"Reminiscence of the past" by Sabina Shrestha

Sabina Shrestha is a journalist based in Kathmandu. She writes for Setopati Media.

If you stroll through Patan during Gunlā, you’ll notice a square metal box in front of the golden entrance door of the Patan Museum. Upon closer inspection, you’ll see a half-submerged stone statue of Buddha inside the box.

'Gunlā,' the tenth month of the Newari lunar calendar, is regarded as a sacred and auspicious period for Newar Buddhists. During this time, they recite holy scriptures and visit various Buddhist shrines, accompanied by devotional music. Due to the rainy season, there is an increased risk of natural disasters like landslides and floods. Consequently, there is a higher incidence of illness and fatalities. To counteract this and protect themselves from such calamities, people spend the month visiting shrines and playing devotional music.

The half-submerged Buddha statue in front of the Patan Museum is displayed during the Gunlā period. According to its caretaker, Babukaji Kapali (60), the statue represents Akshayobhya, one of the five Wisdom Buddhas. He explained that the statue is positioned in front of the golden entrance as a symbol of the Buddhist monastery that existed before the Malla kings constructed their palace and relocated the Buddhist community to another part of Patan.

Symbols are not just words and language. They can be widely reflected in various aspects of lives of society including visual art, architecture, clothing, rituals and many more (Zhnag, 2024). Some symbols are non-verbal expression which is a medium to tell that they belong to that community. This specific Buddha which is placed for a month is also such symbol which reminisces the past and claims for their lost land.

During our Heritage as Placemaking (HaP) International Spring School, we had the opportunity to deepen our understanding of various forms of heritage, including signs and symbols, rituals and practices, sounds and performances, and both tangible and intangible elements.

The author’s Spring School notebook and the mandala created with guidance from Yagyaman Pati Bajracharya. Image courtesy of the author.

On the third day of the spring school, we visited Maitri Bodhisattwo Mahavihar, also known as Jama Baha, located at Jamal, Kathmandu. There, Charya Master and key presenter Yagyaman Pati Bajracharya guided us in creating a geometric design known as mandala in front of where we were seated. With the help of yellow colored auspicious powder, we made a circle in the middle and surrounding that we made four more circles leaving space for rest of the four. As we completed, it looked like a flower with eight petals but here each petal had their meaning.

Bajracharya explained, "The central circle represents the eye. The four other circle represents the ear, nose, mouth and sense of touch. The remaining four is for the components of the earth system: solid, liquid, heat and gas."

Before this session, I had never observed things with such detailed meaning. Now, I see everything as having both physical and spiritual significance. For the Newar community, symbols hold immense significance in daily life. There is a fascinating interplay between Buddhism and Hinduism within this community, and this transition is preserved as a symbol that embodies the core values and essence of their intangible cultural heritage. For instance, the ‘Pikha Lakhu’, a round stone plate found on the doorstep of many Newar homes, is revered as a symbol of Kumar, the son of gods Shiva and Parvati. This stone is worshiped daily and is an integral part of their daily rituals.

When we look at the bigger picture, it's clear that symbols are everywhere—whether it's a nation's flag, community emblems or specific objects and figures that represent an identity. Everything holds a symbolic significance. Symbols are integral to placemaking, as they define a space and weave together a rich tapestry of history, customs, art, beliefs, and ways of life.

Symbols connects our conscious and subconscious minds. Religion and culture around the world have been using different symbols for ages which can cause us to think and behave in certain ways (Thaker, 2022). For the Hindu community, applying an auspicious powder called abir to a stone and beginning worship can transform an ordinary stone into a divine entity. Sometimes, symbols are deeply personal and may be challenging to fully understand, as their significance can be rooted in individual or cultural feelings.

Now, let's revisit the stone statue of Buddha placed in front of Patan museum during the Gunlā. As mentioned earlier, it serves as a reminder of the lost Buddhist monastery of the past. But is there historical evidence to support this practice?

A few months ago, I wrote an article for Setopati online media about the lost sites of Patan, one of which was this Buddhist monastery. I reviewed various written articles, references, and evidence to piece together the information. One significant evidence is a 1,400-year-old stone inscription discovered two years ago during sewer excavation in front of the Bhimsen Temple of Patan. According to experts, this inscription also points to the existence of the lost monastery of Patan, though it does not specify its exact location. However, its existence has been passed down orally through generations.

This close introspection has led me to understand that symbols hold profound significance. They are not merely added to enhance certain objects but are preserved as artifacts that encapsulate and communicate history and culture.

These days, as I stroll through cities or small alleys and come across something intriguing, I find myself automatically wondering, "Does it hold any meaning?"

Photo captions (from left): Mithileshwar Jhijhiya, whose performance formed a key part of the Spring School; Dr. Monica Mottin, one of the Spring School organizers, with the author and other participants; the author’s sketch of the mandala. Photos courtesy of Sabina Shrestha.

