New wonders?
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Not everyone is happy with thenew seven wonders or with the voting method adopted. A. SRIVATHSAN
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While nations like India, China, Peru and
Brazil rushed to vote, Europe and America appeared to be indifferent.
Photos: AP
Not in the final list: The Pyramids of Giza, the only honorary member.
“List of shame, list of ignorance,” spewed an angry blogger. “How can you leave out Acropolis, which was formally proclaimed as the pre-eminent monument on the European Cultural Heritage in 2007?” said another?
“Surprising, inexplicable, even suspicious,” was the response of the Vatican pontifical commission for culture and archaeology, reported The Times of London. The Vatican was disappointed at the omission of the Sistine Chape
l. Cambodia was crestfallen with the omission of Angkor Wat temple. Not every one agreed with the list of new seven wonders or with the method adopted.
The campaign
The original list of wonders compiled by the Greeks was dismissed as “a travel guide for fellow Athenians” by the Swiss-based foundation that initiated the campaign. The New Seven Wonders Foundation declared that the compilation, this time around, would be democratic and open. Anyone was free to choose and vote. Straight, simple and easy — reach for your computer or phone and make a choice. So went the campaign.
Does this make the complaints and quibbles appear like crying sour grapes or does the voting pattern genuinely warrant a critical look at the results.
“About 80 per cent of people voted online and 20 per cent through SMS and phone (many, many more via SMS than telephone)”, e-mailed Tia Viering from the New Seven Wonders Foundation. This was in reply to my query about the voting pattern. “We are not divulging the votes obtained by various monuments. To us the new seven wonders are equal and without ranking,” she said.
Viering seems to have barely noticed the irony in her statement. If the seven wonders are equal so are the remaining 14 that were left out in the final race and, more so, the many hundred monuments that never made it to the list in the first place.
Photos: AP
The Acropolis in Greece.
The Greeks, who first introduced the idea of seven wonders about 2,000 years ago, would hardly have imagined that a day would come when the architectural merit or the spectacle value would no more be a necessary benchmark. Nor would they have realised that society could dispense with high priests of culture — in their case Herodotus, the historian, and Callimachus, the chief librarian of Alexandria — to arbitrate taste and choose on their behalf.
What possibly would comfort them is that, even after many thousand years, people can still be as arbitrary and parochial as they were when it comes to listing the wonders. In the old list, only two of the seven wonders were outside the Greek culture. In the new list, each nation voted for itself with fervour.
The Foundation, through its spokesperson Tia Viering, claims that the voting was truly international. But when asked about the countrywise voting pattern, Viering refused to share any data. Her reluctance to share the information is understandable. Details, if and when they come, will reveal how Indians and other successful nations mobbed the voting machine, in this case their personal computer or the ones at Internet cafés.
Tracy Wilkinson, writing for the Los Angeles Times, described how people in Cuzco, Peru, filled Internet cafes for weeks and voted for the ruins of Machu Picchu. The foundation’s website declared that, as early as 2002, 70,000
Chinese were voting everyday.
The media blogsite http://www.danwei.org/, citing the The Beijing News, wrote that the Great Wall of China was temporarily top of the list in January 2006. In November, it fell to fourth place a
nd, in April 2007, dropped out of the top seven.
According to the blogsite, the majority of Chinese were unable to vote because they could not read English. Hence a “SMS vote” service was developed. As the results show, this changed the course of the voting. The New Seven Wonders Foundation announced on June 7 that about 50 million had voted. By July 7, when the results were declared, another 50 million votes had been added.
Monuments in countries that are poor and do not have substantial access to SMS or the Internet fell out of the race.
Reason to complain
The disappointment, if not anger, as in the case of the 12th century Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, exemplifies this. The Nation, a Bangkok-based newspaper, reported that Chan Sophal, deputy provincial governor of Siem Reap where th
e Angkor Wat temple is located, had said that an architectural marvel being overlooked in this fashion was “regrettable”.
The governor had reason to complain. “The competition just wasn’t suitable for a country in Cambodia’s situation. It is a country with a very small population, most of whom know nothing about information technology or computers so they could not vote or contribute,” he was quoted as saying in The Nation.
The Internet may have the potential to create a relatively democratic space. But people still need capital and effort to take part. Those who did not mobilise it could not vote. This fact was overlooked right through this campaign.
The fate of the Pyramid of Giza was humiliating. The Pyramid is the only surviving wonder from the original Greek list. The Egyptian Government was apprehensive and worried about the voting system. There were fears that the Pyramids would not make it to the list.
Navine-al-Aref wrote in the Al-Ahram online issue that Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, opposed the Foundation’s move to put the Pyramids of Giza up for election.
In response, the Foundation issued a press release conferring a special status on the Pyramid as the only honorary candidate of the New Seven Wonders of the World campaign. The website said that the voters could not vote for Giza. It would not have been surprising if the pyramid had been voted out.
