Critical Asian Studies

ISSN: 1467-2715 (Print) 1472-6033 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcra20

Evicting heritage: spatial cleansing and cultural

legacy at the Hampi UNESCO site in India

Natalia Bloch

To cite this article: Natalia Bloch (2016): Evicting heritage: spatial cleansing and
cultural legacy at the Hampi UNESCO site in India, Critical Asian Studies, DOI:
10.1080/14672715.2016.1224129

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2016.1224129

Published online: 22 Sep 2016.

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CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2016.1224129

Evicting heritage: spatial cleansing and cultural legacy at the

Hampi UNESCO site in India
Natalia Bloch
Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The Indian village of Hampi, site of a medieval Hindu Empire Received 11 December 2015
that is now a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Accepted 14 June 2016
Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, was until recently
KEYWORDS
inhabited by a vibrant community of farmers-turned-small Spatial cleansing; contested
entrepreneurs reliant on tourism. However, since 2011 the village cultural heritage; Hampi;
has been undergoing spatial cleansing resulting in the eviction of UNESCO world heritage;
people and the demolition of their homes and businesses. The anthropology of colonial
residents, portrayed in the official discourse as “illegal legacies
encroachers” and a threat to monuments, have been subjected to
power relations imposed on them by postcolonial authorities
guided by a hegemonic approach to material heritage. This paper
analyzes what has happened at Hampi through a theoretical
framework of the anthropology of colonial legacies as an effect of
mimicry. It also demonstrates how villagers have countered the
state claim of Hampi as an outdoor museum with the concept of
living heritage. However, perceived by authorities as neither
native nor traditional enough, they have failed to win claims to
this heritage site.

Introduction
Hampi, located in the south Indian state of Karnataka, has become a highly contested
space of competing, contradictory interests and incommensurable perceptions on cultural
heritage. While dissonance is an intrinsic quality of the making of heritage,1 the process at
Hampi has resulted in spatial cleansing.2 The farmers-turned-petty entrepreneurs of the
tourism sector, who once inhabited a lively settlement and a vibrant bazaar, have been
evicted and their abodes and businesses demolished. However, this modern history of
Hampi village has been almost completely outshone by its archaeological dimension:
the remains of fortifications, palaces, and places of worship that belonged to the capital
of the Hindu Vijayanagara Kingdom (1336–1646) which at its zenith stretched over
almost the whole of south India. Established in the fourteenth century, Hampi was aban-
doned two centuries later after being raided by Deccan Sultans. Its sacred center, however
– the Virupaksha Temple dedicated to the local emanation of Shiva – has survived as an

CONTACT Natalia Bloch nbloch@amu.edu.pl

1
Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996.
2
Herzfeld 2006.
© 2016 BCAS, Inc.
2 N. BLOCH

important pilgrimage destination. This religious and mythological facet of Hampi is

associated with episodes of the great Hindu Ramayana epic.3
This paper reveals the complex dynamics of heritage as a powerful discourse of knowl-
edge and power at work. Through reconstructing the intricate scenario that ultimately led
to spatial cleansing, I demonstrate how the residents of Hampi village have been subjected
to power relations imposed on them by the authorities of the postcolonial state of India
and these authorities’ acceptance of a hegemonic approach to material heritage that
rests on a belief that sites should be “conserved as found” for their inherent aesthetic
and historical value.4 Employing a theoretical framework that combines the anthropology
of colonial legacies5 and analytical concepts from postcolonial theory, I analyze how this
archaeological paradigm of material preservation has been constructed in the Indian
context since the colonial period and how it has overlapped with the UNESCO World
Heritage regime that accepts the same principles. This paradigm has excluded the resi-
dents of Hampi by framing them as “illegal encroachers” who pose a threat to the monu-
ments by squatting and exploiting them economically. This is an example of displacement
that has happened not in the name of development “to make way for another shopping
mall, golf course or new condominium complex,” but for heritage preservation, as in
the case of Wutai Shan, a Buddhist UNESCO World Heritage Site in China.6 In this
study I also aim to reveal the silenced voices of the evicted and soon-to-be evicted residents
of Hampi. I present the ways they have attempted to resist the definition of the site as an
outdoor museum, bounded, and secured, with people replaced by manicured lawns. They
initially did so by simply ignoring the rules imposed on them and later, by unsuccessfully
negotiating access to intangible heritage status. I analyze why these attempts have failed
(i.e. why Hampi residents have been excluded by both the tangible and intangible
regimes), given that another village community situated within the Hampi UNESCO
site, Anegondi, has succeeded with claims to land and intangible heritage, and has
managed to avoid eviction.
This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hampi between 2013 and
2014 within a broader multi-sited research project on power relations in the Indian
tourism sector. I combined participant observation in the disappearing village with inter-
views and informal talks with residents. In addition, I followed a multi-sited approach7
and established contact with other stakeholders, decision-makers, and administrators at
the local, central, and transnational levels, in order to understand their perspectives.
These included representatives of the UNESCO Office in New Delhi, the Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI) Hampi office, the Hampi World Heritage Area Management Auth-
ority (HWHAMA), district authorities, non-governmental organizations, religious
leaders, and both Indian and foreign archaeologists and architects involved in research
and planning at Hampi.8 This first-hand data was supported by an analysis of secondary

3
Specifically the adventures of Rama and Hanuman. The monkey kingdom Kishkindha is popularly believed to have been
situated where Hampi is located today.
4
Choay 2001.
5
de L’Estoile 2008.
6
Shepherd 2012, 92.
7
Marcus 1995.
8
From, inter alia, Kannada University in Kamalapur and the Department of Architectural Conservation of the School of Plan-
ning and Architecture in New Delhi.
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 3

sources that included a prominent 2009 court case, press reports, guidebooks and photo
albums, and official documents.9
I arrived in Hampi in February 2013, one and a half years after evictions had started.
The atmosphere in the village was tense and insecure, especially among those residents
who had not yet been evicted and still had a lot to lose. People were suspicious and
treated overly inquisitive outsiders as potential spies. The fact that I do not come from
the more powerful part of the world helped me. As a young woman from a post-socialist
country, I was able to dispel fears that I may have been associated with UNESCO. Never-
theless, it took me a considerable length of time, casual visits, talks, and lots of chai, to win
the trust of villagers. My strength was that I wanted to talk to them while no authorities
were interested in doing so. Still there was no chance for formalized, recorded interviews
as my research partners were hypersensitive in regard to confidentiality, so hanging out
and chatting was the best way to find out what people thought about the situation.
Above all, residents hoped that I could help them to figure out the authorities’ plans for
those who had not yet been evicted. They believed that my academic credentials would
force officials to talk to me and clarify the situation. In reality, most officials were reluctant
to speak with an intrusive young female researcher, while some of them talked to me
openly but unofficially.
In academic texts, Hampi is represented mostly by its archaeological and mythologi-
cal facets, reflected in a large stock of books and papers written by both Indian and
non-Indian scholars on Vijayanagara’s history, architecture, religion, arts, literature,
political system, and economy.10 Some of these are the outcome of a long-term survey
of the site co-directed by Australian architectural historian George Michell and
American archaeologist and anthropologist John M. Fritz in cooperation with the
then-Karnataka Department of Archaeology and Museums and its director M.S.
Nagaraja Rao. This continued for over two decades in the 1980s and 1990s. Other
publications are the work of researchers associated with the Archaeological Survey of
India (ASI). However, there have been very few anthropological studies of contemporary
Hampi.11
Much has been written from an anthropological perspective on the Eurocentric concept
of cultural heritage that guides UNESCO in its approach to world heritage, as well as its
notions of conservation, integrity, and authenticity.12 Bottom-up, ethnographic accounts
have shown the impact of the interplay of a world heritage regime and national agencies
on ordinary people’s everyday lives in locations as various as Thailand, Mali, and Nepal.13
The concept of heritage in relation to nationalism and exclusionary processes has also
been studied widely.14 This paper demonstrates that the Hampi case is not a simple

