Culture and Diplomacy: Maritime Cultural Heritage of the Western Indian Ocean

Introduction

Maritime cultural heritage is often defined as the signifier of worldwide relations over long periods across current national political boundaries. But is it seen as ‘international’ in practice or as a building block for international relations? Meskell has suggested that the ‘ideal of internationalism or world government found its fullest expression in the formation of the United Nations’ (Meskell, 2019, p. 33). UNESCO was established in 1945 in the aftermath of the Second World War with the prime objective of countering conflict through intellectual dialogue. The organisation’s maxim remains: ‘Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed’. Clearly, there continues an urgent need to use heritage to promote dialogue and mutual respect among nation-states. The setting up of the Council of Europe in 1949 is a good example of the promotion of European identity based on shared values cutting across different cultures, with heritage providing a robust foundation to the exercise. ‘The European Union was conceived as a peace project after World War Two—a vision that was renewed after the removal of the Iron Curtain’ (Wodak, 2009, p. 64).

A similar sentiment has been expressed by H. E. Dato’ Misran Karmain, deputy secretary-general of ASEAN, for ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community:

ASEAN is moving towards establishing an ASEAN Community in 2015. Pursuant to that, ASEAN is gearing up to forge a regional identity for ASEAN through various cultural and information projects that cover the arts—visual, performing, literary, musical and other art forms whether traditional, contemporary, or modern—cultural heritage, information and the mass media, as well as in collaboration with our Dialogue Partners. ¹

The concept of ASEAN unity is further elaborated in ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint, 2009–2015, which emphasises that the strategic objective is ‘to create a sense of belonging, consolidate unity in diversity and enhance deeper mutual understanding among ASEAN member countries about their culture, history, religion and civilisation (strategic objectives)’. Clearly, ASEAN has accepted the challenge to promote heritage as a cultural bridge for developing unity and harmony among the member states and one that can overcome the harsh realities of sovereignty and national interests.

The thrust of this article is to locate maritime cultural heritage, especially UNESCO’s 1972 World Heritage Convention to which India is a signatory within the ambit of global culture and diplomacy. The issues being addressed in this article relate to (a) the extent to which cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, is a viable tool for building transnational unity among Indian Ocean littoral countries and (b) the State’s Policy towards cultural diplomacy: one at the global level of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee and second with reference to certain groupings, such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). IORA is an intergovernmental organisation established on 7 March 1997. It has 22 member states and 10 dialogue partners. As a founder member, India is the largest contributor to the IORA Special Fund with a recent contribution of USD 1 million to the fund. India has also taken steps to support strengthening the IORA secretariat by sharing expertise (Business Line, 2019). One of the priority areas of IORA is promoting cultural heritage and harnessing the economic potential of this heritage, including World Heritage properties and sites. ² However despite the emphasis on heritage, the organisation has largely focused on tourism.

Clearly, culture and soft power are high on the agenda, but how is this to be translated on the ground and implemented. How successful has the implementation been? A response to this question would require close scrutiny of certain institutions entrusted with the task of execution and completion of the policies of the government. I start the article with a general discussion on cultural diplomacy and global heritage and then move to an analysis of the work done by some of the institutions such as the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the universities established by the Ministry of External Affairs and so on. In the final section, I shift the focus to transnational maritime cultural heritage and the possibilities of exploring it as a means of establishing sustainable partnerships through cultural diplomacy.

‘Heritage’ is defined as what society chooses to protect by law and administration and decisions regarding heritage could have implications internationally if they affect other governments or communities. At the same time, heritage sites can also themselves become contested space, for example, the Dome of the Rock, a shrine located on Temple Mount in Old Jerusalem. Despite this history of conflict and violence over differently conceptualised religious space, one should not despair of an equitable solution to the difficult problems which the opposing claims to Jerusalem’s sacred esplanade pose (Graber & Kedar, 2010). In contrast to examples of contested heritage, there are several cases where nation-states have overcome differences to come together to promote cultural heritage. For example, in 2016, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) led 11 countries to inscribe falconry onto the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Representative List. ³ Clearly the full potential of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention is yet to be realised for establishing transnational linkages and to promote the concept of shared heritage.

