ABSTRACT
In India the concept of restoring a structure to safeguard it for future goes back to ancient times. This process is called ‘jeernodhar’. It was intended to infuse new life into a structure. Although now restricted to temples and such religious buildings, it has retained a deep impression on the minds of professionals involved in this activity. However, a lot of heritage properties, which are not protected under the legal framework and form part of the private domain, are addressed to keep reuse in mind. Long term economic sustainability is the key factor here. It has encouraged many owners of such properties to work towards restoration, rather than demolishing and building anew.
The paper looks at examples with a wide range of approaches (mostly outside the government mechanism), retaining a certain basic premise of principled conservation. The last four decades in India have shown how ways have been found to address the damages in threatened heritage structures. A wide range of cases and scales have adopted various conservation methods leading to the development of human resources, in terms of both, professionals as well as skilled workers. During this period several attitudes addressing damaged properties have emerged. The paper looks at some examples in the Indian context. While the concerns for national and international charters exist, attitudinal differences can be observed, since a large part of such heritage is outside the control of legal instruments— Protected Monuments and Sites Act—the provisions used by the official system. Primarily, the paper uses the case study method to demonstrate, through examples, how private and government properties were conserved. On the one hand, adopting a stricter approach as per government regulations has worked well, and on the other hand some liberal approaches have succeeded in retaining the essence of a structure or a site. Since the paper presents the emerging scenario, these different examples help in understanding the outcome.