9
This court case was Writ Petition 29843/2009, used as the legal basis for forced evictions. Official documents include, inter
alia, UNESCO-ICOMOS Reports on Hampi, the site’s Management and Master Plans, and Indian state Acts and Gazette
Notifications.
10
For example, Kotraiah 2008, Verghese 2000, Gollings, Fritz, and Michell 1991, Fritz and Michell 2001, Sinopoli and Morri-
son 2007.
11
But see, for example, the study of the Chariot Festival by Das 1996. Of particular import to this paper is Stian Krog’s thesis
on local notions of space (2007), based on fieldwork in Hampi before it underwent spatial cleansing, and Matthew
LeDuc’s research on relations between tourism and heritage (2012), which was also undertaken before evictions in
the village started.
12
For example, Eriksen 2001, Fontein 2000.
13
Herzfeld 2006, Joy 2010, Owens 2002. See also Brumann and Berliner 2016.
14
Boswell and Evans 1999, Shepherd 2006, Silverman 2011.
4 N. BLOCH

story of direct imposition of a Eurocentric view of material heritage and preservation, but
rather is an outcome of a postcolonial appropriation by Indian state authorities of this dis-
course combined with UNESCO principles.

Setting the stage: village-making in Hampi

At the beginning of the twentieth century there were probably no more than a few people
living in Hampi, described by a colonial surveyor at the time as “a hamlet … of no
importance itself.”15 This changed, however, in the late 1940s and early 1950s when
severe droughts in the area pushed people to search for new homes. Hampi proved to
be a good choice. Located by the holy, life-giving Tungabhadra River with a new dam
constructed nearby, it was surrounded by irrigable lands that needed agricultural
labor. The descendants of those migrants recall that many of them initially settled in
the Virupaksha Temple’s vast courtyard which protected them from wild animals.
When the number of settlers breached the capacity of the temple, people, partly encour-
aged by Virupaksha authorities, occupied the mandapas, the colonnaded pavilions lining
the nearly one-kilometer-long bazaar in front of the sanctuary. In the 1970s, Indian
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi initiated a land reform and housing project for landless
farm laborers,16 and at the beginning of the 1980s seventy-two families in Hampi
were given plots behind the mandapas where they could build small houses. Other vil-
lagers remained in the pavilions.17 In addition to farming, they catered for the temporary
needs of pilgrims visiting the temple. These pilgrims had been joined in the 1970s by
European hippies attracted to Hampi’s peace and quiet, in contrast to the then hippie
mecca of Goa.
In 1986 the archaeological complex of Hampi was inscribed on the UNESCO World
Heritage List. This attracted tourists from all over the world. Consequently, most
Hampi residents abandoned less-profitable farming and shifted towards the tourism
sector. They turned their dwellings into guest houses and eateries and put souvenir and
snack stalls inside and in front of the mandapas to provide services to backpackers,
who constituted the majority of foreign tourists in Hampi. As with every tourist destina-
tion, Hampi soon drew the attention of job seekers. Some were seasonal migrants from
Kashmir, Rajasthan, Nepal, and Tibet, following the tourist seasons. Others, from the sur-
rounding countryside, were mostly poor, uneducated people trying to make ends meet
from petty businesses such as selling coconuts, peanuts, or postcards from carts, makeshift
shelves, or along the roadside. They found the mandapas perfect for dwelling. This lively
settlement surrounding the Virupaksha Temple and the bustling bazaar coexisted with the
scattered monuments until July 2011, when district authorities and the body responsible
for managing the Hampi World Heritage site, under the pretext of executing an order
from the High Court of Karnataka State, gave the go ahead to remove people and their
dwellings from the area.

15
Francis 1904, 259.
16
Kohli 1987.
17
Some were not in the records so they were not granted the plots, and some did not want to move for different personal
reasons.
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 5

Spatial cleansing
Zoning, regulating, correcting
According to foreign archaeologists affiliated with the Vijayanagara Research Project,
economic changes in the livelihood of residents, combined with an increase in the village’s
population as a result of inward migration, “accelerated conflicting efforts to develop the
site and to conserve the archaeological record.”18 They were referring to the infrastructure
investments in the area by the Government of Karnataka State, which often contradicted
the goals of archaeologists. The latter includes the ASI, which on the basis of The Ancient
Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958 is responsible for preser-
ving and caring for “monuments of national importance,” including those inscribed on the
UNESCO World Heritage List. The Hampi site consist of fifty-eight structures that are
protected under this act. Because of this large number, ASI maintains a local office in
nearby Kamalapur. The Karnataka State Department of Archaeology, Museums, and
Heritage has jurisdiction over an additional approximately 1600 monuments, which are
not protected by the ASI. Under pressure from UNESCO, the Hampi World Heritage
Area Management Authority (HWHAMA) has been established in order to manage the
site in an integrated way, although in practice its focus is on protection. Consequently,
HWHAMA includes no representatives from the Hampi Gram Panchayat (village
elected government).
During my field research, Hampi villagers offered several narratives of blame regarding
eviction and demolition. Among those they blamed was “the government.” This catch-all
term covered all forms of officialdom at national, state, district, and local levels. All were
believed to be corrupt. Another focus of blame was political parties. Villagers who sup-
ported the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accused the Indian National
Congress (INC), which controlled the national government at the time and was respon-
sible for appointing officers at district levels. Those who voted for the INC (a minority
in the village) blamed the BJP, which held power at the state level when the evictions in
Hampi started. The more educated villagers blamed “ordinary people” for sticking to
their particular interests, while the latter accused the former of not representing them
effectively. The poorer residents complained that they lost everything while the more afflu-
ent answered that they had lost more. Secular villagers who provide services to tourists,
claimed that Brahmins wanted to appropriate Hampi for their “pilgrimage business.”
Despite these divisions, blaming “archaeology people” and UNESCO was most
common. The owner of the first chai shop and eatery in Hampi recounted the situation
when he opened his small business in 1971:
At that time only the temple was here, no archaeology. The problems started when archae-
ological people came to Hampi. It was in 1981 or 1982,19 when they came and told me: “you
have to move, this is not your place.” But at that time there was no demolition, they gave
time, slowly I could look for a new place.