Heritage and Cultural Diplomacy

The General Conference of UNESCO in 1972 adopted a Convention concerning Protection of World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage. The Convention sought to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. India ratified this Convention in November 1977, and the first Indian sites to be inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1983 were the Taj Mahal; Agra Fort in Uttar Pradesh; the second century bce to sixth century ce Buddhist caves at Ajanta; and the 600 to 1000 ce rock-cut Ellora Caves near Aurangabad. The ASI functions as a nodal agency for the nomination of World Heritage Sites to the UNESCO, though the Permanent Representative of India to UNESCO headquarters in Paris is generally an officer from the Ministry of External Affairs, thereby combining culture and diplomacy.

Securing a seat on the World Heritage Committee, one of the influential institutions for implementing the Convention, is seen by many countries as one way to effectively raise their profile and India has served thrice on the Committee: from 1985 to 1991, from 2001 to 2007 and, more recently, from 2011 to 2015. ‘Apart from its domestic agendas, India, like most States Parties, has advanced its international ambitions through its membership of the World Heritage Committee. During its last mandate (2011–2015) India worked in close partnership with other nations of the BRICS group’, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to challenge European domination of the World Heritage List and expertise in conservation practices and instead stressed local knowledge and cultural understandings, with an emphasis on vernacular and living heritage (Meskell, 2019, pp. 33–60). ‘India argued that governments, as sovereign entities, should not be put on the line, nor should information from NGO’s and other groups necessarily be accepted’ (Meskell, 2019, p. 38).

Realising the role of support for heritage as a potent tool of diplomacy, the US Ambassador’s Fund has supported over 750 projects in 132 countries at a cost of some USD 40 million. Initially aimed at supporting the preservation, rehabilitation and promotion of places of historical significance for local constituencies, the aims of the grants have shifted through time to support initiatives that might combat negative perceptions of the USA worldwide following the invasion of Iraq (Luke & Kersel, 2013).

One of the projects supported under this fund in India is the World Heritage Site of sixteenth-century Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi inscribed in 1993 and the Qutb Shahi Tombs in Hyderabad, which has received funds to the tune of USD 100,000. This amount is channelled through public–private partnership involving the ASI and Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) in India and includes work on the Urban Renewal project in the Nizamuddin Conservation area in New Delhi. The project includes the conservation of over 50 monuments, environmental development of over 300 acres in the heart of New Delhi and an extensive socio-economic development programme leading to an improvement in the quality of life for more than 15,000 residents of Nizamuddin Basti. In addition, AKTC is also working at the Qutb Shahi Heritage Park in Hyderabad, which includes the conservation of over 80 monuments belonging to the sixteenth-century Qutb Shahi dynasty as well as 108 acres of landscape development.

Another site of relevance to this article that is supported under the US Ambassador’s Fund is that of the Dutch fort of Galle in Sri Lanka. The USA has supported the long-term preservation of Sri Lanka’s World Heritage Site of Galle with a view to improving the economic growth potential of the fort as a tourism destination. ⁴ In addition to Galle in Sri Lanka, the US Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation project has also funded the World Heritage Site of Makli necropolis at Thatta in Sindh in Pakistan to the tune of USD 260,000. The fund was to be used for the restoration of the 400-year-old tombs of Sultan Ibrahim and Amir Sultan Muhammad. Makli functioned as the capital of three successive dynasties and was later ruled by the Mughal emperors of Delhi. The remains of the city and its necropolis provide a unique view of civilisation in Sind from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century.

The US consulate-general in Karachi is working with the Sindh government for the rehabilitation of Varun Dev Temple on Manora Island with a cost of USD 250,000. ⁵ According to a legend, it was around sixteenth century when a wealthy sailor by the name of Bhojomal Nancy Bhattia bought Manora Island from the Khan of Kalat, who owned most of the land along the coastline at that time and then his family commissioned a temple. In Afghanistan, the USA has undertaken the Victory Towers of Ghazni Documentation Project. The 75-ft-high flanged towers dated to the twelfth century are built of fired mud brick faced with inscriptions like the Victory sura from the Qur’an and the titles of their builders, Sultans Masud III and Bahram Shah.

