We all live with the legacy from our past, which is our heritage. This is something that we must pass on to our future generations. Every country can boast about its heritage values which is a record of the life and history of the country. To know about something, we must study about its past and this could take us to a long time back in the history. Present is always in front of us but to find the past, a look at the heritage is important. Hence it is our duty to preserve our heritage values. We cannot guarantee that the heritage will survive and be available for the future generations but we must at least try to preserve it.
With this objective all countries have started preserving and protecting their cultural heritage. Monuments, buildings, landscape, arts and crafts are all our heritage and show the lifestyle of our ancestors. Industrialization poses a great threat in preserving the heritage sites in every country. Climate also plays a big role in destruction. Apart from these, war and unrest in a country are also causes for the destruction.
Growth in population has created an increasing demand for apartments. Joint families have become nuclear families and the younger generation prefer to have independent lives. When the available land is not enough to accommodate this growth, we tend to demolish older buildings and build multi-story apartments and communities. We must find a balance to this at some point. There are many who invest in apartments (more than one of course) purely for the purpose of making extra income, which also is a reason for the increasing number of sky scrapers and community houses everywhere.
In India we have the Indian Archaeological Society (IAS) which was founded in 1968 at Varanasi. This is a non-profit, non-governmental organization of Archaeologists founded by Sri A.K Narain and other Archaeologists. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is a government organization. It is under the Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for the archaeological research, conservation and preservation of historic and cultural monuments in India. ASI was founded by Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1861 who was the first Director General.
Similarly other countries also have their own organizations responsible for preserving the cultural heritage. The National Trust was founded in 1895 in the United Kingdom. The trust is taking care of the historic houses, gardens, ancient monuments etc.
ICOMOS is another non-governmental International Organization which is dedicated to conserving world’s monuments and sites.
To achieve good results, a lot of planning and development is necessary with enough funds to support and run the operations. Members and Volunteers are needed and it is our responsibility to help them by all means. An impartial political vision is also necessary to achieve the goals which often fails to compliment.
Let us preserve not destroy our heritage. Like monuments, gardens, parks, buildings we need to preserve our Art and Craft forms and make them available for our future generations. We must also inculcate core values in life from a child level to build a better world.
You can have references at the below links to know more about the preservation and protection of world heritage sites.
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)
ICOMOS
See also: Keezhthali Sree Mahadeva Temple
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