Monuments to Decay and Neglect

By Hans W. van Santen

India was one of the cornerstones in the all-Asia trading system the Company developed. Often its important role within this Asian trading network system is underestimated. The trading relationship did not evolve into a colonial relationship as was the case in Indonesia, but its importance is well established: as Om Prakash has shown, in Bengal many tens of thousands of weavers depended upon the VOC demand for cotton and silk. In Kerala, the East India Company played an important role in state formation. My own research on Gujarat and Hindustan in the seventeenth century describes the crucial importance of the VOC as the largest foreign trader in these areas.
The collapse of the VOC at the end of the eighteenth century also marked the end of the Dutch presence, although in some cases factories remained operational for some decades into the 19th century. All that remained afterwards were factories, forts, churches, cemeteries and some garrisons. After having visited some of the old VOC sites in India, I believe that they all have one thing in common; the fact that they are neglected and that the condition of most of these important historical and cultural monuments is deteriorating very rapidly. They are monuments to decay and neglect.

Owing to rapidly expanding urbanization in India, the land on which these monuments stand is often in great demand and so are the bricks, wooden parts, etcetera. If nothing happens, the combination of the monsoon, the extreme heat in the summer, and theft will mean the total disappearance of these monumental remnants of Dutch entrepreneurship of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the interaction between Dutch and Indian culture.

Action plan
My suggestion would be to try to work out a sort of VOC conservation action plan for India. The first stage will be to make an inventory of what still remains. To my knowledge no fully documented description of all Dutch sites exists although I know that over the last decades attempts have been made to compile such a work. The CNO, the Foundation for the Cultural History of the Netherlands Overseas, also has a very successful collection of descriptions and pictures. What is urgently required, however, is to make an updated list of all objects in India, giving full details of the sites and the actual physical state of the objects. The second phase could be to make a shortlist of priorities. To attend to all the sites at once will be too much of a financial burden; what is needed is to make a list of say ten objects that require the most urgent attention and an analysis of how to restore them as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. The last phase could be to actually start restoring these monuments. Participation of Indian organizations, such as the Archaeological Survey and Indian NGOs in the field of cultural heritage, would of course be crucial at all stages.
The crux of the problem will be how to finance the project. This is particularly relevant to the actual phase of restoring some of the monuments. The making of a fully detailed inventory and analysis of the objects deserving priority interest can be done on a limited budget. There are reasons for optimism. Once a good project proposal has been drawn up, financing will follow, either from the public sector or through private donations.
This is only a very general sketch of how efforts might be made to ensure that the rapid deterioration of VOC sites can be stopped. A full debate on how to halt this process of neglect and decay is crucial. The remaining cemeteries, forts, and houses of the VOC in India are part of the common heritage of the Netherlands and India. It is worth the effort to try to conserve and restore this heritage.

Dr H.W. van Santen works at the Dutch Embassy in new Delhi, India