The drawing of the boundaries of the protected area by multiple authorities involved
in Hampi’s heritage management placed villagers within zones that had not existed.

18
Vijayanagara Research Project 2014.
19
In 1982 Hampi was nominated by the Archaeological Survey of India for UNESCO World Heritage status.
6 N. BLOCH

Figure 1. Signs put by the Archaeological Survey of India in Hampi. Photo: Natalia Bloch 2013.

These included “core,” “buffer,” and “peripheral” zones;20 a “prohibited area”

and “regulated area;”21 and “red belt,” “green belt,” “yellow belt,” and “blue belt”
zones.22 Signs appeared around the village that stated: “This land belongs to the Archae-
ological Survey of India and all encroachments are illegal” (Figure 1). “Once people were
neighbors, now we live in zones,” my landlady commented.
Utilizing a “hegemonic authorized heritage discourse … reliant on the power/knowl-
edge claims of technical and aesthetic experts, and institutionalized in the state cultural
agencies,”23 UNESCO worked as a catalyst for the contradictory interests between the
area’s development and the monuments’ preservation. There was pressure from
UNESCO to prepare a management plan for the area, especially given its size and popu-
lation. This pressure increased after Hampi’s inscription on the World Heritage in Danger
List in 1999. The reason behind this decision was UNESCO’s concern with the partial con-
struction of two bridges within the protected area, one for vehicles and the other for ped-
estrians. The impact caused by these investments initiated by the Government of
Karnataka in 1997 were identified by the UNESCO Reactive Monitoring Mission as threa-
tening the integrity of the heritage site, hampering archaeological research and excavation,
and increasing road development and vehicular traffic in the area. Inscribing a site on the
List of World Heritage in Danger (and the threat of delisting) is a means of pressuring

20
See HWHAMA Act 2002 and MP 2006 (Master Plan – 2021 for Hampi Local Planning Area). “Core zone” and “buffer zone”
are UNESCO’s terms (the latter serves to provide an additional protection to a World Heritage site), while “core zone” is
also used in state legislation. “Peripheral zone” was added in the HWHAMA Act as one more layer of protection. “Core
zone” covers the area of 41.80 square kilometers as notified by the Government of Karnataka. “Buffer zone” is an area
extending up to one kilometer beyond the limits of the “core zone” all sides, while “peripheral zone” extends up to
one kilometer beyond the limits of the “buffer zone.”
21
These terms derive from the central regulations related to the ASI. A “prohibited area” is an area up to one hundred
meters from the boundaries of a “monument of national importance” where no construction is allowed. A “regulated
area” extends up to 200 meters beyond the limits of the “prohibited area” and any construction within it requires per-
mission from ASI.
22
Colors used by HWHAMA to draw the “proposed land use” on the Master Plan’s maps. Red color indicates the archae-
ological area, green the park and “open space,” yellow residential areas, and blue commercial space.
23
Smith 2006, 11.
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 7

authorities who seek to use heritage projects for development purposes.24 In the case of
Hampi, this pressure was effective, as bridge construction was halted. But following the
recommendations of Reactive Monitoring Missions, the UNESCO World Heritage Com-
mittee decided to retain Hampi on the List of World Heritage in Danger. One of the
reasons was another investment undertaken by Karnataka State authorities, construction
of a visitor center and a commercial complex on the outskirts of Hampi village in 2002 and
2003. This project was ultimately abandoned in 2006.
It was during this critical time that UNESCO experts from both the World Heritage
Center and the New Delhi office expressed their hope that the government would also
address the problem of “illegal encroachments” in Hampi village. According to one expert
people elsewhere must also learn the value of conservation. It is not very easy for a villager in
Hampi to realize that one part of the site is as important as the other part on which stands a
monument. It is difficult, so it requires education.25

The State Government set up a task force, which subsequently suggested relocating Hampi
residents to “an alternative accommodation outside the heritage site.”26 The decision to
remove Hampi from the List of World Heritage in Danger was finally made in 2006 on
the basis of a number of steps. These included progress in the preparation of urban build-
ing regulations for the villages in the core zone; preparation of the Master Plan for the
regulation of development activities within the site; and a government focus on illegal con-
struction in the core zone.27 The UNESCO Reactive Monitoring Mission to the site in
2007 pressed for stricter control of what it called “encroachments by vendors and even
resident squatters” at the Hampi bazaar. It also recommended “partial demolition of
illegal establishments” and “relocation of certain businesses.”28 This pressure for “preven-
tive and corrective actions”29 caused mutual accusations between the ASI and the State
Government of unprofessional management of the site.
The selection criteria under which Hampi was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heri-
tage List illustrate how the site has been perceived by the authorities responsible for its
management. Their focus in the original nomination report was on archeological
remains. For example, the report notes the “remarkable integration between the
planned and defended city of Hampi with its exemplary temple architecture and its spec-
tacular natural setting represent a unique artistic creation.” The report also states, “The
city [of Hampi] bears exceptional testimony to the vanished civilization of the kingdom
of Vijayanagara, which reached its apogee under the reign of Krishna Deva Raya
(1509–1530).” At only one point is the existence of functioning temples acknowledged,
when the report notes that the city, despite its destruction in 1565 CE, “left behind an
ensemble of living temples, magnificent archaeological remains in the form of elaborate
sacred, royal, civil and military structures as well as traces of its rich lifestyle, all integrated
within its natural setting.”30 As Mary E. Hancock observes in the case of Chennai’s active

24
Litton 2011, 229.
25
Minja Yang, following The Hindu 2000b.
26
Achala Moulik, following The Hindu 2000a.
27
WHC 2006, decision no. 30 COM 7A.24.
28
UNESCO-ICOMOS Report 2007, 36, 35, 39, 40.
29
UNESCO-ICOMOS Report 2007, 7.
30
For the UNESCO selection criteria, see: http://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/ and for the selection criteria for the Group of
Monuments in Hampi, see: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/241 (Accessed March 14, 2016).
8 N. BLOCH

temples and churches, they are made to “follow the model of the registered historic site
and are valued by conservationists not for their assertion of religious roots but because
they bear the patina of time’s passage.”31

