Page 1 of 15
Tangible and Intangible cultural heritage: A Logic for their Continuance
Dr Saurav Sengupta
Dept. of English
Damdama College
Heritage is a difficult word to define. David Herbert categorizes heritage into three broad types:
“cultural”, “natural” and “built environments” (10–12). In a narrow and simple sense heritage is
literally “what is or may be inherited” (Little Oxford English Dictionary 294), or “something
other than property passed down from preceding generations: a legacy; a set of traditions, values,
or treasured material things” (Reader’s Digest 721). Melaine Smith interprets heritage
differently. According to her, heritage is a matter of human interpretation and is coterminous
with selection, objectification and even omission of ideas and beliefs that may suit systems of
government or powers that be (Smith 82). There are then two aspects to heritage. The first are
buildings, monuments, artifacts etc that is generally defined as tangible i.e what is seen, can be
touched and even reproduced if allowed. The second category relates to intangible forms-shared
behaviors, conducts, forms of social organization and systems of rule. In this form, heritage can
be felt. Lind Richer therefore believes that heritage pertains to those ideas and images of the past
“that can be visited” (Richer The Politics of Heritage 108). The articulation of heritage then
becomes a political project. A possible outcome of such politicizing determines and controls a
community’s ideas about itself. If states manipulate cultural values and the way people interpret
them, it is a short cut to making subjects accept what is official true as true. Ian Glover observes
that governments “attempt to create discourses with the past in order to legitimize and strengthen
the position of the state and its dominant political communities” (16–17). Benedict Anderson in
argues the same point when he states that after the end of historical colonialism, local
governments had to reposition its identity in terms of monuments, temples, rock carvings etc to
define an imagined golden past of “endeavor and achievement subsequently eclipsed by
colonialism”(qtd. in Glover 16-17). When colonial governments excavated sites of historical
importance, it was their intention to differentiate their territorial possession from other power
Page 2 of 15
centers. So, again the definition and objectification of heritage sites was highly problematic and
motivated by considerations of power control. UNESCO designates heritage merely as tangible
and to this end raises concern against the theft, commercial exploitation, and misinterpretation of
artifacts in temples and buildings. Less importance is placed on “ideas and beliefs contained in
such artifacts” (Hitchcock 5). It is more important says UNESCO that a building or natural habit
should exemplify a remarkable synthesis between the humans and environment, especially when
damages done to the environment is irreversible. Secondly, heritage sites should demarcate a
significant stage in human growth and progress. Consequently, a few important places of natural
or artistic importance, which could not make to the UNESCO list has been replaced by high rises
and glass enclosures. Those that made the list have been rendered more fabulous than they were
meant to be. Boniface and Flower makes this point when they speak of “cultural colonization”
and tourism as “neo-colonialism” (2–4, 7, 11–13, 20, 152–162). Ooi argues that such
representations are dangerous for a community. Not only the visitors, but those who are
intimately related to cultural expressions are delinked from a sense of the past in its proper
dimension (Ooi, 67, 123–138). Communities lose their sense of history and diachrony. Hitchcock
says therefore that “Southeast Asia is also home to at least one grassroots rebellion against the
creation of a World Heritage Site: the sacred temple complexes of Besakih in Bali (I Nyoman
Darma Putra and Hitchcock, 225-237). Naturally, heritage sites are also sites of contested
identities between those in power controlling the governance and maintenance of such sites
against those who seek to discover in these places meanings for their community. However such
meanings are not constant or unchanging. This is why Harrison observes “there is nothing
intrinsically sacrosanct about any building, any part of nature, or any cultural practice” because
“as one class or pressure group takes ascendancy over another, new perceptions, new views on
the past and what was of value in the past, also take over” (Harrison 287).
