Rrishi Raote: It is what it is

Once upon a time the Shore Temple at Mamallapuram, south of Madras, was actually on the seashore. I was lucky to see it then. Now there is a sea wall, lawns, landscaping, paved paths fringed by rope, and so on. Then there was nothing between temple and sea but sand and boulders. I was only a boy, but I was stunned by the elemental glory of this work of man and nature.

No sea now will get anywhere near this World Heritage Site, not if the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) can help it. The Shore Temple is safe, at least physically. It will weather more slowly. No ordinary tsunami will knock it over. But what it was for 1,300 years it is no longer. Now it certainly wouldn't inspire a child with a force of feeling that would still be vivid after 25 years.

Something similar has happened to Humayun's tomb and environs in Nizamuddin, Delhi. For six years the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) has been hard at work renovating this World Heritage Site, resting place of the second Mughal emperor and quite a few members of his family. Last week the finished tomb opened to the public. I went to see it.

It's very pretty. The grass is cared-for, the trees are healthy, the paths are smooth. Walls are newly pink-cemented or white lime-plastered; there are surprising new walls, where old walls had ceased to be. The tomb and its inner enclosure look less ruinous than they have for centuries. There are pulses of colour from glazed tiles on the cupolas above the roofline. The dome shines. Within, what used to be a tall, dark, resonant space is now bright with white and red plaster in an austere pattern.

However, and I hate to say this of such a lovely creation, the place no longer commands the soul. Losing its imperfections, it is stripped of its age, of its character. It is just a monument. It even looks smaller.

Woolly this may sound, but just like at the Shore Temple, the magic has been erased. (Time, thankfully, is rolling up its sleeves: already the new plaster is peeling.)

This is not to say that a bad thing was done. Every building needs care and maintenance. And as project head Ratish Nanda of the AKTC has said, heritage should work for the present, bringing livelihoods and skills to local people and zones of peace to harried urbanites. A small army of workers was hired from Nizamuddin Basti, and taught old building techniques. Delhiites in general get a large, history-filled new public space - so what if there is an entry fee.

I say "large" and "new" because the AKTC is looking much further than Humayun's tomb. The historic Sundar Nursery next door has been totally reinvented. It is now dotted with brightly restored tombs, and includes an elaborate new formal garden inspired by a Persian carpet. The nursery, the adjacent zoo, Railways land, and more, Mr Nanda hopes to unite and landscape into one vast tomb-laden urban park of 1,200 acres. "The idea here," he told a journalist, "is that this is a magical space that takes people away from the humdrum of daily life."

One expects that this park will be more successful than Delhi's other big archaeological park in Mehrauli, home to the Qutb Minar. But one fears it will be another Lodhi Garden - the outcome of a very English love of the picturesque, without particular regard to the original setting of each ruin within it, and a viceregal freedom of hand. To this recipe, add a good dollop of "theme park". A zone of peace, perhaps, but one that demands no real work from the imagination. Small likelihood of magic here.

Why must all these tombs look like they did when they were new, when the park that surrounds them is modern? Such a setting turns even the authentic inauthentic. Architectural heritage does not exist so that we can practise lost building techniques, employ locals, or decorate a park. It exists because it meant something when it was made, to people who were not really like us at all. We may rebuild and re-plaster their walls, but we cannot see their buildings as they saw them. It is silly to pretend. It is rude to grab.

Rather than redo an entire building crypt to finial, make it structurally sound, and then practise your building techniques on a part of the whole, or a few of the many. That way the thoughtful visitor can follow both lines of thought: how it was, why it is.

There are exceptions. The Red Fort, for example. That poor palace-fortress has, besides the spectacular walls, little of its original architecture left. Prime candidate for an imaginative reconstruction. And Tughlaqabad, please leave it alone - it's glorious enough as a ruin.

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