Anthropology in Central IndiaConference

13-14 October 2012Archaeological Survey of India

Bhopal Circle

Session:

Conservation, Heritage Management, Museum and Public Archaeology Shrines, saints and religious graffiti: anatomy of a defacement of two painted

prehistoric rock art shelters at Wyndham Falls Site (WYN 3 and WYN 4), Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh.

By

Ajay Pratap, FRAI,Associate Professor,

Department of History,Faculty of Social Sciences,Banaras Hindu University,

Varanasi – 221 005

apratap_hist@bhu.ac.in

• Abstract

• Amongst the archaeological materials that have been produced by prehistoric humans, the place of the rock paintings, at the Wyndham 3 and 4 Sites is secure. These sites were located by us during a field survey conducted in October 2008 (Antiquity URLhttp://antiquity.ac.uk/antiquityNew/projgall/pratap321/). They are situated well-within the Vindhyan Ranges, South of the Varanasi District; and have by now has been thoroughly documented (see our project website URL http://www.rockartofindia.webs.com), and, therefore digitally secure. We would propose to discuss the issue of the prehistoric rock paintings of the WYN 3 and 4 Sites, as the discussion, of Vindhyan Rock Paintings, as contemporary material culture, the possibilities of its proposed Intellectual Property Right resting with the local community, has not been made until now, in the context of the Indian Laws.

• In this paper we propose to discuss the issue of the proper conservation of the prehistoric rock paintings, at WYN 3 and 4 Sites, found by us in the course of an Indian Council of Historical Research funded research project, The Documentation and Analysis of the Rock Art of Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh (2009-2011), of which I am the Project Director. This is so as a discussion of Indian rock paintings as contemporary material culture and its intellectual ownership and appropriation may properly be discussed.

• It is thus, and therefore, that this paper proposes to consider the pros and the cons of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, under the Indian Penal Code, to consider how as academic Indian archaeologists we may even begin to define a concept of Intellectual Property Right with regard to Sites and Monuments of India. How they may be safeguarded better, in the Indian Context, and this is all well within the particular ambit of the Indian prehistory.

Rock Art as Traditional Knowledge

• That rock paintings do have an aesthetic component in them cannot be denied. However, rock art researchers round the world seem to shy away from accepting or regarding rock art as art in the modern connotation of this term `art’ (Conkey). Although it is not denied by them that this sort of material culture, in analogy with `art’, does work as semiotic-ally, so as to give us, like ‘art’, multiple readings of the painted `text’. Others like Rowley-Conwy (2001) who does not engage in such a debate at all, have been led to regard that the painting of animals into images in various stages of growth and their gender chosen for depiction does belie that such choice of factors such as age and gender, in a painting may be regarded as deliberate and not random. Thus paintings of adult deer, male or female or fawns, male or female, does indicate even minimally that hunter-gatherer art did serve to suggest to their beholders optimal hunting-strategies which should be adopted (the relative merits and demerits of hunting an adult male vs. female deer, adult vs. male or female fawn etc.). In this sense, where the gender of the animal suggested in paintings as desirable for hunt is explicitly shown it may certainly be regarded as a heuristic and hence Traditional Knowledge.

Rock Art as Traditional Knowledge (cont.)

• Although Vindhyan Paintings abound in depictions of various types of deer, but not always is their gender or age exactly explicit, we also very rarely find that odd species whose depiction does belie that their depiction in rock paintings was with the purpose of passing information about the availability of that species down generations. A good example is the depiction of a school of Fresh Water Dolphins depicted in a painting at the height of a hundred or so feet above an open air shelter at our site Mukkha Dari which is located in a drainage channel of the river Belan. Although this painted site occurs in a palaeochannel of this river their depiction at a hunting camp definitely suggests to us that the reason they were painted is also a functional one, the necessity of letting future generations know of the availability of such game in the Belan River.

