The Golden Takeover: Replacing Heritage on the Bhujiyo Hill
Natural disasters serve as crucial crossroads in the life of a city, presenting rare opportunities to choose what parts of the cultural landscape to restore and what to allow to remain fallow — in effect, be erased. This article explores one such pivotal moment: the rebuilding of the Indian city of Bhuj after a devastating earthquake in 2001, whose epicenter, Bhujiyo Dungar (or Bhujiyo hill, in Kutchi), the highest point in the city, sits at the convergence of three tectonic plates. At stake was nothing less than the city’s identity. For while the people went about rebuilding their lives, the state fundamentally transformed Bhujiyo Dungar — Bhuj’s most recognized site — from a place commemorating the city’s history to a tourist attraction memorializing the earthquake.
Figure 1. Bhujiyo Dungar with Bhujiyo Fort at the summit and the new Smriti Van Earthquake Memorial and Museum in the foreground. Photograph by Ninara, 2023. Courtesy Flickr under CC BY 2.0 license.
Bhujiyo Dungar has a rich and illustrious history beyond its geological importance. Three hundred years ago, in 1723, the local rulers, the Jadejas, built a fort atop it to serve as a defensive bulwark against Mughal and Gujarat Sultanate invasions, later updated to accommodate the transition from bows and arrows to firearms. (Underscoring the site’s strategic value, the British also erected a cantonment nearby.) During the battles with the Mughals, the Jadeja clan was aided by the Naga clan, who joined arms to protect the Kutch region. Until 1948, an annual public procession, led by the crown, on Nag Panchami (a day of worship dedicated to serpentine deities) paid homage to the Nagas. Bhujiyo Dungar has also long played an active part in the cultural practices of the city. Many of the Bhujiyo’s flora, for instance, are well-known to be essential to local medicinal practices.
Figure 2. Looking up toward the final Bastion of the fort wall from the new sunset point of the Smriti Van Memorial. Photograph by Roshini Pushparaj, 2023.
Figure 3. The apertures for firearm defense in the old Bhujiyo Fort wall. Photograph by Raj Sompura, 2018, annotated by Roshini Pushparaj with permission.
Figure 4. Map of the Bhujiyo Dungar. Illustrated by Roshini Pushparaj, 2023.
The fort’s majestic structures, along with Bhujang Dev temple — a place of worship named for the serpentine god, and regularly visited by locals — dominated the city’s skyline for centuries. Built with Kodaki, a local sandstone with a distinctive grayish appearance, it withstood several major earthquakes, including two in the nineteenth century, despite a lack of a foundation. Perhaps a result of compatibility with the hill's stratification, it required only minor repairs. The temblor in 2001, however, which measured 7.6 on the Richter scale, was different. Most of the fort’s bastions and connecting walls were damaged, prompting the Indian Army, which had controlled it since 1948, to abandon it and cede control of much of the site to the state.
“The new museum and the disassociation of the fort have struck a blow to the city’s identity.”
Figure 5. View of the Bhujiyo Fort wall and the Bhujang Dev Temple. Photograph by Bhargavinf, 2012. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 6. The Bhujiyo Fort wall, originally of built gray Kodaki stone, whose random-rubble course work is visible at top, has been repaired with golden Khavda stone, laid in stretcher bond, below, echoing the new architecture. Photograph by Raj Sompura, 2018.
Responsibility for rebuilding lay with the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority. But rather than restore the fort — along with the rest of the city — the government only reviewed it for regenerative work. Instead, officials focused on the construction of a new tourist attraction dedicated to the lives lost in the earthquake: the Smriti Van Earthquake Memorial and Museum, designed by Rajeev Kathpalia (of Balkrishna Doshi’s Vastushilpa Consultants) and opened in 2022.
The new complex offers a linear and chronological account of events and features several dam memorials (inspired by the regional stepwell architecture) and a museum that focuses on providing a sensory journey. Catering to the market demand for reductive “experiences,” it conveys the elemental nature of the earthquake and the terrors it wrought: the feel of cold metal as visitors grab railings in the earthquake simulator; the sound of real recordings of people crying for help during the disaster, broadcast from an installation of red phone receivers looming overhead. The museum also offers an easy narrative: that of the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes. As one walks along new paths of Khavda stone, whose golden hue contrasts with the grey Kodaki, surrounded by Miyawaki forest designed to hide and reveal the memorial dams as visitors move through space, one feels not sadness but optimism. Ascending the hill towards a sunset vista, the route reveals not the city’s long history, but a blinkered view of a city renewed that leaves much out. (Indeed, walk down into the heart of the city betrays a more complicated reality, of past and present co-existing.)
Figure 7. View of the dam memorials from the Bhujiyo Fort wall. Photograph by Nizil Shah, 2016. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 8. Overlooking Bhuj from Bhujiyo Dungar, with new walkway paved in gold-hued Khavda stone. Photograph by Roshini Pushparaj, 2023.
The choice of the golden Khavda stone for the paths (and other elements of Bhujiyo Fort that had to be conserved to avoid further decay), was pragmatic. Kodaki, now under the jurisdiction of the Gujarat Forest Department, is no longer open to quarrying. Even if it were, it doesn’t meet today’s standards for strength. Still, the shift in materials also feels symbolic. Enveloping the old gray structures in a new sea of gold parallels a shift in the hill’s public meaning, from a site celebrating military victory and independence, to a quasi-sacred space, directed mainly to tourists and schoolchildren, commemorating perseverance over natural disaster. The gold stone also concretizes a sense of eternal helplessness by disrupting what Pierre Nora describes as the “dialectic of remembering and forgetting,” an essential process for formation of collective memory. Meanwhile, despite being a mere ten feet apart, there is no direct access between the bastion of the old fort and the new sunset point of the Smriti Van. To reach one from the other, visitors must circumnavigate the entire hill.
Many in Bhuj support the government’s transformation of Bhujiyo Hill. They welcome the flow of tourists from across India, and the money they spend. But the new museum and the disassociation of the fort have struck a blow to the city’s identity. The earthquake was horrendous and the lives lost deserve a memorial. But the Smriti Van has greatly diminished the rich significance of Bhujiyo Hill in the collective memory of locals.
Author’s note: This research was aided by the CEPT Center for Heritage Conservation, Ahmedabad, and the Pragmahal Archives, Bhuj.
Citation
Roshini Pushparaj, The Golden Takeover: Replacing Heritage on the Bhujiyo Hill,” PLATFORM, July 31, 2023.