References:

Yue Zhang, Thawascha Dechsubha (2024). The Display of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Semiotics Perspective: Migration letters

Thaker, Mrinalini. (2022). Symbols – The Historical Artifacts of Identity. International Peer Reviewed E Journal of English Language & Literature Studies - ISSN: 2583-5963. 4. 33-39. 10.58213/ell.v4i1.58.

"Trees and Heritages" by Lisa Spinelli

Lisa Spinelli is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Lisbon ISCTE and Nova Universities, working for the research centers CRIA and CCCM, and winner of a scholarship for academic research from FCT foundation. She is currently conducting research concerning popular music in everyday life, education and micropolitics in Nepal.

Lyrics from the song by Adriano Celetano. Screenshot from YouTube.

My reflections concerning the Spring School "Heritage as Place-Making," 2024, sparkled from a comment made by Prof. Abhi Subedi. During his speech, he recalled a sentence he heard from some passersby during the re-enactment of a traditional performance in an ancient neighborhood of the city of Kathmandu. "It's as if I could hear again the wind rustling through the leaves of the tree that once stood here," one of them had said. This image made me think of a popular Italian tune from the '60, by singer songwriter Adriano Celetano. The refrain goes: "There where once there were green fields, now lies a city… and that little house in the green, today, where will it be?" ("Il ragazzo della via Gluck," 1966, my translation.) Both images talk of treasured memories of "green" spots that are long lost due to rapid urbanization, and of the heartfelt need of keeping alive places and social habits that are dear to us, in spite of historical processes that seem to take them out of our hands. But how to revert the course of such undesirable events, or else —in the terms proposed by the Spring School— how to keep our heritage alive?

While the answer Prof. Subedi vouched for was closer to the concept of revitalization of the "heritage" itself, the following considerations verge towards the opposite end of what I see as a continuum that from heritage flows into "place-making."

First and foremost, I briefly summarize the main sources from HaP Spring School that influenced my thinking on this relevant topic. Dr. Monica Mottin, Dr. Monalisa Maharjan and Dr. Binita Magaiya helped the participants witness significant events —from the continuing practices of ancient rituals in ancient spaces, as in the case of Charya, Jhijhiya and Harisiddhi dances, to the modern interpretations of local folk that we witnessed at the festival Echoes of the Valley. We were therefore presented with a variety of examples of what a living heritage might be like: a cluster of more or less traditional practices, vividly kept alive by groups of concerned people. In order to do so, these reappropriate or reinterpret often deeply transformed spaces within contemporary urban landscapes, in negotiation with local authorities and a broader spectrum of socioeconomic forces. Prof. Tulasi Diwasa raised a fundamental issue: whose heritage do we tend to see more prominently in our daily lives and studies, and, equally importantly, to whom does the heritage actually belong? As eloquently pointed out by authors as Stuart Hall, these issues are connected to the long lasting effects of all sort of colonizations, where the heritage of the less privileged is often incorporated and reinterpreted, independently from their will, along the lines of the history of the hegemonic social actors ("Whose Heritage," 2007). Here, the perspective proposed by Prof. Padma Sunder Joshi, according to whom heritages should be kept alive by the communities they belong to, fits well. If history and power conflicts take the decisional power away from the communities with a weaker voice on the public arena, the key to keeping alive cherished traditions in an equitable way, might consist in reinvigorating such human groups by granting them more rights and political agency over the spaces they inhabit.

While my opinion on this topic doesn't differ substantially from this view, I believe more considerate reflections on what is meant by living heritage, and what is actually important in it, are due. To come back to Prof. Subedi's anecdote, I wonder what the real issue at stake should be: being able to remember the wind rustling though the leaves thanks to the re-enactment of a heritage, or to be able to plant a new tree?

Youths stage protest outside Kathmandu Metropolitan City. Photo courtesy: Desh Sanchar.

I delve in a short excursus, before coming back to this issue. While the question that the Spring School organizers suggested us to answer is "what keeps the heritage alive," I find it easier to continue my reflection by first considering what is it that "kills" it.

In brief: political, economic, and cultural hegemonies, or else, all the forces that exclude certain voices from the public arena. Killing someone's heritage equate quite precisely with denying their agency in affirming their past, and in determining their life patterns, as often happens when political powers limit the freedom of choice of certain segments of the population.

Tibetan folk dance. Photo courtesy: Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. 

