Chinsurah methodologies and action

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Payal Wadhwa

Founder Director InspireConspireRetire Design practice, London

urban heritage conservation, communities & Cultural Strategy Methodologies in Action Integrated Urban Development Chinsurah 2014


An overview The Dutch in Chinsurah Project Urban conservation projects worldwide often focus on community engagement to empower people with a sense of understanding of their prized and shared histories. Which in turn, helps translate value formulation into an exhaustive set of ideas and aspirations they may envision for their own spaces. This endeavour may potently inform planners, conservation architects and academicians on ways to tackle the complexities such historic urban spaces present. This project, The Dutch in Chinsurah, is perhaps a primer for things to come and an effort to document what remains of Dutch heritage in Chinsurah. Commissioned by the Embassy of Netherlands in India, its aim is to enable the Dutch to gather a better understanding of their own history in the region, its place and relevance today as well as define how it remains closely intertwined with the histories of other colonial powers that were influential in the day. To walk into a town and spend almost a year on the ground without including and informing its rather curious community about the purpose of this project would have been impolitic. This is an attempt to summarise the work done by ICR for the Dutch in Chinsurah project over the course of 2014, with Aishwarya Tipnis Architects, who have been the project partners along with the Embassy of Netherlands and Presidency University, Calcutta. The aim of this paper is to bring to light the methodologies and praxis in contextual response for the need of urban heritage conservation in Chinsurah, where the focus in writing as well as practice, has been on the process rather than the outcomes. The rivers and riverfronts of India sit at the centre of a political agenda that envisions development and cleanliness, two rather essential objectives for planning in the years to come. Chinsurah, sits on the banks of the river Hooghly and there has existed a fascinating masterplan (since mid 2000s) called Europe on the Ganges, led by INTACH chapter of West Bengal. It suggests restoration and creation of infrastructure to build a facility of boat cruises down 40 kms of the river focusing on the remnants of European architecture in towns such as Serampur, Chandernagore, Chinsurah, Kolkata and Bandel.

defining our scope of work ICR is led by Payal Wadhwa who was asked by ATA to work on the project and our role has been that of Interpretation Planning and Design. The project, as it has panned out over the year, has allowed us to work on the field with researchers and conservation architects, in tandem with various stakeholders of the community to be at a significant juncture to further write – a cultural strategy for development


and restoration that is envisioned for the precinct. The initial thrust of the project, as has been incredibly led by ATA was to document the tangible markers of cultural heritage that are specifically Dutch in Chinsurah and to create a succinct report on the ways forward towards conservation of these built structures. ICR is a practice where our work remains centred on making meaning and building cultural value through design, interpretation and engagement. Our methodologies derive strongly from the fundamental principles of each one of these practices to create a seamless, context-specific approach that facilitates strong outcomes that can change the traditional ways of approaching work with cultural institutions, cities, heritage and communities. The Dutch in Chinsurah project has therefore been a unique project for us as well as ATA, the project lead who we have seamlessly worked with, forging principles of inclusive conservation with interpretation such that conservation to come may be equipped with a conscience, if I may define it this way – where social development and social expectations remain at the heart of the work. In order to ensure the same, our work on the ground has needed to constantly involve the citizens of Chinsurah to build awareness around the significance of the heritage of their own town, define for them what this heritage is- in the first place and to dispel myths and assumptions of their shared histories so that they can cherish and appreciate their own town better. To convince these citizens to play responsible stakeholders of their own heritage, our approach has been towards equipping them with means of being cognizant and vigilant guardians for conservation and regeneration of their historic built environments.

Interpretation Objectives Everywhere around the country, towns and cities are constantly evolving into entities with lives unknown as, in the name of development, all traces of the past are being lost to irresponsible building and alien models of planning. What these spaces mean to the citizens is essential for us to understand, as we begin this course of documentation of the town. At ICR, when we began work on the project – we defined the interpretation objectives and scope of work adopting two parallel stances. This, I believe has tremendously influenced each outcome, because we have been able to reason and align the intention, process and result to particular perspectives. These are articulated as “The World Looking at Chinsurah” as well as “Chinsurah looking at itself and the world” Initial thoughts defined that workshops, symposiums, exhibitions and publications could be remarkable ways of creating channels for awareness, bringing in experts, enthusiasts and academicians (particularly focusing on documentation, restoration, maintenance and rehabilitation) and be clubbed under the “world looking at Chinsurah” On the other hand, we set out with a loosely structured approach aimed at


