Competition Winners!

Winners:

                Photography : Devika Mayekar                                   Esaay Writing: Yash Agrawal

Winning Photos

    Intangible Heritage                                                  Tangible Heritage

Bridging the generation gap...                                   Heritage always prevails...


Winning Essay

Interpreting Cultural Heritage Sociologically (An Excerpt)

             The culture of any place is determined by its people and the features associated with them. Cultural heritage consists of folk-tales, language, dialect, myths, beliefs, life-style, cuisine, traditions, religious customs, clothing, indigenous industries and arts, festivals, values and manners, etc.. Mumbai being a metropolitan city has caused migration of people from all parts of India, and thus it has a diverse culture, affected by the ethnic groups residing here. Heritage includes the indications of our history that remain, and it is important to preserve, conserve or record them. Unfortunately, many people do not understand this importance, and they change the nature of surroundings, and damage our heritage. We can preserve tangible heritage such as architecture, but not necessarily some aspects of intangible heritage. Our cultural heritage may constitute both good and bad things. Some practices may be undesirable, unethical or unsuitable in the modern age. For example - superstitions. Yet, it is necessary to ‘record’ them, because they may be useful to us in future in finding what our origins are and finding solutions to our problems that have connection with the past. On the other hand, some activities are better if done in traditional way, than in the modern, newly introduced ways or methods.

But the step before conserving heritage is to interpret heritage. It is easy to understand others' cultural heritage, than to understand one’s own heritage and culture. This is because when we study others' cultures, we are able to identify the differences that they have with our culture, and thus we can know the characteristics of that culture. The study of societies emerged in that way; first the Europeans in the beginning of the modern age studied tribal cultures of faraway lands, and only then they were able to understand and describe their own culture and life-style. The same is true for the study of languages; by the comparative study of languages, scholars were able to understand the common grammatical principles that led to the development of linguistics. On the other hand, it is difficult to study our own culture, though it seems easy to, and though it is easy to practise it and live in it. This is because as we have been continually living by that culture, it has become ingrained in us and becomes a part of our life. We are likely to miss the nuances of our culture, and we may not be able to scientifically and impartially describe it. Some things may seem too common-sense to us, to be called a part of our culture. Thus, researchers may face this problem that their study might become subjective. It is affected by 'cultural relativism of ethics'.