A clear example might be the treatment of Tibetans by both Chinese and Nepali authorities. They are denied citizenship in exile, and within Chinese borders, freedom of expression or of religious affiliation. Economic forces equally play a dominant role, as one can notice in the huge exclusionary urban transformations due to the workings of capitalistic markets and processes of gentrification. A last and less obvious example that I wish to mention here are the effects of some forms of heritagization of "lived" cultural phenomena. Such processes often leads to stagnation of the heritage in discussion, which leads to a formalization of a practice that once was more variable and flexible. This often brings about the exclusion of the practitioners whose style is not ‘heterodox’ depriving them of the benefits that the heritagization was meant to bring about to the whole community in the first place. Ethnic and other forms of tourism might contribute to the transformation of a heartfelt practice to a profitable, fix phenomenon, therefore taking ‘life’ out of it. It is therefore not surprising that anti-heritagization movements are arising worldwide (Patricia Rangel, "Patrimônio cultural em disputa," 2017). An example is Fado music, a style of folk music practiced in Portugal, that besides being subjected to the mentioned disadvantages after turning Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2011, has the infamous history of having been appropriated by the aristocratic Salazar's Regime from the lower social strata and made a symbol of the Portuguese nation despite the bitterness of many of its practitioners (Rui Vieira Nery, "Para uma História do Fado," 2004).

What "keeps heritage alive," then, are all the forms of policy and social action that contrast such forces, by limiting the obliterating power of hegemony and including weaker voices in the public arena. Good examples could be policies that give people the power of deciding concerning their space and communities —as in collaborative urban planning or by granting financial aids towards communal initiatives—, or that give people the power of deciding concerning their time —for instance, by limiting economic exploitation and inequalities. Even policies that protect the material heritage of their or other communities worldwide, by limiting illegal trades or promoting repatriation policies in case of theft, are going a long way in terms of keeping "heritages" alive (Smith, E, "The ongoing quest to return Nepal's looted cultural heritage," 2022).

But the core of the issue hare at stake is not limited to a visualization of the practical meanings and instruments necessary for "keeping heritage alive." It also fundamentally consists in understanding what do we refer to when we mention heritage, and making it explicit what heritage in particular should we strive to protect and why.

Let me return to the meaning of living heritage itself. Firstly, perhaps a bit obviously, it is important to notice that in cases as the ones that we have been considering in HaP Spring School and that are aimed at in heritage politics in general, we are generally speaking of endangered cultural forms or spaces. The heritages of a nation are already well protected into its political system and social structures. The phrase "keeping heritage alive," likely refers to protecting and giving engendered heritage (back) to whom it belongs to.

Nepal’s LGBT community takes part in a gay pride parade in Kathmandu on August 8, 2017. Photo Courtesy: AFP via Hindustan Times

Secondly, the word "heritage" and policies concerning it, make an indirect claim to the positive value and to the ownership of objects, places and tradition on the basis of a supposed ancestral link that connects specific people to them. However, there are a few —again, perhaps obvious— contradictory aspects within this conceptualization of heritage. It is not difficult to recall aspects of such traditions that, to a contemporary (perhaps Westernized) eye, do not seem legitimate at all. We could think, for a concrete example taken from Prof. Joshi's conference, to the role of women in Newar collective festivals: they were not allowed to be on the streets, but only watch from windows, confined into domestic spaces. Moreover, how to frame the importance of new collective rituals and habits in a framework that gives importance to heritage, as an ancient form of culture? Are phenomena as the queer Pride Parade, that is taking place in Kathmandu only since a few years, less important, less worthy of protection from the polity? Finally, how to frame the issue of belonging, of a practice, or to a place when, worldwide, economic globalization has such a capillary impact and when migration (incoming and outgoing) has become an ingrained phenomena shaping the population of both rural and urban centers?

When we talk about "living" heritage, we talk about vibrant, heartfelt practices and social spaces. But for this notion to be incorporable into contemporary life experiences, change (historical, social, cultural) must be included into the mix. What is "living," indeed, is what is felt as needed and desirable in the lives of people that live today. The term "heritage" can likely be stretched to reach such experiences as well, but some carefulness is due while using it, since the term itself could be misleading, since it carries a heavy (and in many cases undesirable) legacy (Hall, 2007).

Within "living" practices or spaces, the past stretches flexibly into the future, sometimes flowing into it, sometimes being subjected to drastic alterations, and what really matters is what people wish to happen within their lives and in the spaces they inhabit. In other words, the importance of the whole issue surrounding heritage, in my opinion, consists in protecting and (re-)creating what is valuable for people living today —whether it comes form a more or less easily claimable tradition or from a new cultural movement. In this sense, what I see as deeply precious in heritage is that, in today politics, it might function as a key to unlock precious material and immaterial resources. These might enable less advantaged groups of people to live the life that they desire and grant them protection against hegemonic cultural and economic forces, which might otherwise too easily incorporate or erase their voices. In this view, "heritage" might be seen as a form of political activism, that has as a general goal "living," or granting groups of people with a weaker public voice the right to live in a closer way to their wishes. To bring back the term "place-making," in my view, heritage politics is most importantly one of the many routes that might help people to gain some form of political agency, especially over the spaces where they live.