Planning and the rules of the game

The HWHAMA was established in 2003.32 This added one more actor on Hampi’s divided
stage of central and state archaeological and administrative bodies, all bent on executing
their visions for the site.33 In the same year both the Virupaksha Temple and the bazaar,
which had previously been under state authority, were declared “monuments of national
importance” and placed under the central jurisdiction of the ASI. The ASI, already under
pressure to go beyond employing only archaeologists and chemists, commissioned a team
headed by Nalini Thakur from the Department of Architectural Conservation of the
School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi to prepare an Integrated Management
Plan (IMP). This five-volume document, submitted in 2005 (and later supplemented with
two more volumes), emphasized the intangible heritage of the site and recommended a
participatory approach, that is, cooperation with local communities in the management
and development of the area. The existence of the bazaar was considered in the IMP as
important for Hampi’s integrity and, although it needed a conservation strategy, there
was no suggestion of people’s removal.34 This was the first IMP in India and, if introduced
successfully, was supposed to serve as a model for other heritage sites in the country. The
work of Thakur’s team therefore demonstrates the internal dynamics within the heritage
discourse in India, including the competing visions on what heritage is and how it should
be managed.
However, this approach was not taken into account by the HWHAMA while preparing
the Master Plan – 2021 for Hampi Local Planning Area (MP). Instead, the master plan pri-
vileged the monuments’ conservation. In the “proposed land use” for Hampi village, com-
mercial activity was reduced from 16.4 percent to 0.64 percent and the residential area
from 14.15 percent to 7.89 percent, while the archeological zone was doubled, to 41.52
percent of the whole area. Furthermore, a new category was introduced, “park and
open space,” which was to cover 43.3 percent of the site. In the UNESCO office in New
Delhi and in the HWHAMA office in Kamalapur, I was told that IMP was “too academic”
and “not very workable for the management of the site” because it did not provide specific
solutions that could be implemented.35 While work on making the IMP more “oper-
ational” continued, there was pressure from both UNESCO and the ASI to complete
the Master Plan as a condition to remove Hampi from the List of World Heritage in
Danger. Moreover, the residents of Hampi were led to believe that the plan had already
been approved and therefore would be implemented.36 They were also led to think that
31
Hancock 2008, 12.
32
People in Hampi call this institution simply “Pradhikara” for its name in Kannada: Hampi Vishva Parampare Pradesha Nir-
vahana Pradhikara. “Pradhikara” means “authority.”
33
Matthew LeDuc calls it a “crowded institutional landscape” (LeDuc 2012, 32).
34
IMP recommended the removal of encroachments but “except Hampi Bazaar ( … )” (IMP 2006, 72) which should be “con-
served as living heritage site” (IMP 2006, 114).
35
Although by that time the sixth volume titled Operationalising the IMP had already been submitted. See IMP 2006.
36
There were many copies of different parts of the IMP and MP circulating in the village. People pointed at various maps
and were extremely confused, especially with regard to the zones’ names. Moreover, most of the documentation on
Hampi WHS was produced in English. Villagers who were able to read it transmitted the news to the others. This
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 9

UNESCO supported this plan and its rigorous approach to building and zoning regu-
lations. For example, after the UNESCO team’s inspection of the area in January 2007,
local newspapers carried articles entitled, “UNESCO Team Lauds Masterplan for
Hampi” (Deccan Herald) and “Curb Illegal Constructions: UNESCO team” (New
Sunday Express), although the UNESCO representatives were very reluctant towards
HWHAMA’s failure to understand the principles of the Thakur’s team’s IMP while
preparing the Master Plan.

Erasing existing space

It was at this time that another important actor appeared at the site: a group of Hindu
nationalists who have protested since the 1990s against the misuse of what they claim is
holy land.37 In 2009 they filed a Public Interest Litigation in the High Court of Karnataka
State (Writ Petition 29843/2009) against a number of authorities responsible for the
management of the Hampi World Heritage site, including the ASI, HWHAMA, district
authorities, and the police, all of whom they accused of not “preventing uncontrolled
development and commercial exploitation of the area.”38 Confronted with charges of
taking material advantage of the “illegal activities” occurring in Hampi, the authorities
decided to take swift action. “There was a knife, there were vegetables, just somebody
to cut them was needed,” one Hampi resident concluded. This “somebody” was the
Deputy Commissioner (DC) of the district, who was responsible for law and order.
The DC was also the official head of the HWHAMA and thus the person who issued
eviction notices to Hampi residents. He based his decision on a High Court order from
July 25, 2011, although no such decision had been made on that day.38 Notices were
handed out on the evening of July 28, and the next day bulldozers entered the bazaar
(Figure 2).
Meanwhile, twelve “sectoral studies” that had been commissioned by the HWHAMA
to facilitate the final management plan were still under preparation. On July 27, the head
of the ASI Bangalore circle organized a meeting to review the final volume of the Joint
Heritage Management Program. The meeting was attended by state authorities and
Nalini Thakur, but HWHAMA representatives were not present. It was decided that
an agreement on joint principles for monument conservation had to be prepared.40
Nevertheless, two days later bulldozers entered the bazaar. What structures were
removed was determined by the 1992 Gazette Notification Regulating Prohibited and
Regulated Areas. This prohibits any “erection of a structure or a building, including
any addition or extension thereto either vertically or horizontally,” within a radius of
100 meters of monuments or areas “of national importance.” Demolition at Hampi
included the bazaar and its surroundings, as well as the area between Virupaksha
temple and Tungabhadra river where there were no mandapas which could be required

only caused further confusion, as much was lost in translation. However, the local press published in Kannada language
applied the same rhetoric (see Bloch under review).
37
Bloch under review.
38
Writ Petition 29843/2009, 6, par. 10.
39
There was a hearing on that day but it referred to procedural matters only. No binding decisions were made by the Court
on July 25, 2011.
40
By ASI, HWHAMA and Karnataka State Department of Archaeology, Museums, and Heritage.
10 N. BLOCH

Figure 2. Spatial cleansing at the Hampi World Heritage site: evicted mandapas at the main bazaar.
Photo: Natalia Bloch 2013.

by the ASI. Until now approximately 350 families (roughly two-thirds of a total popu-
lation of approximately 2200) have been removed. Some managed to rent rooms in
nearby villages (although rent prices increased dramatically as a result of high
demand), but more than eighty of the poorest families lived for eighteen months in a
shack encampment on the outskirts of their former village.
At first, authorities refused to assist displaced residents, claiming they had illegally
occupied state land. However, after another case was filed in the state High Court –
this time by villagers supported by the Bangalore-based NGO Equations – evicted resi-
dents were given tiny residential plots of land (between twenty and thirty square feet)
located some three to four kilometers from Hampi, along with 130,000 Indian rupees
($US 2360 at the time). This compensation, however, did not provide them with a liveli-
hood. Government and ASI officers suggested that Hampi residents could become
farmers. Moreover, the compensation they received was not enough to construct basic
houses, so they were forced to take high interest mortgages offered by the Canara Bank,
whose local office, ironically, is still located adjacent to the mandapa structure at the
bazaar.41 Only those residents who had been granted one of seventy-two plots during
the 1980s still live in Hampi, but they are stigmatized by state officials for misusing the
generosity of the government by making commercial use out of the residential site.
They do not know what will happen to them.42