While nations like India, China, Peru and Brazil rushed to vote, Europe and America appeared to be indifferent. This difference in response cannot be attributed to access to the Internet or lack of it. Had it got to do with the peculiar post-colonial conditions of these countries?
For almost a month, my inbox, and that of many others, was flooded with mails urging that we vote for the Taj to save our national pride. The idea of a national monument was cleverly overlaid on the New Seven Wonders campaign and it seemed to pay off.
To a country with a national flower, national bird, even a national game, the absence of a national monument appeared to be long overdue. Lotus as the national flower, peacock as the national bird and tiger as the national animal — the arbitrariness in such representations does not bother us.
Emblems are useful and can be handy, many seem to think. The patriotic ploy did work. Not many could resist or oppose it. This echoes what Alessandra Stanley, writing for The New York Times, had to say about media coverage of Paris
Hilton: “the sheer absurdity of her fame ensures that anyone who denigrates it looks even more foolish.”
The question is not whether Taj is qualified to be a national monument or a world monument. But the irony that the wonders of the world — buildings of common world heritage — had to be chosen through the prism of a nation remains.
While we celebrate the selection of the Taj, the state of the heritage city of Agra or the pollution of the Yamuna does not draw the necessary attention. One hardly hears of a large campaign to protect local monuments. Concerns about heritage protection and voting for the Taj appear to be mutually exclusive. Understandably, the UNESCO has distanced itself from this campaign and even dismissed it.
Commercial motives
What can we expect of this new wonder campaign? Many have criticised the commercial motives behind the campaign. Newsweek wrote, quoting the foundation spokesperson that Bernard Weber, the founder of this campaign, paid $700 for a w
ebsite based out of Canada to launch this contest. The voter turnout and the Internet voting have been many times more than what was expected.
The foundation pledged half of its revenue for the various conservation efforts including reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. The fact that the Afghan government has not prioritised the restoration of Bamiyan Buddhas nor that the Japanese government has already pledged US$ 1.8 million for the same project and the work is in progress is not an issue for the foundation. Instead of getting into such highly visible reconstruction project, should the foundation look at many monuments that languish without funds? This is a separate issue.
Photos: AP
The Easter Island statues.
The New Indian Express recently reported that the New Seven Wonders Foundation claimed that they have invested €10 million in the whole campaign and that they did not break even. As a result, the Foundation announced that the mon
uments will not receive any funding for their conservation.
The Foundation may claim that it is a non-profit organisation, but another organisation called the New Open World Corporation (NOWC) owns the copyright to its content and operations. The Foundation’s spokesperson has neither confirmed the expense and revenue figures nor explained the commercial arrangement with the NOWC. The details of who owns and runs NOWC are also not clear.
Till this article went to press, there was no reply to these queries. In the absence of information about voting details, revenue earned and the actual money pledged for conservation, the commercial theory gains ground.
Given the familiarity of the newly elected seven world wonders, the claim that this campaign would significantly add to the inflow of tourists to these monuments remains doubtful.
The Taj and the Angkor Wat: Access to modern technology played a role in the campaign.
World Heritage Sites and not World Wonders
UNESCO turned down several invitations extended by the new seven wonder foundation to join the campaign. It dismissed the exercise as a mediatised campaign and dismissed any comparison with its own world heritage list. To them, a mere acknowledgement of the sentimental value and inscribing the sites on a new list is not enough. UNESCO has distanced itself from such euphoria of list making. In contrast, promotes a sustained effort to conserve and manage world heritage sites. So far, it has declared 851 properties including 660 cultural, 166 natural and 25 mixed properties as world heritage sites.
In their view, the approach they adopt is sustainable since it compels the relevant authorities to commit to the upkeep of heritage sites.
They think their project also has a clear educational role with respect to the value of the heritage sites, the threats they face and their protection.
For the list of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, see http://whc.unesco.org/en/list
The World Heritage Convention
The idea to have a common convention and list concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted by UNESCO in 1972. The first list of World Heritage Sites was published in 1978 and continues since then.
The countries that are signatories to the world heritage convention can access the world heritage fund. Every year about US$4 million assistance is available for these counties to promote and preserve their heritage. So far about 184 countries have ratified the world heritage convention.
Article 6 of the world heritage convention makes it clear on the member countries that they will not deliberately damage directly or indirectly the cultural and natural heritage of other member countries. This, it is hoped, will protect world heritage sites from the devastation of war
The world heritage convention reiterates that the protection of the cultural and natural heritage should be dovetailed into regional planning programmes. Whether this happened remains doubtful? The conservation of Taj Mahal and lack of development within the Agra city is a case in point.
There is also increasing concern as to whether the world heritage list itself is a balanced one or does it reflect only a particular understanding of what constitutes heritage.
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