residents and the local tourists from Bengal. This would entail crafting educational resources and their integration into curriculum (SE, FE), community building workshops highlighting particular concerns (women’s health, sanitation, land ownership, family businesses etc - and tying it into the larger narrative of the city), creating heritage awareness not only through heritage trails but allowing the community to actually contribute to the storyline (identifying not just architectural landmarks but also community specific points), training local residents as volunteer guides, and bringing cultural change to the community for them to regard this heritage as invaluable. This under the umbrella of a strong interpretation plan focusing on oral histories, creation of a community video volunteer programme for region specific updates and as well as crowd sourced research about distinctive “localness” through music, food, craft etc were the first few ideas towards “Chinsurah looking at itself and the world “

Collaborations and the context Given that the project began primarily as a means to document and enlist all built structures of cultural significance in Chinsurah, our first task at hand was to understand what exists on the ground. This work, led by ATA brought us to the understanding that very little remains of the original Dutch buildings within the precinct and the cemetery is perhaps the largest edifice serving as a marker of the time. In addition to the cemetery, stand the Governor’s House that is now the DM’s office, the Chinsurah court, the Dutch cemetery and the Hooghly Mohsin College that is housed inside a Dutch building. These were highlighted as the significant landmarks of Chinusrah before the seminar held in Kolkata in February 2014. Dr. Oeendrilla Lahiri, the historian who has worked tirelessly with ATA and ICR, put together a historical account of the town having trudged through various primary and secondary source accounts at The British Library, West Bengal State Archives, Indian and Dutch National Archives including those of the VOC. A sense of what landmarks and historic events shape the telling of the story of the Dutch is strongly derived from her research. We also realised that it is also rather important to assess what exists in the town today, to plan in an inclusive manner, the vision for what the town may become and how it may chose to remember its own histories. Very often, with lack of interpretation and engagement methodologies, conservation plans can become didactic – eliminating the citizen from the fold. ICR believes that the same isn’t sustainable or appropriate in the age that we live in, where knowledge remains the most powerful tool for citizens who are enthusiastic, more than ever – to take control of their immediate surroundings and live in a world they are more aware of. To forget that this town has changed drastically over the last 300 years and that it was occupied (and re-built) by the British and then the landowners whose families still live within these structures today would be completely injudicious.So began, our journey to contextualise, deconstruct, interpret and disseminate histories that are the cornerstone of our interpretation strategy. In order to understand how it functions today, how it is used by its people and what the social fabric of Chinsurah is, it became important to map the town in as


many different ways as possible, to make these patterns and relationships apparent to ourselves. At ICR, we equipped the team from ATA with what we developed and called a mapping pack – that defined the fundamentals of mapping in order to understand the social construct of the town. A team from ATA were encouraged to follow guidelines enlisted within this pack, to observe and note the intangible and tangible markers. This process that has spanned months, has informed the team on the ground, ATA as well as ICR with incredible detail of how the town functions and what it perceives as significant. It also throws light on what the West Bengal Government perceives as significant in Chinsurah.

MAPPING CHINSURAH Maps tell us as much about the people, ideas and the powers at play, as about the places they depict. This exercise of mapping has been a way of understanding Chinsurah, through its cultural geographies, the social fabric that binds it together. This mapping through cartographic norms and building of geographical information systems has allowed us to create a semblance of the town, through digital layers that can be read independently or in combination. Our aim through these exercises has been to be precise, observant, objective and engaged. Mapping Chinsurah as an exercise was carried out in three phases. Phase 1, was by no means a small task – because it included building the layers that would eventually help us create the base layer of this town, and building onto it touch-points for narratives to follow and populate it. The team walked through the padas, identifying buildings of value, collecting information about these structures as well as their immediate surroundings. As the team split up into groups, the first phase included 2 architects and 1 historian in each group, collecting and defining data in a systematic manner. Phase 2, included tireless recording of the variant data points on the map in order to build a strong semblance of the town, especially of its intangible attributes. The third phase, included re-tweaking the base map and finalising the same – based on observations from the first two phases and the discrepancies that arose between these and the digital maps of the town existent (Google Maps) as well as filling in any gaps of recordings from the field. Our method of mapping has followed cartography conventions as well as considered psychogeographic deductions. Psychogeography, a “study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” (Internationale Situationniste, 1958) has been essential to deduce the intangible traces and define them through a system of signs and symbols on our maps. The propagated theories around psychogeography, particularly by Debord have informed our practice determining “values of the urban landscape: the soft ambiance — light, sound, time, the association of ideas - with the hard, the actual physical constructions. “ We acknowledge that these ‘ambiances’ are at times neither quantifiable, nor static. It has therefore remained important for the team on the ground and then back