41
People were threatened that unless they initiated construction within three years, the plots would be taken away from
them.
42
Many people believe that they are still in Hampi because if they were to be displaced, they would have to be compen-
sated “properly,” which for them implies that the government does not have enough money to pay.
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 11

Material heritage and colonial legacy

Who makes the past?
Having been declared to be encroachers on a national and world heritage space, the resi-
dents of Hampi village then had to be removed. The logic behind this argument is based
on how the past is perceived by the ASI which asserts its position as the official interpreter
of India’s tangible national history. Its reading of the past is largely structured by the legacy
of Indian archaeology, which in turn is bound up with India’s colonial legacy. This does not
mean putting “the inhabitants of a post-colonial world in the position of passive receivers”
and “the colonizer in the position of the ancestor who bequests his legacy.”43 According to
Benoît de L’Estoile, “Legacies are not simply ‘handed down’; they are often claimed and
negotiated, but also repudiated, selectively accepted, falsified or challenged. They involve
various feelings, nostalgia and jealousy, remembering and forgetting, gratitude or
bitterness.”44
The ASI was established by British colonial authorities in 1861. Its founder, the first
Archaeological Surveyor and later the first Director General of the ASI, Alexander Cun-
ningham, has been hailed as “the Father of Indian Archaeology.”45 As in many other colo-
nies, the first officials to engage in archaeology often were army officers or engineers who
were “informed by a romantic notion underscoring the necessity of conserving overgrown,
deserted, and forgotten sites.”46 Excavations conducted by those self-made explorers and
antiquarians, the photographs taken by them, and the museum exhibitions they organized
drew attention to particular sites and shaped the way these were perceived and rep-
resented. As a result, built space including active centers of worship “acquired a new
status as historical monuments”47 and self-proclaimed custodians. These archaeological
strategies established and authorized a conservationist paradigm based on a conviction
that heritage is something that should be passed on, unchanged, to future generations,
a perspective that to a great extent has prevailed in the postcolonial era.48
The ruins of Vijayanagara were first visited in 1799 by Colonel Colin Mackenzie, a
British “military surveyor turned antiquarian”49 and the future Surveyor General of
India. His descriptions of the monuments “represent[ed] the first modern step to study
the ruins,”50 while his watercolors framed the empire’s remains within the aesthetics of
the English eighteenth-century picturesque landscape painting tradition.51 The artifacts
he and his Indian assistants collected, including religious sculptures and other sacred
objects, were later displayed in the first museums in India.52 The first known photographs
of Hampi – and perhaps the earliest photos of any monuments in India – were taken by
Alexander J. Greenlaw in 1856. In 2009 the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums
published a revised edition of Greenlaw’s photographs accompanied by contemporary

43
de L’Estoile 2008, 268.
44
de L’Estoile 2008, 270.
45
Imam 1963, Garg 2014.
46
Falser and Juneja 2013, 3.
47
Guha-Thakurta 2004, 268.
48
Guha-Thakurta 2004, Sengupta 2013.
49
Stein 2008, 2.
50
Vijayanagara Research Project 2014.
51
Weiler 2013.
52
Stein 2008, 2, Guha-Thakurta 2004, 43–82.
12 N. BLOCH

images and comments on the current condition of each monument. An emphasis on open
spaces dominates this collection. According to one caption, “Efforts are being made to
remove the encroached structures; surroundings of the [Virupaksha] temple complex
have been cleaned up and consequently the entire complex looks more elegant.”53
The visual and textual representations of Hampi in ASI publications are similar. The
monuments are portrayed as isolated from their social environment. For example, a
guidebook to the site published in a World Heritage Series in 2007, four years before
displacement began, does not contain any images of a functioning bazaar.54 A one-para-
graph description in the text reads: “Facing the Virupaksha temple is the once impressive
Hampi bazaar … with double-storied colonnaded structures flanking its sides. Though it
lies in ruins today, it once served as one of the important thoroughfares of the city.”55

Archaeology and nationalism

Following Indian independence in 1947, the ASI embraced a nationalist perspective on the
material past which could help legitimize the new nation-state, declaring as its primary
objective the “protection of the cultural heritage of the nation.”56 The Survey has
become a powerful organization with a national agenda and centralized conservation
policy.
In India there are more than 3500 national monuments and twenty-five cultural World
Heritage Sites. Given this number, why has ASI placed so much attention on Hampi?
According to the application submitted to UNESCO for World Heritage status, the Vijaya-
nagara Empire was the most extensive and “the last great Hindu Kingdom” to rule south
India before the region was conquered first by Muslim invaders and then by the British.57
Hampi therefore has a pan-Indian significance as it is supposed to prove the pre-colonial
origins of the contemporary Indian state.58
Indian scholars are not unanimous whether this past should be confirmed by archae-
ology or textual evidence. Dilip K. Chakrabarti argues that “it is difficult to assert that
archaeology has ever played a major role in the formation of Indian national identity,”59
while Sourindranath Roy claims that “it is archaeology which, more than anything else,
has helped [India] to rediscover herself, to win back, so to say, her lost identity.”60 Never-
theless, the global self-referential paradigm has been constructed upon the same body of
knowledge as archaeology imposed on India by the British and appropriated by postcolo-
nial archaeologists to serve national interests.61
53
Rao and Gopal 2009, 51.
54
Devakunjari 2007.
55
Devakunjari 2007, 78.
56
ASI official website, see http://asi.nic.in/asi_aboutus.asp (Accessed June 14, 2015).
57
Following UNESCO-ICOMOS Report 2007, 8.
58
There was of course much earlier than this Asoka’s Empire, thanks to which “discovery … India itself was revealed as more
than just a geographical sum of its historically fragmented parts. Archaeology has restored its esteem as an ancient entity
with a political pedigree comparable to China’s” (Keay 2011, 33). Asoka is considered to have been an open-minded ruler
who supported all major religions of his time, therefore the postcolonial Indian state, designed by the Indian National
Congress as a modern, secular republic, has adopted many of his symbols. However, Asoka’s Empire survived only an
estimated forty years, did not include the whole south of the subcontinent, and was Buddhist in its origin. Thus, Vijaya-
nagara better suits the more Hindu nationalist imagination of the Indian state’s origins.
59
Chakrabarti 2003, 185.
60
Roy 1961, following Keay 2011, 13.
61
Choay 2001, Meskell 2015, 6.
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 13

Hampi is a good example of this aim, as illustrated by an ASI publication on the

subject: “The attempt of the southern powers to resist the rulers of foreign origin
[Delhi sultans] culminated in the rise of the Vijayanagara Empire which acted as a
bulwark of Hindu culture and nationalism for over two centuries.”62 This interpret-
ation had already emerged in the 1920s, when Indian historians, such as
S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, presented Vijayanagara’s history as “a heroic struggle to
protect dharma from Islam – ‘the last glorious chapter of the independent Hindu
India of the South.’”63 Since acquiring the status of a “monument of national impor-
tance,” the Virupaksha Temple has become a means of national identification, being
“likened to the monuments, memorials, and museums in which the nation’s history
is encoded.”64

Who is an archaeological expert?

