The fight to protect Bengaluru's precious Cubbon park and its heritage

It is not just about lung space, it is also about the missing ‘heritage law’ to preserve the city’s vanishing old structures.

news Environment/Urban Infrastructure

“The issue of Cubbon Park is emotive and non-negotiable. Allowing the seven-storey structure will set a bad precedent,” says Priya Chetty-Rajagopal, one of the founders of Heritage Beku, a citizens’ initiative to preserve Bengaluru’s heritage.

Priya is one of the many citizens in the city who are gravely disappointed by the recent Karnataka High Court order allowing the demolition of a pre-19th-century heritage building inside Cubbon Park, to make way for a seven-storey annexe building for the High Court. An online petition by Heritage Beku seeking the reversal of the order has got more than 13,000 signatures; around 500 citizens turned up to protest against the demolition order on Sunday.

The collective anger is based on two prime reasons: although the government has said no trees should be cut for the construction of the new building, activists question its practicality. Secondly, residents are miffed by the scant regard to preserve the vanishing heritage of Bengaluru.

A threat to Bengaluru’s green space

“Cubbon Park is an essential part of the city’s identity,” says Priya, who started the online petition and is organising a series of activities (including Sunday’s protest) on the issue. “The park has already reduced in size due to several sports and recreational clubs inside the park. If this continues, our posterity will identify Cubbon Park as a single tree looking over the statue of Cubbon.”

Incidentally, the HC had also denied permission to construct a swimming pool inside the park in May.

Citizen-activists are likely to contest the judgement based on multiple legal technicalities, including a blanket ban on further construction in the park.

Umesh Kumar, an advocate and president of the Cubbon Park Walkers Association, says, “Even if no tree is cut, there will be at least an additional 200 cars coming into the park if the building is constructed. Where will all these cars be parked?”

To put a number on the loss of green cover, a 2015 study by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) found that the green cover in the city is likely to reduce to as low as 2.96% in 2020 compared to 38.7% green cover in 2002. In 1973, the tree cover was 68.2% in Bengaluru, which was also known as the ‘Garden City’ due to the extensive green space.

Even while the issue was in court, citizens had pinned their hopes on the Revised Master Plan 2031, which proposed provisions for the conservation of heritage buildings.

Noting how successive governments continued to neglect the issue, Priya says, “As part of the citizen feedback, we had sent the Bengaluru Development Authority a 50-page supplementary set of inputs on structure and functioning of a heritage body, along with a list of heritage structures in the city. There was no response. Now, the Revised Master Plan is further delayed as it is under legal scrutiny due to some other issue.”

Read: Bengaluru’s heritage Russell Market may face the axe for Smart City plan

Lack of concern from authorities

Incidentally, the Bangalore Urban Arts Commission, which was functioning under the Urban Development Department, was unceremoniously disbanded in 2002, leaving no public authority to protect the city’s heritage structures. Over the years, many private heritage structures have vanished and those owned by the government kept crumbling.

Arun Prasad, an activist, says that there is clear neglect by officials in maintaining old buildings. “There is little chance of kickbacks when maintenance work is issued to a contractor. They, however, wait for the building to develop cracks, then declare it ‘unsafe for use’ and clear it for demolition,” he says, citing Janatha Bazaar, the 100-year-old Krumbigal Hall in Lalbagh, Attara Kacheri (Karnataka High Court) and the University Union Building as some examples.

Read: ‘We are gutted’: Bengaluru’s heritage enthusiasts upset as colonial-era house razed

A ‘heritage law’ is long overdue

Experts and activists agree that heritage conservation can be empowered with a state-wide law, which is missing in Karnataka. Other than the sites under the Archaeological Survey of India, there are no legal provisions to protect heritage structures.

“Ideally, there should be a heritage law to preserve at least those buildings that are owned and maintained by the government,” says Yashawani Sharma, urban historian and architect.

“Bengaluru has a lot of heritage in terms of buildings but also there is a lot of tangible heritage in the form of inscription stones, statues, other heritage structures and natural heritage structures like parks and tanks. With the disappearance of these buildings, we have lost the vision of our old leaders. For example, we used to have a tradition of rainwater harvesting system but those have been all lost as these structures also vanished,” she says, while pointing to the system followed in Mysuru.

“Mysuru has a Heritage Committee, which was formed by a Gazette notification in 2004. This dedicated committee has been able to do a fine job in restoring the city’s old charm,” she says.

The committee has seven non-official members in addition to the official members from the Mysuru City Corporation and the Mysuru Urban Development Authority, among others.

Elucidating further, professor NS Rangaraju, an acclaimed historian who is part of the Heritage Committee, says, “We attend bi-monthly meetings chaired by the District Collector and consider issues that we notice or come to us through the public. Once notified, the authorities are assigned to restore and maintain the structures. Other than buildings, we have also been able to preserve 80 to 100-year-old trees, water tanks and even private structures.”

A city with no identity?

Suresh Moona, another noted historian, says Bengaluru’s changing cityscape in the next decade or two will mean that it will no longer be different from any other city.

He describes how Bengaluru had a lot of trees and buildings with large windows, but with the real estate boom, we are no longer concerned about the identity or beauty of the city.

“The very culture of the city has been eroding since the 2000s. This was not the case when erstwhile leaders were ruling the nation. They were very particular about buildings that were coherent with the city’s culture. That’s why regions like Basavangudi, Cantonment and Chamrajpet still have their quaint charm intact,” he says.

Read: Heritage Beku: Activists upset as HC paves way for demolishing building in Cubbon Park