A KEY feature of urban planning in post-independence India has been the growing emphasis on developing ‘new’ areas instead of the ‘old’. In adopting the ‘master plan’ approach it has more often than not completely overlooked and bypassed the indigenous principles of planning inherent in historic towns and cities. Planning through master plans has, in the guise of development, either led to the conscious destruction of historic urban fabric or, through sheer neglect, reduced historic settlements to slums.

This legacy of ‘a neglect of the traditional’ goes back to the colonial period reflecting the compulsions of a political ideology that chose to undermine traditional urbanism, with Patrick Geddes perhaps the sole voice of dissent. Post-independence, however, it was the pressures of a developing country wanting to appear ‘modern’ by discarding the ‘past’ that contributed to this neglect. As a result, historic built environments, which through centuries and generations had been nurtured and sustained a quality of life more wholesome than that provided by contemporary planning, are today considered a burden and a liability rather than an asset for the future.

However, even while lamenting this loss, there is another reality, that even today a sizable proportion of the urban population continues to live in historic towns and cities. Equally that even in their neglect these historic settlements continue to foster and reflect a vibrancy, vitality and energy missing in most ‘new’ developments. The reasons for this are perhaps buried under the more visible squalor of many of these historic environs. It is these values and principles of planning that need to be retrieved to not only conserve them but because they are worth emulating in new developments.

There could be many rationale for conserving our heritage. At one level the need for conservation arises out of a search for roots, for personal and cultural identity, a nostalgia for the past fuelled by a mistrust of the future or simply a need for a sense of continuity. Heritage, seen and defined by some as a ‘resource’, provides other reasons for its conservation. The term ‘resource’ entered common discourse only in the 19th century capitalist phase of development when nature became a ‘natural resource’ and human beings became a ‘human resource’, thus enabling them to be seen as commodities for easy exploitation. In more contemporary times one hopes ‘culture’ and ‘heritage’ as resources do not share the same fate.

 

 

In the context of historic settlements in India, heritage areas as repositories of knowledge systems contain lessons for planning and design that are still relevant today. Conservation in such instances acquires additional validity as an alternate model of development. If one were to weigh the principles of traditional planning against contemporary variants, some features stand out. Historic cities were closely interlinked to and deeply respectful of nature. Their physical form was based essentially on animate rather than inanimate forms of energy, resulting in cities of a human scale, planned for people and not the automobile. Because of their relatively high densities and compact forms they encouraged a multiplicity of space usage, ensuring greater economy in the use of time, energy and land. Their architecture was reflective of a self-sustaining, ecological model of design. The city and its architecture displayed the ability to constantly reinvent itself without compromising on these basic values. In making a modern case for their conservation, it needs to be underscored is that the value of these historic settlements and their architecture lies not in their image but rather in the way they once performed. Their future can be ensured only by comprehending and appreciating these multiple meanings.

Conservation thus gets redefined as a process of development, responsive to and respectful of the positive attributes of the past, addressing the current socio-cultural needs of the people by integrating modern amenities and infrastructure wherever necessary within the historic environment, consequently leading to a healthier, safer and improved quality of life for its inhabitants. While accepting change and transformation in the urban fabric, as also in the lifestyle of the people, as inevitable and necessary, conservation has to guide these transformations without compromising on the basic values of heritage. In the absence of this perspective on living historic settlements we may continue to lose our rich urban heritage to anonymous and indistinctive settlements.

 

 

It was with this rationale and understanding of conservation that we approached Orchha, a historic settlement, unique in itself and yet representative of scores of historic towns in the issues pertaining to their conservation. Orchha is a small settlement of around five thousand inhabitants in Madhya Pradesh. It is sited in a most picturesque setting on the banks of the river Betwa, amidst a forest cover that once provided the natural bastion necessary in the turbulent medieval times. As the capital of the Bundelas between 1531 to 1783 AD, Orchha today has some of the best surviving examples of Bundela architecture, a rich natural heritage comprising of the river landscape and forests and a living Bundela culture embodied in the people, their lifestyle, folklore, music and literature.

