Speaker: Himanshu Prabha Ray, Chairperson, National Monuments Authority

Chair: Shri Pravin Srivastava, Member-Secretary, NMA

The group of monuments at Pattadakal on the banks of the Malaprabha river in north Karnataka, were inscribed as a World heritage Site in 1987 on the grounds of it being "˜the high point of an eclectic art which, in the 7th and 8th centuries under the Chalukya dynasty, achieved a harmonious blend of architectural forms from northern and southern India'. 

UNESCO's World Heritage Convention, to which India is a signatory, makes a distinction between cultural heritage and natural heritage. This presentation interrogates the viability of this distinction in the context of India and also examines the relationship between the monument and its cultural landscape. It shifts the focus from patronage of religious architecture by political dynasties such as that of the Chalukyas to understanding the monuments in their social context, which raises two significant issues: the first relates to the choice of the site. Why was Pattadakal chosen for the setting up of temples? What do we know of the archaeology of the site? The second theme is that of identity and the extent to which religious architecture defined the landscape ascribing it with sanctity and cultural identity. The larger objective is to initiate discussion on the extent to which "˜categories' defined in the early twentieth century continue to be in use. Perhaps it is time to analyze the theoretical frameworks that corroborate these categories.