Contested Glories of Selective Renovation in West Bengal

The preservation of old buildings and work to restore the architecture of otherwise intangible socio-cultural heritage, memory, history, even trauma, entails multiple social and economic costs. Using critical concepts of contested understanding, project planning opportunity and local perspectives on renovative purpose, this article assesses political issues in a ‘heritage colonialism’ case study. Appraisal of the Serampore Initiative of the National Museum of Denmark might not only be of the extant architectural material of the sites but of the lived contexts in which heritages exist and continue as selective historical recall. Memory, backgrounds, ruins and archives are all subjective in different ways when recalled by architects, ethnographers, tourists, nations and critics, each of whom have coexisting and often competing interests. The critique foregrounds more local perspectives often overlooked by entrepreneur-developers facing the implacable imperatives of externally funded reconstruction.