Destruction Of Memory Essay

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to light and freedom.” These famous words of Jawaharlal Nehru from the ‘Tryst with Destiny’, is still etched in our hearts that runs a memory of the striking and glorious post-independence era.
But a few months ago, at the stoke of the midnight hour, something terrible happened that shook the architecture fraternity all over India. “Hall of Nations demolished.”, the newspapers read the next day. “It was less than 60 years old, hence couldn’t be considered as heritage.”, the authorities answered.

~ Intangible heritage.
I truly believe that intangible heritage is the soul of tangible heritage. And this intangible memory is the source of our endearment towards a building

We 're all familiar with examples from ISIS recently destroying tangible heritage as acts of war. Destruction not only shatters a nation’s culture and morale but is also a deliberate act of eradicating a culture’s memory and, ultimately, its existence. As the author of ‘The Destruction of Memory’, Robert Bevan, so eloquently explains that, the destruction of culture - of buildings, books, and art - is often not an accidental consequence of conflict. Intangible cultural heritage can be harnessed to ameliorate those acts of war. Wars are about memory and interpretations of the past. We must learn to reinterpret. Yes, losing tangible heritage does cripple the memory. But we need to believe in healing, through remembering. It’s the book that has been torn down. Not the story. If we forget the story, that’s when we lose heritage forever. But if we encourage ourselves to commemorate and memorialize these stories, I truly believe we can rewrite them in a more beautiful book, when the right time comes. Surely, the books to our future will be just as noble and treasured, as the ones from our