Photo courtesy of the author.

Heritage politics fundamentally works towards the diversification of lifestyles possibilities within cultural hegemonies, the de-centralization of powers from the hands of dominant social actors, and a generally easier access to political agency for a wider population. From this point of view, this kind of political action is likely to bring about desirable results. However, many issues remain open. Delineating criteria for belonging to a heritage-based community, especially if place-based, and accounting for the variety of voices that might claim, refuse or be denied this right, is not an easy task. As mentioned above, there are many cases in which the heritagization of a cultural phenomenon lead to further discriminations, to the illegitimate appropriation of it by hegemonic actors, and to the straight away devitalization of it. As is often true, it could be agreed that the value of the creation of a form of heritage depends on how it is implemented according to the case.

To conclude with Prof. Subedi's and Celentano's cherished green "spots", in the "best possible world", heritage as a form of place-making might equate to the possibility of planting a new tree, while engaging in our chosen lifestyles in its shade. In the grey area between this rare luck and the worst case scenario, we might be able to remember the tree while still being able to perform some (ancient or contemporary) forms of expression where it stood. Or else, witnessing trees, together with little houses in the green, disappearing without being able to oppose resistance, can indeed be a sad experience.

I owe some heartfelt thanks to the organizing team of the HaP Spring School for a great experience on the field and for having generated a space of dialogue for the participants that inspired many interesting ideas.

"How to get rid of (our) heritage? How to identify the parts of heritage that we really want to pass on? How to create a future, we want to live in?" by Töff Beine

Töff Beine (they/them) graduated with their thesis on "Colonial Legacies in anthropological collections in Germany" in MA Empowerment Studies from University of applied science Düsseldorf in 2022. Currently they teach German language at the Goethe Zentrum, Kathmandu.

As we identified in various stages during our “Heritage as Place-Making” Spring School in Jyapu Samaj (Patan), the term heritage is not easy to grasp. Attempts to define often perceive heritage as something that materializes in the world we can touch or experience; something that is frequently institutionalized; something that should be preserved for the future; something that is passed on to our generation by the past and by our ancestors. Through this lens, heritage appears as something precious and endangered. That might be true as well in some cases.

Mural in Kaalo.101 by Sazeed Shakya, 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.

With this in mind, I really appreciate and want to highlight the work of the artist Sazeed Shakya, who creates paintings and murals to raise awareness on the spiritual, cultural but also infrastructural meaning of Hiti, ancient water sprouts, found everywhere around Newar towns of Kathmandu Valley. The importance and preciousness of Hiti as heritage, as culture that is passed on, was part of our Spring School as well, for example in the public talk of P. S. Joshi and our city tour around Basantapur by Monalisa Maharjan.

 Heritage lives through people. It gives meaning to our lives as it connects us to the past, supports us navigating through the present and helps us imagining a future. If we understand heritage in this very large and broad sense, we are already born with our own individual and collectively heritage. On one side, heritage surrounds us, materialized in forms of architecture, literature, arts, history, social structures and more. On another level, a very personal one, heritage is transmitted through our families and communities, basically inscribed in our bodies. There is vast research on generational trauma which continues to be passed on from generation to generation, often unconsciously and unintended. I propose to look at multigenerational trauma as some kind of heritage, as it is basically an embodied experience that is passed on.

Heritage therefore becomes something that organically continues and connects people, as we are not isolated from our past or our surrounding. In general, people are relational. In present times heritage discourse, there is often a perspective of lack and scarcity and an objective to seek to include more and more histories, traditions, cultural practices and identities. Through raising awareness around the heritage of diverse communities, heritage discourse tries to challenge social stratification along structures of power and oppression. I think there is a great need in diversifying mainstream heritage and pointing out the conditions of power and oppression under which heritage is (re)produced and maintained.

In addition to this, I want to emphasize on heritages’ potential of resistance. Even if mainstream heritage safeguarding ignores and makes specific heritages, archives, histories and cultural practices invisible, sabotages them or tries to erase them. To remember is an act of revolt and sometimes it is basically surviving. Queer and trans communities do have preserved knowledge and cultural practices which have been transmitted over centuries. There is queer and trans history. Because of the dominant narrative (and especially how funding works within the heritage and cultural sector), a very common description nowadays fosters the image of a need to create queer and trans histories (which often means putting it into a manageable, written or recorded manner, so it can be archived, heritage-ized, maybe safeguarded). This notion is arrogant and ignorant, as it does not recognize heritages and archives that do not follow the dominant parameters. A concrete example of queer and trans heritage is the circulation of knowledge, experiences and methods around binding, packing, gender transforming medication or surgeries.