Like other parts of the orient, where temples and sacred places housed important creative
artifacts much to underlie the principle of nature and biology-human beings and nature in a
single coterminous whole, temples in North Eastern India too were designed to showcase the
man-nature continuum. Madan Kamdeva for example a shrine sacred to the Hindus is now a
shadow of its former self. One could estimate that the place is significant not only for its display
of intimate human emotions between the sexes but also because of a traditional belief that as part
Page 3 of 15
of nature, human beings have a unique ability to procreate if only they accept periods of
dynamism and stasis. More importantly, it showcases equality between the consenting adults,
which has been unfortunately derogated to a jouissance for carnal drives. One could point out
that India’s ritualistic traditions had deep sympathies both for man and woman, which is why the
lingam is not the phallus, but a will to change and initiate new beginnings. The containing oeuvre
could be signified as society, pre-ordained social reality, reason and the like. It does not make
sense therefore to see them merely as basic postures for copulation and orgasm. It is also
possible to see the architecture of the temple as an expression of the artist, intent on voicing his
relationship with his mentor and even protest against the hegemony of patronage, desirous of
fixing an order in relationship between art and its content:
The temple has a horizontal nexus with its patrons that are based on a relatively equal exchange of wealth for legitimization and the social recognition of piety. But, it also has a vertical nexus with those who keep it going […] the bard, who was outside the normal hierarchy of caste and at the same time evolved a ritual which gave him a special sanction […] the priest who drew strength from investing political authority with elements of divinity and used the sanction of ritual and worship to control social action. These were civilizational symbols whose outer forms varied when dynasties changed or new religions introduced or when new kinds of political action required (Social Scientist. v 15, no. 165 (Feb 1987, 28).
It is important that symbols, motifs, figures and manuscripts are related to the social reality of
times. This is why Andreas Huyseen points out:
No matter how much the museum, consciously or unconsciously, produces and affirms the symbolic order, there is always a surplus of meaning that exceeds ideological boundaries and opens spaces for reflection and counter-hegemonic memory(qtd. in Social Scientist. v 26, no. 304-305 (Sept-Oct 1998), 45).
Again Huyseen argues that when cultural symbols are just interpreted in terms of their makers or
the time of making, the result is disastrous:
Such representations contribute to the distancing from the processes which affect our daily lives. They tend to promote an uncritical patriotism which numbs the ability of multi-cultural identities to understand and communicate with one another [qtd. in Social Scientist. v 26, no. 304-305 (Sept-Oct 1998), 45]
Page 4 of 15
Yet it is unfortunate that it is this contrived nature of images that find way to museums and art
galleries around the world. More significantly in a globalized world of easy consumerism, it is a
part of neo-liberal hegemony to shrivel cultural artifacts of their moral and humanistic concerns:
Today, few would deny that we live under the virtually undisputed rule of the market dominated, ultra-competitive, globalized society with its cortege of manifold iniquities and everyday violence. Have we got the hegemony we deserve? I think we have and by ‘we’ I mean the progressive movement, or what’s left of it…the ‘war of ideas’ has been tragically neglected by the side of the angels, for a more equitable world have in fact actively contributed to the triumph of neo-liberalism or have passively allowed this triumph to occur[…] (Susan George Masks )
The relevance of this point is further exemplified when one considers the transformed case of
Sualkuchi, a small textile town near Guwahati. Sualkuchi was once venerated for its silk and
muga garments and when Gandhi visited Assam, he expressed his admiration for the skills of the
weavers saying that in Assam, almost all woman know how to spin wonderful fabrics. Most
significantly, khadi or home spun clothes somehow blurred the traditional demarcated lines
between the higher echelons of society and those at the below. Kamakhya Pradad Das, a noted
freedom fighter and a pioneer of khadi movement in Assam in his article says:
During the reign of the Ahom king Swargadeo Pratap Singha, a senior official namely Momai Tamuli Barbaruah, made it a rule for the men to make at least one basket each and for the women to spin at least one bobbin of yarn, before retiring for the night. It was customary for every Assamese family to posses a spinning wheel, a loom and a dheki (grinding apparatus). This was a part of the Assamese culture (Das Khadi: A Brief Historical Account in Facets of the North East, http://googlescholar.com)
He also points out that it would have impossible for an Assamese woman to find a suitable bride
for herself without knowing how to spin yarn. There was a time of the day when she would be
busy at her loom and Das refers to this period as “hedari”(Das A Brief Account). When a
daughter in law engaged herself at the wee hours of the morning for the same purpose, the work
was designated as “Sorairingia Hedari” (Das A Brief Account). The real intention in such
practices was to be self sufficient in terms of clothes required for household members. It was a
Page 5 of 15
real achievement of sorts when the pandal for the 41st session of the Indian National Congress
under the stewardship of Srinivasa Iyengar at Pandu, Guwahati was made out of khadi entirely
woven and manufactured here.
