World Heritage Sites

Legacy and blessings exists today in the form of some places which resemble the culture of our ancestors and their thoughts.

A quote by Jawaharlal Nehru "Culture is the widening of the mind and of the heart“, was the first prime minister of Independent India-But why did he say so? Because culture does so! It connects us with our ancestors and their wisdom as well as their blessings. Our ancestors no longer live but they live in the legacy they have left for all of us to dive deep inside to the origin of our selves. This legacy and blessings exist today in the form of some places which resemble the culture of our ancestors and their thoughts.

Steve berry an American author has so rightly said that an effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies because they are all of the things that quite literally make us who we are. The legacy exists in the form of Monuments and Sites which are of historical and cultural importance.It is a Shared wealth of humankind itself! In order to preserve them on 18 April 1982, The International Council for Monuments and sites had organized the symposium in Tunisia and put up a proposal for the protection of such sites. But they wanted to celebrate this day. It was then ratified with UNESCO general conference was held and a resolution at its 22nd session in November 1983 was passed declaring 18th April as "International Monuments and Sites Day”. It traditionally came to be called as "World Heritage Day".

Hence we must improvise on ourselves by contributing little to protect such sites by not littering and keeping it clean. Recently we hear instances of acid rain on Taj Mahal where it corroded the walls of the Palace hence ruining the walls and in turn heritage. Such things have to be considered. Hence a new point comes to view that to preserve the heritage we need to preserve our environment first. The recent news says otherwise. The new enemy and danger to world heritage sites is terrorism. Its news of 18 January 2016, the invaluable legacy of humanity’s common heritage was under attack in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. Heritage sites were destroyed and looted to finance terrorism. Individuals were persecuted on religious and cultural grounds almost every day. This is so bad. We need to be aware of even this. Terrorism knows no religion. The people who terrorize and kill people at so massive level do not care about such heritages.

Another instance where a French man took a photograph of a site. Some years ago, French architect Yves Ubelmann was working in Afghanistan and there he took a seemingly minor picture of a village with mud homes. When he returned to the site two years later, the village was gone. The architect felt sad and he said if we don’t know where we have come from, we will not know where we are going.

Hence now it’s a collective responsibility to protect and preserve such heritage sites.