50 more sites across India on UNESCO’s Tentative List, await upgrade

NEW DELHI: India is home to a variety of heritage sites, only few of which come under UNESCO World Heritage Sites. With Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan in West Bengal and Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysalas in Karnataka added to the list, India’s count now stands at 42. The national capital has three such cultural properties.

The distinguishing feature of a World Heritage Site is its exhibition of India's diverse architectural brilliance and cultural depth, along with its historicity. India boasts of 34 cultural sites, 7 natural sites and 1 mixed site that bears both natural and cultural significance (Sikkim’s Khangchendzonga National Park).

Further, as many as 50 sites in India, from the Neolithic settlement in Burzahom to the Baha'i temple of Delhi, are on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List. Shantiniketan, for example, embodies the explanation of its new status: Established by the Nobel laureate, poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore in 1901, Santiniketan was a centre for art founded on ancient Indian traditions and it harboured a vision of the unity of humanity transcending religious and cultural distinctions.

In 1921, Shantiniketan came to be known as a “world university” and “Visva Bharati” and marked itself apart from the prevailing European ways in form and spirit-the British modernism and the colonial architectural orientations of the early 20th century. A World Heritage Site listed by UNESCO must quintessentially be a unique landmark which geographically and historically stands out owing to its cultural or physical significance. These sites are maintained by the international World Heritage Programme, which is administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.

The ‘living city’ of Delhi has in its precincts the remains of over a thousand years in different states of preservation. The city’s surviving historic urbanscape includes four regions--Mehrauli, Nizamuddin, Shahjahanabad and New Delhi-that have retained their historicity. Delhi developed historically in a triangular pattern along river Yamuna on one side and the Aravalli range on the other two sides. Additionally, Delhi was a strategically located region on an important trade route that ran along the Gangetic plain and merged with the Silk Route.

The precincts of Mehrauli, Nizamuddin, Shahjahanabad and New Delhi are being proposed to earn Delhi the nomination for a World Heritage City. But as of now, these precincts house the city’s three World Heritage Sites. The Heritage Conservation Committee, though existing since 1983, was given a fresh orientation in 2004 by the Supreme Court of India to include provisions for the protection of heritage buildings, heritage precincts and natural feature areas in Delhi.

The World Heritage Sites in the national capital are the Red Fort complex, Humayun’s tomb and Qutub Minar and its surrounding structures. Although Delhi houses only three World Heritage Sites, it is dotted with numerous historical structures that are tourist attractions for both locals as well as for international visitors. The tag of a World Heritage Site contributes significantly to the conservation and maintenance of these sustaining pieces of antiquity, but the several other monuments that are devoid of any protective label are no less an echo from history. IANS

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