Taj Mahal could be 'adopted' by a corporation. India's liberals need to get over it

Going by the panicked headlines of recent few days, one would think India's entire 5,000-year-old civilization is up for sale.

Liberal intellectuals are apoplectic at the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi government that the Red Fort, a 17th-century palace built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, is to be "adopted" by Dalmia Bharat, a private company that makes cement and sugar. But this time, India's liberals have it all wrong.

Admittedly, the Red Fort is not just a symbol of India; it is India. The first war of independence from the British was led from its ramparts in 1857. In the 1940s, soldiers of the Indian National Army (an anti-colonial militia founded by freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose) were imprisoned there and put on public trial. The Red Fort is a symbol of India's nationhood, and serves as the backdrop each year when the prime minister delivers his Independence Day address. Built during the Mughal dynasty, it is also a shining illustration of the diverse histories that framed the foundations of an avowedly pluralistic, modern democracy.

I can understand the instinctive resistance to the idea of big-bucks corporations taking control of India's heritage sites. But if we examine our own attitudes, we will come up short on reason and high on hypocrisy. Cash from the private sector bankrolls our newspapers, our television channels, university chairs and sometimes entire chains of colleges. It funds our health care, roadways, human-rights groups and nonprofit organizations. Yet we balk at the thought of private money in culture and heritage? Or are we as liberals that smug in our self-images as aesthetes, that we think only we can be the arbiters of good taste and artistic subtlety?

The government's "Adopt a Heritage" policy, which allows private organizations to patronize a monument and manage its peripheral facilities (i.e., bathrooms, cafes, ticketing, crowd-management and marketing) is actually a great idea, provided enough safeguards are built in. There are global parallels too: In Italy, luxury brands such as Tod's financed the restoration of the Colosseum in Rome, while Bulgari paid the bills for the Spanish Steps.

So far, 33 agencies have shown interest in adopting close to 100 of India's monuments. This includes the Taj Mahal, the UNESCO world heritage site globally known for being a testimony to love, and is a mandatory photo-op for every visiting prince or politician. But while we can still revel in the magnificence of our history, our glory, 70 years after Indian independence, is mostly in the tombstones of the past. Several monuments have been lovingly protected, but successive governments have failed to professionalize the management of these sites. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the administrative guardian to more than 3,000 monuments across the country, is cash-starved and overworked. It is also enmeshed in a morass of bureaucracy and inertia.

Tourism minister K.J. Alphons pulled no punches in an extraordinarily candid admission during an interview with me, one that deserves applause, but could land him in the headlines for the wrong reasons. "Not one monument or site in India is visitable," he said. "They are stinking dirty. Even at the Taj Mahal, where the monument itself is fine, the area around it is a terrible mess."

He is right. There is no defensible reason India should receive only 10 million foreign tourists a year, given our attractions. Compare this to the 82 million tourists received by Spain - a country roughly seven times smaller than India in size - and you have a sense of how underwhelming the performance is.

New Delhi recently unveiled the newly restored Humayan's Tomb and the 90 acres of gardens surrounding it, with 20,000 saplings and a breathtakingly landscaped green space - a veritable oxygen mask to the capital city's polluted lungs. The restoration was entirely done by the Aga Khan Foundation, and was initiated during the previous government led by the Indian National Congress. The current ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is correct in asking liberals why that was lauded while its move to do something similar is being slammed.

The answer could lie in the gladiatorial collision between the right and the left over India's history. The left has long accused the right - often with good reason - of rewriting history, and of entirely disowning some historical figures while culturally appropriating others. As governments change in India, so do school textbooks to reflect these alternations. At the heart of liberal apprehensions is the fear of right-wing prejudice and the rewriting of the content at museums and heritage sites. A BJP legislator in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, for instance, did not spare the Taj Mahal when he used the fact that it was built by a Mughal emperor as context for making anti-Muslim statements.

But the tourism minister has gone on record to underline that new foster parents to heritage sites will have no "access to the main monument and no power to restore or repair." The power to interpret history, too, remains solely with the ASI and "not a comma can be changed without its consent." Private players will be required to ensure that the public space of the heritage sites remain accessible and affordable for everyone. The government guarantees any commercial fees - whether they are for sandwiches or trinkets - will be subject to ministerial approval. And no, there isn't going to be an auction where the family gems will be sold to a costume jeweler. Any interested private party has to present a document outlining its vision that will be scrutinized by a government panel.

So, yes, India's moneybags might be seeking free advertising, great branding and tax benefits as their heritage grants come from corporate social-responsibility funds. But when private capital has permeated so many other liberal bastions, it is a bit late for us be socialist chic.

My quarrel with the government is not that the Dalmia Bharat Group gets to manage the facilities at Red Fort. It's that, at around $750,000 a year, they are paying too little to do so.

Dutt is an award-winning TV journalist and anchor with more than two decades of reporting experience. She is the author of "This Unquiet Land: Stories from India's Fault Lines." Dutt is based in New Delhi.

(COMMENT SECTION, BELOW )