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The Mumbai Project: Mumbai's past needs a future
Unlike Singapore and Sydney, our civic body in Mumbai has only made it easier to erase its legacies. Chitrangada Choudhury tells us...Talk to us...Check out the special on The Mumbai Project
“If HSBC had to sell this property tomorrow, we would receive great value, because we have preserved a rare building.” - Simen Munter, Deputy CEO, India, Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited
(Check out the special on The Mumbai Project)
From his fifth floor office in South Mumbai, Simen Munter, HSBC’s deputy CEO, often contemplates the panoramic view of the Fort business district — named after the fortification that the East India Company built and was later pulled down by the British colonial government in the 1860s.
As the tall Norwegian walks across to the HSBC headquarters, a 1913 balustraded building whose façade the bank restored this year, his eyes frequently seek out fine architectural details on the many decaying edifices that line the streets of Fort: an elegant dome here, an intricately carved iron balcony there.
“I am a sucker for old buildings,” confessed the soft-spoken Munter. “There is such great potential here. Given that it is impossible for Mumbai to recreate such character in any of the newer glass-and-steel office districts like Bandra-Kurla Complex, it would be criminal for the city to not preserve what it has, ja?”
Far from helping the city preserve its architectural past, our civic body has just made it easier to erase it. Last month, the Municipal Commissioner, Jairaj Phatak, said proposals for redeveloping thousands of protected buildings in some of Mumbai’s most distinctive enclaves — from the Art Deco hub of Marine Drive to the East Indian colony of Matharpakady — will no longer have to be vetted by the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee, the civic body’s heritage arm, thus removing a crucial check to wanton redevelopment.
But the problem runs deeper: the civic body lacks a comprehensive conservation policy and has not armed the heritage committee with the funds or equipment it needs to do its job well. Add to this an unsympathetic bureaucracy and obsolete tenancy laws, and the future seems bleak for the city’s past.
In contrast, city governments all over the world, led by Europe, give tax breaks and grants to owners of historic properties to help them conserve their buildings. Even Beijing and Shanghai, which sacrificed much of their old inner city housing in the 1990s to massive redevelopment programmes, have now formulated a law that fines developers who tear down old buildings.
“Heritage is yet to be woven into Mumbai’s grand plan for global status,” said Pankaj Joshi, an urban planner and member of the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee.
This when Mumbai has much in its architectural past to be proud of. It is home to a globally renowned collection of colonial buildings, two World Heritage sites — a 1,400-year-old cave temple complex and a 19th century Victorian railway station — century-old gaothans (villages), vibrant Art Deco buildings, the largest set after Miami, and a collection of mills that showcase the city’s 19th-century manufacturing roots and tell the story of a nation’s leap into the industrial age.
The city also has less well-known sites of key historical moments, from a bungalow where writer Rudyard Kipling was born, to a courtroom where Mahatma Gandhi began practising in 1891 as a tongue-tied lawyer, and a working-class block where Lokmanya Tilak began a community festival that sparked off nationalist sentiment.
Others cities in the world, blessed with far less, are achieving a great deal more, through progressive and imaginative policies.
Sydney, for example, held a ‘History Week’ in September, during which citizens and tourists could choose from 250 events, including sessions on the history of the city’s street names and tram network and how immigration altered Australia.
Singapore’s National Heritage Board is now executing a three-year plan to create what it calls a “museum-going culture” among its residents. As a result, the number of people who visited the city-state’s museums jumped 70 per cent in 2005 over the previous year to 8.2 lakh.
“Mumbai appears to have immense planning, transport and infrastructure problems, which really need to be sorted out first to enable appropriate conservation policies to be effective,” said Robert Jensen, who heads a Sydney-based architectural firm that advises the local government about how to protect its heritage.
“An obvious example: unless private transport is tamed and managed better, it will destroy any attempts to develop conservation precincts.”
For instance, policies encouraging the use of private cars are inimical to preserving precincts like Khotachiwadi, whose narrow lanes were built to suit a different urban context.
Two steps backwards
In 1990, when Mumbai enacted protective legislation for close to 600 heritage buildings, it clearly established itself as leading the country’s urban conservation movement. But a decade on, activists say that the results are largely limited to one-off restoration projects of high-profile buildings, like the Mumbai University’s grand Convocation Hall, which won this year’s UNESCO conservation award.
The civic body may have an Rs 8,000-crore budget, but the heritage committee does not even have its own website or office. “The Heritage Committee has less power than a traffic constable,” said a member of this body.
The committee routinely gets petitions from citizens complaining about the loss of a charming bungalow in their neighbourhood to slapdash redevelopment. The bureaucrats inevitably file them away. “All we are empowered to do is forward these to the government,” said Sharad Upasani, a retired bureaucrat who heads the committee.
