STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME CONSTRAINTS IN CONSERVATION OF HERITAGE AREAS IN HILL STATIONS OF INDIA: A CASE OF DARJEELING

Abstract

Conservation of built heritage is essential for preserving the historic and cultural identity of a place and contributes towards the collective associative cohesiveness of the community. The tangible heritage is the physical manifestation of the root values, socio-cultural context and origin of the nation or community and is a symbol of national pride and image established through association. The necessity of heritage conservation is established and acknowledged worldwide and several provisions through international and national laws, legislations and charters are developed and implemented through inter-governmental collaboration. Conservation is essentially a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary process involving investigation, analysis, planning, implementation and management at multiple levels comprising the national, regional and local levels with association of professionals from various fields of expertise including architects, planners, engineers, anthropologists, historians and archaeologists, with the involvement of the stakeholders of the heritage. It is hence obvious, that an assortment of issues and challenges will arise, owing to the scale and the complexity of the process. In this research, the process and constraints in heritage conservation are studied in the context of India, with focus on the colonial hill station of Darjeeling, the erstwhile summer capital of colonial British India. The origin of Darjeeling was a result of the British desire to establish sanatoria within the subcontinent where European invalids could recover from the heat and disease of the tropics. The travel to the north Indian hill stations often proved a time consuming and costly affair and it was essential for the British to develop a hill station in close proximity of Calcutta (now Kolkata). Eventually a sanatorium was developed in Darjeeling on 1st February, 1835 and with the introduction of the tea plantations in 1841 by Dr. Arthur Campbell, the first superintendent of the sanatorium, made Darjeeling a tea estate. The town became politically eminent when it provided for the summer headquarters of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, the Conservator of Forests, Bengal and a few more prominent British officers. The propitious climate coupled with the political prominence, Darjeeling grew rapidly as a hill town.