In July of 2011, architects from the US National Park Service’s Historic American Building Survey (HABS) embarked on a ground-breaking project to fully document the towers. Using high definition surveying, also known as laser scanning, Dana Lockett and Paul Davidson captured the elaborate terracotta details of each façade as well as the brickwork of their exposed foundations to a level of accuracy never previously achieved…. Security and safety concerns meant the survey had to be completed in two days allowing only enough time to scan the towers at medium resolution. The entire process was captured by Agnieszka Dolatowska, an archaeologist and member of the Polish military, who joined Dana and Paul at the site and photo-documented the towers as well as the scanning process at the request of the US Department of State. ⁶

Clearly, the USA has appreciated the value of heritage for promoting cultural diplomacy and though it is not the only country to do so, it is perhaps able to use it for promoting its agendas. Several nations have realised that World Heritage inscription of heritage sites is a sure means to acquire global visibility in the domain of culture. More importantly, these joint projects provide critical research material and documentation that help in the production of both publicity materials, as also academic scholarship that invariably impacts the thinking of policymakers. This issue of generation of valuable primary data and production of knowledge is critical for the successful adoption of culture as soft power. It remains one of the neglected thrust areas in cultural diplomacy in India, as is evident with reference to the ASI’s engagement with countries outside India.

The Archaeological Survey of India and Preservation of Heritage

The ASI maintains nearly 3,700 monuments and archaeological sites in India. It has also extended its efforts to countries outside India. Important among these are explorations and excavations conducted by ASI in Egypt, Nepal and Bahrain; chemical preservation of paintings in Bhutan; establishment of a museum in Angola; structural conservation of Ta Prohm Temple in Cambodia and Vat Phou Temple in Lao People’s Democratic Republic, structural conservation and chemical preservation at Bamiyan in Afghanistan, Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia, Ananda Temple in Myanmar and Thiruketeeswaram Temple in Sri Lanka. Recent additions to the list include monuments such as My Son Group of Temples in Vietnam and Aapravasi Ghat in Mauritius. These initiatives have however been limited to conservation projects and it is not clear to what extent these have contributed either to proposing new paradigms for a study of the past or in building partnerships with local scholars and researchers.

For the privilege of getting a cultural site inscribed, the investment in money and human resources are high and the efforts are often long drawn out. Putting together a dossier for the nomination of a cultural site involves not only the careful selection and presentation of hard data on the site, a skill in which government agencies are woefully underequipped but also a genuine appreciation of the history and context of the cultural site proposed. The latter part requires knowledge gained through deep and time-consuming research, which often gets sidelined in the documentation process. Available materials in secondary historical sources are indiscriminately relied on with inadequate formal validation of authenticity.

India has 38 World Heritage Sites, that include 30 cultural properties, 7 natural properties and 1 mixed site. The city of Jaipur was the latest to be inscribed in July 2019. ⁷ The first transnational site in India was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2016 and titled Architectural Work of Le Corbusier (1887–1965), an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement. It comprises of seventeen sites spread over the seven countries of Argentina, Belgium, France, Germany, India, Japan and Switzerland. It is not clear if this inscription had any geopolitical implications.

At this stage, the example of Nalanda Mahavihara, 95 km from Patna in Bihar, which was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2016 may be quoted. Archaeological research at the site and its history is irrelevant here, as the World Heritage Site is inextricably linked to the project of reviving the ancient Buddhist university and the establishment of the international university close to the site. Although the project of reviving ancient Nalanda was conceptualised in the 1990s, it received widespread attention in 2006 when the then Indian president, Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam mooted the idea while speaking in the Bihar Legislative Assembly. The project received support both from the state government and the centre and in 2007 the Nalanda Mentor Group was constituted to guide the university chaired by the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and included among others Singapore’s ex-foreign minister, George Yeo, who was also the former Chancellor of the university.

In January 2007, the Government of India shared the proposal with the 16 member states at the East Asia Summit in the Philippines and again at the fourth Summit held in October 2009, at Hua Hin, Thailand. To reinforce the university’s international character, an intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding came into force at the 8th East Asia Summit in October 2013. Till date, 18 countries have signed the Memorandum of Understanding, including China, South Korea, Mauritius, Australia, New Zealand and Portugal—countries which had little interaction with ancient Nalanda.

In response to a question in the Lok Sabha, the Minister of State, Ministry of External Affairs stated on 23 April 2015:

Nalanda University is a non-profit public–private partnership with significant contribution from the Government of India. Foreign governments and entities have made voluntary contributions. It is not obligatory for foreign students to pay the University in foreign exchange. The foreign exchange likely to be earned in future will depend on such contributions. An amount of ₹2,727.10 crore has been approved by the Government for the establishment of Nalanda University, of which ₹47.28 crore has been released till date. ⁸

Can the ‘authenticity’ attributed to Nalanda World Heritage Site as ‘the most ancient university of the Indian Subcontinent’ be sustained? How does the archaeology of the site compare with its contemporary revival as an international university? ‘Clearly, the gap between historical and future Nalanda is vast and comparisons between the two must be made carefully in order to avoid stretching historical fact in the service of present-day aspirations’ (Pinkney, 2015, p. 122). Pinkney goes on to argue that in its revitalisation, the Nalanda International University negotiates between two frames: one, as a common cultural property of Asia and the second, as a symbol of India’s soft power to be used in furthering India’s national interests. It thus marks a shift in India’s foreign policy from ‘nationalist’ to pan-Asian and from competitive diplomacy to mutual cooperation (Pinkney, 2015, p. 125).