at ICR to tackle some of these exercises seeking the intangibles, with precision and in response to the physical markings present on the ground. Also, simultaneous reading of detailed base maps created by the team on the ground in parallel with archival maps drawn over time, has allowed us to understand the morphology of Chinsurah. In this way of articulation, a thorough reading of the urban morphology has lent postulations about human behavior and their correspondences within the town to pave the way for cognizant and sentient development or restoration in the times to come. While we understand the power of maps and suggest the thrust of the project be led by mapping as a tool for exploring its social fabric, it has been critical that any and all assumptions that go into the making of the map are revealed to the viewer. Whilst mapping, should there have been certain assumptions taken by the mapping team, a note of the same was included for the translation of these hand-drawn maps into graphical representations that work with an order of systems designated for defined legends. On the digital platform (the website for the project), the data collected on the field can be read in multiple layers to allow the end user to triangulate and derive inferences of associations and relationships – that may otherwise escape the eye, when reading a simple base map or exploring Chinsurah over platforms such as Google Earth. The objective of this exercise has been to map the town in as many different ways as possible so that it may bring Chinsurah alive for even those who may never be able to visit. As a part of the Chinsurah website, it would provide researchers, scholars and those curious, an open source data to build onto and draw from. Because the team was on the ground for weeks at end in each phase, curious residents of Chinsurah have directly or indirectly contributed immensely to the building of these maps. For their participation in this exercise, we remain grateful. Participatory mapping was the original intention as a means of engagement but could not be fully facilitated at the commencement of this exercise for multiple logistical barriers. It also needed us to re-check everything, should it have been a volunteer led/crowdsourced way of mapping. The fact that despite the initial reservations, the residents of the town have been able to participate in this exercise, albeit in a smaller way, is still incredible for a project of such nature where their response to our work has been only encouraging. The team on the field have often cited instances of how people have welcomed them into their homes for them to be able to look around, or for them to rest whilst in the field. Conditions while mapping can be incredibly trying and the team has done a wonderful job in articulating the variances of the town to the best of their capabilities. We hope that these maps generated as well the awareness of the town about itself that has definitely been augmented - informs and influences the redevelopment and restoration of this town and its heritage structures, as and when undertaken as a part of the Europe on the Ganges Masterplan or any other State Government initiative in the years to come.


Community Engagement Modules A number of activities spanning from a couple of hours to a fortnight were designed and programmed to reach out to all demographics in Chinsurah. The aim of this programme has been to generate social capital as well as build awareness. When we began with mapping, a group of community volunteers called the “Rangers” assisted the project team on the field surveys. Their inclusion became a vehicle for conversations around the project and increasing interest in the work ATA and ICR seeked to do. News spread, mostly word of mouth as well as over social media channels such as Facebook that were initiated to generate interest for participation. Local enthusiasts and historians, teachers came forward and shared their insight of the history of the town. Interviews were conducted with local residents, students, rickshaw pullers, teachers, doctors, people on the street to gauge and define the sense of place of Chinsurah. Captured over video, this has enabled us to create snippets that craft the identities and realities of those who live in and share this town. These feature on the project website on a section that is a mouthpiece for Chinsurah looking at itself.

Mental Mapping The first of the workshop format activities was creation of mental maps of the town. An exercise, posited in guise of a “painting competition” – it asked students from primary schools to the age of 20 to reflect on what they consider to be the heritage of Chinsurah. To be defined as a local painting competition within one of the most enthusiastically attended events in the town – the Durga Puja gave us our first strategic win. Every year, the Puja committees set themes that students draw and paint as a part of a competition. We soon realised that by defining it in this formulaic format, could be one way to break any barriers of apprehension for people to be involved with a project that may otherwise have come across as alien academic pursuit. To develop this exercise, instead of suggesting that participants have a free reign on what their ideas of Chinsurah and its history could be, we armed them with a short story, that of the Dutch in Chinsurah – so that the final outcome of this exercise may have inferences drawn from the text, married casually with their sense of the town as it stands today. It gives us incredible insight about landmarks and features of the town that are considered important and iconic. An overwhelming response to this exercise, has led to the best of images documented on the Dutch in Chinsurah facebook page.

