Paper short abstract:

The paper reveals the Hampi villagers’ failed struggle against their forced displacement from a UNESCO site in India. It argues that the discursive superiority of sedentarism over mobility that privileges ‘rooted culture’ works against communities which have been formed by mobility processes.

Paper long abstract:

This ethnographic study demonstrates how the discursive superiority of sedentarism over mobility that privileges distinctive 'rooted culture' may work against communities which have emerged as an outcome of mobility processes.

The residents of Hampi - a south Indian village - have been forcibly displaced from the core zone of the UNESCO World Heritage site since 2011. Two thirds of the village population has already been evicted and their homes and small enterprises demolished. Initially, the most disadvantaged established a shanty encampment on the outskirts of the village. They are currently being resettled.

The evictions were based on a conservationist paradigm and I analyse why the Hampi villagers' attempts to resist the forced displacement did not succeed despite employing the concept of intangible heritage, which was to adopt a more "human rights-based" approach to heritage management. I argue that they discursively failed to prove their 'cultural authenticity' as they were neither natives to Hampi nor peasants attached to their ancestors' land. Their community had been formed in the 1940s in the process of inward migration caused by droughts. Later on, they engaged with the low-budget tourism sector which attracted new migrants. As a result they have been framed in the public discourse as both "illegal encroachers" with no land rights and an "artificial", "commercialised" community contaminated by market economy. In comparison, a neighbouring village of Anegondi - which fits the native frame of traditional culture - is developing rural endogenous tourism with the support of the state tourism agency and the UN Development Programme.