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- Convenors:
-
Monica Mottin
(Heidelberg University)
Stefanie Lotter (SOAS)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Lanyon Building, LAN/0G/074
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to explore forms of erasure of subaltern heritage and whether/how solidarities and commoning may facilitate the repositioning of heritage to question dominant historiography.
Long Abstract:
Heritage is as much about the past as it is about the future. But not everyone has an equal say in shaping the future. In South Asia in particular, heritage is co-opted into local, ethnic, and national/ist politics to justify claims to place, erase, silence, or marginalise histories of subaltern voices, even more so when a global crisis like the Covid19 pandemic further widens pre-existing inequalities. Bettina Arnold argues that "erasure of the past can be a creative force as well as a destructive one" when selective editing of the past results in the "preservation of only some parts of the archaeological or textual record" (2014). Erasure of the past can take different forms but through selective destruction of heritage or lack of care and solidarity, alternative historical perspectives are selectively silenced and erased when they do not conform with the dominant agenda towards history. Who has the power of doing the "erasing"? How does erasure of cultural heritage take place and how is it justified? How are capitalism, neocolonial ideologies and internal colonialism paving the way for processes of erasure? Can commoning and solidarity across subaltern groups reposition heritage to challenge dominant historiography? How does erased heritage resurface and what does such decolonised or localised heritage look like?
We welcome ethnographic studies and theoretical contributions that question hierarchies and elaborate on the solidarities necessary to erase or counter the Authorised Heritage Discourse (Smith, 2006). We seek to learn how tangible, intangible, everyday or natural heritage is altered.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Helena Cermeño (Department of Urban Sociology, University of Kassel, Germany) Katja Mielke (BICC)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the selective silencing of heritage in national conservation projects of the Walled City of Lahore and whether/how this form of structural violence is countered by subaltern initiatives for heritage conservation that yield prospects for reconciliation between India and Pakistan.
Paper long abstract:
The debate on the commons is of high relevance for questions of shared histories. Where urban heritage in post-colonial cities is concerned, not all layers of heritage are considered worthy of protection. In this paper we analyse heritage management and urban conservation frameworks in the Walled City of Lahore, Pakistan. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted on and off over the past decade, we explore how selected urban heritage is mobilized as a tool for economic growth and investments opportunities by the government and development authorities, and how these processes of heritage management in turn silence important dimensions and objects of heritage that constitute a shared history with Hindus and Sikhs before and during the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947. The prevalent erasure of a history of conviviality and violence, we argue, prevents any constructive confrontation with the past and constitutes a form of structural violence. While development and conservation projects in the Walled City target the tangible heritage, such as selected built environment (e.g., officially designated houses, public spaces, facades, and monuments), at the same time cultural heritage and intangible dimensions of it, are instrumentalised along with discourses of participation and inclusivity to create acceptance for heritage management projects among the affected population and facilitate their implementation. By examining the relation between development, collective memory, and heritage, this paper traces alternative forms of heritage management in Lahore arguing for the need to decolonize heritage to move towards a constructive confrontation with the past required for agonistic peacebuilding and reconciliation.
Cameron Warner (Aarhus University) Katherine Hacker (University of British Columbia) Sara Shneiderman (University of British Columbia) Manoj Suji (Concordia University) Line Holm (Aarhus University)
Paper short abstract:
Heritage in Nepal has laid bare tensions between the government and local authorities. We study local political power and heritage management in Bhaktapur. We show tensions between a municipality and the government, ethnic minorities and the majority, private homeowners and public officials.
Paper long abstract:
Nepal's devastating 2015 earthquakes prompted anxious attention to the UNESCO-designated World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley and the means and methods for rebuilding damaged monuments and residences. As a value-loaded concept, the debate over 'heritage' in Kathmandu today laid bare tensions between the national government and local authorities over the use of foreign experts, building techniques and materials, and the appropriate style of heritage sites. Utilizing ethnographic data, archival material, and photo documentation, we follow the diachronic unfolding of the interdependence of local autonomous political power and heritage management, viewed from contestations over the styles of both private houses and public temples and former royal palaces in the city of Bhaktapur, one of the three major urban areas of the Kathmandu valley. We show how heritage becomes the material manifestation of power struggles between a municipality and the national government, between a local ethnic minority and the national majority ethnicity, between private homeowners and public officials. Our findings build on the values-based approach to heritage studies through a focus on heritage as the material manifestation of community values, but also the site where those values are contested.
