Modern ‘emperors' imperil monuments
The recent ruling by the Supreme Court that even an illegitimate child must take the caste of its father has led women's activists to protest the continuing inequalities in property, custody and guardianship law in India, all of which continue to be determined through male descent

- Darryl D'Monte

Halfway through the 17 th century, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb wrote to his father, Shah Jahan, whom he had imprisoned in Agra fort. From his window, the royal prisoner could see the “miracle in marble” which he had built across the Yamuna in memory of his beloved wife, Mumtaz. Aurangzeb noted that when he had visited the Taj Mahal on a Friday he saw the “illustrious sepulchres and gained the blessing of paying homage to that holy shrine.”

But he added: “The dome is leaking in two places…The buildings in the sacred enclosure stand exactly as they were completed in Your Majesty's august presence except that the master builders state that if the roof of the second storey is opened out and treated with concrete…it is probable that the semi-domed arches, the galleries and the smaller domes will be set right, but they confess their inability to prescribe any corrective measures in respect of the main dome.”

If the damage to the Taj was evident within a few years of its completion (it took 22 years to build at the cost of Rs 6 crore at the time, a mind-boggling sum), nature and man have been at work in the centuries since to undermine it further. A century later, the Jats captured Agra and camped in the monument: they burned hay within the mausoleum to keep themselves warm – oblivious, no doubt, of any environmental impact that this would have had. They carried away its finest gems and silver gates. In the 19 th century, the British used the gardens for “frolic”.

Outdoor balls were held on the marble terrace in front of the main door; the mosques on either side of the Taj were rented out to honeymooning couples! Lord Curzon, who is considered the unofficial father of Indian archaeology, recalled early in the 20 th century: “It was not an uncommon thing for the revellers to arm themselves with hammer and chisel, with which they whiled away the afternoon by chipping out fragments of agate and carnelian from the cenotaphs of the Emperor and his lamented Queen.”

One of Curzon's predecessors, however, nearly presided over the extinction of this noble edifice in the 1830s. Lord Bentinck, the first Governor General of India , announced his intention to demolish the best Mughal monuments in Agra and Delhi and remove the marble facades. As one chronicler writes, “Several of Shah Jahan's pavilions in the Red Fort at Delhi were indeed stripped to the brick and the marble was shipped off to England (part of this shipment included pieces for King George IV himself). Plans were made to dismantle the Taj Mahal and wrecking machinery was moved into the garden grounds. Just as the demolition crew was setting to work, word came from London that the first auction had been a failure and that all further sales were cancelled – it would not be worth the money to tear down the Taj Mahal.” However, Warren Hastings did dismantle the marble bath in Shah Jahan's palace and ship it to his sovereign in England .

The first major threat in post-independence India was the decision to locate an oil refinery at Mathura , only 40 km as the crow flies from Agra , in the early-1970s. This led, surprisingly, to the most comprehensive study ever conducted in the world at the time on the impact of pollutants on an ancient monument, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The technical input was provided by Tecneco, an Italian group of consultants which had previous experience of such a threat in Venice . It commandeered the services of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation of Cultural Property in Rome , whose experts lovingly surveyed the monument and reported how it was basically in good condition at the time, despite the impact of dust-laden hot winds ( loos ) which pitted the sandstone in the edifice. Thanks to the nation-wide controversy over the refinery, a government committee recommended several protective measures, which ensured that the damage was minimal, if at all.

The next threat cropped up in 2003, when UP Chief Minister Mayawati started her infamous Rs 175 crore “Taj corridor” supposedly to connect the Taj with other monuments in and around Agra and enable tourists to bypass the town. This was done with the collusion not only of her pliant bureaucrats, like her environment minister and chief secretary, but the Centre's environment secretary as well. Although Mayawati had to resign for proceeding with these madcap plans (including shopping malls on the banks of the Yamuna) and these gentlemen lost their jobs, they have all been recently acquitted by the CBI. This follows on the heels of a report from the Attorney General that there was no “criminal intent” and only “departmental action” was recommended.

Although this infamous project -- which seemed a thinly-disguised ploy to line the pockets of state politicians and bureaucrats, bit the dust -- other threats keep surfacing. The most recent was the decision to permit a yoga guru named Vikram Choudhury to hold impromptu classes on the main platform of the monument! He even allowed his students to rest against the delicate lattice screens after sessions. This had led to a fracas between the UP government, led by Mulayam Singh, and the Centre, which is in the dock on this occasion. (In a similar incident only a few months ago, the Archaeological Survey of India or ASI inexplicably gave permission for a Jackie Chan noodle western to be shot near a temple in the Hampi complex and had to be overruled.) The Centre has maintained a curious silence over this unpardonable lapse of security.

