EVOLVING STRATEGIES FOR STRENGTHENING THE BUILT HERITAGE OF INDIAN COLONIAL HILL TOWN CENTERS

Abstract

India has a symbolic reputation for being a country with diverse and abundant cultural heritage and legacies. The historical assets it accommodates include several hill towns such as Shimla, Mahabaleshwar, Darjeeling, Ooty, and Mussoorie, which the British established in the quest to recreate familiar landscapes they had back home. Primarily developed in the first half of the 19th century, these colonial hill establishments imbibed the predominant architectural vocabulary and institutional & cultural mannerisms of the native places in England. However, several social and political circumstances led to the shift in traditions and heritage value of Indian colonial hill towns, both in the pre-and post-independence scenario, that reshaped and transformed these authentic cultural landscapes. In addition, institutional and administrative neglect gradually narrowed the significance of these towns from being historically substantial places to mere profit making tourism-centric commercial establishments. This dynamism of evolution and transformation is analyzed in two British colonial hill town centers in India, Mahabaleshwar and Mussoorie. Most of the institutional facilities in these British established towns were positioned around or alongside the long-sheltered promenades that formed the center of the town both functionally and spatially. The present study is also geographically focused around these town centers in the selected research sites. The research findings highlight several key issues that are imperative to be addressed, including environmental degradation, overburdening on infrastructure, mass tourism, disregard of colonial built heritage, underutilization of cultural resources, absence of participatory planning, and unplanned & haphazard development, amongst others. For this research, the aspect of colonial built heritage is investigated for the hill town centers of stated research sites while incorporating stakeholder participation in the research methods. In the present scenario, the ongoing disregard for the historical notions of colonial hill towns is leading to the decay of British established built heritage in these sites. Moreover, the fragmented development and heritage conservation approaches in the colonial hill towns echo the top-down decision-making process, which does not reflect communities' or stakeholders’ interests. Hence, this research aims to evolve strategies for strengthening the built heritage of town centers in Indian colonial hill stations by conducting a comprehensive investigation through socio-spatial studies and stakeholder participation. The study analyzes the aspects of the socio-spatial transformation of the colonial legacy, the impact of tourism, and the significance and role of stakeholders in the heritage management of these traditional places. In doing so, the research follows an inductive research approach for overall investigation and a mixed-method approach for data collection by implementing techniques that are derived from several diverse domains and disciplines, such as history, urban morphological studies, geography, sociology, and visual & observational studies. Consequently, the research provides holistic documentation of the socio-spatial transformation of tourism centric Indian colonial hill towns of Mahabaleshwar and Mussoorie from their advent in the British era to the present contemporary scenario. It is followed by stakeholder participation through recording and analyzing their perceptions of heritage in the tourism centric colonial hill towns selected for the study. In addition, the circumstances of other major colonial hill towns of India are also investigated through secondary studies to identify the significant issues imposing challenges for their heritage sustenance. The study concludes by proposing strategic directions to strengthen the built heritage of Indian colonial hill town centers. The research is an original work that addresses the aspects of colonial-built heritage in a developing country that otherwise has faced persistent neglect. It also attempts to bridge the gap of previous research by binding together the built environment and participatory methodologies in heritage conservation studies at colonial hill towns. Moreover, in the theoretical domain, the study expands the discourse on the morphological transformation of the historical places pertaining to the change in social and political scenarios that consequently reflect in their built fabric. Additionally, it also deliberates upon the theoretical underpinning on the interdependence of heritage conservation, tourism and sustainable development of the tourism driven places, subsequently integrating it in the methodological frameworks for the case studies.