Fifteenth-Century Monument - A Palace Of The Pathan Period – Demolished To Construct Government Officer's Bungalow
By
Saquib Salim, New Age Islam
28 April
2023
“History is
a necessity. Individuals, communities, and societies could scarcely exist if
all knowledge of the past was wiped out. As memory is to the individual, so
history is to the community or society. Without memory, individuals find great
difficulty in relating to others, finding their bearings, in taking intelligent
decisions - they have lost their sense of identity. A society without history
would be in a similar condition.” Arthur Marwick wrote these words in his
celebrated 1970 book, The Nature of History.
IAS officer gets notice for demolishing 15th-century Delhi monument and
building bungalow
----
Several
media outlets reported on April 27 that an IAS officer was served notice by the
Vigilance Department for allegedly razing a 15th-century Archaeological Survey
of India (ASI) protected monument. The fact that the monument existed a couple
of years ago near Lajpat Nagar in South Delhi and that it has been replaced by
a palatial bungalow for his family to live in sent shockwaves.
A few
months ago, another piece of news made it to the headlines when the government
informed Lok Sabha that at least 24 ASI-protected monuments were found to be
untraceable. Out of these, the disappearance of the famous Barakhamba cemetery
in New Delhi is the most shocking. Records from 1920 show its existence and now
ASI couldn’t ascertain its exact location.
Md Umar
Ashraf, Founder of the Heritage Times portal said, “As a society, we should
understand that history defines our present. Can you think of people who can
define themselves without history? Muslims define themselves through Quranic
stories of the past while Hindus through the past narratives of Ramayana and
Mahabharata and other scriptures. Similarly, every society has a history
through which they identify themselves. Here we are erasing our identity.”
Historians
have written the same over the centuries. In the words of Marwick, “It is only
through a sense of history that communities establish their identity, orientate
themselves, understand their relationship to the past and other communities and
societies. Without a knowledge of history we, and our communities, would be
utterly adrift on an endless and featureless sea of time.”
It is a
matter of fact that “as societies have developed in stability and organization
so they have made greater efforts to preserve and perpetuate some account of
their past”. It is no coincidence that every advanced nation has taken care of
maintaining museums, archives, and monuments.
Europe and
the USA at present can be seen as cases in point. Earlier at the peak of their
advancements Indian, Arabs, Mesopotamians, Chinese, etc. had state-sponsored
chroniclers, archivists, and historians.
It is
alarming that in India people in power are destroying our history. More
concerning is the fact that this is happening in the national capital. This
destruction will slowly rob us of our sense of national identity.
Can you
imagine a person who wakes up one morning and has no idea of his past? He is
unaware of his family, ancestors, or even what he did the day before. A nation
without its history will be in a similar position. It’s our national duty to
save our heritage.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-history/century-monument-pathan-demolished-bungalow/d/129659
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