Orchha means different things to different people. To the local inhabitants, Orchha is a place of residence, where having lived for over four hundred years, surviving today on the traditional economy of agriculture is difficult because of a degrading natural environment. Forests have disappeared and the water regimes so carefully tended over centuries by the traditional wisdom of water harvesting stand disrupted. As a result, people are increasingly turning to a new occupation, tourism, to eke out a living, in however petty a manner.

 

 

While the urban fabric retains some of its medieval character in its spaces – streets, courtyards, chowks and vernacular housing – thus sustaining and promoting a cohesive community structure, it is threatened by change under the pressures of misguided urbanization. It lacks the basic infrastructure related to sanitation and water supply transforming what could otherwise have been a very humane habitat into a degraded and unhygienic living environment.

To the residents of the wider region, Orchha is an urban centre providing infrastructure such as dispensaries, schools and hostels, many of which are functioning out of historic buildings, thus giving them a new lease of life. For them, Orchha is auspicious because of its association with Hardaul, a folk hero of the 17th century, who features in many of the folktales and ballads of Bundelkhand. To the several thousand pilgrims from all over India, Orchha is a town of temples, the most famous being Raja Ram mandir. Reflecting their faith they throng in lakhs during festival times for a dip in the river Betwa, and in the absence of any infrastructure, leave behind an even more degraded environment for the local people to live in.

To the tourists, Indian and foreign, Orchha represents the splendour of medieval monuments, some standing, most in ruins. Unlike the pilgrims, these tourists view the magnificent temples with different kind of awe and reverence, devoid of religious faith but worshipful nonetheless, acknowledging the creativity of a people and a culture that found expression through the medium of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries. These tourists take back magical memories of a medieval capital. Through their needs and demands on Orchha, however, they not only overburden a nonexistent infrastructure but also leave behind an alien cultural baggage that is triggering a rapid pace of change. This is manifested, for example, in the transformation of the very distinctive vernacular buildings in stone and brick into faceless concrete hotels.

 

 

Orchha is all this and much more. In preparing its conservation plan, an initiative by INTACH in 2002, the objectives were manifold. The challenge was to improve the site for all who live, visit and work in the area; to ensure not only the physical survival of archaeological sites and monuments but also to improve interpretation and understanding of the site as a cultural landscape; to identify economic and cultural benefits that could be derived from the heritage site without harming it in any way; to work with the local community so as to arrive at a long term self-sustaining endeavour towards its conservation; and to address the current land management issues as a means of managing heritage. Additionally, the conservation plan had to be seen as a process to effectively manage the site whereby the needs of heritage, tourism and the local community could interact positively to create a better living environment.

The conservation plan had to be multifaceted. A holistic approach was vital for the Orchha Heritage Zone spread over six square kilometres, where the interests and future of the people, the landscape and the monuments were closely intertwined. It had to balance the concerns of built heritage with nature conservation, local community demands and visitor needs. In the process it became evident that conservation proposals had to form part of the larger economic and social planning for the area. For example, while the presence of monuments was giving an impetus to tourism, in the absence of any established thresholds of carrying capacity of the site, it was also leading to an unbalanced economic and urban development.

 

 

Many people were abandoning their traditional sources of livelihood like agriculture to turn to tourism, a proposition that seemed very lucrative in the short run. But just one bad year in tourism could create slump in tourist inflow, adversely affecting the income levels and the quality of life of the people. The conservation plan, in order to promote a more diverse occupation profile suggested, among others, improving the agriculture potential of the land through reviving the water regimes through water harvesting and afforestation. Closely linked was the need to prepare a plan with an emphasis on joint forest and water management practices to ensure conservation of the natural heritage.

