Dear Colleague, INTACH is twenty years old.

It was established with extravagant expectations to transform (among others) the conservation scene in India. In 1984, the major player in the field was the Government, operating through the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and State Departments of Archaeology (SDA). Together, they conserved about 8,500 monuments. This left out hundreds of thousands of buildings and precincts of valuable architectural heritage, which were unidentified, unprotected and at the mercy of neglect or insensitive development. The few local NGOs that existed operated as advocacy groups and spread awareness, but there was no alternate institution with a national agenda. INTACH set out, ambitiously, to remedy this situation. The venerable ASI had, justifiably, acquired a reputation of international standing. Nevertheless, it had not evolved in keeping with the times. For example, it was staffed largely by archaeologists, historians and some engineers, but, surprisingly, not conservation architects, as was the practice the world over. It also needed to redefine inherited conservation objectives and practices so that it worked more with the people instead of for a disembodied national interest. Several Charters of UNESCO/ICOMOS had defined such changed conservation objectives, but these perceptions had not yet percolated into India. INTACH took on the task to transform this legacy. In twenty years, what has INTACH achieved? Few will claim that it has redeemed its promises, at least, not in full measure. But it has made a dent in an area that appeared immune to change and brought about greater awareness, at the national level, for the need to conserve our architectural heritage. It also set up an institutional base for undertaking conservation work. It set up Chapters in all corners of the country to identify, record and promote conservation activity. It engaged in productive dialogue with various government agencies to promote the imperatives of conservation generally as partners but, when necessary, as adversaries in Court. It enabled over fifty young architects to obtain post-graduate education in conservation in UK and thus transformed the pool of expertise available in the country. In doing so, it has changed the field of conservation, which was once the sole prerogative of the government, into a more democratic arena of expert intervention. Nevertheless, much remains to be done. Twenty years is an adequate benchmark to justify introspection, take stock and reformulate goals. Among the areas of INTACHs activities, which need to be examined, is how it has dealt with conserving the legally unprotected architectural heritage of the country. This was a central concern of INTACHs founders, on which many of its earliest initiatives focused. In spite of much work having been done in this area, in one major respect it remains uncharted territory: there are no guidelines to plan and monitor the conservation of this category of heritage. When INTACH started working on the conservation of unprotected architectural heritage, it adopted, by default, the principles and practices of ASI as its norm. But architects who engaged in projects at that time realised that they were dealing with a new order of conservation issues. Not being formally schooled in conservation, they saw these issues afresh.

Their insights led to the articulation of new models for dealing with the conservation of architectural heritage, such as the Heritage Zone concept. The Heritage Zone concept emerged on a project-by-project basis. It generally dealt with heritage in a holistic manner and attempted to locate unprotected architectural heritage in the area of overlap between the activities of ASI and local Town Planning Departments. This had not been attempted before, and it appeared to be an eminently appropriate and pragmatic strategy. But it did not establish the criteria to guide decision-making in other conservation projects or situations. In the absence of a compelling set of guidelines many approaches emerged. In the meantime, many young architects received formal training in conservation, in India and UK. Their formal training reinforced the rule of universal principles in the Indian context. In a manner of speaking, INTACH was back at square one, although this time not by default, but by volition, driven by the convictions of freshly trained conservation architects. Not surprisingly, differences in conservation ideology emerged. Many realised that they were not dealing with one reality, one truth, one way to conserve, but at least two contexts simultaneously, one universal and the other rooted in neglected indigenous practices. The debate is not over which of the two is the correct approach, but the need to reconcile the imperatives of both. This condition of hybridity is a unique characteristic of the Indian situation. The idea dawned that both historic buildings and historic ways of building need to be conserved: separately these objectives are acceptable, but in tandem they create irreconcilable anomalies. Out of this realisation emerged the project to formulate a Charter for the Conservation of Unprotected Architectural Heritage of India. Interestingly, it was Sir Bernard Feilden who first endorsed this project when he mentioned in the Guidelines for Conservation for INTACH (1989), that India needed its own Charter. While formulating the agenda for the national convention to mark INTACHs twentieth anniversary, we realised that the time for defining such a Charter had come. In preparation for formulating the Charter, INTACH organised several workshops attended by Indian and foreign experts in the field. The present draft of the Charter is an outcome of those discussions. It is still, however, only a draft, and is being widely circulated to solicit comments and advice. We hope that you can forward your response by September 30, 2004 to enable us to produce a better document to present to INTACHs National Convention on November 2, 2004. You can either post your comments to INTACH or email them directly to me at: agkm at tvbshs.org Thank you and with regards, Yours sincerely, [signed] A G Krishna Menon