But, those days are long over. Weavers do not feel encouraged to use conventional or traditional
materials or even conventional methods while making fabrics. One reason is said to be the dearth
of muga yarn or the production thereof in places around the small town. Another reason is
obviously the pressure from tourists for souvenirs as mementos of their visit. Such transactions
benefit weavers undoubtedly. Crippen, for example notes how selling handicrafts offer weavers
an alternative to sex trade (Crippen 274). Michael Hitchock, while admitting the economic and
aesthetic importance of such sale and purchase for both the parties fears that these transactions
have the problem of “deleterious cultural erosion” (Hitchcock 223). He believes that mass
selling of souvenir products are often “supply led” (Hitchcock 223) when demands for handmade
items are reduced in the face of easy and cheap availability of factory made goods. The whole
cycle has the effect of endangering the livelihood and status of local craftsman who then resort to
cheap and use of easy available raw materials for production of handicraft items. In most cases
designers aware of trends in international fashion, push for cheap production techniques to serve
their clientele (Hitchcock 223). It is ironical that governments in developing countries as also
some aid agencies promote “designer crafts” (Hitchcock 224). Even when skills of local
craftsman are not compromised in the production of items, there is still the danger of a “mix and
match” (Bunn 167) approach to serve tourists. Again when such items are sold to the tourists,
there is a problem that they may be unwilling to pay a high price for commodities they do not
understand (Hitchcock 224). Yet again, souvenirs are often made more antique than they really
are to attract tourists. Cheap dyes are often used for the purpose as has been reported from Bali
(Hitchcock 227).
Under the circumstances, it is highly nearly impossible to demarcate the lines between the
authentic and the easily available. More so when trade restrictions between the developed and
the developing countries are being eliminated, to allow penetration of commercially produced
goods into local markets, the incentives for producing handcrafted commodities are minimal.
The point is that unless there is a real and concerted effort by all stake holders in their respective
Page 6 of 15
heritage to restore and refurbish what is traditional, and this include trade incentives to those who
are actually in the process of producing authentic or value added items, nothing can really stop
the downslide or even complete erasure of cultures and customs from memory.
It is a matter of importance that reworking of traditions is often mired in controversies-
renovating temples or even motifs from a feudal past can have its own negative repercussions.
The destruction of Babri Masjid at Ayodha by the Bajrang Dal, and the subsequent riot between
Hindus and Muslims is a case in point. The VHP views Muslims as disloyal to India and the
period of Muslim rule in India as one of humiliation when its rulers systematically dismantled
temples and architectural splendors associated with a Hindu idea of culture. But Shahid
Sadruddin Nanavati argues in his paper on Gujarat:
At no time, however, did the Muslims live as aliens in the land, as the British did, separating themselves in language and culture from the Hindus. In fact, Muslim rulers learned a great deal and borrowed a great deal from the Hindus. (Paper presented to Prof. Diane Davis at the Department of Urban Planning and Management MIT, Fall 2003).
Mark Johnson brings the example of Hue at Vietnam to help understand how a monument that
may be part of a problematic historical past can yet be recognized as important:
Hue is not as overtly part of the recurrent memorializations of the ‘struggle for national liberation’ that are found elsewhere in Vietnam. This may be partly explained both by the fact that prior to reunification Hue was politically aligned with South Vietnam and by the continuing controversy over the alleged massacre of civilians at Hue by retreating Viet Cong at the start of the American counter-offensive (Aspiring to the ‘Tourist Gaze’, Selling the Past, Longing for the Future at the World Heritage Site of Hue, Vietnam, in Heritage Tourism ED. Michael Hitchcock, Victor T. King and Michael Parnwell).