Mural in Pulchowk by Machaa, 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The need and wish of safeguarding and preserving heritage implies the notion of heritage to be positive, naturally aspired and precious. Something to keep dear and treasured. Continuing the line of thought, that heritage is already within and around us and connecting it to the aspect that we are still living in a world where structures of power and oppression divide us: even if the local and regional features of power structures differ, patriarchy, hetero-/cis-normativity, racism, antisemitism, adultism, ageism, ableism, fascism, capitalism, for example are passed on to each and every one of us through heritage.

Against this assumption, I want to turn the question around: Instead of asking “What keeps heritage alive?” let us ask: “How do we get rid of certain heritages?” How can we heal – personally and collectively - from violent heritage? As a white German with a nazi- and colonial background in my personal family biography as well as in the history of the society that surrounded me, heritage always tasted bitter (not even bittersweet) and did never create any urge to be preserved or carried on for me personally. Rather I always tried to distance myself very rigidly. This distance creates a disturbing dissonance, because I cannot run away from what has been transmitted to me through values, histories, folklore, movies, monuments, behavioral patterns and cultural practices.

Tsepo Bollwinkel, a Black non-binary historian, once highlighted that we cannot overcome white supremacy by imagining ourselves as the better anti-racist and not investigating where we come from. Approaching the world with an assumption, that people are generally okay and that we have to understand the conditions under which our ancestors operated, can actually enable us in the present to heal wounds that not only haunt the affected people but the oppressors and perpetrator as well. Processing violent heritage, heritage of colonialism, war, rape, looting, eviction, for example might open up a window of possibilities: where we actually might be able to break the circle of (often unconsciously and unintentionally) passing on violent heritage to the future.

I want to quote one of my dear fellows from the HaP Spring School, Shaheera. In her thought-provoking reflection at the end of our Seminar, she called upon developing a perception of oneself as an active heritage transmitter or maker. I think that is very powerful. Is there space for creative encounters with heritage, old traditions and practices? Can we make space for actual people with their very unique identities who do not fit into linear and exclusive narrated heritage scripts?

Entrance courtyard Kaalo.101. Photo courtesy of the author.

These questions might seem complex and abstract. But there are examples who operate already in such a way. For the time of our Spring School and even beyond, I was able to live in one art house project called Kaalo.101 which I want to mention here and share some Fotos. Kaalo.101 exists since 2016 as a community, arts and house project. It aims to create a braver space, a space of possibility where artists, activists and cultural managers investigate, work, develop and produce precisely at the intersections between traditions, cultural heritage, counter culture, futurism, politics and critique of power. Approaches like this refuse to “nation-alize and tradition-alize” conception of culture and heritage, as Stuart Hall identifies one of the great dangers inherent to heritage discourses. Apart from radical political intentions, Kaalo.101 creates a space of identification, conversations, conflict, friction, disruptions, agency, community, history, heritage and also future.



References

Bollwinkel, Tsepo (2015): Ancestral Lineage Healing. https://tsepo-bollwinkel-empowerment.de/

Hall, Stuart (2007): Whose Heritage? Un-settling “The Heritage”, Re-imagining the post-Nation.

Kaalo.101 (2024): About us. https://kaalo101.org/

"Heritage as Placemaking Spring School" by László Stachó

László Stachó is an ethnomusicologist, psychologist and musician.

Spring School participants, after Holi celebration. Photo courtesy of the author. 

Even as a somewhat unusual child, I was passionately committed to preserving the heritage of a rural culture on the brink of disappearance. At the age of 13, I won a competition organised by a major municipal museum in my native Hungary, presenting the findings of my ethnographic field trips in the region where my grandparents lived. From that time on, I began building a significant collection of folklore documents, photographs, and artifacts dating back 100 to 200 years. Among these, my collection includes photographs I took as a child in the early 1990s, capturing peasant architecture in Northern Hungary, much of which has since been completely demolished. My goal has always been to document the fascinating remnants of a premodern culture, one that had remained largely unchanged since the Middle Ages but has now vanished in the West. Lastly, in 2015, I purchased the ruined traditional peasant house of my great-grandparents in a northern Hungarian village with the goal of fully reconstructing it and opening there the area’s first house museum. For this project, I have brought together architecture professionals and friends to relearn and exclusively use historic technologies in building with clay, hay, horse and cow manure.

Spring school participants outside Jyapu Academy. Photo courtesy of the author.

