As legatees of an ancient civilisation, Indians like to believe that they have an uninterrupted cultural memory. We invoke our past easily, and often with pride. Yet when one looks for evidence of that pride in the way we preserve, project, and commemorate the lives of our great poets, writers, artists, and thinkers, the confidence falters. A civilisation that does not take care of the physical sites of its intellectual inheritance risks turning its reverence into rhetoric, and memory into amnesia.
His haveli in Ballimaran, Old Delhi, was for decades a monument of neglect—hemmed in by encroachments, stripped of dignity, its genius obscured by grime. (Getty)
Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava, known as Munshi Premchand (1880–1938), was one of the most important voices in modern Indian literature. He gave the Hindi-Urdu novel its conscience, and chronicled peasants, debt, caste cruelty, and the lives of ordinary people with unmatched eloquence. And yet, in his village, Lamhi, near Banaras, the house associated with his life languishes in neglect, surviving more as a rumour of importance than as a living space of memory. There is little there to communicate to a visitor why Premchand matters, how he lived, what shaped his imagination, and why his work still speaks to India.
The story repeats itself with Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’, one of the most powerful nationalist and post-nationalist poets of Hindi, who lived and wrote in Begusarai, Bihar. When I visited his home, it pained me to see that there was no memorial commensurate with his stature. There is respect in the abstract—quotations, anniversaries, official speeches—but little institutional effort to translate that respect into a space where citizens can encounter the man behind the poetry.
Even Mirza Ghalib, arguably the most luminous poet of the subcontinent, was not spared this indifference. His haveli in Ballimaran, Old Delhi, was for decades a monument of neglect—hemmed in by encroachments, stripped of dignity, its genius obscured by grime. I was part of the group of citizens, spearheaded by Kathak danseuse Uma Sharma, who helped to restore it, but today it has again lapsed into shabbiness, with neither cultural programmes nor upkeep to sustain it.
Rabindranath Tagore stands as the great exception in West Bengal. Jorasanko Thakur Bari and Santiniketan are preserved, curated, and woven into the cultural identity of the region and the nation. Tagore is not merely remembered; he is institutionalised. But beyond him, what of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, or even more recent literary figures? Their homes have not been systematically preserved or converted into museums that speak to the public imagination.
In South India, the pattern is uneven and equally troubling. There are notable efforts—such as memorials for Subramania Bharati in Tamil Nadu or Kuvempu in Karnataka—but these remain exceptions rather than the rule. Many great poets and writers in Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil live on through syllabi and ceremonies, not through thoughtfully designed spaces of remembrance. The physical contexts of their lives—the rooms where they wrote, the streets they walked, the landscapes that shaped their sensibility—are rarely preserved as cultural assets. Language pride does not automatically translate into heritage consciousness.
On the whole, India’s museums suffer from a curatorial lethargy that is astonishing in a country so rich in artefacts. The National Museum in Delhi, for instance, holds extraordinary collections, but many displays are poorly contextualised, dimly lit, and intellectually uninviting. More disturbingly, a vast number of priceless objects remain locked away in godowns, unseen and uncelebrated. A museum should tell stories; too often, ours merely store things.
Why does this happen? Part of the answer lies in our historical experience. Centuries of political subjugation weakened the habit of self-curation. We inherited institutions of preservation from the colonial state, but not always the inner impulse to value ourselves through them. Post-Independence India, preoccupied with development and survival, treated culture as an ornament rather than as infrastructure. The result is a utilitarian mindset that struggles to see literary memory as a public good.
Perhaps Indian society venerates saints, warriors, and political leaders more easily than writers and thinkers. The poet who questions, the novelist who exposes social hypocrisy, the essayist who refuses easy answers—these figures do not sit comfortably within a culture that prefers affirmation to introspection.
The contrast with many other countries is stark. In London, I used to see the homes of almost all literary figures of note adorned with a blue plaque as a token of honour and respect. Many of these homes are befitting memorials visited by hundreds of people each day upon the purchase of tickets. Our memorials—the few that exist—rarely invoke such interest.
To ask why Indians have no pride in their literary past may be too harsh. The pride exists, but it is diffused, sentimental, and inadequately translated into action. True pride builds institutions, protects spaces, and tells stories well. Until we learn to do that—until Premchand’s house, Dinkar’s home in Begusarai, and countless other sites are treated as national assets rather than footnotes—we will continue to proclaim a civilisation we are unwilling to curate.
A culture that does not house its writers properly risks becoming homeless in its own imagination.
(Pavan K Varma is an author, diplomat, and former member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha). The views expressed are personal)
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