Johnson also says that this problem was solved with the idea that Hue constituted an
‘architectural and artistic’ place and as ‘one of the culminations of Vietnamese creativity’
(Johnson 548). Narratives of restoration located the monument in a process of decay and
deterioration “linking people and environment in essential ways” (Hitchcock 177). Hindu
temples, mosques, churches and similar religious monuments in India can also be narrative in a
similar fashion. Unfortunately, the central government’s inefficacy in stopping the Bajrang Dal
Page 7 of 15
from dismantling the mosque is proof that argument of tolerance and sympathy for diverse
linguistic and religious communities is grounded on recognition that a power center can only
parry regional threats at the cost of skewed ideologies. Bose and Jalal in their critique of India’s
democratic institutions have commented that India’s poor continue to languish in deprivation and
this has to do with the “Congress’s inheritance of the colonial state’s unitary centre” (Modern
South Asia 163). Partha Chatterjee writes about the negatives of such an “order” (qtd Bose and
Jalal 161) when the same was arrived at by “glossing over all earlier contradictions, divergences
and differences” (Bose and Jalal 161). Gandhi’s own admission of the lapses of English
education in the Indian context and the inability of bureaucrats trained in systems of the west to
appreciate problems of the toiling masses lends credence to the need by democratic institutions
to accept communities and their cultures apart from one another.
Vietnam’s Hue monuments is important in the Indian context precisely because its beauty and
craftsmanship is articulated through ambivalence-seriousness of researchers associated with the
HMCC(Hue Management Complex) against tour guides who helped tourists see the monuments
from a humorous perspective. Both the groups felt exasperated at the official intrusion of
bureaucrats interested in commercial exploitation of the sites even at the cost of minimizing
authentic details. Mark Johnson who visited the sites more than once came across Van, a
research scholar associated with HMCC. Van was particularly unhappy at the way heritage sites
like Hue was managed, a lacunae, he attributed to the presence of unqualified people at
leadership positions. When Johnson encountered tour guides he understood that the guides had
different perceptions about visitors. For example, visitors from the south of Vietnam were more
affluent and were not so much interested in the monument’s past as much in having their pictures
taken( Aspiring to the ‘Tourist Gaze’ 195-96).Those from the North presented a more austere
audience interested in hearing and learning about the culture of the place (Aspiring to the
‘Tourist Gaze’196). But another distinction was more important. The Southerners appreciated
the sites outside the historical conundrums of the past with a playfulness that signaled an open
and free “gaze” allowing escape from a moribund present (Aspiring to the ‘Tourist Gaze’ 195-
96).
Page 8 of 15
What is stressed here is not logic of non-commitment. Implicit in such playfulness is the need of
any society to understand and figure out the mechanism of state control and power which is best
kept intact in hammering monotonous clichés and straitjacket expectations. If one goes back to
considering heritage at crossroads between a new economic and globalized order against
mourning for the past, the safeguarding of antiquities becomes a matter of calculated priority.
The problematic of a discourse that promotes memory based on caste differences as it happens in
India is at once a matter of dominant class hegemony as also a need to selectively erase the past
considering that its presence can seriously disrupt attempts at homogenization. Mary. E.
Hancock in her study of Chennai’s suburbs confirms this fear:
The embodied pasts of caste difference and stigma persist in caste-segregated living spaces and in bodily performances (through dress, for example) of deference, avoidance, and defiance. Oral narratives and community shrines also engage difference though often to assert distinct genealogies, worldviews, and identities. […] Villages have long been sites of state surveillance and intervention […] (The Politics of Heritage from Madras to Chennai 14).
Even the naming of old cities of Bombay, Madras, Gauhati to Mumbai, Chennai and Guwahati
has been done to reaffirm cultural roots based on a dominant class ideology. The same is
reinforced through maps, paintings, popular narratives and architecture. It is ironical that such
efforts often garbed under the premises of minimizing oppressive colonial memory still relies on
a “curatorial state” (Hancock 22) for organizing, extracting and publishing aspects of the cities’
past. Colonial expressions of the same emphasized “oriental exoticism” bordering on traveler
tales. Those commissioned by nouveau rich Hindu families as in Chennai affirmed the place’s
cultural importance as one of “prosperity, artistic freedom and religious merit” (Hancock 26).