With this motivation and interest, I travelled to Kathmandu to attend the Heritage as Placemaking Spring School. As a classical music professional, I was thrilled not only to visit stunning historical sites and observe religious rituals, but also to experience authentic folk music and dance performances at the Echoes in the Valley Festival. The Spring School’s rich, engaging, and stimulating program made my first visit to South Asia one of the most captivating journeys of my life. I often share stories with friends and colleagues about our time in Kathmandu, emphasizing our interactions with researchers and policymakers – both the Nepalese ethnographers and experts, as well as the researchers who accompanied us. I also highlight the wonderful fellows – with whom we had so much fun not only during our sessions in Jyapu Samaj but also while recording sounds of Patan from the streets, not to mention all the other common programmes – our participation in the Charya programme and the enchanting Echoes in the Valley festival, the meeting with the Charya masters and the Jhijhiya dancers, as well as our visit to Harisiddhi, where we not only witnessed the fascinating Mask Dance but also engaged with the performers – and the most memorable and valuable aspect of this all was that we felt like insiders wherever we went. Finally, my lifelong passion for heritage protection was greatly enriched by our thought-provoking discussions during project presentations: I feel more attuned to and integrated into contemporary trends in ethnographic research. But perhaps most cherished of all are the lasting friendships I forged during this unforgettable journey.


"What makes heritage alive?" by Sudatta Ghosh

Sudatta Ghosh is a PhD scholar at South Asian University, New Delhi.

A wall art of ‘Rajamati’ in Itum Baha. Photo courtesy of the author.

The six days spent in Kathmandu Valley, participating in the Heritage as Placemaking spring school, was an overwhelming experience for me. It made me open my eyes to the beauty, vibrancy, and complications of a culture similar and yet so different from my own as a Bengali from India. On the very first day, Monica Mottin had pointed out that, as the spring school progresses and we visit different places, listen to various people, and interact with communities native to Nepal, we must constantly ponder over the question, “What makes heritage alive?” Several further questions emerge from this provocation: whose heritage are we talking about (borrowing from Stuart Hall’s ‘Whose Heritage?’ published in 1999), is heritage dead, who has the power to make it alive or revive it, how much of heritage is intertwined with politics specific to a nation and its culture, and so on and so forth. While answering all of these would require a thesis in itself, I decided to think about heritage and placemaking from a single point of view for the purpose of this write-up. The first thing that really struck me when I reached Patan, where we stayed in a quaint little hotel and where most of our sessions took place at the Jyapu Samaj, was the architecture. The beautiful windows, narrow alleys, temples at every corner and intersection, interspersed with cafés, local wine shops, grocery stores, as well as meat shops. But as the days passed, I realised how none of these spaces mean anything without the people moving in and out of them. It means nothing without knowing about the people who once occupied these spaces, the ones that occupy them now as well as the future generation who will most certainly attach new meanings to the space. Past, present and future are beautifully interspersed with one another. People, together with a space, lead to the creation or making of a place.  What is merely space becomes place when things like architecture, people, religion, rituals, language, food, dress, gestures, emotions, and memory; all combine together.

Evening at Kathmandu Valley. Photo courtesy of the author.

While I feel all these things come together to make heritage alive, I would talk about one particular aspect, which is resistance. By resistance, I do not only mean the very overt kind that we see in political rallies on the streets, but also the everyday resistance that people carry out through their mundane activities. Resistance is performed through the everyday. It's when Abhi Subedi sir said that people make places usable through performances and rituals. Resistance is when people are able to take back the heritage they own from the Chauni Museum when they need it. Resistance is when people come together as a community to manage the space. such as the sithi nakha, which is the community cleaning of water bodies. Resistance is the charya tradition where people devote themselves to a certain way of life that preaches peace, friendship and compassion in times when countries are waging wars and so openly inflicting violence upon people. Resistance is also when Manju Ale, Biniti didi, and other women partake in Chharya that seemed to be a male-dominated space. Resistance is also when the Jhijhiya dancers through their performance and rituals engage in placemaking within the larger socio-political context of Nepal. At the Harisiddhi temple performance, we learnt how there are so many versions of the Ramayana and people are keeping it alive through performance. This is also resistance against the one mainstream narrative of the epics that we usually study in our schools. The thematic of resistance, for me, binds countries together where socially excluded or marginalised groups, through their embodied acts and performances, make a space meaningful and preserve heritage in different forms. Its emotions, love and compassion that are felt by people which makes heritage living. All of these drive people to resist and show resilience against exclusionary practices and claim spaces and one’s priced heritage as one’s own. Back in West Bengal in India, I work with a group of women known as Nachnis who continuously resist the appropriation of performance that is carried out by the State and other sections of society. They do this through their gestures and movements during the dance performance but they also do it through their everyday lives. Resistance and resilience of people is what makes heritage alive.  

A man looks at vibrant masks in a shop. Photo courtesy of the author.

Lighting diyas at the Kathmandu Durbar Square. Photo courtesy of the author.