Sasi Kumar (Woxsen University, Hyderabad, India.)
Paper short abstract:
This analytical paper looks at the way how Hindu fascist forces take over all subaltern heritages in India, whether Muslim--Babri Masjid was an example in the past--Secular Constitution and JNU as progressive political space. Constitution represents as hallmark for social and political freedom.
Paper long abstract:
Heritage involves text, memory, politics and culture. India's past represents contesting forces and India's freedom struggle was not an exception to this. Hindu fascist forces was never be a part of long-drawn Independence struggle which Indian people fought and won against British colonialism in 1947.
It was the Rashtreeya Swayasevak Sangh (RSS) orchestrated and paved the way for Naredra Modi as Prime Minister of India in 2014. Though the RSS was formed in 1925, it was not at all part of Indian freedom movement in which all the contesting forces competed each other with their political, cultural and ideological positions. Even though, the RSS claims India had a glorious Hindu past heritage, they never involved in the struggle against the British destroying it.
The RSS began its project of erasure of Muslim past by demolition of Babri-Masjid in1992 and subsequently, it captured the power at the centre. It began altering history text books, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru's role in Indian freedom struggle, finally, Indian Constitution which was conceived by Ambedkar, who fought for social equality. He attacked upper caste hierarchy and Brahmanism which the RSS had always been supported for. Jawaharlal Nehru University, after its establishment, stood for political space against the RSS propagation of erasure of history of Muslims and Dalits, anti-colonial heritage, the constitutional imagination of social equality. This alter-heritage project of the RSS can be resisted by all the forces as they stood previously for India's freedom struggle, peasants, workers, students, Dalits and Muslims once again.
Katja Müller (Merseburg University of Applied Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
Alternative forms of curating Indian heritage material scrutinizes established institutions. Community-based online archives and collections are forms of heritage making from beyond the centre, which require Indian national institutions to reassess access policies and European ones to rethink their understanding of ethnographic collections.
Paper long abstract:
This paper seeks to provide insight into alternative forms of heritage creation and curation that scrutinize established institutions. It argues on the basis of Indian community-based archives and collections, that the online dissemination of digital/digitized ones allows for alter-heritages: curated and circulating assemblies of meaningful references to the past, relevant for the present and shaping the future. These forms of archives and collections – not only preserved and decided upon by professional curators, but by active lay-persons and engaged citizens – are not only more successful in active memory making (through creating empathy at a distance). They also challenge established institutions within the country to follow suit with providing online access to cultural heritage. Furthermore, these online voices from non-professionals show a strong focus on heritage material and audiences from within the country and the subcontinent. This indicates that European museums and archives, housing large collections from South Asia and all over the world, might have to rethink their agenda of what ethnographic collections entail and what a decolonial agenda might mean. They might become less of a centre after all, while voices from the margins resituate themselves and (co-)constitute alternative heritage collections.
Shobhit Shakya (Tallinn University of Technology)
Paper short abstract:
As speakers of Nepalbhasa – the language of the Newars, dwindled through discriminatory state policies pushing it into the endangered languages list, the new affordances provided by the ICT has seemingly provided it with a lifeline as digital permanence is sought as a remedy.
Paper long abstract:
“If the language survives, so will the community” – was a defining slogan of the Bhasa Andolan (language revolution), the struggle of the Newars of Kathmandu valley to save their language and heritage. Largely discriminated, Newars, the dwellers of the historical cities and towns of Kathmandu valley and surrounding areas with a distinct cultural identity, believed that saving of their cultural identity from absolute erasure depended on the survival of their language – Nepalbhasa. While speakers of the language dwindled as the result of discriminatory state policies pushing the language into the endangered languages list, the new affordances provided by the advent of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), has given, what is seeming, a lifeline. Through community activists and tech-savvy youth, a revival of the language appears to be aimed through heightened grassroots activities leveraging the internet and social media to promote and preserve the language while using the World Wide Web as a repository of resources. But if at all so, how big a part can the digital permanence that has been sought be for a solution to the complex issue of identity and heritage preservation? We reflect on the emerging digitally leveraged grassroots activities of the Newars of Kathmandu Valley in a struggle to save their language and identity.