This way of thinking about national tangible heritage can be understood as an effect of
mimicry. Mimicry, as defined by Homi Bhabha, was a strategy used by colonizers to con-
struct their colonized subjects in their image, while simultaneously sustaining irreducible
differences. This led some colonized subjects to reject their own cultural practices as
inferior in a utopian wish to achieve equity with their colonizers.65 Indian archaeologists
followed Western European standards of material preservation, accepting this was the
only correct, civilized way to deal with it.66 This is how Western scholars who did research
in Vijayanagara tend to perceive their Indian colleagues from the ASI, as those who have a
“limited understanding of archeology” and therefore are guilty of clearing the bazaar:
Unfortunately, this is all too common in India, where there is only a limited range of para-
digms for managing heritage sites … the ASI seems familiar with only two approaches. Some
sites, like the [Hampi] bazaar prior to 2010, are neglected, unprotected, and open to illegal
encroachment and inhabitation … Other sites, like the bazaar today, are “protected” –
cleared of all encumbrances such as previous inhabitants, set in pleasant garden compounds,
and surrounded by walls and gates.67

According to one foreign archaeologist, “archaeology is not a natural part of Indian culture
because it is [ritually] dirty, all this digging in the soil.” Indian archaeologists, especially
those from the ASI, are said to be antiquated: neither familiar with contemporary research
techniques, nor critical about the sources. According to an India-born project specialist
from the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cul-
tural Property, “The [Indian] centralized heritage management systems coupled with an
almost exclusive focus on the buried past have alienated local communities and have
broken the links between the past and the present.”68 A.G. Krishna Menon, a conservation
architect from Delhi, admits that “in conservation, as in other fields, we are rushing to
‘catch up’ with concepts prevalent in the West.”69
62
Devakunjari 2007, 11.
63
Following Stein 2008, 9.
64
Hancock 2008, 83.
65
Bhabha 1994.
66
See Falser 2015.
67
Fritz and Michell 2012b, 3.
68
Fong et al. 2012, 47.
69
Menon 1989.
14 N. BLOCH

Meanwhile the new paradigm of intangible heritage has emerged as a global model. As a
consequence, mainstream Indian archaeologists are once more placed “in an imaginary
waiting room of history,” according to the evolutionist and historicist logic of the Enlight-
enment that “we were all headed for the same destination … but some people were to
arrive earlier than others.”70 Such an attitude provokes accusations of paternalist condes-
cension or even contempt and therefore the continuity of colonial superiority.71 As a
result, it only strengthens the anti-colonial attitude of some postcolonial archaeologists.
This is how mimicry works: as a double-edged sword which might have unintended
consequences.
My conversations with archeologists from the ASI and the HWHAMA revealed their
vision of Hampi: an uninhabited park of monuments and green space surrounded by pro-
tective fences, protected by surveillance cameras and round-the-clock security personnel,
where tourists would be brought in air-conditioned buses and taxis to the paid car park
and shown around in electric vehicles; in the evenings they would be entertained by
sound and light shows and then returned to upmarket hotels in the nearby city of
Hospet or government-run lodges on the route between Hospet and Hampi.72 “People
will do sightseeing with the guides on their ears [audio-guides], so they will not need
the human guides,” as one of my research partners envisioned.

Living or heritage: forms of resistance

Practice and rhetoric
Hampi residents call this scenario an “open-air museum” or, most often, “dead monu-
ments” and have attempted to negotiate the meaning of cultural heritage. Initially, this
was a practice-oriented resistance through “daily practices of being (…) and doing,”
more than “knowing.”73 Treated as “encroachers” who harm national heritage, they
were communicated to by authorities with eviction notices, demolition orders, manage-
ment plans, signboards, and court cases. Their most common response to these impo-
sitions of power was to ignore them and continue their lives as usual, including
construction activities.74 Some villagers even argued that the fact that “people neglected
Pradhikara’s decisions75 made DC mad” and pushed him to issue the eviction notices.
During my fieldwork in 2013 and 2014 I found the attitude of Hampi inhabitants
towards heritage to be very reflexive. There previously had been attempts to respond
directly to state narrative. For instance, in 2003 the owner of a bookstore in the bazaar
wrote to the authorities on behalf of what he called “Hampi stakeholders,” arguing that,
“There is life in and around Hampi. It is not ruins as it is normally described!!!”76 But
the 2011 demolition of the bazaar was a transformative event that forced villagers to
reflect on their positions in the space of Hampi and the need for a rhetorical defense,
70
Chakrabarty 2000, 8.
71
Chakrabarti 2003, 221–222.
72
See also The Hindu 2000a, The Hindu 2000c, “Statement of objections of the HWHAMA Commissioner. July 23, 2010.”
73
Krog 2007, 145–148, see Escobar 2001, 160.
74
See Shepherd 2012, 92, 110–112.
75
See footnote 32.
76
Following IMP 2007, Annexe 26, 3.
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 15

especially for residents not yet displaced. It was then that local responses took on the
rhetoric of “living heritage.”
The strategy of rhetorical resistance to the dominant heritage discourse was introduced
by local elites supported by external NGOs,77 Western scholars (who had local assistants
working as middle men) and Thakur, the author of the IMP, who classified the activities
within the temple and the bazaar as “traditional use: the historical use of the structure,
which still continues today.”78 The residents skilfully appropriated the new global heritage
paradigm’s vocabulary to formulate their claims towards the mandapas, the bazaar, and
the temple. According to the young owner of a family-run guest house in Hampi:
The Virupaksha Temple is one of the oldest temples in India that are still in use. The more
the government should not kill this living temple by removing people from here. And the
bazaar? The bazaars always accompanied the temples to serve pilgrims’ needs. And this is
what Hampi Bazaar served for during Vijayanagara.

Residents have adopted an anthropological understanding of culture as complex and fluid

to accuse the ASI of cultural destruction. “They think that culture means buildings. They
are very narrow-minded. They destroyed the culture,” a photographer asserted. The owner
of a family-run guest house and small internet café cum travel agency, evoked the language
of human rights to indicate the way “ordinary” people are neglected in a postcolonial state:
They [the authorities addressed in the Equations call for setting up a commission of enquiry]
are big people! Listen, this is India, there are too many people [living] here. Population is
increasing, but everything else is decreasing. Where there are too many people, there are
no human rights. In Europe you can protest and make a big deal, here maybe in the court
they will answer [to your complaints].

