This course presents some important vignettes of a complex, highly diverse India that is also witnessing unprecedented changes since its formal independence in 1947 from Great Britain. The lectures revolve around social dimensions of change, the continuing influence of ancient texts on contemporary India, political democracy, economic transition from the state to the market, gender relations, India's economic globalisation and changing world view. While one of the objectives is to capture the multifaceted process of change, the course also critically examines some of the tensions inherent in these changes. For example, how does gender inequality play itself out in a changing Indian society, how do the modernist conceptions of art entailing market valuation challenge the more socio-centric values found in South India, what are the politics linguistic identities, and how might India address its myriad development challenges such as poverty and unemployment. No specific prior knowledge is required. However, it would be helpful if students are aware of the socio political dynamics at play in contemporary India and keep themselves abreast with current affairs and debates in the country to fully appreciate the various dimensions and contours if the subject matter in the course. This course is taught in English. View the MOOC promotional video here: http://tinyurl.com/hx8mhxb
7.5 Conservation & heritage-ization
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From the course by The University of Melbourne
Contemporary India
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From the lesson
The past in the present: traditional art forms in today's India
We will use arts as a lens to look at some of the general transformations in today’s India. The focus in this section will be to negate the modernity/tradition dichotomy and instead argue that traditions in India are constantly changing. These traditions adapt to the prevailing conditions, which present its own complexities. To understand them, specific concepts and tools will be introduced to better explain the realities of contemporary India, which simultaneously remains connected to its ancient past.
Meet the Instructors
Anthony D'CostaProfessor
School of Social and Political Sciences
Welcome back to this lecture on the traditional arts in Contemporary India.
And we've just taken a look at two types of essentialism
that are characteristic of a modern worldview.
One type of essentialism is museumization, and
another type is or another expression of essentialism is fetishization.
And now we're going to look at two more trends that are also associated with this
essentialist mindset or essentialist worldview.
Conservation practices and Heritage-ization practices or
heritage, a transformation of Indian art into heritage
is something that is relatively, recent.
Primarily in the last decade and a half or so.
So conservation functions to materially, and mythologically suspend the forces
of time, abstracting the work of art from its concrete relation to shifting
historical contexts, as if it's independent of context.
As if it is not something that exists within its own compartment,
but is inherently free.
Independent, just like a modern economic person.
The object is valued in and of itself as a kind of aesthetic fetish, and
it exists independent of time, independent of history, independent of context.
Just as I am not defined by the circumstances I'm in or
by relationships but by some sort of, inherent property that I
have within myself that makes me a distinct, and unique individual.
And the work of art is imagined in the same terms, or
a temple is imagined in the same way.
Specifically, the purpose of conservation is to make these objects seem
to be something that exist mythically, in mythological time and
space of their existence, is really the time and place of their origin.
They're supposed to be conserved
as monuments to some ancient moment when they were produced and
when they were originally used.
So the idea of conservation is to try to make this object seem
like it has always existed outside of time.
And to give us some connection, some sort of, imaginary connection to the past.
Both the practices of conservation, and
those of modernist individualism express an of idea that each person,
or each thing has some sort of inherent and independent essence.
Something like art or Universal Rights or, or our Human Nature,
self-interested, essentially economic beings who are rational calculators
of cost and benefits that sort of, thing and to universalise this notion of
Human Nature as this is the way that human beings are by nature, and
this is how this object is a work of art.
And it is a work of art by nature.
And it doesn't depend on any circumstance, it's doesn't depend on history,
it doesn't depend on any time and place.
History is all about one context after another, and
conservation removes the object at least mythically from context.
As if it's something that exists in a timeless realm.
And this timeless realm is associated with the sort of,
pseudo sacred attitude that we take toward works for art.
As if the adorno nicely compares
the word museum to the word mausoleum.
That museum, and the museumization, and
the conservation of objects is something like the embalming of an object or
embalming of a person at one time had a social life.
And these sacred works of art at one time had a social life.
And after that social life is over they are embalmed,
or they preserved for all time.
They exist in some sort of, a space, sacred space that is beyond the plucks,
and change of history.
That it enters into some sort of, timeless realm.
And this mausoleum like atmosphere is characteristic of the
museum as well.
And associated with this conservation
of ancient art as there is you're basically you're
conserving the shell of the object, its outer appearance.
It's social life is over.
It's no longer actively in worship the temple that
that is in the background of this photograph has been entirely museumized.
It's an ancient monument that dates it was originally produced in
the eighth century.
