Ancient
sites like Kathmandu matter. The cult of authenticity should not
get in the way of restoration
Two disasters hit Nepal
at noon last Saturday. The first wiped out whole towns and
villages, and has killed as many as 10,000 people. With the
world’s help, that disaster can be and will be rectified. The other
disaster was to one of the world’s most exquisite cultural
survivals, the ancient settlements of the Kathmandu valley and
their Hindu and Buddhist shrines. That disaster, labelled
“irreversible” by some experts, cannot be ignored. It must be
rectified and without argument.
Pictures from Nepal show temples, stupas, towers and squares collapsed
or severely damaged. Protected for centuries by their isolation,
they have suffered the one horror from which nothing could protect
them: natural catastrophe. Irina Bokova, boss of the ever defeatist
Unesco, with seven Nepalese sites on her books, says the damage is
“extensive and irreversible”. The local historian Prushottam
Lochan Shrestha agrees that “we have lost most of the world
heritage monuments … they cannot be restored”.
Related: Nepal earthquake destroys Kathmandu valley's
architectural treasures
Initial surveys show appalling
losses. Kathmandu’s lofty Dharahara tower is gone, taking 180
tourists with it. Durbar Square is ruined, the god Garud toppled from its
pillar. The ancient
Swayambhunath Stupa outside the city stands, but in a wilderness of destruction. In Bhaktapur the delightful
Vatsala Durga temple is a pile of rubble. Boudhanath Stupa,
one of the largest in the Himalayas, is damaged. Lovely Patan’s
temple complex looks wrecked.
These sites and their surrounding lanes and wooden houses were
among Asia’s last remaining examples of what in Europe were
medieval cities, rich in shrines, palaces, markets and colour.
Their tight-knit urbanism recalled the intimacy of Tudor England.
They were part and parcel of Nepal’s cultural identity.
A single clearance
bulldozer can wipe all trace of these places off the map. In their
wake, Kathmandu can easily become another Asian concrete jungle. It
was not just second world war bombers that wiped out Europe’s old
cities, it was the bulldozers and developers that came in their
wake. Such vultures circle over these disasters, paid not to
conserve but to relieve immediate suffering, with little care for
the past or the future.
After 1945 the
Germans rebuilt the Hanseatic town of Lübeck, casually flattened by the RAF to teach
Germany “a lesson”. The Poles did likewise to central Warsaw, as an
act of healing and defiance. Britain did not restore old Coventry or Bristol,
their modernist ideologues preferring to erect new Jerusalems in
the fashion of the day. As a result Lübeck and Warsaw are now world
heritage sites. No one visits England’s new Jerusalems.
Of course the first
response to the Nepal earthquake must be humanitarian. But
populations can and do restore themselves. The loss to a nation’s
culture and identity – in Nepal’s case also to its tourist economy
– can be for ever. Such is the trauma of this loss that its
recovery can seem unimaginable. Asia currently faces threats to its
historic legacy that, were they in Europe, would be rated global
cataclysms. The Mesopotamian cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Hatra have been dynamited. Syria’s Aleppo lies in ruins. The Buddhas of Bamiyan remain gaping holes in the
mountain. Western intervention in Iraq led to the looting of the great museum of Baghdad and
the obliteration of some of Christianity’s oldest
sites.
Most of European
architecture's great works are reproductions, from Venice’s
Campanile to the turrets of Bodiam Castle
The cause in each case is
irrelevant, be it war or natural disaster. The remedy is what
matters. The answer to cultural destruction is restitution. There
is no technical handicap. Money can always be raised, as it was
after the Florence floods of 1966. The cost merely defines the value we place
on that culture. The arts of conservation have never been so
skilled, or scholarship so thorough. The job can be
done.
One dogma stands in the way of restoring Nepal’s historic
districts, the art-historical cult of the ruin. Destruction is “the
historical record”, it proclaims. What war or nature has destroyed
should be “conserved as found”, lest we stand condemned
by the great god, authenticity. If we want to know what
the past looked like, we should ask a professional
consultant for an artist’s impression. All else is
pastiche, “Disneyfication”.
Previous generations
saw no ideological problem in restoring and if necessary
reproducing the legacies of their past. Most of the great works of
European architecture are reproductions, from Venice’s Campanile to the west front of Chartres, from the walls of Carcassonne to the turrets of Bodiam Castle. Kathmandu’s lofty Dharahara
tower, now a pile of stones, was actually the third erected on the
site after earthquakes, most recently in 1934.
Yet the
anti-restitution dogma remains influential. It has gripped 12 years
of Unesco wrangling over the Bamiyan Buddhas. Some “experts” feel
the holes should be left as a memorial to Taliban iconoclasm, as
part of the statues’ “authentic” history. Others argue that the
statues were already much restored, and the best counter to their
destruction is replacing them. Asians have no aesthetic hang-ups
about reproducing images of the Buddha. No one can
decide.
All reminders of the
past, original or replicated, are precious. The buildings and
settlements in which our ancestors lived and thought, worked and
prayed, are history in four dimensions. They are potent in the
imagination, which is why totalitarian regimes so often seek to
destroy them. Heritage sites remind people of who they are –
undermining authority’s power to make them something else.
That is why China is destroying Tibetan and Uighur heritage
sites.
Of course the
Nepalese should decide how far to go in restitution. But
money, expertise and encouragement should be no bar. The placid
settlements of the Kathmandu valley should return to their former
glory. Likewise should Aleppo, Nineveh and Bamiyan. After the food and shelter have
arrived, nothing would better lift Nepal’s pride and morale
than to see itsold splendour rise from the enveloping
dust.