The fact that alternative narratives take their cue from or are influenced by professional
narratives does not mean that they can be reduced to it.79 Hampi residents distinguished
between “living” and “dead” temples before 2011: the former were still used, while the
latter were ruins and no longer worship places. In other words, usage signified authen-
ticity, not age. Residents distinguished between “living” and “dead” temples but not
between “old” and “new,” the crucial distinction for the transnational (global) understand-
ing of heritage. For villagers (unlike for UNESCO administrators) the categories of “old”
and “new” (and not “living” and “dead”) intertwined.80 This reflects Hampi residents’ atti-
tude towards the mandapas. They present themselves as those who in fact took care of the
structures by inhabiting them when no authorities were present and interested in doing so
(and still, according to the villagers, they prove not to be, as the site lacks both visible pres-
ervation activities and tourist infrastructure development). They did so not only in a
material sense by repairing structures, but also in a ritual way, keeping them pure by per-
forming everyday religious practices inside.81 They believe they have a personal relation to
the mandapas as domestic space, as opposed to the dead monuments which are perceived

77
Mostly by the already mentioned Bangalore-based Equations and the transnational Global Heritage Fund.
78
IMP 2007, Annexe 3, 11.
79
Purvis and Hunt 1993, following Smith 2006, 4–5.
80
See Krog 2007, 30.
81
Laurajane Smith notes a similar approach to material heritage in a different geographical context: “While the sites were
intrinsically important to the [Waanyi] women from Australia, it was the use of these sites that made them heritage, not
the mere fact of their existence” (Smith 2006, 46).
16 N. BLOCH

as belonging to the surrounding wilderness.82 “I am not saying that I do not respect our
heritage, our nation,” a local guide explained while we were roaming around the aban-
doned mandapas, “but look around! This is a dead place.” The argument that “the govern-
ment did not care for the place satisfactorily” was often used by residents who presented
themselves as the real custodians of Hampi. “Twenty, twenty-five years ago,” as another
descendant of the first settlers pointed, “there were no archaeology people here, only
locals who took care of the site; and now they come and say: ‘This is ours.’”
The bazaar, as the center of social life and the source of most residents’ livelihood, is
also the center of Hampi’s sentimental landscape. Residents recall its past as a bustling
market full of traders and buyers, and perceive themselves as continuators of this tradition.
According to a Brahmin
The bazaar has been here since Vijayanagara, they were selling gold here, many other things.
And now the government is telling us that only coconuts for puja can be sold from a few stalls
at the bus stand. And people, after they visit the temple, would like to buy some things.

A young man who had just completed tourist guide training argued that
We can live here, along with the monuments. Now, as I know more about Hampi, I can see
that even clearer. In the fourteenth century a Portuguese came here and he wrote that there
were 60,000 soldiers living here, and the bazaar, and everything.83

A young woman, a descendant of a family who settled in Hampi in the 1940s and a
daughter of the first guest house owner in the village, said with sorrow: “The bazaar
was so beautiful, so full of people … Now in the evening we are afraid to go there
alone.” There are many stories of wild animals, including leopards and sloth bears,
roaming around the abandoned mandapas, which is symbolically perceived by people
as nature, that is, wilderness, taking control over culture.
The bazaar is also presented by villagers as necessary to serve pilgrims’ needs. The
owner of a small eatery pointed this out:
If they remove everything from here, people will be coming from Kamalapur, four kilometers
one way, and then back, so altogether eight kilometers. Where they will buy water to drink? A
snack to fill their stomach? Offerings for the temple? If they do that, people will have nothing
to do and pilgrims nothing to eat.

The Hampi religious calendar – rich not only in the festivals popular in the whole of India
(such as Holi or Divali), but also in the specific local holidays – has been attracting crowds
of devotees streaming from all around, many still on oxcarts beautifully painted and
dressed with ribbons.84 Those pilgrims used to find temporary shelter in the mandapas,
where they cooked, dried laundry, and took rest, while others stayed overnight in the

82
See Krog 2007, 108.
83
“Portuguese traders who visited [Hampi] in the early sixteenth century wrote that it [Hampi bazaar] was stocked with
food of all kinds, birds and other animals, and even precious stones, including diamonds. In contrast to the exposed
ruins of much of Vijayanagara, Hampi Bazaar was a welcome respite where visitors could find shade and refreshment.
Though these modern businesses were occupying the medieval site, they seemed perfectly appropriate – they recovered
some of the original function and spirit of the bazaar.” Fritz and Michell 2012a, 56–57.
84
The most popular of Hampi’s festivals is the Chariot Festival (also called Jatra, that is procession) that marks the ritual
marriage of Virupaksha and Pampa, with the divine couple held in a giant wooden chariot pulled in the procession
through the bazaar, together with the temple’s elephant blessing the crowd. But the temple is visited both by pilgrims
and residents on daily basis, for family fetes, full and new moon pujas and celebrations of auspicious days according to
Hindu calendar. As such it is a core of religious life in a village and surrounding area.
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 17

Figure 3. Spatial cleansing at the Hampi World Heritage site: view of the Virupaksha Temple. Photo:
Natalia Bloch 2013.

temple’s courtyard just as the first residents of Hampi did almost eighty years ago
(Figure 3).

Contested living heritage

As part of the Hampi Master Plan planning process, “stakeholder” meetings were orga-
nized with local residents but had little impact. “It’s difficult to understand UNESCO
and ASI because they don’t discuss with us,” a tourist guide commented. Villagers com-
plained that they were not consulted, but only informed that they had to move out in
order to preserve the monuments. According to an assistant to the district Deputy Com-
missioner, “Hampi is not just for us, we have to sacrifice.” Residents proposed various
compromises but to no avail. “If there are more bazaars lined with mandapas at the
18 N. BLOCH