And it was in worship for maybe about 1,000 years, or so,
but it fell into disrepair.
And then the British archeological survey.
Began to restore it, and now it’s a major tourist destination.
And in this photograph what we are seeing is this conserved temple,
museumized temple, being visited by Indian schoolchildren, and this is a sight
that you see everywhere in India, where schoolchildren are taken to these.
Sights in order to in order to expose them to their heritage.
These monuments are defined, or reclassified as heritage.
And then as heritage, they become symbols, or
representations of a kind of national identity, or a national essence.
These children are learning to be Indians, they're learning to imagine themselves to
be part of this specific community of people
that has endured for a long time in across this large span of time, and
these monuments are part of their heritage that link them to their ancestors.
These are museumized signs, representations of the past that
exist supposedly outside of the sphere of traditional pilgrimage.
At the same time that children are being
taken to these monuments to expose them to their heritage.
What is going on is a subtext, tacitly, implicitly,
without anybody's conscious explicit admission,
is that they are learning the neo-liberal economic lessons of sight seeing,
of cultural tourism, of treating these objects as tourist destinations.
Domestic tourism is something that's a relatively new thing in India.
Indians travel a lot.
They travel for social reasons.
They travel for weddings.
They travel for for religious pilgrimage, and this is an ancient practice.
This has been going on for a long time.
But going on vacation, going someplace just for you know, recreation.
Just for the heck of it,
just you know, as a kind of consumer activity that's relatively new.
And you need to socialise people from the relatively, young age.
Now, you have have people in their 30s, and 40s who were raised with
the being taken in school being exposed to their national heritage, and
being taken to monuments, and now they're beginning to take their own children.
And so there's the beginning
of a kind of market for domestic cultural tourism.
But cultural tourism,
up until relatively recently, there was something that foreigners did.
Foreigners came to India, and traveled around to these monuments,
and went to the museums, and treated them, as works of art.
And certain middle class, and upper class Indian's,
who were comfortable with these modern foreign institutions, and
also economic ways of looking at the world, also engaged in these practices.
But with the heritage-ization of movement where,
children are learning their heritage, they are also learning
to treat this sector of the economy in the proper way.
You know, they're learning to be tourists.
They're learning how to consume leisure activities, and especially vacations.
So they're not just traveling for traditional reasons, for weddings,
or traditional pilgrimage.
But they're also traveling for
for recreation for tourism.
And they're learning about their own national identity.
They're learning that these
these ancient monuments symbolise their Indianness.
Even though India is a rather, is a new nation state, and
it's only existed since 1947, and the idea of India is a relatively new idea.
India used to be composed of many, many different kingdoms throughout its history.
In the third century BC there was a kingdom that did encompass much of south Asia,
but for the rest of the, of the history of India, history of
the south Asian subcontinent it's been divided into many, many kingdoms.
And it's only recently, that this idea of India, as some sort of
a coherent nation state has arisen.
And here the challenge is how do get people to imagine themselves
to belong to this imagined community of people that has existed
since time immemorial for 5,000 years, or 2,000 years.
This is where art comes in so
art is being used in service of this idea of an Indian nation.
And an Indian national identity, some sort of an essential identity.
So when re-framed as heritage.
Then the preservation, and
the appreciation of ancient art helps to serve a political aim.
Forging this idea of a coherent contemporary national identify.
And imagined as a sort of, independent national essence.
The rub here is that this is a bit of a tricky thing to do because,
these ancient monuments have sectarian, and regional significance.
And Sectarian divisions, and Regional divisions,
Linguistic divisions are a threat,
often through the coherence and the unity of the nation state.
And so using ancient art in this way can make this is a risky strategy.
Students may go to the Madurai Meenakshi Temple for the example, and
learn that this is their heritage, but some of them are going to be seen as this
is out Tamil heritage, not necessarily our heritage as Indians.
It has to do with, or this is a specific Shiba form of Hindu heritage,
rather than something that's broader and
more inclusive that includes people of a lot of different religious orientations.
So this can be a bit of a risky strategy to treat these things
as national heritage.
But, it's become Conventional now.
It's become a standard mode of practice
in Indian contexts.
So we've just looked at two aspects of a kind of essentialist
worldview, modernist essentialist worldview projected onto the ancient
arts of India connected to conservation practices,
the conservation of ancient monuments and ancient art.
And their deployment as symbols of a national identity,
or national coherent Indianness.
That can be summarised by the term, Heritage-ization.
In the next section we'll go on to wrap this up,
and to ask a couple of concluding questions.
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