The Comic Book workshop Comics are a beautiful medium to incite responses in a manner that can seem unthreatening, playful and approachable. To define histories that are three hundred years old and forgotten to most residents of Chinsurah and gauge their comprehension or ways they relate to the same, the format seemed tailor-made. The workshop was conducted in Chinsurah with students and adults, all of whom enthusiastically braced


ideas of defining the relevance of the newly known histories of their town. The content of the workshop included definition of what the power of the comics can be, the many ways one may draw one, what the various ingredients of a comic are and how their task would be to respond to a story about the Dutch, that a lot of them – had never known before. Their responses, drawn over a fortnight in elaborate comic pages, bring to light how they perceive these histories and what characters, incidents and relationships from the time of the Dutch in Chinsurah, resonate most with them.

Heritage Walks Having painstakingly mapped the town and culled histories, local folklore, ideas and myths from residents of the town, it became apparent that heritage walks would go a long way to dispel certain notions while telling the histories of the town, as we have come to know them – through our research and documentation. However, it would have made little sense for ICR or ATA to lead these walks only once and eliminate the opportunities the people of Chinsurah may have to know their own stories over time, at their own convenience. There exists a certain reticence in smaller towns for unfamiliar activities such as this – and to run this walk with utmost sincerity and local buy-in is essential. We found Rangan Datta and Saptarishi Banerjee, two local historians who volunteered to run the walks – to build on the work that they do in Chinsurah already. A day-long workshop was organised with ICR, ATA and the two historians to craft the trails for the two walks, and train them in ways of leading the same. Beyond the dates that the walks launched on in late November 2014, the historians would use the scripts – co-developed by ICR and ATA – to run successive rounds, which could turn it into sustainable revenue channels for themselves. The two walks are titled ‘In the footsteps of the Dutch’ and ‘The Dutch in Bengal’

Photography Workshop A means to explore the architectural heritage of Chinsurah, participants for this two day workshop were invited to photograph the town while discovering its secrets and stories. On day one, a guided-photo walk introduced them to history of the Dutch during their years of trade in Bengal while they walked to the forgotten markers of their time - the old wall of the Fort, the cannons of the VOC and the Cemetery. Encouraged to develop their own photo-essays, they built narratives that brought these histories to life. The guided-photo walk was preceded by a masterclass in architectural heritage photography. The participants spent the next day independently shooting their own photostories and then composing to present their photo-essays at the end of the day to their peer group. The aim was to present these essays to the community of Chinsurah in a street exhibition in the fortnight to follow. The last stage of this engagement remains unfinished.


Storybook Dr. Oeendrilla Lahiri, the historian who has meticulously crafted the narrative of the Dutch in Chinsurah wrote for us, an abridged and simplified version of the story for children. This, composed as a downloadable e-book is available over the project website, illustrated with beautiful illustrations made by students in Chinsurah, in response to the mental mapping exercise. This was followed up, to fill any gaps, with a simple brief to our volunteers Prabal Dhar and Sohini Dhar – local art enthusiasts – to guide students to create illustrations to the themes missing within the book.

The Exhibition What remains an elusive end to this project for the lack of sufficient funding is an exhibition. This would be our way of presenting every stage of the process through drawings, visualizations, photographs, films and text to build up to and supplement the content that shall sit on the website. The website shall have been launched, yet the exhibition which could travel, would allow people to understand the complexity of a project such as this, and bring an academic undertaking in a simplified, accessible form to the general public, re-emphasising the need of preservation and interpretation of tangible and intangible heritage and cultures. It could also go a long way to ‘foster a deeper understanding of cultural identity and solidarity between peoples’ We could envision writing a short strategy document to introduce the project or to work as a takeaway from the exhibition – for those interested. One may define the audiences we could expect at an exhibition of such nature as academics, conservationists, policy makers and local governing bodies, researchers, architects, designers, teachers, students (middle school- college level), families, historians, media-persons, filmmakers and interested members of public.

