New Delhi: An UNESCO-awarded colonial-era building in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir has been allegedly vandalised. The development has angered students, heritage conservationists, historians and environmentalists.
The local administration has justified the culling of dozens of poplar trees along a scenic avenue in Amar Singh College, which is Kashmir’s second oldest college. According to official documents, a tender was floated by the J&K’s State Forest Corporation on May 29, 2019, for removing the trees.
Prof Sheikh Aijaz Bashir, the college principal, said that the proposal was mooted in 2019 when he was not at the helm and the process culminated earlier this month with the removal of 234 poplar and willow trees.
“These trees were decaying and posed a threat to life and property,” Prof Bashir said, “To ensure the safety of more than 4000 college students and staff, they had to be removed.”
A forest department official confirmed that the college had referred the trees for evaluation to the Social Forestry Department after which they were put up for auction. However, the official couldn’t provide the evaluation report of the department.
“It is a listed heritage college and a Grade-1 heritage structure,” Srinagar-based art conservator and historian Saleem Beg mentioned, adding that that the plantation, which was an attraction among filmmakers and tourists in the city, has been a part of the original layout that synchronised the entries, pathways and buildings of the college which was built in 1913.
Dozens of poplar trees were removed from a scenic avenue in Amar Singh College, which is a listed heritage college and a Grade-1 heritage structure. Photo: Ubaid Mukhtar
“It is a very inappropriate decision. The avenue has been the essential part of the built fabric that linked the main building with its natural settings. The college management should have retained the natural setting by protecting these trees. They should have known better,” Beg, who is the convener of the J&K Chapter of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), noted.
The INTACH notified Amar Singh College as a Grade 1 heritage structure in 2004. The college also figures in the Department of Higher Education’s list of heritage colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the state government has not notified the college as a heritage building.
The INTACH carried out conservation works at the college which was funded by the J&K government. In 2020, the college-related work was one of seven projects that won the prestigious Award of Merit in the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation.
Poplar trees at the entrance to Amar Singh College in Srinagar. Photo: X@Gaamuk
Students unhappy with the move
Many students who have returned to the college after the culmination of winter vacation earlier this month were shocked and visibly upset by the scenes of lopped logs of poplar trees scattered along the avenue which they had once beautified with their towering presence.
“What has been done is not right. The trees didn’t kill anyone. I used to see them on reels and photos of the college before I joined here last year. Now they are nowhere. It seems as if the identity of the college has been erased,” said a first-year-student, who didn’t want to be named.
Similarly, Junaid Ahmad, an alumni, fondly recalled that the avenue presented the looks of a green tunnel which showed an impressive view of the main heritage building. “The avenue was an imposing feature of the college which conveyed to the students that they are in a very great and grand space. Sadly it has been flattened.”
Architects and environmentalists express concern
Architect Saima Iqbal, who led the INTACH conservation effort, said that the poplar avenues were important landscape elements for enhancing entrance experience of buildings and for providing vistas, shade and formality to the urban roads in the early 20th century Kashmir.
“It is a historic avenue. It has a permanence and relevance of its own, an importance of its own and also a significance of its own. It had a specific purpose to give visitors a guided vista of the college. What has been done is a catastrophe,” Iqbal said.
A Srinagar-based environmentalist, who didn’t want to be named, pointed out that the college has “effectively wiped off a mini carbon sink” on the campus. “These avenues play an important role in the preservation of micro-climatic conditions and also filter the air.”
Blaming the college management for the move, Beg asserted that the rules governing the conservation of notified heritage sites should have been factored in by them before culling the trees which are “equally important” from a heritage point of view.
Under official guidelines, any proposal of drastic changes in notified heritage buildings or heritage landscapes has to be approved by the Heritage Conservation Committee which is headed by a secretary-level officer.
The guidelines mention that Grade-1 heritage buildings “deserve careful preservation” with “no intervention” allowed inside the heritage building or in its natural features.
“Even though the college is not a notified structure but by extension the model bye laws should ipso facto apply to listed buildings and the state government-declared heritage colleges. Although the government declaration was meant for seeking funding for their preservation, but that definition is there,” Beg said.
Art historian Hakim Sameer Hamdani, who has led major heritage conservation and restoration efforts in Srinagar underlined that people in Kashmir are not generally against the idea of heritage, but “it is a question of how do you value and what do you value” as heritage.
“Our understanding of natural heritage is largely limited to the protection of Chinar trees and Dal Lake. As a society, we have to re-understand what development means, what beautification means and what respect for [the] past means,” said Hamdani, a Srinagar resident and author of the upcoming book on Srinagar, ‘City of Kashmir — a Popular History’, said.
According to the college principal, a batch of conifers planted by the Social Forestry Department along the avenue some two years back will replace the poplar trees. Hamdani, however, pointed out that the non-deciduous trees can’t be a substitute for poplars because they don’t allow sunlight to filter in during winter months which can aggravate cold conditions.
