Saving B'lore heritage buildings a monumental task

Protecting heritage buildings in the State capital has become difficult with no count of how many such structures exist at present.

With not a single structure gazetted, be it the iconic Vidhana Soudha or the less-visible Balabrooie guesthouse, Bangalore is struggling to save its history. 

In the last 65 years, since Independence, only one informal listing of heritage structures was made by a concerned citizen, K N Iyengar, in Bangalore. Pedalling his way across the City on a bicycle, Iyengar is said to have listed 200 monuments and buildings in the mid-1980s. Since then, the City has transformed itself by trying to appeal to the modern world and losing many of its glorious buildings of yesteryears.

The 153-year-old Balabrooie guesthouse, which is all set to make way for a state-of-the-art legislators club, according some informed people, was also one among those listed by Iyengar for being protected as a monument.

Civil society members state that the government has time and again failed to listen to their pleas of conducting an inventory of the heritage structures in Bangalore. “We have been having regular talks with the government for doing an inventory of the heritage structures in the City. But there appears to be absolute apathy for conducting such surveys,” said INTACH co-convenor Satya Prakash Varanashi.

Varanashi said the government needs to wake up and take note of the City losing its heritage and make an attempt to protect the structures which are a century old.

The State archaeology department sources said that the government, after nearly two years since proposing the name of Bangalore as a heritage city, has given the contract to a private agency for doing an inventory of the monuments in Bangalore and other parts of the State. However, there has been a delay in completing the process, the officials said.