The past is as important as the present and future

Once a proud showcase of India’s railway legacy, now lying forgotten in the mud at the Lonavala museum site. Pics/Devraj Malekar

The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) heritage gully in Mumbai, which is an open-air museum featuring rare relics like India's oldest electric and steam locomotives and parts of the original railway infrastructure, has been carelessly dismantled and relics relocated to Lonavala to make way for the CSMT's redevelopment into a ‘world-class' terminal.

The priceless artefacts, once showcased at the site, have now been transported to Lonavala, where they were reportedly damaged during transit and are currently lying abandoned on a muddy plot earmarked for a future museum, according to a report in this newspaper.

We need to plan our preservation at the time when new works or redevelopment are beginning. This should be factored in with plans for the redevelopment of an existing facility or site. Experts need to be called in to relocate existing heritage or history in the best possible way.

In fact, where we relocate artefacts must form a vital part of the entire relocation process. This will show how much value we have for our history and relics. We are quite right to rue a general lack of sensibility when it comes to heritage. It is something that is usually an afterthought, a kind of thing for the history geeks, a postscript to the main piece, perhaps. This is true of many amenities/public buildings where heritage is not given the same attention as rebuilding/redeveloping.

Making things shiny and new, but history is sacrificed or neglected in the new design. Let us tilt the scales so that the past, present and future have equal weight, and we learn that the past teaches invaluable lessons, not just for us but also the generations to come.