In the last chapter of his book The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple gives a harrowing account of a massacre parallel to the killing of supporters and the family of the Mughals. It includes the systematic erasure of Mughal architecture: havelis or homes, mosques, gardens, caravanserais and, of course, the Red Fort, of whose magnificent halls, living quarters and gardens, only 20 percent could be saved by the intervention of John Lawrence. He was a British army officer, after whom Lahore’s Lawrence Gardens are named and to whom the world must be grateful for saving whatever he could.

History is filled with politically motivated destruction of art. The Egyptians destroyed statues of their predecessors, the Romans practised damnatio memoriae (condemnation of memory), the public destruction of statues and monuments of their predecessors. Religion was, of course, a major motivator for the destruction of art and heritage: the eighth century Byzantine Emperor Leo III ordered images to be removed from churches; Protestant reformers did the same across Europe in the 16th century; colonisers destroyed or superimposed upon the heritage of their colonies; Saudi rulers erased historic sites to prevent them becoming secondary places of worship; the communist regimes of the erstwhile Soviet Union and China destroyed places of worship; Hitler destroyed or removed “degenerate art” and, in our time, we are witness to the destruction of heritage by the militant Islamic State.

The largest destruction of built heritage has been at the hands of urban developers where the main motivation is a complex combination of profit, the urge to modernise, to house growing populations and the lack of skill at preservation. Urban cultural tourism is a major income generator that also encourages allied businesses. Pakistani tourism highlights its pristine mountains and archaeological wealth, but historic cities are usually left out of the equation. Preservation of historical urban areas is consequently not factored into urban planning strategies as life leaves cities that were once vibrant and full of character.

Ironically, while art and architecture are seen to exist on the periphery, they become the main symbols of identity for civilisations or objects to vent political rage. We have seen statues of Lenin, Stalin and Saddam Hussain pulled down by angry crowds. The statue of Napoleon was destroyed and restored three times.

The Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, instigated the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence in 1497, where sinful objects were publically burnt, including mirrors, fine dresses, art, books, playing cards and musical instruments. The artist Sandro Botticelli reportedly voluntarily burnt several of his paintings depicting classical mythology.

The largest destruction of built heritage has been at the hands of urban developers where the main motivation is a complex combination of profit.

The French Revolution wishing to eradicate any memory of the The Ancien Régime (Old Regime) including their art, found a way to preserve it by establishing museums. The Tehran Museum of Modern Art and the Hermitage ,containing some of Europe’s most valuable artworks, also survived revolutions. Museums seem to depoliticise art and contain it in a neutral space, transforming artworks into innocuous emblems of history and scholarship.

Anna Sido in her study Making History: How Art Museums in the French Revolution Crafted a National Identity (1789-1799) notes that, after roughly 25 million were incited to destroy monuments, the new government justified saving artworks and monuments of the Ancien Régime by presenting them as “one of the most powerful ways of proclaiming the illustriousness of the French Republic.” Cultural goods became a form of diplomacy, speaking of the cultural power of the revolution and taking attention away from the political mayhem.

A young Parisian archeologist, Alexandre Lenoir, who later became director of Musée National des Monuments Français, heroically saved more than 200 monuments from “the axe of the destroyers and the scythe of time” including Michelangelo’s ‘Dying Slave’ sculpture. He would have preferred to leave objects where he found them, but felt they were no longer safe. It is a philosophy shared by many in Pakistan who have kept antiquities in their personal collections.

Heritage can also be denied or falsified. In Modi’s India, P. N. Oak’s (1917 - 2007) revisionist histories claim the Taj Mahal was a Hindu palace, Qutub Minar a Hindu astronomical observation tower and the Red Fort was a palace built by a Hindu ruler. In fact, according to them all medieval mosques and tombs in India are misused Hindu palaces and temples, including the tombs of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti. When the Agra Court ruled the Taj Mahal was in fact a tomb, the official Uttar Pradesh government’s tourist guide book of Agra omitted the Taj, despite it being the biggest tourist revenue earner.

Historians write of the long nineteenth century when the Western world changed into economy-driven capitalist societies. In its wake, there grew a great nostalgia and longing for the past. The idea of “heritage” came into being in the search for emblems to address the “crisis of representation” in a homogenising industrial culture.

The turmoil of the short 20th century — decolonised, war-torn and digitalised — has created needs for new emblems of representation. Pakistan, too, has begun to establish nascent cultural policies and heritage awareness, giving hope to the dedicated individuals who have tirelessly collected and protected what they could. Still the contested ownership of nationalism, it is waiting to become national heritage.

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist and heads the department of visual studies at the University of Karachi

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 29th, 2018