https://epaper.timesgroup.com/Olive/ODN/TimesOfIndia/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=TOIGO%2F2019%2F02%2F04&entity=Ar00705&sk=2C3C077B&mode=text (abridged)
Some good news for the threatened built heritage of Goa last week, when Town and Country Planning minister Vijai Sardesai announced he would try to create incentives for heritage homestays and hotels across the state, in an effort to preserve and promote the spectacular architectural legacy created by previous generations. He said, “we are trying to create a scheme wherein old houses can be turned into homestays by giving them sops, like tax exemption. We are trying to create the scheme along with other tourism schemes, and I will speak to the tourism minister because there is no other way to preserve heritage” adding “we also have to speak to chief minister Manohar Parrikar, who is the finance minister, because the scheme has financial implications.” Sardesai said the inspiration for his new ideas come from Rajasthan, where state support has helped to turn many havelis across the desert state into well-regarded tourism destinations, homestays and hotels. But that’s part of an international trend, and indeed much the same is already underway in Goa, where outstanding example including the magnificent Figueiredo House in Loutolim, the longtstanding award-winnwe Arco Iris in Curtorim, and the outstandingly hospitable Casa Menezes in Batim, where younger generations of Goans have made appropriate use of their ancestral properties to create unique hospitality options. In recent years, scores of entrepreneurs from other parts of India and the world have also joined in this adaptive reuse of old homes. Actually, it’s somewhat tragic the government of Goa is only just waking up to the world class caliber of the state’s Luso-Indian architecture, so often grotesquely mischaracterized as “Portuguese”. In fact, as Panjim-based architect Raya Shankhwalker (and current Secretary of Goa Heritage Action Group) has written, there are no such houses in Europe, and “ill informed real-estate brokers have coined the term, which reflects a deeply ignorant conception of the complex, multi-layered evolution of architecture in Goa. It is wrong, even offensively wrong, and it is extremely irritating to see the term actually gain popularity instead of being discarded.” Far from being Portuguese, the houses, temples and churches built in Goa in the latter centuries of the colonial period are profound expression of the fluid, endlessly adaptive world view of the natives. Paulo Varela Gomes, the late architectural historian, wrote these are “unique in the world history of architecture…They represent one of the more remarkable contributions to the history of building.” Most crucially, he adds, “to anyone with architectural and artistic sensitivity, these [structures] don’t seem to be the end result of a compromise but the affirmative artistic statement of a cultural position.” Given the uniqueness and importance of Goa’s architecture, its rampant destruction in the 21stcentury is criminal. All over the state, entire neighborhoods have been heedlessly bulldozed in the name of development, without concern about environmental, social or cultural costs. Even in the tiny conservation zones earmarked in Panjim and Margao, buildings are constantly torn down and rebuilt, often egregiously flouting heritage norms. Others are hijacked in plain sight, such as the superb (and expensively restored) gallery spaces of the Adil Shah palace at the heart of the capital’s waterfront, now occupied by bureaucrats, with air conditioning vents shockingly punched through 500-year-old walls. Though very far from delivering anything useful, there’s no doubt Vijai Sardesai has absorbed an essential insight about Goa’s treasure trove of architectural heritage, in that he wants to co-ordinate his TCP with the Tourism and Finance ministries, under the aegis of the chief minister himself. This is the kind of importance the crisis deserves. The solutions require decisive action, preferably from a department for heritage that has its own ministerial representation in the cabinet. This is how it works in other countries. Prompt action here could indeed mean fresh daylight and a new beginning for Goan architecture.
