Carve your Love on your heart, not on our Monuments

Aditi Panda

We observe World Heritage Day once in the year. But does that end our responsibility? Obviously NO because the monuments are timeless and matchless structures which hold a unique status in our heritage and it’s our duty to keep their splendour untouched and safeguard them.

However, when you visit these extraordinary architectural marvels it’s heartbreaking to find names of men and women or boys and girls scribbled on the walls and sculptures. Some are carved and some are even painted leaving a bad impression on the eyes and psyche of the onlooker. This becomes annoying for a true Indian to see the world heritage being defaced in this manner.

India boasts of a rich mythological history and a traditional past. Our country has a plethora of ancient archaeological construction in the form of temples, forts and monuments built by our ancestors and which are a delight to our eyes. Not only that, every artistic site has a story of bravery and heroism to tell.

Now the question arises is it necessary to write names on the walls of the monuments to show love for each other and many a times it’s a frivolous affair which evaporates in thin air before it actually gets started. But this gesture destroys the magnificence of our cherished structures and creates a bad impression on the visitors and tourists.

On one side there are reckless youngsters who ruin and damage our world heritage monuments but it’s exhilarating to know that on the other hand there are various youth groups in many cities who are on a mission to wipe down these eyesores and graffiti from our heritage sites.

Love is a superlative feeling but that does not give any citizen to damage our cultural heritage.”We have no right to harm anything which we cannot create. Our royalty have put in a great deal of labour, wealth and time to create each heritage and we cannot replicate them”, says retd. professor Digvijay Singh. He pleads to the youth to use some other way to display their love but spare our monuments from damage.

Youth for Seva is one such group that has come forward to clean our monuments. Sangram Patra an energetic young member of this high-spirited group said,” I and my friends had visited Khandagiri and Udaygiri caves which are one of the earliest Jain rock-cut shelters and make Odisha proud. While moving around, we saw many names were written on the walls and sculptures. It was very annoying and heartbreaking for us as it was destroying our inheritance. That’s when we all decided to clean these world famous caves.

“To proceed further we took permission from archaeology department to eradicate the names from the caves. We cleaned rocks and walls using cleaning brush, detergent water, tarpin, etc. However, the miserable part is that we were not able to clean Khandagiri completely in the same fashion as Udaygiri as the names were carved using sharp instruments,” added an agitated Sangram.

He appeals to more youth to join this cause and dedicate themselves to such work without expecting any personal gain as they plan to clean other historical monuments in Odisha. If anybody is interested you can contact them on their given numbers.

Sangram – 90900890990

Subrat – 9937083542​

(Aditi is a freelance writer and pursues interest in the area of social issues)