Other NGOs like Development Alternatives, active in the area with the local population in building check dams, were drawn into the larger conservation scene. Similarly, the need to upgrade the pilgrim infrastructure was considered vital, not for pilgrims alone but for the local population as well. In the absence of any sanitation, sewage was leaching into the soils and polluting the underground water, thus proving a hazard for the large number of local inhabitants dependent on the wells for their water supply.

 

 

Another key objective of the conservation plan was to evolve a sustainable approach for the future management of the site, one that reduced dependence on externalities. Closely linked to this was the design of meaningful stakeholder involvement such as to employ local skills and abilities for the continuing care of heritage. This was handled at several levels. It was evident that those heritage structures that people could relate to on a daily basis remained better conserved.

One of the positive aspects of Orchha was that through adaptive reuse of many historic structures it had made this possible and had thus ensured their survival. Jhujhar Singh palace, Keshav Bhavan, Purani Haveli, the barracks – all 17th century structures – were functioning respectively as a tehsil court, an intermediate school, a primary school and a boy’s hostel. To further encourage this trend, while making an inventory of the built heritage of Orchha, the possibility of using several other heritage structures for public use was explored and proposals prepared.

In the early phase of the project a workshop was held with local contractors and masons to sensitize them to the skills and materials necessary for the restoration of monuments. Many of these skills had existed till very recently and were used in the vernacular housing. However, they had been marginalized with the modern building industry aggressively promoting new materials. What was noteworthy was that, more than the masons, it was the contractors who needed this education and orientation.

Subsequently, in order to further encourage the development of these skills, INTACH undertook the restoration of six smaller heritage structures with a team comprising largely of local craftspersons. A register of these craftspersons was maintained with the nagar panchayat and the Directorate of Archaeology, Archives and Museums (DAAM) for employment in future restoration work. It was also proposed to set up a building conservation cell within the nagar panchayat to advocate the use of traditional materials and skills in the mainstream building industry, as well as to ensure their easy availability.

 

 

The involvement of the community in the protection of heritage, currently non-existent, was crucial to the success of the plan. It was all the more important given the fact that the maintenance and management of the expanse of heritage was clearly beyond the means of DAAM, with its limited financial and technical resources. Of the 165 heritage structures within the Heritage Zone of Orchha, the DAAM was actively protecting only a dozen of the grand, monumental and more visible buildings. There was a need to evolve mechanisms whereby the task of heritage conservation could be shared by a larger number of individuals or groups under the guidance of DAAM.

One such proposal dealt with the several historic wells and baolis that lay scattered within the agricultural fields. Most of them were in a state of disrepair and disuse with water sources blocked by debris. An initiative was taken to make an inventory of the wells and subsequently clean them with the nagar panchayat and DAAM providing initial subsidies for their repair, thereafter handing over their maintenance to local farmers in whose fields they lay as they had a stake in their conservation. The existing administrative wards comprising of about fifty households each also proved to be a very cohesive unit for decision making for the care and management of smaller heritage structures like pavilions and baradaris that fell within the limits of the ward boundaries. Many of these structures not under the purview of DAAM were incorporated in chowks and open space design as part of the urban design schemes.

Several proposals highlighted the need to adopt innovative approaches to conservation of heritage in spheres where the conventional methods of maintenance of heritage had failed in the past. This list was wide ranging and diverse and included proposals for preparing manuals for users of the historic buildings, introducing ecofriendly modes of transport like bicycles and cycle rickshaws within the core of the heritage zone for tourists, pedestrianising certain zones, banning plastic bags and setting up a paper bag industry using local skills.

 

 

The conservation plan also called for a revision of the ASI Regulation of 1992 that restricted and regulated development within 100 metres and 200 metres respectively of monuments. Imposing this blanket regulation was proving to be impractical in the context of a living settlement such as Orchha, and was one major reason why it was flouted without compunction. A development plan identifying various precincts with different levels of control, guided by the nature of the heritage within, was prepared in consultation with the Town and Country Planning Organization (TCPO).

