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Tangible and Intangible cultural heritage: A Logic for their Continuance

Dr Saurav Sengupta

Dept. of English

Damdama College

althusserganesha@gmail.com

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

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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

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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]

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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

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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

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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

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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).

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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).

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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

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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