I wish to conclude this brief write up by stating that I have taken back important and practical learnings about the different ways in which one can understand heritage and placemaking. The spring school provided several new experiences, one such being the hands-on training provided by Rajan Shreshtha on audio recording and podcast methodologies. Inspired by his training, the next day I observed Prabita, a fellow participant in the spring school, recording sounds of various objects and humans as we went about our itinerary. I realised what a brilliant project Prabita was undertaking by arguing that heritage is multisensorial. While the visual has always been put on a pedestal, what makes heritage alive is also the soundscapes, tactile sensations experienced, smells, and so on. The sheer brilliance of each and every participant I spent the week with will stay with me and it has been an inspiration for my own work to a great extent.

"What Keeps Heritage Alive?" by Tara Brahme

Tara Brahme is an MA Student at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Universität Heidelberg

It was the day before the annual festival of Holi, and children across the neighbourhoods of the Kathmandu Valley were armed from their terraces with water balloons, in anticipation. We had just attended the Jhijhiya dancers’ performance at the Echoes In The Valley festival and were making our way down the narrow lanes of Kathmandu to speak with them in more detail about their performance and the dance tradition that they practice while trying to dodge every noticeable water balloon-armed terrace. At the discussion venue, we sat in a large circle explaining and trying to understand the worlds and traditions of performance that we all came from and teasing out the similarities in South Asian performance traditions. What stared as a discussion, evolved organically into a sharing where we ended by singing songs to each other from the many different places we came from.

A street in Patan. Image courtesy of Tara Brahme.

I frame these final reflections on the question “what keeps heritage alive?” and the 2024 Spring School around this performance and the interactions with the artists and hope that this choice becomes clearer through the questions that I raise.

When I was thinking about the question, and project while applying to the spring school, the first question that struck me was even more basic than this one, and it was: “can heritage be alive?” And, “what does it mean to phrase something in this manner?”

More often than not, the tendency is to understand heritage as something static and frozen in time rather than dynamic. We see this in how “heritage” is explained as well. When we look at words like “legacy” and “inheritance” as words related to heritage, in whatever form they may take there is an underlying sense of something being passed down in its “authentic” form and the emphasis is often on preserving continuities with the past as an unbroken thread. Then when I think of heritage as living, I find that we must decentre the emphasis on the past and think about heritage as something dynamic and one that is constantly evolving. This presents a contradiction.

The second problem or challenge with a category like heritage and one that deeply concerns me, especially given the current political moment that a neighbouring country like India is in, is related to power, exclusions and who can make claims to heritage within a national or regional community. And consequently, who gets left out of the narrative when certain sites, objects, monuments, festivals and similar aspects of cultural and public life are assigned the role of representing the heritage of national and/or regional communities.

It is in relation to these two aspects – one of contradictions and the other related to power and representation – that I would like to bring in Jhijhiya as an example. Through the interactions we had with the artists two things stood out as broadly relating to my questions, concerns and thoughts.

Learning from the Jhijhiya dancers. Photo courtesy of Monica Mottin.

The first and perhaps the most obvious challenge to heritage as static and singular practice were the variations that emerged during our discussion with the artists, the translator and Dr Mottin when each of them had a slightly different answer to some of the questions we asked them based on their own practice in different locations and Dr Mottin’s research interviews with other Jhijhiya groups as well.

The second emerged when the dance form was placed in the social context of a caste society. And I think it is here that the potential of this form to illustrate what we have been contending with in this workshop lies. From my understanding of the discussion, what came up was that in some instances (not with this group) there is a difference between which caste groups perform in which settings. According to the translator, often it is the oppressed caste communities who perform in the ritual context while in popular context people from diverse caste background may be part of the performance. Thus, the dance form in these two spaces contrasts caste-based practice/ labour in the ritual context versus an access to wider publics which allows groups to perform in the popular context outside the ritual sphere.

What is interesting about this then is that Jhijhiya dance then challenges this vis-à-vis who can and does perform in which setting. The fact that oppressed caste women dance it in the ritual context and women from other castes dance it in the popular context complicates questions of who the dance “belongs” to especially if we were to look at the ritual context as a more “legitimate” sphere endowed with greater value, power and meaning than the popular context. Conversely, one could also argue that it is the performance in the popular cultural presentation context that keeps the form alive by introducing it to audiences who may not be able to access the ritual performance. And then in this instance the work is being done by those who have access to perform in these contexts who then can also make claims to the form. Therefore, I’m inclined to argue that it is perhaps tensions and contestations like these that keeps heritage alive because aspects of it are always being challenged and changed as different people and communities encounter it over generations.

It is also important at this point to go back to the spontaneous sharing session we had at the end of the discussion with the Jhijhiya dancers because of how central the participatory aspect is to keeping heritage alive. In conclusion then, this set of reflections has tried to show how central participation in the form of sharing is to keeping heritage alive and contesting the static quality that the label of “authenticity” ascribes to it and highlighting the inevitable dynamism of cultural heritage as performance.

"Crossroads to change" by Tanya Jones

Tanya Jones is a Doctor of Philosophy Candidate at Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University

On the first day, the building was there. By the last day of my stay in Patan, I realised it was gone.