Another problem could be the preservation of the cities bungalows derived from “Bengali
vernacular architecture” (Hancock 23). The Englishman’s versions were based on their desire for
luxury, “were cool and comfortable and meant to entertain strangers” (Hancock 23). The Hindu
intended these to entertain their English friends and signify their ritual status and their ability to
patronize “poets, musicians, dancers, and other retainers, according to medieval models of royal
patronage” (Hancock 27).
Page 9 of 15
It is no uncommon knowledge that the state has embarked on patronizing those it favors.
This has been shown in the Godhara riots and state sponsored terrorism manufactured by the
Gujarat government. Bungalows in Chennai, considered as heritage sites then emerge as
endorsement by the state to embark on its own selfish doctrine of patronizing those in power and
having the right connections in right places. The multitudes of commoners in India continue to
be these “strangers” meddling with politicians for easy favors based on caste and religious
considerations, less on meritocracy, while the latter would be more comfortable doing less and
enjoying more leisure and luxury in their cool and comfortable precincts. Ultimately, the state
itself is rendered helpless in the event of globalization as has been said before as also because of
the confusions and poser of a cosmetic democracy. Gramsci notes:
One of the most important characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance is its struggle to assimilate and conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional intellectuals but this assimilation and conquest is made quicker and more efficacious the more the group in question succeeds in elaborating its own organic intellectuals (Prison Notebooks)
Economic powerhouses therefore not only fund universities and research institutions to carry on work beneficial to its interests but also train professors and personnel to abrogate differential ideological equations for a systematic propagation of its own theoretical mission. Susan George comments:
It is widely rumored that when a neocon scholar produces a book, the foundations (Heritage Foundation in America receives money from the Bradley brothers of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who are members of the ultra right John Birch Society) provide the funds to buy several thousand copies, so that the book go straight to the best seller lists and are thus, automatically reviewed and discussed (Masks of Empire 66).
It is possible that after books become best sellers, Heritage Foundations can choose to sell them
at a higher price therefore continue its robust shelf-life. An effect of such funding is to produce a
climate of fear where, to be rational is to support the US role as exceptionally beneficial to
world’s population. When colonial travel artists like Thomas and William Daniell in their
illustrations in the six-part Oriental Scenery (1795–1801)and A Picturesque Voyage to India; by
Page 10 of 15
Way of China (1810) showed Indians, the impression arrived at was of an “exotic landscape’s
obligatory serpentine”(Hancock 28). English structures in the same canvas had “orderly classical
proportion” (Hancock 28). If then such paintings are to be considered heritage, traces of truth
subversion and gaps of information has to be figured therein. Pertinent would be to see the
Indian way of life as complex and intricately oriented, where castes and religions often
overlapped one another in their professional and social life. But, the colonial gaze could not
always be expected to understand or even honor such complexities and at best could make casual
references to the same depending on its own “dispassionate, objective and temporally driven
history”(Hancock 30) In most cases, architecture was to be a conduit for enforced civic order.
The ASI’s professed task during the colonial rule was to excavate religious sites of its figures to
be stored in museums. Civil servants employed for purposes of documentation, preservation and
cataloguing educated in missionary schools in the continent or in Europe defined tradition as
pertinent to colonial achievement. Nationalists saw tradition beyond the gridlines of colonial rule
and hinted as in Chennai to a pure Tamil homeland. In the aftermath of neoliberal policies, old
buildings, mansions and even biodiversity centers are still retained not so much for their intrinsic
value but more as signposts of life that modern systems of commerce, technology and society
succeeded in superseding.
This explains why Star Theatre in the city of Kolkata was dismantled. “It was a matter out of
place” (Hancock 48) in quest for modernity. Vivekananda long back expressed his admiration for
India’s cultural heritage:
In ancient times, old ladies decorated their homes, drew multifarious patterns on walls; they cut banana leaves and cooked sumptuous food items. These days, one rarely finds such food or homes nicely decorated. New ideas or technologies have to be adapted to old contexts. But all that is old need not be dumped en masse. Visit some interior village and you will be awed by the beauty of wood carvings, stone sculptures. Calcutta cannot build any such thing nor even manufacture a beautiful entrance door. […](qtd. Papri Sengupta, The Thought and Philosophy of Vivekananda, 222).