Today, conservation is mostly left to the initiative of individuals, like ad agency head Shailen Somen and merchandiser Tarini Jindal.
They have bought over neglected gems in the Fort neighbourhood, hoping to house modern enterprises in edifices that are struggling to survive in a city whose economy is rapidly changing.
Next week, Somen’s ad agency will move into 7,000 square feet in Esplanade Mansion, a tenth of the building’s total floor area. Built two centuries ago by India’s first great entrepreneur, Jamshetji Tata, the building was his palatial five-storey home in Bombay.
The rest of the grand edifice, with wide central stairways, elaborate stained glass panels and ceramic murals spouting lines from Shakespeare, is frozen in neglect. Since October, Jindal, 24, runs her clothing, books and accessories store, Muse, out of the three-storey Upadastra House on Forbes Street.
Mumbai needs more people like Jindal and Somen to be able to give its past a future. Our city’s grand colonial edifices have given it world fame. But we are doing little to protect and preserve our architectural past, unlike others cities in the world that are blessed with far less. A movement has started, just about.
Is this enough?
Problem 1: The multi-disciplinary heritage committee, made up of civic engineers, historians, conservationists and redevelopers, oversees the protection of the city’s listed buildings. But the civic body is empowered to overrule its recommendations on proposed redevelopment. The committee neither has its own budget, nor a dedicated staff. The public cannot attend its meetings, while minutes are confined to civic files.
Problem 2: The civic body is currently expanding the existing heritage list, which only covers the island city, i.e. from south Mumbai to Bandra. The expanded list, with up to 2,000 more buildings, is not likely to become law before 2009. Several buildings, for example, historic textile mills, have been pulled down in the interim, and still more will be, while the exercise lumbers on.
Problem 3: Development rules to regulate construction in protected precincts like the leafy Parsi Colony in Dadar, or the quaint East Indian settlement in Khotachiwadi were framed in 2002. They are still waiting to be made law by the state government.
Ladakh sets an example
Four years ago, in Ladakh, the royal family, the Namgyal Cultural Institute, sponsors and locals from Basgo village joined hands to restore the 15th century Maitreya temple complex.
Work began in 2003 and continued till 2006. New wooden capitals were crafted, mud terraces repaired, intricate murals in the temple restored. All this was done by Ladakhi craftsmen who employed traditional techniques and materials to breathe life into the crumbling structure, which was on the global ‘endangered monuments’ list.
The project won the Unesco 2007 heritage award, for excellence in conservation. “The contributions of the local community, in terms of both skills and resources, have allowed for the safeguarding of an iconic, but endangered part of the heritage of the Himalayan region,” said Unesco.
Jigmed Namgyal (41), the 37th descendant of Namgyal dynasty, which built the Maitreya temple as part of the citadel of the mediaeval Ladakh city, said, “I hope it will inspire similar efforts in the region to protect our rich heritage.”
Keeping history alive: Plans for 2008
In 2007, the Mumbai University’s 132-year-old Convocation Hall won the Unesco award of distinction for conservation. Plans for 2008 include the restoration of the 1867 two-storey Kipling House (birthplace of writer Rudyard Kipling), set in a garden in the J.J. School of Art campus. It will be converted into an art museum with a bookshop and café, with a Rs 2.4 crore grant by the Jindal Foundation.
The BMC headquarters, built in 1893, will see a year-and-a-half-long upgradation, starting January 2008. This includes repairing the roof, stairways and fixing leakages. The project also includes plans like rearrangement of departments and computerisation.
Global Recall: New York
The Landmarks Preservation Commission, established in 1965, is the New York City agency responsible for identifying and designating landmarks and buildings in the city’s historic districts, and regulating changes to over 24,000 protected sites, including its most iconic structures like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Empire State building and the Brooklyn bridge.
New York’s Landmarks Law was enacted in response to New Yorkers’ growing concern that crucial physical elements of the city’s history were being lost despite the fact that these buildings could be reused.
The Commission, with 11 commissioners, including five local residents, has a full-time staff of 70 members, with departments that carry out research and evaluate grant proposals to owners of historic properties. All its meetings are open to the public, and decisions are posted online.
The buck stops here
‘I am so busy I have no time to clear files’
Ramanand Tiwari, Secretary of the state government’s urban development department
An expansion of the city’s heritage listing is on since three years now. Rules to protect precincts were drawn up from 2002, but are waiting to be made law. A plan for a museum is gathering dust for a year. Why are heritage issues placed on the backburner?
We value heritage. But I am so busy that I have not had the time to clear the files.
Why not give the heritage committee more powers and a dedicated fund?
The heritage committee is meant to advise the BMC. It cannot become a separate institution with powers of its own.
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