Heritage is Inspiration
Heritage
is Inspiration
Are you one of those people
who believe that preserving our heritage is a colossal waste of time? Are you
one those people who feel that history is weighing us down and we should only
concentrate on the present? If your answers are yes, then please indulge me for
a few moments. Recently I was dining with a friend, a manager at a leading
multi-national company, and during our conversation he confided that “all this
talk about ‘heritage’ in social media and national narrative” is simply not his
cup of tea. “We should focus on aaj (today), not kal (yesterday).
We need to focus on economy only and all else is simply noise.” He was quite
surprised to learn that I disagreed. In fact, he had assumed that as I was a
scientist, I was a ‘rationalist’ (whatever that means) and I would vehemently
agree with his views. I can see why, from an individual’s perspective, heritage
can often be a difficult concept to appreciate since the traditional view of
“heritage” usually conjures images of decades and centuries long history.
People often view their own actions as short-term responses, or reactions to
the need of aaj – a very linear style of thinking. For a society
however, its heritage (or what it defines as heritage) often has an impact in
the short time-scale (~days or months). In fact, from a societal perspective,
heritage can often have significant economic impact as well. I will try to
elucidate this idea through some examples.
You
are probably familiar with the neem and haldi patent battles. Raj
Chengappa had then anguished over “how we are losing our traditional knowledge
to marauding foreign companies who have started poaching on our ancient healing
techniques”1. The
news is almost 20 years old, yet the root message is still relevant. Our
‘heritage’ includes valuable knowledge, which can be monetized and used for the
benefit of society. However, careless neglect of our ‘heritage’ knowledge will
enable external entities to monetize this same knowledge and sell it back to us
a “new”. The campaign to
prevent loss of traditional knowledge, spearheaded by celebrated scientists
like Dr. Mashelkar2, has led to the formation of the Traditional
Knowledge Digital Library3, an immense contribution to maintaining
India’s traditional knowledge. Initiatives such as this need not always be
reactionary. A pro-actively organized methodology to catalogue, preserve,
celebrate and share our ‘heritage’ is the approach needed to foster the
conviction that “heritage can be inspiration”. How? Allow me to share a
real-life experience with you. Many years ago, as a school-kid, I was visiting
the National Museum in Kolkata where the exhibits of beautiful stone murtis caught
my attention. Just like the exquisite stone Yaksha in the image4
below, these murtis have survived the test of kaal (time) by
standing strong for thousands of years! They are priceless. They are
inspiration.
Many
of the murtis were carved on dark Basalt stone. What intrigued me most was that
these thousands of years old murtis appeared pristine, with their smooth
surfaces and clear outlines! I began to wonder if these murtis had
lasted so long in their pristine condition, could we not incorporate basalt in
new novel materials? Could we combine one or two of these stones to make a new
type of stone? As a student, my ideas were still ill-formed, but these murtis
roused my intellectual curiosity. Eventually though these questions sank
into the depths of my memory. Recently, a colleague of mine who works on
materials and with whom I happened to share this story, sent me information on
how Basalt is being used to make novel materials. One example of such a novel
material is the Basalt fibre which has several important properties such as “a
good range of thermal performance, high tensile strength, good electromagnetic
properties, inert nature, and resistance to acids, radiation, UV light,
vibration, and impact loading.”5 Basalt fibers are a present-day
innovation and cannot be viewed as simple extrapolations of previous
techniques. The question is not whether our ancestors already knew how to make
these fibers, but was it our neglect of “heritage” that inhibited our inspiration
to innovate for kal (here I imply tomorrow). Basalt fibre is a low-cost
material eminently suited to manufacture in India where the raw material is
plentiful (nearly 5, 00,000 sq. km of basalt rock).5 Unfortunately
for India, today basalt fibers are mainly manufactured in Eastern Europe,
Russia, the USA, Israel and China. A Google Scholar search for ‘basalt fiber’
does not locate a single research manuscript based out of India in its Top 20
list. Earlier this year, the US Department of Defense (USDOD) specially
solicited research proposals to implement multi-purpose basalt composites.6
Bharat, your inspiration for innovation lies hidden in plain sight and
the world awaits you to realize that.
Basalt
fiber is a lost cause, but the world of literature offers us a great example of
how heritage can inspire innovation in the form of the newly born genre of
‘dharmic fiction’. Dharmic fiction novels are not dharmic literature; rather
they take inspiration from the latter to create new stories and are a testimony
to how heritage can translate into economic impact for the society today. Interested
readers can refer to my essay on the dharmic fiction genre.7 The
promise of dharmic fiction extends far beyond a simple retelling of old tales.
I hope to see futuristic plots, where synthesis with science fiction occurs;
this would result in stories with a larger appeal and would herald a new era
within this genre. Heritage can perhaps also inspire the nascent gaming
industry of our country8. Dharmic fiction, basalt fibres etc are
specific examples that I have used to illustrate the more generic idea that our
heritage is not simply a burden, but rather an invaluable material and
intellectual treasure that we must protect.
In
this respect, endeavours like India Pride Project (Twitter handle -
@IndiaPrideProj) championed by people like Anuraag Saxena (Twitter handle -
@anuraag_saxena) are crucial. Anuraag informs me that murtis fashioned from
many different materials have been recovered, but due to research funding and
public interest constraints their “heritage” potential to India has not been
meaningfully investigated. I believe for such projects to have a deeper impact,
a holistic public interest in such conservation efforts is critical. Anuraag
says “We must not let the world monetize our heritage. Our heritage is
priceless”. I agree and to that thought I would like to add that “Our heritage
is our inspiration”.
References
and Notes:
1. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/patents-india-wins-a-victory-over-turmeric-but-the-war-is-on/1/277014.html
7. https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/the-time-is-right-for-a-new-literary-genre-dharmic-fiction
Disclaimer: All posts should be treated as personal opinion of the author, unless explicitly stated otherwise. All material is copyright of Dr. Aloke Kumar, unless stated otherwise.
Conflict of Interest: There is no conflict of interest to declare.
About the author: Dr. Aloke Kumar is currently an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Twitter handle: @aalokelab
Update: This article was subsequently published with slight modifications by Swarajya Magazine. The link to that essay is here - https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/lost-heritage-why-our-knowledge-is-packaged-and-sold-back-to-us
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