Vivekananda was particularly effusive in suggesting the beauty of India’s art and he hinted at its metaphysical basis most elaborated in the figures of various gods and goddesses.
Page 11 of 15
Metaphysical art is comparable to a lotus which draws its nutrients from soil. And yet, its petals open up to the sky. True art is rooted in the real. When this connection is lost, art become listless and lifeless. Also, art must transcend the senses to grasp something beyond finite systems (The Thought 219).
Vivekananda was not so much concerned with realism or with the aesthetics of art. He admired
its emotive qualities. Art must connect to life and enrich human experience of lived routines-the
psychological complexes that define humanity. Indian art is inwardly mimetic unlike Greek art
that reflects external truth.
This is confirmed in the paintings of Sunyani Devi whose paintings “came to epitomize Indian
primitivism as an expression of anti-colonial resistance, its simplicity and ‘artlessness’, as a[…],
validation of the formal values of Bengali village art” (Partha Mitter The Triumph of Modernism
40). Amrita Sher Gill’s use of abstract lines and diagonal forms give her paintings a rare
monumentality of aesthetic emotion that interpreted nature and not imitating it (The Triumph 50-
56). Her own perception of India is detailed in the following description:
It was the vision of a winter in India – desolate, yet strangely beautiful – of endless tracks of luminous yellow grey land, of dark-bodied, sad-faced, incredibly thin men and women who move silently looking almost like silhouettes and over which an indefinable melancholy reigns. It was different from the India, voluptuous, colorful, sunny and superficial; the India [of] travel posters that I had expected to see (qtd The Triumph 56).
It is possible to see heritage-paintings and sculpture, temples, monuments and mosques as
impressed with a sense of the life and spirit of the people often bypassed in policy making.
Tagore’s Untitled Cowering Nude Woman, show “clothed figures (judges? torturers?), hovering
threateningly over a crouching naked female. The power of this subliminal work lies in its
suggestion of a tormentor-victim relationship rendered through a ‘primitivist’ non-
representational mode” (The Triumph 77). If he expunged human faces of its variety making
them look more like masks, he also questioned the idea of jingoistic nationalism since his masks
lack effusive sentimentality.
Page 12 of 15
In the North East, Bhupen Hazarika, Nirmala Pandey and others emphasized on the pluralism of
cultural reality and sought humanity to identify metaphors that would bring disparate sections
together. Hazarika for example did not see the Bihu and other celebrations as mere flashpoints of
color and songs. For him and his kind, such festivals helped the common people connect to their
roots-river, landscape, its fertility and food bound to one another through an agency of human
responsiveness. Bishnu Rabha, the other cultural icon believed that if the workers of the world
unite, a real democracy shall be born. This is why he said:
Break, break, break, breakThe iron chainsCrack, crack, crack, crackPrison houses of servitude. […]( Bishnu Rabha Rasonaboli).
Transnational control of man’s natural and human resources makes a culture of protest and
struggle imminent. When such control of resources take the form of complete occupancy as it did
in Iraq, youths there took to violence. It is unfortunate that media houses controlled by funds
from MNC’s describe such violence to a hatred for the American way of life, “our freedoms and
prosperity” (Achin Vanaik Masks of Empire 120). But this is a “diversion” (Mask 121) says the
critic:
As long as there are those who believe that power can jump justice, and impose its ‘final solution’, the cycle of conflicting and rival terrorisms would continue (Masks 121).