The Need for a strong Cultural strategy Historic and touristic cities and towns need responsible development considering their citizens as primary stakeholders. What may be defined as heritage from the etymons of the past, is in itself a process that demands thoroughness, inclusion of multiple perspectives and the ability to discern. This remains rightly the task of historians, archaeologists and architects with interpretation planners who may work together to craft narratives to promulgate this knowledge amongst local citizens and those interested. As these towns take centre-stage in touristic trails, as is envisioned for Chinsurah in the Europe on the Ganges Masterplan, the comprehension of heritage and its cultural and economic value can greatly serve the needs or destroy the local community. As we have come to see in many cases, communities that occupied homes that may have historic value, have slowly sold off to developers in guise of restoration efforts. The truth remains that for an average Indian, it is easier to sell a historic


property and live in a ‘builder flat’ (new build) than invest in the restoration and upkeep of the same. It is, one of the many vagaries of heritage tourism and little can be done to prevent this – an evolution that often leads to dissipation of the social fabric of neighbourhoods and communities. On another hand, should the community remain planted in situ, tourism may bring with it forces that propel economic revitalisation that local residents can leverage their positions within; and be a part of the flow such that sustainable and inclusive development may occur. To enable them to capitalise on the strategic roles they may play, a good comprehension of their own histories and heritage becomes essential and has therefore been the thrust of our work here at ICR with the Dutch in Chinsurah Project. Chinsurah at this point in history, is a dormant town in the landscape of West Bengal from where a considerable part of the population leaves its perimeter every morning to head to work in Kolkata or surrounding larger towns. A whole generation recalls people who left in the previous decades in search of a better life. To comprehend its own strengths and cultures in wake of ongoing plans that shall turn focus on the town over time, constructive feedback and insight must be harnessed in a manner that it has a positive impact on those who still live within it. Towards a Chinsurah that fits into the vision of the larger masterplan, placemaking efforts would be imperative. This project has brought to light the aspirations of Chinsurah, while allowing us to document and understand better, the social assets of the town. Over time, public spaces such as the Maidan, the riverfront and the other landmark nodes and buildings should remain at the heart of the town; nourishing communal capacities and enabling transformations that strengthen bonds between citizens, their environments and their shared histories. Drafting of a cultural strategy, if supported by the various stakeholders would further build on ideas of placemaking. Augmenting maximum-shared value for the community through thoughtful development would be in the interests of all stakeholders. Planning in the years to come should catalyse growth of sustainable micro-economies that engender civic pride and instill a sense of place. Preservation of authenticities would be another essential objective.

Conversations and Legacies People forget, if they have no way of documenting their histories and generations of stories may have been lost to time and ignorance. We may never know. However, the Chinsurah we know today needs to continue to remember the stories that make it unique within the histories of Bengal and the country. The project cannot end with us leaving little for the community to build on and so it becomes essential that their memories and ideas of their town be constantly logged. The project website, was envisioned to allow people to leave memory markers on the GIS maps – such that it becomes a living archive of conversations – however we’ve found that technology still presents a barrier for a lot of residents. They remain willing to share, but newer interfaces such as GIS may be difficult for them to grapple with – at this moment. The Facebook page (wall) presents a simpler medium of communication, where


the people of Chinsurah have been constantly encouraged to share photos, stories and anecdotes. The project team shall curate this and we shall upload the appropriate content onto the GIS maps ourselves, to keep this cycle of sharing alive. What becomes of the town in the next decade with plans for holistic and sometimes, piecemeal development needs to be seen - however an attempt to retroactively shape the town to restore nodes of the town purely as touristic centres needs rethinking. The invigoration and development of this whole district needs to be tackled as a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Our work with the cultural mapping Chinsurah is in hope to facilitate the same, such that by allowing data to remain accessible over an open source platform one may read multiple parameters in sequence or simultaneity to triangulate and infer useful patterns about the way the town currently functions.

IN CONCLUSION Urban Conservation and economies of tourism are two considerably different influencers for a medium sized town like Chinsurah in contemporary India. Whilst efforts in conservation are manifestations of the custodial tendencies from practices such as architecture and archaeology, development of precincts towards cultural tourism can easily slip into whirlpools of forces controlled by markets and commercial interests. To find a balance between public interest and commercial interest would be the real test of the masterplan, Europe on the Ganges. An integration of local social economies (resources, traditions, environment, people) would help stakeholders – involved agencies, government bodies etc - to build a sustainable tourism model that could equip this precinct of living heritage to hold its ground when the tourists march in. Urban continuity and preservation of morphologies of the town need to be taken into serious consideration. While the outreach and community engagement leg of the Dutch in Chinsurah project has been a small beginning to facilitate this transition, a lot remains to be done. A cultural strategy that is informed by and inturn influences planning and conservation is recommended to prevent the loss of the real place in the process of it evolving into a tourist destination.



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