The temple with materials from a demolished building sitting in front of it. Kathmandu, near Jyapu Academy. Photo courtesy of Tanya Jones.

Along the roads to Jyapu Academy stands a Bhairab temple, its composure unchanging except for the poster notices stuck to its sides, and the LED that lights up the trim of its roofs. Where my attention was drawn, however, was toward the daily-changing surrounds of the temple – a crossroads of life moving on; buildings, cars, and construction material finding a play to stay, and then to go, revolving as a mandala around both the holiness and the regularity of the architecture. As a group, we discussed the flow of heritage in its changes and its continuities across livelihoods in Nepal, finding our ways to where water, flora, and fauna once gave life, too, and to where the tangible and intangible meet to enliven that which is maintained and developed across time.  On my own, I explored the ideas that cause a place to change or to remain the same – what are the conditions for something to stay, or to go?

MacDonald (2018) writes that “[h]eritage… is imagined and produced as enduring unchanged over time” (p. 3), in discussion of terminology surrounding heritage preservation and that which is “allowed” (p. 3) to change. I further draw upon Chitrakar (2020) in their exploration of Kathmandu Valley public spaces as an “integral part of urban life… [and] in providing a common ground for human contact and social interactions” (p. 25). In the understanding that the temples, stupa, and everyday parts of living like water and commerce make up these social interactions, I find myself wondering who and what in Kathmandu Valley determine which social interactions stay, and which go, and where and why such vital elements to public life might stay or go.

The temple standing untouched, now with the ruins of the building removed. Photo courtesy of Tanya Jones.

To begin along the journey to an answer, of some sort, to these ponderings, I think back to the first few days of my stay in Patan. We were told of restoration – both of place and of self and behaviour – where the future creates the past, as selected and curated from repertoire of the past, and that nothing can truly be done for the first time. All relies upon an orientation to the past, built upon by a continuity of acceptance or rejection as each performs their own identities. Similarly, we asked ourselves what heritage might mean for different stakeholders – who curates the past for the future’s care?

In the Kathmandu Valley we may think of the town planners, from the Malla Period, the Nepalese caste system, and the communities that come together to build and carry chariots in times for festivals, or, among the Newar people, we may think of the guthi systems dedicated to religious, funerary, or locality-based traditions, as examples (see Toffin, 2005). I also point to the recent post, Where is gender in heritage research?, (curated by Pooja Kalita, 2024, April 3), where women’s invisibility is recognised in the carriage of tangible and intangible heritage in research from past to present. Who is it, then, who tells what is to be and do, and what isn’t? In some cases, one might say that they who began a heritage, by agreement or by rejection of other values, are the hinges upon which change does or does not occur. In others, we look to other ways of doing and being in this world, and take and learn where we can.

LED lights line the roofline of the temple. Photo courtesy of Tanya Jones.

In the case of the Bhairab temple in central Patan, was it a man, or a guthi member, an employee, or a landlord who caused a building nearby to be torn down? As a foreigner to the Kathmandu Valley, I could not ask, and may never even know these answers. Despite this, I wonder, especially, who arranged the LED lights on the temple, or who caused the temple to be untouched and unharmed, and beautiful, in what appeared to be the re-construction of that nearby building? Is it the temple, or the people living around it who carry the heritage of this little crossroads in Nepal?

I, of course, cannot argue for one or for the other – nor can I say that the people and place have equal value in all cases in the Kathmandu Valley. That said, someone, somewhere along the lines of reasoning in changing this little public square, has accommodated the sacred even as they sought to build what may be accommodation for people. Stray dogs sheltered in the shade of the rest house from where I took my photos, and flowers were decorated onto even the tiniest of mandalas in the streets bordering this Bhairab temple. Life flows in and around this public space, maintained through the changing everyday and urban lives of the people in and around it. Vehicles and buildings, and people and animals all come to stay at some point, and all must go, too, swayed by the harmony and discordance in community and the city that holds them.

References:

Chitrakar, Rajjan. 2020. Morphology of Traditional Towns and the Organization of Neighborhood Public Spaces in the Kathmandu Valley. In Revisiting Kathmandu Valley’s Public Realm: Some Insights into Understanding and Managing its Public Spaces. Nova Science Publishers (pp.1-28).

Kalita, Pooja. 2024, April 3. Where is Gender in Heritage Research. Heritage as Placemaking. Accessed 20 April, 2024, from https://heritageasplacemaking.com/blog/where-is-gender-in-heritage-research  

MacDonald, Sharon. 2018. Heritage. The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (pp. 1-12).

Toffin, Gérard Tofin. 2005. From Kin to Caste: The Role of Guthis in Newar Society and Culture. Lalitpur, Nepal: Social Science Baha.