The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach), has taken the first step to declare the national
capital
(Delhi) a World Heritage City.
The country's leading non-profit organisation dedicated to conservation of heritage last week completed a pilot blueprint of a new heritage-tourism route between the Red Fort and Humayun's Tomb along the
capital's busy Mathura Road.
“The route will link at least 30 big and small historical
monuments as part of a mega project, 'Delhi Heritage Routes', designed to put the capital in the list of 220 heritage cities worldwide in a bid to preserve the city's 1,000-year old cultural and historical wealth,” A.G Krishna Menon, convenor of the Delhi chapter of Intach, said.
The monuments, along the route, can be accessed by a special hop-on-hop off heritage bus and cycles from the Cycle Society in Delhi.
The pilot project has been funded by the World Monuments Fund, which has pitched in with 200,000 USD as a start-up grant.
The project divides Delhi into seven heritage precincts between the ridge and the river.
The Intach report has sent the report to the Delhi government for implementation.
The Intach had signed a heritage pact with the government of Delhi in 2008 for sustainable development of the capital's cultural heritage that will help Delhi become a World Heritage City .
The World Heritage City status is granted by UNESCO after a complex screening of the heritage conservation of a city and its historicity. Some major heritage cities include London, Rome and Jerusalem.
“This stretch of the Mathura Road has several important monuments like the Firoz Shah Kotla, Purana Qila, the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg and several smaller structures. These will be beautified with aesthetic landscaping, attractive signages, lights and street furniture like fancy seats and benches so that they become friendly spaces. The aim is to best showcase the cognitive heritage of the capital to attract global attention,” Menon said.
“We have also proposed hop on-hop off heritage bus service along the route that will ferry tourists to the monuments,” Menon said.
The project should not run into hurdles because it has been cleared the Delhi government and ASI, Menon said.
The routes will be spread across a 50-km stretch from the Coronation Park in the north, where the durbar commemorating the cornonation of King George V in England took place in 1911, Red Fort, Chandni Chowk (Shahajanabad), Nizamuddin, Dariyaganj, Feroz Shah Kotla, Purana Qila (Old Fort), Lutyen's Delhi, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Mehrauli, Sultangarhi and even Tughlakabad, Menon said.
“We have also spoken to the Cycle Society in the capital to loan us bicycles so that tourists can visit some of the monuments on cycles- those which will be inaccessible to the heritage bus,” Menon said.
The Delhi Development Authority has also asked Intach to restore the derelict Coronation Park as part of the pilot project.
“Once we identify the rest of the routes in a year, it will enable us to push for Heritage City Status for Delhi at UNESCO,” Menon said.
Explaining the background of the project, he said the ministry of culture and tourism, the Intach and the ASI for a long time agreed that Delhi qualified as a World Heritage City.
“It is just that we decided to work towards it last year. We mooted a heritage routes linked to the significant sites in the first phase,” Menon said.
The Delhi Heratage Route Project was one of the four projects that WMF supported in 2008.
“We support anything creative that promotes sustainable development of heritage and tourism. We hope to see ourselves as a catalyst of change in Delhi so that it becomes a World Heritage City. The state should fund the rest of the routes,” Amita Baig of the World's Monument Fund told IANS.
The Intach also plans to set up audio-visual interpretation centres at the archaeological sites along the routes to “enhance the visitors' knowledge of the monuments”, set up a Women's Museum at Qudsia Palace in Qudsiabagh near Kashmere Gate and chronicle the oral history of the capital based on the memories of the old residents as part of the World Heritage City campaign.
--Madhusree Chatterjee