Some months ago, there was a dispute between the state and central governments over the 350 th anniversary celebrations of the Taj Mahal. This time, the Centre stayed aloof, reportedly because of a disagreement over the arrangements for the festivities. And the ASI has been guilty of an “on-off” stance on permitting tourists to visit the monument on moonlit nights for security reasons. Surely, it would be well within the capacity of any organisation to frisk visitors on such occasions – as is the practice at airports? Such an extra-cautious attitude actually works to the detriment of the preservation of the monument, because it deters some from spending more time in Agra for this precise purpose and visiting it at different times of the day, if not month. One has only to recall the words of Mary Sleeman – wife of the redoubtable Colonel who took on thuggee in Rajasthan – who wrote a friend in England after visiting the Taj that she would happily die to have such an edifice built in her memory.

Very recently, the ASI's chief, C Babu Rajeev, confirmed that the minarets of the Taj are tilting, which was known six decades ago but, some reports allege, had been suppressed. The Advisory Committee on the Restoration and Conservation of the Taj Mahal at Agra reported in 1941 that the plinth levels were different and submitted 25 drawings to this effect. Two noted historians have now warned that the bed of the Yamuna ought to be refilled with water if the monument is to be saved. According to a former head of Rajasthan University 's history department, the river forms an integral part of the Taj's design. Indeed, “Mayawati's folly”, fortunately stopped halfway through, may have already spelled the death knell of the Taj for altering the flow of the river, although the state government has sought to remove the reclamation along the bank.

Historical records show that the river was already full and extensively used for transport. Even Shah Jahan's body was brought to the Taj from the Agra Fort in a boat. Last October, Mulayam Singh constituted a committee of experts to examine the causes of the tilt. One only hopes that this report doesn't go the way of so many documents and merely gather dust in some decrepit office – as indeed was the fate of the 1941 report, which this columnist had access to three decades ago.

Politicking is a major problem when it comes to projects that imperil the preservation of archaeological sites. Mayawati is now trying to implicate the former national coalition government for staging a witch-hunt against her in the Taj Corridor case. She alleged: “The Taj scam is a false case which was put on me as part of a conspiracy to force (her) Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) support. They wanted to pressurise me, but I did not fall in their trap.” However, the CBI has made it clear that even if she is cleared of corruption in the Taj case, she is still in the dock for amassing assets which bear no relation to her income.

Considering that India receives only 3.5 million visitors a year – a third of what Thailand does – when it has arguably the largest and most diverse number of historical and natural sites in the world, every effort ought to be taken to ensure their protection. The new Tourism Minister, Renuka Chowdhry, has vowed to do as much, armed with the Sanskrit slogan that every visitor ought to be treated as a king. With Thailand facing the repercussions of the tsunami, it is just possible that India might receive many more thousands in the next few months if travellers switch to this part of Asia instead.

While our sites can match the best in the world, the infrastructure is one of the poorest. Mayawati and her cohorts certainly had a point when they made a case for connecting the various monuments scattered around Agra , but the Corridor was a hare-brained way of putting this into practice. Transport is a major bottleneck, and if the situation around the Taj is bad – just a few hours away from the national capital – the environment around other sites can well be imagined. In Ajanta , which some experts believe marks the highest point of Indian culture since the art depicted in it has never been surpassed in its grandeur anywhere else in the county, this problem has now been solved by halting all vehicles some distance away from the hillside and conveying visitors to the base by electric buses.

Crowd management is another sore point. This columnist recalls visiting the Taj early one morning some 15 years ago. The attendant had lit a few sticks of incense and placed them on a stand atop the marble tomb in the mausoleum, sprinkling some notes and coins around it in the hope of attracting offerings from the faithful. Our group confiscated this sum – which amounted to Rs 200 within half-an-hour of the monument throwing open its doors – and scolded the attendant for threatening to discolour the ageing marble-clad edifice. At Ajanta , on the other hand, crowds make a beeline for the two or three caves where alone the wall paintings are somewhat intact. Walter Spink, formerly from the University of Michigan, who is the world's foremost ‘Ajantologist' and has been studying the caves for 40 years, has proposed a simple scheme to restrict entry to different caves by coloured tickets, which has fallen on deaf ears for many years.

One only hopes that Chowdhry, who is known to be excessively enthusiastic on occasion, doesn't overdo the access to monuments simply in order to boost the tourism figures (and her own prestige in the process). The greatest pains have to be taken in permitting son et lumiere shows or dance recitals, such as those now being conducted at Khajuraho and Elephanta, both World Heritage Sites themselves. Ultimately, if we succumb to the greed for earning that extra dollar, we might harm the monuments irretrievably – and that would throttle the tourist trade. And, in the process, we ought to spare a thought for that much-neglected poor cousin, the domestic tourist, who often visits sites as much for a pilgrimage as anything remotely to do with tourism.