At its peak, the Maratha empire extended from India’s Northwest to the deep South, with a network of forts across this swathe. In January 2024, India said it would seek Unesco World Heritage status for a network of 12 forts associated with Maratha king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the founder of the empire. But that plan has hit a hurdle with the advisory body vetting applications pointing to gaps in “management, documentation, and impact assessment” in India’s submission, highlighting a problem that isn’t new to a country that has a rich history, but which hasn’t done a great job of documenting this or preserving historical structures.
ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites), the Paris-based advisory body to Unseco which vets all the nominees, has recommended deferring India’s entry, titled “Maratha Military Landscapes” because “it fails to convincingly demonstrate how the dozen geographically scattered forts ... functioned as an integrated military defense system.” HT has seen a copy of the assessment.
ICOMOS assessment is advisory and the World Heritage Committee, comprising representatives from 21 Unesco member states elected on a rotating basis, has to take a final call on the matter.
ICOMOS serves as the principal advisory body to Unesco on cultural aspects of the World Heritage Convention. When a country nominates a cultural site (or a mixed site’s cultural value) for inscription on the World Heritage List, ICOMOS provides expert technical evaluations (charging Unesco around $28,000 to evaluate a single nomination), conducting rigorous on-site assessments and making recommendations to the committee.
HT reached out to the Union culture ministry which did not respond to queries.
{{/usCountry}}HT reached out to the Union culture ministry which did not respond to queries.
{{/usCountry}}Officials from the cultural affairs department of Maharashtra said they were in touch with the central government, adding that the deferment is not final. “We are doing everything possible with the help of the central government. The deferment is not final and we are still hopeful of getting the Unesco nod after all the efforts we are putting in,” said a top official from the cultural affairs department, asking not to be named.
The development comes amid the ongoing 47th session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris, where final decisions on nominations will be taken. While a deferment is not a rejection, it is a procedural setback, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named.
They explained that this implies that Unesco’s advisory body believes that the current dossier does not sufficiently establish what Unseco calls “Outstanding Universal Value (OUV)” of the property—a key criterion for the World Heritage tag. The news will be especially disappointing to the Maharashtra government which has seen chief minister Devendra Fadnavis take personal interest in this mission, visiting it on several occasions. In February this year, a high-level delegation including Maharashtra’s culture affairs minister Ashish Shelar, senior bureaucrats like additional chief secretary Vikas Kharge, and conservation architect Shikha Jain travelled to Paris to make their case.
HT reached out to Jain but did not receive a response immediately.
The World Heritage Tag means that the site possesses OUV and has exceptional importance to humanity. The tag also signifies that the site must be protected and preserved. Once a site is included on the list, it is placed under protection of the World Heritage Convention 1972.
All eyes are now on July 11 when the Indian delegation, led by Ambassador to the Unesco Vishal Sharma, will have an opportunity to challenge this deferral by arguing about the “technical inaccuracies” in the ICOMOS report.
There is a lot at stake for the government as Maratha Military Landscapes is the only official entry for India this year. The 12 structures in Raigad, Rajgad, Pratapgad, Panhala, Shivneri, Lohagad, Salher, Sindhudurg, Suvarnadurg, Vijaydurg, Khanderi, and the sole one in Tamil Nadu’ Jinji are seen as showcasing the military ingenuity, territorial defense system, and architectural legacy of the Maratha Empire, a source of major cultural pride in the state.
ICOMOS said in its assessment that there is a need to “reframe the nomination into a more focused and phased format”. The assessment urges India to first submit a smaller, representative cluster of forts, particularly from the Western Ghats and Konkan coast, and then expand it later or a second phase, through a boundary modification. It points out gaps in management, documentation, and impact assessment. ICOMOS has also pointed to the need for more robust heritage-specific protection mechanisms for the smaller forts, improved conservation practices, integration of GIS mapping for risk management, and better upkeep to delay further structural degradation.
To be sure, the state government is also aware of issues such as encroachments State culture minister Shelar had written to union Culture Minister Shekhawat requesting him to hand over the forts’ conservation to the state government so that they could care better for it than the Archaeological Survey of India.
A senior government official said that ICOMOS, though influential, is not an intergovernmental decision-making body. “The power to inscribe, refer, defer or not inscribe lies solely with the World Heritage Committee. ICOMOS only provides recommendations,”the official clarified.
India, which also hosted the World Heritage Convention last year, has 43 World Heritage Sites. Assam’s Charaideo Moidams, burial mounds of the Ahom kings, queens, and nobles, were the latest edition last year.