Both the diversity of heritage and of agencies functioning in Orchha brought out the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspect of conservation, where heritage became the concern not only of archaeologists or conservation architects but equally town planners, traffic and transport planners, environmental planners, tourism experts, urban designers, landscape architects, economists, sociologists, anthropologists and graphic designers, to name a few.

 

 

Our study of Orchha showed that for conservation to be successful heritage has to be integrated with the lives of the people in a more direct manner, to touch aspects concerned with contemporary living. It has to be relevant in economic, social and ecological terms. In the practice of urban conservation the two most important participants are the users and the institutions responsible for the urban environment. It thus became imperative to locate ‘heritage’ on the agenda of each of these institutions and agencies functioning in Orchha for any conservation plan to succeed. This was done through various proposals and policies identified in the Conservation Plan. It was observed that an awareness of the heritage of Orchha was either completely missing within the institutional framework, or if it did exist, it was in a very myopic manner.

Through the conservation plan, the Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) expanded its understanding of the urban heritage of Orchha beyond ‘monuments’ to include the vernacular housing, the urban morphology with all its qualities such as the human scale of streets and open spaces, their multiplicity of usage, the safe and secure environs of cul de sacs and the otlas as an interface between the private and public realms. It recognized that any future development plan for Orchha had to respect and enhance these features because they were sustaining a quality of human existence worth conserving.

The conservation plan also emphasized the need to frame development guidelines sensitive to these qualities, different from the existing ‘standards’ like front, back and rear setbacks and FARs (floor area ratio) applicable to any ‘modern’ development. Similarly the DAAM which was protecting only the grand and the magnificent was made to realize the value of the lesser known structures which were contributing as much in retaining the image of the medieval capital as the palaces and larger havelis.

 

 

The Conservation Plan also sought to alter the ‘museum piece’ attitude towards all heritage, currently adopted by the DAAM, which often compelled them to evict all uses and users from historic buildings and construct fences around monuments. The proposals followed the age-old dictum that ‘the best way to conserve a historic structure was to put it to a compatible use.’ The tourism department was prompted to regulate tourism before it grew to proportions where it became self-destructive. The forest department was also made to recognize the need to adopt joint forest management practices as a means of managing natural heritage.

The PWD was sensitized to the importance of the city gateways as heritage so that it ceased to treat them as impediments to road widening schemes. It was made to see the utility of these historic gateways in a traffic plan where the gateways become regulators of the quantum and modes of traffic permitted through them, thus ensuring a safe and secure environment within the streets in the core of Orchha. The water pollution board was also notified of the fact that the boulders in the river were as much a part of the natural heritage as the river and fishing by blasting had to be banned because it was polluting the river as well as damaging the rock outcrops. The state electricity board and the telephone department also had to be coaxed into re-siting the electrical and telephone cables so as not to deface the monuments or mar their view.

 

 

To conclude, conservation in living historic areas has to be about quality of life and unless heritage conservation can help add to that, in tangible or intangible terms, it will continue to be neglected. Urban development in India in recent times has resulted in a disconnect with the past which has changed people’s perceptions of their heritage. Conservation today has to aim to reconnect with this past by illustrating that it has much to offer to enhance the quality of life.

For example, in conserving the vernacular housing, the argument is not one of preserving a relic of the past to make for good photo opportunities for tourists on heritage walks, but because, as a detailed study of the vernacular architecture in Orchha revealed, it is ecofriendly, durable, economical, low on maintenance and comfortable to live in. While acknowledging that certain facilities such as toilets and other infrastructure need to be introduced within the existing fabric, there is still much of the past that can and has to be carried into the future as an asset.

Living historic towns and cities embody many of the qualities expressed in terms such as ‘sustainable’, ‘ecofriendly’, ‘mixed land use’, ‘low rise high density’ that are part of the vocabulary of an alternative discourse in modern architecture and planning. Therein lies the hope and future of conservation of our historic towns, a future based not merely on accommodating the symbols of the past in the present but a future shaped in a very definitive manner by the positive qualities inherent in our heritage.