The Hindu : New Delhi News : ASI inventory a note from the past

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 06, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

ASI inventory a note from the past

By Mandira Nayar

NEW DELHI, OCT. 5. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) seems to be helping people brush up their knowledge of not only history but also geography if the recently published Inventory of the Delhi Circle is anything to go by. With precise coordinates of buildings, a compass will essentially be a survival kit to find anything listed in it. However, the ASI tries desperately to make the task of finding these monuments easier -- it lists the bus station, the airport as well as the railway station -- which are all "helpfully" listed as Delhi.

Pending for more than five years now, the inventory has finally seen the light of day this year. But the Inventory of the Delhi Circle does not seem much better than the ASI's "bible'' -- the list of Centrally Protected Monuments -- which has remained relatively unchanged since pre-Independence days. An inventory of largely archival pictures, latitudes and longitudes for every monument, it is unfortunately quite useless for anyone who wants to know what the buildings look like now.

While the inventory of monuments of the Delhi Circle has been printed, those of all the other circles that the ASI has are still waiting to be printed. "The inventory of the Srinagar Circle and the Chandigarh Circle have also been printed. "We started the process in 1998. It will take time because we need so much material from the Circles and some regions are inaccessible.

We have also used pictures that are found in the ASI archives, only 30 per cent of the pictures are recent," stated a senior retired official.

But with the same format being followed in all the inventories -- the other Circles might not be useful either. And with only archival information needed for the inventories, it is a wonder that the ASI did not complete it sooner.

A walk through history, quite literally, the Delhi inventory has practically no recent pictures of buildings which defeats the whole purpose of having an inventory, believe experts. With sketchy information about the building, the district, locality, the notification number of the building, a brief history, as well as whether it is in administrative control, it does very little else.

Turning a blind-eye to encroachments and the rapid development around the buildings, the inventory prefers to portray a picture of the `perfect' past. Strangely, it does not even have information on the condition of the buildings now, as the officials compiling the inventory have not visited the sites to take pictures. And the inventory will add very little value to the information that ASI already has and is poor in nd to the already published listing of the built heritage by Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.

The other big problem is that ASI's inventory has very little bearing on the real situation of monuments. A look at the entry for Badli-Ki-Sarai -- a symbol of Indian resistance during the First War of Independence in 1857 -- is enough to illustrate that the inventory is outdated and decades too late to be of any use. With very little of the `sarai' still surviving, the inventory still shows it whole and in its original glory. Badli-Ki-Sarai is not a lone example.

The last palace of the Mughals in Mehrauli -- Zafar Mahal -- is also painted in its old glory. Interestingly, while it clearly states in its introduction that buildings that have lost their relevance are in the process of being de-protected are excluded from the list, it mentions the D'eremao Cemetery, which has, according to experts, gone missing. But since the inventory was put together with practically no site visits, it is probably a mistake that the ASI has overlooked. And taking history too seriously, the ASI seems determined to stick firmly to the past.

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