• Thus to my mind it cannot be denied that transmission of information did serve as one of the primary purposes of Vindhyan Rock Paintings. This is of course the case with what we may conjecture to be the earlier, perhaps, the Pleistocene open air shelters and the game depicted in them.

Rock Art as Traditional Knowledge (cont.)

• Curiously these same shelters often carry paintings which are clearly decorative designs, hand-stencils, hand-imprints, dancing human figures, and human figures undertaking various non-task-specific postures: thus men holding bows and arrows, men holding spears or other instruments (most common), men shooting arrows at game, sometimes at other human figures and so on. Sometimes speared animals are also depicted.

Rock Art as Traditional Knowledge (cont.)

• Images of animals speared also occur however these are very few as compared with animals depictions in which only the subject is depicted. Elephants with raised trunks, Bos indicus, Bos gaurus, and such other animals are often painted in isolation of how they would have figured in a food-economy sort of configuration as compared with deer. Blackbuck, Cheetal, Sambar, Barasingha are very often also painted as individual icons.

Rock Art as Traditional Knowledge (cont.)

• Considering that at least the Morhana Pahar shelters are juxtaposed with numerous megalithic burials, it is not surprising that in these shelters we also have depictions of ‘modern’ human activity like spearing of rhinoceros, camel-carts, and looting of buggies.

• Most unusually there are historic period paintings superimposed upon earlier ones and their style has allowed us to source the authorship of at least one superimposition on Morhana Pahar CAR shelter 12 to a nearby shelter called Lekhania Pahar where a stylistically similar painting occurs. At the very least this does reveal a social sphere of the artist as revealed in the rock paintings of the Vindhyas.

Is There an Intellectual Property Right of the Local Community over Archaeological Sites

and Monuments?• Under the archaeological laws obtaining in India, I The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and

Remains Act 1958 (Act No. 24 of 1958) at the moment, very briefly it is the government of India, acting through its agencies like the Archaeological Survey of India and the state-wise Directorates of Archaeology, which lay complete claim over all archaeological properties below and above the ground, and in every sense of the term `claim’.

• Claiming thus, the a priori ownership of all archaeological sites and monuments known and unknown puts before it a herculean task of finding the archaeological sites and remains which are on date not known at all, but also their proper upkeep and conservation which are, given India’s sheer geographical size, and variations in climate and terrain, nearly an impossible sort of undertaking, if not a bewildering one.

• Suffice it to say that of its own successive governments since the independence have maintained a sort of status quo.

• It would appear that a concern with the proper management and development of heritage resources on the part of the Government is only a very recent and new development. However, the system dealing with heritage management is centralized and under complete government control, bringing to it a gargantuan liability.

• The immediate result of, since the colonial period, this nearly un-modified claim to `complete and total ownership’, see The Ancient Monuments Preservation Act 1904 (VII of 1904) [As Modified Up to The 1 st September 1949]then also, on date, brings to it all liability which accrues by way of destruction and defacement of monuments and archaeological sites and remains, which due to its shortages of manpower resources, or the lack of a countrywide managerial cadre which would have looked after heritage resources, leaves the government in many cases as a mute spectator.

• As a prehistorian who has recently become interested in studying rock paintings I would like through this paper to show that the present laws bearing relevance to conservation of archaeological sites and remains of India are in need of repeal for the better management of our historical resources.

IPR of the Local Community (contd.)

• In the absence of a central cadre of heritage managers, one such way is for the government to consider farming-out the business of the protection, safeguarding, and ultimately conservation of archaeological sites and monuments to the local community.

• This is mainly because the government agencies entrusted with this task presently are hardly able to so discover, protect, and conserve, the extensive built and other types of heritage, which it is empowered under the law to do, as these agencies are very badly under-staffed, and there is in the near future no sign that their numbers would increase.

• Unfortunately important heritage such as rock paintings which are constantly under threat of destruction and defacement from illegal/legal mining, quarrying as well as tourism cannot wait for the legal and legislative wheels which in any case move very slow in India.