Nalanda was the first of two international institutes of higher education, along with South Asian University (SAU), which was started by the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as instruments of foreign policy. They are both, therefore, ‘coordinated’ by the Ministry of External Affairs rather than the human resources development ministry, which holds the portfolio of higher education (Mitra, 2016). Compared with some other universities founded around the same time, Nalanda’s progress so far has been less than satisfactory on most parameters (Mishra & Kaushal, 2015). There are other factors that have hampered the smooth functioning of the university as detailed in a report in Business Standard dated 4 March 2015 (Puri, 2015). The investments in money made by India do not seem to be justified if both Nalanda University and SAU are to replicate courses taught at other educational institutions in the country, though the current vice chancellor of Nalanda University counts comparative religion which is not taught at any other university in the country (Seneviratne, 2019). The vision statement of Nalanda University by the former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam had emphasised the notion of education for developing enlightened citizens based on: ‘(a) value-based education; (b) religion transforming into spirituality; (c) economic development for societal equality’ (Pinkney, 2015, p. 130).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced 30 scholarships for students from the seven-member states of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) that links India with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan. It has also been announced that a special programme for ‘Bay of Bengal Studies’ will be established (Seneviratne, 2019). However, Nalanda University has yet to provide evidence for collaborative partnerships and research with universities in South East Asia. It needs to be underlined that education and research are two areas in which long-term collaboration is possible. In the final section of this article, I discuss the research agenda that could underwrite India’s proposal for maritime heritage routes across the Indian Ocean (Ray, 2019, pp. 98–108), though in this article the focus will be on the Western Indian Ocean.

Transnational Nominations: The Way Forward

Political boundaries demarcated on geopolitical considerations often split a continuous cultural region, separating places of faith from their followers and traditional cultural landmarks from the communities that used them. The passage of time hardens these man-made partitions, and the memory associated with these once familiar sites is often lost with successive generations. Thus, trans-boundary shared cultural heritage sites and zones need to be nurtured and promoted. Between 1988 and 1994, the concept of ‘routes’ emerged and evolved as an idea of movement and dialogue in UNESCO, when initiatives on the Silk Road expeditions and the Slave Road were launched as the ‘Roads of Dialogue’. The focus on the ‘Silk Road’, launched in 1988, was primarily intended to rediscover the links between East and West, while the ‘Slave Road’ was launched in 1994 as a historical connection between Africa and the Americas. In 1993, Spain added ‘Pilgrim’s Route to Santiago de Compostela’ to the World Heritage List. Of the 1,121 properties inscribed on the World Heritage List to date, thirty-nine are transboundary nominations. ⁹

In addition to the shift to routes, UNESCO has over the years underscored the involvement of the community in heritage protection and preservation, rather than merely focusing on the conservation of static monuments and archaeological sites. In 2003, UNESCO adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage, which shifted the spotlight to knowledge-based traditional practices. As defined in Article 2, the Convention draws attention to the vibrant and dynamic nature of intangible cultural heritage that is transmitted over generations and one that also provides a sense of cultural identity:

This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. ¹⁰

Thirteen intangible cultural heritage elements from India have been inscribed to date, including Vedic and Buddhist chanting, ritual theatre and dance, Kumbh Mela and traditional performance of Ramlila and so on, but a transnational nomination is yet to be conceptualised. The launch of Project ‘Mausam’ by India in 2014 and future partnerships with other neighbouring member countries on this project could further enable this initiative by recording and celebrating this important phase of World History from the African, Asian and Arab world perspective. There is a much-needed change required in the current approaches of UNESCO which can be steered by India through this project.

In this final section of the article, I would like to examine the historical foundations of heritage routes across the Western Indian Ocean through which knowledge transfers took place and which provide appropriate examples of linkages across the seas that prospered in the past. These linkages continue to play a significant role in nourishing the shared intangible cultural heritage of the Western Indian Ocean despite radical shifts and technological transformations in ship-building technology since the nineteenth century.