It is unfortunate that only knowable, correct and proved epistemologies are believed to be
European or American, while the rest is mired in a “mythical, religious” naivety and so cannot
hope to “to elevate mankind through universal scientific reason” (qtd. Dipesh Chakrabarthy Post
Coloniality and the Artifice of History 2) as the former does. When Alexander Dow wrote his
History of Hindostan, he explained the success of colonialism and thereby of reason,
commonsense and justice to violence, juxtaposing India’s past of despotism, barbarity,
whimsical governance and fabricated mythologies against the civilized, just and properly
enumerated principles of the Empire (Post Coloniality 5). Only recently Salman Rusdie’s
success as a novelist was enumerated to his sense of English cultural history and only minimally
to his oriental or Indian background:
Page 13 of 15
Though Saleem Sinai [of Midnight's Children] narrates in English ... his intertexts for both writing history and writing fiction are doubled: they are, on the one hand, from Indian legends, films, and literature and, on the other, from the West-The Tin Drum, Tristram Shandy, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and so on (qtd. Chakrabarty from Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism 65).
There are certainly no real grounds why oriental knowledges are to be disregarded. An example
of traditional medicine use in north east shows how people used herbs, plant roots, flowers etc
not only for rituals but for the actual purpose of healing:
The roots and leaves of Catharanthus roseus are used as anti carcinogenic medicine. Other major ailments which are traded by the medicinal plants include leprosy, jaundice, dropsy, pneumonia, asthma, elephantiasis, piles, hysteria, malaria, bronchitis, pharyngitis and rheumatism(Sikder and Dutta Traditional Phytotherapy among the Nath People of Assam).
It is therefore proposed that both governmental and non governmental agencies busy with the
demands of progress honor a community’s history, its music, songs, dramas, as also its temples
and mosques. Multiple expressions of reality allow for new and possible understanding of human
behavior and conduct. Cultural ideas are not renewable and it is also important that its carriers
are honored and protected. This is why an African proverb says: “Africa loses a library when an
old man dies” (UNESCO Intangible Heritage Website). It has been suicidal to extract artifacts
from its surroundings and put the same in museums. After all, ideas and belief systems are only
possible “in performance and transmitted orally” (Dragana Rusalick Making the Intangible
Tangible 22). Amar Chitra Katha in India, popular with children is not just full of mythological
stories. The series captures various religious beliefs present in the subcontinent, the use of roots
and herbs which a group respects, its festivals and rituals, the reasons thereof substantiated in
folklore. Oral narratives are again full of riddles and can only be lost at the cost of a community
ability to sustain itself in relation to its environment.
Page 14 of 15
Bibliography:
Ashworth, G. and P. Larkham. Building a New Europe: Tourism, Culture and Identity in the
New Europe. Routledge: London, 1994.
Bhaba, Homi. The Location of Culture. Routledge: London and New York, 1994
Das, Kamakhya Prasad. Khadi in Assam. In Facets of the North East.
Gandhi, Rajmohan and Gandhi, Usha. Partition Memories: The Hidden Healer In D. Fairchild
Ruggles l Helaine Silverman (Ed.) Intangible Heritage Embodied. Springer: London and New
York, 2009
George, Susan. Manufacturing Common Sense. In Achin Vanaik (Ed.) Masks of Empire. India:
Tulika Books, 2007.
Guha, Ranajit and Gayatri Spivak, eds. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988.
Hancock,Mary E. The Politics of Heritage from Madras to Chennai. Indiana University Press:
Bloomington, 2008.
Huyssen, Andreas. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New York:
Routledge, 1995.
_____. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford, Calif.: StanfordUniversity Press, 2003.
John, Mark. Aspiring to the ‘Tourist Gaze’: Selling the Past, Longing for the Future at the World
Heritage Site of Hue, Vietnam. In Michael Hitchcock, Victor t. King and Michael Parnwell
(eds.) Nordic Institute of Asian Studies: Liefgade(Denmark) 2010
King, Anthony. The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture. Revised edition. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995 [1976].
Rusalic, Dragana. Making the Intangible Tangible. Institute of Ethnography SASA: Belgrade,
2009
Page 15 of 15
Sengupta, Papri. The Thought and Philosophy of Swami Vivekanda.Guwahati. UGC Minor
Research Project, 1997.
Vanaik, Achin. Political Terrorism and the US Imperial Project. In Achin Vanaik (Ed.) Masks of
Empire. India: Tulika Books, 2007