Hampi World Heritage site, why was it not possible to keep this one alive and the other to
conserve?”, a resident asked. “Or to conserve mandapas at the Hampi bazaar, while instal-
ling shops, stalls and other commercial infrastructure behind them?” But residents classi-
fied as “illegal occupants” were not given a voice. The former vice-president of the Hampi
Gram Panchayat expressed his anxiety directly: “First they called us stakeholders and then
they said we were illegal!”
Although temple towns constitute more than one-third of the World Heritage Sites in
India,85 Hampi does not fit the category of intangible heritage, as understood by planners
and ASI decision-makers. I argue that the reasons behind the failure of Hampi villagers’
struggle over their recognition lie in traditionalist and ethnological understandings of
intangible heritage.86 First, the Hindu nationalists whose court case was the pretext for
evictions appropriated the concept of “living heritage” by reducing its meaning to a
“living temple.” Interpreting tourism as a form of moral contamination, they called for
keeping foreign tourists, as well as those who “support [their] ‘unethical’ activities,”
away from Hampi’s sacred space.87 By applying the rhetoric of religious nationalism,
they excluded secular residents of Hampi from the category of the real Indian, that is, a
good Hindu devotee, by labeling them as greedy, immoral businessmen exploiting a
sacred site. This rhetoric has been widely adopted by Indian authorities, archaeological
agencies, media representatives, and residents of neighboring villagers.88 Reducing
Hampi’s living heritage to its temple erased both the Hampi bazaar and its residents
although the latter practiced daily sacred rituals such as drawing rangoli,89 worshiping
gods at home altars (devara mane), and visiting nearby shrines. ASI staff members
accepted this Hindu nationalist perspective, as shown in their recommendations that
shops selling such articles which were not being sold at the mandapas in the historical past
must necessarily have to be relocated away from the monument. The basic approach to be
adopted is to restore the original sanctity of the mandapas vis-à-vis the shops.90

To do so, ASI tasked researchers to determine whether the mandapas sold only “puja
articles.”91
In addition to their commercial activities, Hampi residents were suspect in the eyes of both
state authorities and Hindu nationalists because they were not considered to be natives. Their
attempt to establish themselves as an “entrepreneurial cultural community”92 was not
accepted. Thus, while Hampi villagers were displaced, residents of Anegondi, another com-
munity situated within the “core zone” of the Hampi World Heritage site, managed to
avoid eviction by adopting a rhetoric of intangible heritage. Anegondi, inhabited by
peasant families for generations and not a popular tourist site, has been framed by local

85
ASI 2008; Shinde 2012, 328.
86
The Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List was launched in 1994, and led to
UNESCO adopting The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. It should be noted
that it prioritized living heritage and everyday culture “in the broad anthropological context” (Meskell 2015, 26–27).
87
Writ Petition 29843/2009, 10, par. 22.
88
Bloch under review.
89
Decorative patterns made every morning by women with finely ground, often colored powder in front of the households’
entrances in order to ward evil off. During the day the drawings – walked or driven over by pedestrians and vehicles –
slowly disappear to be replaced the next day.
90
ASI 2009, 2.
91
Articles, such as incenses, flowers, coconuts, or colored powder, used for an offering ritual performed by devotees,
especially while visiting temples.
92
Coombe and Weiss 2015.
 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 19

officials as the antithesis to “artificial,” commercialized Hampi. Anegondi seems to have all the
attributes that a “heritage village” is expected to have and which Hampi does not possess:
peasants’ natural attachment to their ancestors’ land, vernacular architecture, traditional
knowledge systems, and folk traditions.93 According to the Hampi Master Plan: “The
housing in these villages [Anegodni and Kamalapur, another ‘native’ community] represents
the traditional life style, construction technology, etc., and continue to exist occupied by their
traditional owners … such cultural and architectural properties need to be protected and
conserved.”94

Conclusion
Removing people from Hampi’s landscape was preceded by stigmatizing them in a heri-
tage discourse shared by archaeologists, political authorities, religious leaders, and journal-
ists.95 Villagers were defined as illegal encroachers without any rights. They were
portrayed as intrusive individuals who, driven by greed, exploited national heritage and
a sacred site for personal gain. Spatial cleansing, as Herzfeld points out, is “the conceptual
and physical clarification of boundaries, with a concomitant definition of former residents
as intruders.”96 Hampi residents were ultimately defeated by the conservationist paradigm.
The archaeological discourse of heritage reduced to national narratives represented by
buildings excluded alternative discourses. According to this paradigm “the recovery of
allegedly important archaeological structures, involved the removal of present-day popu-
lations.”97 The archaeological and bureaucratic apparatus communicated with the villa-
gers only from a position of power, without genuine attempts to address the Hampi
community perspective. This mirrors how “stakeholder” and “participatory” models func-
tion: residents are invited to take part, but they are not invited to propose alternative
outcomes.98
As many researchers have noted, the archaeological gaze inherited by the ASI from its
colonial ancestors has been widely appropriated by the postcolonial state to legitimize the
nation-state’s claims. The Vijayanagara Kingdom is particularly important in this archae-
ological, political, and historical process of confirming the glory of the Indian nation-state.
While alternative narratives on heritage exist in contemporary India, the ASI, bolstered by
its national standing and control of central conservation policy, possesses the expertise and
authority to manage tangible heritage sites and therefore dominates this conservation.
In the last two decades a new global paradigm of intangible heritage has emerged,
adopting more “culturally sensitive,” “sustainable,” and “human rights-based” approaches
to heritage conservation and management.99 Indian mainstream archaeologists are again
93
Tobert 2000; see Malkki 1997.
94
MP 2006, 81. Anegondi is currently developing “endogenous tourism” with the support of the state Tourism Department,
the United Nations Development Programme and the local branch of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heri-
tage, an NGO which works on an India-specific approach to heritage, emphasizing “living continuity of traditions” and
accusing the governmental agencies of “Victorian concepts of professionalism.” However, its focus is mostly on “tribal
cultures” and establishing “heritage villages”, therefore excluding those communities such as Hampi which do not fit
the native frame of traditional culture (intangibleheritage.intach.org; www.intach.org, accessed August 23, 2015).
95
Bloch under review.
96
Herzfeld 2006, 142.
97
Herzfeld 2006, 132.
98
Smith 2006, 44.
99
See Araoz 2011.
20 N. BLOCH

perceived as those who must “catch up” with global standards.100 Ironically, this shift has
occurred in response to criticism of the international heritage movements’ Eurocentrism
initiated by indigenous groups and scholars on the periphery. However, this new paradigm
did not benefit Hampi residents, as they were evicted six years after the Government of
India officially ratified The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage. Instead, their practice-oriented resistance was interpreted as illegal and
greedy, and when they did adopt the rhetoric of “living heritage,” they did not fit. For
Hampi residents, perceived as neither native nor traditional enough, even intangible heri-
tage worked as an exclusionary category.

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank all the people of Hampi for their patience in answering my countless questions and
trust they offered to me. I am also grateful to all those involved in the Hampi issue for sharing their
views and knowledge with me. I also thank my colleagues from the Department of Ethnology and
Cultural Anthropology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań for comments on this article.
Last but not least I am thankful to my family for supporting me at every stage of my research on
Hampi. Without them all of this would not be possible.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This project was financed by the National Science Center, Poland, decision number DEC-2011/03/
B/HS2/03488.

Notes on contributor
Natalia Bloch is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropol-
ogy, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She specializes in the anthropology of mobi-
lity, including tourism, migration, and exile, particularly in the postcolonial context. She has
conducted research in Tibetan refugee settlements and among workers in the tourism industry
in India. She teaches courses on postcolonial theory, the anthropology of tourism, the anthropology
of migration, and refugee studies.

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