University of Minnesota Press

University of Minnesota Press Constructing Cultural Significance: Looking at Bombay's Historic Fort Area Author(s): Rahul Mehrotra Source: Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 2004), pp. 24-31 Published by: University of Minnesota Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25834944 Accessed: 21-10-2015 17:57 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Minnesota Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Wed, 21 Oct 2015 17:57:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions i. Branding the area with new signage was the firstmove in a series of strategies to shift perceptions about the emerging sig nificance of the area. (Photo by author) 24 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Wed, 21 Oct 2015 17:57:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RahuiMehrotra Constructing Cultural Significance: Looking at Bombay's Historic FortArea India, and particularly urban India, is emerging as a unique landscape of bewildering architectural pluralism. The urban Indian landscape is characterized by intense duality where modernity, tradition, prosperity and acute poverty, communali ty and communalism, medieval society and cutting edge infor mation technology coalesce to create incomprehensible cities. These emerging landscapes defy conventional notions of the city and are represented more accurately throughmotion and mutation of urban space, rather than conventional notions of the city as a largely static and stable entity. Today in our urban areas there exist two cities?the static and kinetic?two completely differentworlds that cohabit the same urban space. The static city is represented through its architecture and by monuments built in permanent materials. The kinetic city that occupies interstitialspace is the city of motion?the kuttcha city,built of temporarymaterial. In the kinetic city architecture is no longer the spectacle of the city; rather,processions and festivals form its spectacle and memo ry,and the very expression of the city is temporal in nature, in constant flux. In this dynamic and near schizophrenic situation how does one approach urban or architectural conservation? How do we reconcile the static and kinetic?What does conser vation of the built heritage mean when architecture is no longer the spectacle of the city?How do we conserve with a divided mind? The Notion of Cultural Significance It is here that the notion of cultural significance gains impor tance?an idea where culture, place and perhaps aspirations intersect in interestingways, opening up several questions about conservation approaches, and where the act or thrust of conservation movements must necessarily go beyond the stat ic to also encompass the kinetic city. The notion of cultural significance as an all-encompassing idea emerged clearly in the conservation debate in the late 1970s (with the Burra Charter to be more precise). The Burra Charter initiallydefined cultural significance as the aesthetic, historic, scientific or social value forpast, present and future generations, later adding spiritual significance in the 1999 Future Anterior revision. in this definition is the belief that Volume 1, Number 2 Implicit signifi Fall 2004 cance is static. It is a definition that is object centric (devoid 25 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Wed, 21 Oct 2015 17:57:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions of life)with its roots in the debate propagated by the anti quarians of the Renaissance. This situation calls into question the validity of such a notion in a highly pluralist society where cultural memory is often an enacted process, leaving one to question our cultural reading for the kinetic city,which now formsa greater part of our urban reality. In this dynamic context, ifthe act of conser vation has to be informedby our reading of cultural signifi cance, itwill necessarily have to include the notion of "con structing significance" both in the architectural as well as con servation debates. Unfortunately,most conservation debates discuss change in terms of the loss of something, as opposed to new possibil ities,mostly because people (especially the propagators and patrons of conservation effort),will easily react to any sort of new condition as worse than some "magic moment" in the past. Conservation professionals then easily develop a ration ale to describe that sense of loss. But, in the context of our contemporary urban state, the issue is how to simultaneously identifynew typologies and work with them rather than dwell in the "postcard city", a city that only flightsof nostalgia momentarily recreates. In fact, conservation activists often take on an attitude that Italo Calvino describes in his seminal book, Invisible Cities where: ...the traveller is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show itas itused to be... ifthe traveller does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the Postcard City and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regretat the changes within definite limits. How do we then embrace this change as integral to the conservation movement, especially when the creator of that environment and the present custodians represent completely differentcultural constructs?With contemporary aspirations inspiring the process of conservation, we are being forced to look forwardand backward in a simultaneous gesture. A great opportunity then lies in the identificationof the contemporary engines thatwill drive this process of urban conservation. This situation suggests a need to develop enhanced reading of cul tural significance, along with the validity or necessity to some times invent cultural significance to drive this process. 26 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Wed, 21 Oct 2015 17:57:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 2. An aerial view of the FortArea from 1930 looking fromsouth to North. In the foreground is theArt Districtwith the Prince ofWales museum complex as the centerpiece. (Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra, Bombay-the Cities Within.) Looking at Mumbai Some of the work carried out by citizens' groups inMumbai's historic FortArea (Figure 2) addresses this issue of using con temporary engines to drive this process of conservation and, more importantly,animating interstitialspaces while creating thresholds between the many differentworlds that exist in the city. In short, thiswork has simultaneously created new urban typologies and invented significance in response to specific problems and emerging aspirations inMumbai. While Mumbai was fortunate in 1995 to have enacted a legislation to protect historic buildings and precincts, the first phase of its existence was dominated by the postcard city syn drome, focused on nostalgia and sentiment. Conservation standards came to be benchmarked by a purist approach per petuated by trained professionals, frequently intellectually detached from the largeremerging cultural landscape of the contemporary city.While thiswas a great strategy to establish a niche of specialization, it resulted in conservation activities being perceived by the citizens at large as an expensive, elitist process and preoccupation. However, as a broader range of professionals and NGOs understood and engaged with the implications of the legisla tion, they began looking at and grappling with the transform ing nature of the city.These issues were related to urban con servation as well as the general degradation of the environ ment in historic precincts. The examination led many to ques tion the point in restoring individual buildings when the land scape theywere set inwas falling apart. These exercises, besides achieving improvement in the physical state of the environment, shifted the (oftenmyopic) debate fromarchitectural conservation exercises to urban con servation approaches. This was a critical shift, as it involved engaging with the largercultural landscapes and treating the built environment as an evolving entity. Furthermore,the con 27 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Wed, 21 Oct 2015 17:57:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions servation effortsgrowing out of this shift inspired and set precedents forother such processes in the city,driving their relevance beyond the conservation debate and into the larger planning process. Itwould be useful to look at some cases fromMumbai's Historic Fort area. The firstsub-area in the Fort to engage in such a process of conservation was a "Grade I" open recre ational space, the historic Oval Maidan, which until 1996 had been under the jurisdiction of the state government. As this is a city-level open space (chieflyused for cricket), therewas a general detachment of local residents from the upkeep of the Maidan. As a result, this open space had deteriorated physi cally and in terms of use to such an extent that itwas trans formed into a spot fordrug dealing, prostitution and gross misuse. A citizens' group, OCRA (Oval-Cooperage Residents Association) comprised mainly of local women, petitioned the Maharashtra government to maintain the Oval Maidan. The state government did not respond, resulting in the citizens' group taking it to court. The High Court ruled in their favor, directing the government to either maintain the space or hand itover to the citizens' group. As a result of this decision, the OCRA subsequently took over the Maidan in 1996.

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