Date:11/05/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/05/11/stories/2003051101731100.htm

National

Central Command's novel initiative

By Mukund Padmanabhan

Lucknow May 10. At a time when conservationists are struggling to persuade a number of State Governments to pass heritage regulations, a trailblazing and novel initiative has emerged from an unexpected quarter: the Indian Army. The organisation's Central Command — under which fall seven States (including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa) and a vast chunk of the country's territory — has kicked off a process aimed at conserving the vast heritage assets that lie within its theatre.

These assets take many shapes or forms. They lie in individual buildings of historical or architectural value, in whole precincts that retain a special or unique character, in natural or pristine areas with ecological significance and in a range of objects relevant for any study of military history — documents, weaponry, ammunition, uniforms, songs, folklore, etc.

Naturally, any heritage conservation effort by the Central Command must be restricted to Army cantonments or lands held by it. But these are by no means a small area. Almost half the 62 cantonments in the country lie within the Central Command's theatre. And many of them — Meerut, Kanpur, Allahabad, Jabalpur, Ranchi and Mhow, to name but a few — contain old and architecturally valuable structures worthy of preservation.

Among the significant proposals is the one to conduct feasibility studies of declaring Ranikhet and Lansdowne heritage cantonments. What makes both special is the extensive wooded areas in which they are located as well as the fact that they have a generous sprinkling of old buildings. For instance, the officer's mess in Ranikhet was once Lord Mayo's bungalow (circa 1869); conservationists estimate that there are at least over 60 buildings and churches that are over a century old.

The Central Command has been engaged over the last couple of decades in preserving its natural or physical heritage (example, forestation, rainwater harvesting, nature parks). What it is proposing to do now is widen the task of conservation to include heritage assets that have historical, architectural, archival and cultural significance.

There is still a long way to go before ideas become reality, but the significant thing is that the process of trying to implement them has begun. Recently, the Command Ecology Cell was reconstituted into the Central Command Ecology, Environment and Heritage Committee (CEEHC), with the Army Commander as the Patron-in-Chief and the Officiating Chief of Staff as the Patron and the Chief Engineer as the Chairman and a number of other senior staff officers as members.

Two panels, one for the Uttar Bharat region and the other for Madhya Bharat, have been constituted and so have further sub-committees down to the station level. The panels have been designed to include a wide representation of people and, apart from Army officials, include a mix of civilians, politicians and heritage activists. The panels have been asked to submit a feasibility studies by mid-July that are expected to spell out not only a broad conservation strategy but the possible means by which Ranikhet and Lansdowne may be declared heritage cantonments.

Working closely along with the Army on these proposals are representatives of INTACH and other NGOs. Last month, a workshop on `Conservation of Heritage in Central Command' was held with INTACH's cooperation, an event that was responsible for a lot of the momentum that has taken place on this front.

Army officers connected with the process prefer not to be named, saying that the initiative is institutional rather than personal. "We are fully committed towards conserving our heritage assets. But the exact shape the heritage regulations will take is still not fully clear," says the Secretary of the Command's Ecological Environment and Heritage Committee.

The shape of such regulations of course will not depend merely on matters of detail. They will also depend on the legal framework on which such heritage regulations rest.