• It is thus that, in this paper, we have argued that de-centralizing heritage management, and taking it out of the government sphere and bringing it more properly into the public sphere may profitably be started with considering the issue of `rights’. Does the local community have in any sense of the term a right over an archaeological site or monument which is located in their area?

• Ethnographies of Indian monuments suggest that diverse as our population is in terms of culture and religious persuasions, our past represented through our archaeological sites and monuments is equally if not more diverse.

• Without a shade of doubt, therefore, Indian peoples do connect with archaeological heritage in their areas with just the same immediacy as obtains elsewhere.

• However, the difference here lies in the economic contexts of diverse Indian peoples and cultures and the archaeological monuments which obtain in their areas.

• It is thus that urban peoples and their monuments get the lion’s share of the union budgetary allocations for their upkeep, as well as international funding, say from UNESCO.

• Rural archaeological sites and monuments are relatively lesser known and therefore rather ill-managed as compared with urban and better known ones.

The Ancient Monuments Preservation Act 1904 (VII of 1904) [As Modified Up to The 1st September 1949]

• Salient Points:• THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS PRESERVATION ACT 1904• (VII OF 1904)• [AS MODIFIED UPTO THE 1ST SEPTEMBER 1949]• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED• A.O. 1937 For Government of India (Adaptation of Indian Laws) Order,• 1937, as modified by the Government of India (Adaptation of• Indian Laws) Supplementary Order, 1937• A.O. 1948 For Indian Independence (Adaptation of Central Acts and• Ordinances) Order, 1948.• Govt. For Government• L.G. For Local Government• G.G. in C. For Governor General in Council• Mad. For Madras.• C.P. For Central Provinces• Subs. For Substituted.• Rep. For Repealed.• S. For Section.

The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958 (Act No. 24 of 1958)

• Salient Points:• ANCIENT MONUMENTS AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL• SITES AND REMAINS ACT, 1958• ARRANGEMENT OF SECTIONS• PRELIMINARY• SECTIONS• 1. Short title, extent and commencement• 2. Definitions.• ANCIENT MONUMENTS AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES AND• REMAINS OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE.• 3. Certain ancient monuments, etc., deemed to be of national importance.• 4. Power of Central Government to declare ancient monuments, etc., to be of• national importance.• PROTECTED MONUMENTS.• 5. Acquisition of rights in a protected monument.• 6. Preservation of protected monument by agreement.• 7. Owners under disability or not in possession.• 8. Application of endowment to repair a protected monument.• 9. Failure or refusal to enter into an agreement.• 10. Power to make order-prohibiting contravention of agreement under• section 6.• 11. Enforcement of agreement.• 12. Purchasers at certain sales and persons claiming through owner bound by• instrument executed by owner.• 13. Acquisition of protected monuments.• 14. Maintenance of certain protected monuments.• 15. voluntary contributions.• 16. Protection of place of worship from misuse, pollution or desecration.• 17. Relinquishment of government rights in a monument.• 18. Right of access to protected monuments.

The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2010

• Salient Points:• THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES AND• REMAINS (AMENDMENT AND VALIDATION) BILL, 2010• A• BILL• further to amend the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958• and to make provision for validation of certain actions taken by the Central Government• under the said Act.• BE it enacted by Parliament in the Sixty-first Year of the Republic of India as follows:—• 1. (1) This Act may be called the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and• Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act, 2010.• (2) Save as otherwise provided, it shall be deemed to have come into force on the 23rd• day of January, 2010.• 2. On and from the 16th day of June, 1992, in the Ancient Monuments and• Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 (hereinafter referred to as the principal Act), in• section 2,—• (i) after clause (d), the following clauses shall be inserted and shall be deemed• to have been inserted, namely:—• ‘(da) “Authority” means the National Monuments Authority constituted• under section 20F;

Thank You!

• Ajay Pratap

• Bhopal