125 – Relating Heritage and Activism: Placemaking, Solidarity and Erasure in South Asia

October 3, 2025
8:30 am
H02
The establishment, appropriation and contestation of heritage takes different forms that reify, politicize, curate or diversify identificatory ideas. Recently, we have seen a sharp rise in the promotion of South Asian cultural heritage for national, ethnic, diasporic and other communal purposes, that shape and divide interest groups. This panel examines how cultural heritage is both the product and consequence of civic engagement and political mobilization. Social cohesion, ideas of solidarity and the recognition of commonalities are essential for the processes of creating cultural heritage. But defined through the creation, its uphold or its destruction of cultural heritage, commonalities are also instrumentalized and mobilized for political means. We thus suggest considering heritage and activism in their dynamic relationship to each other. Activism as a practice shows how intersectional and diverse social actors negotiate the meaning of places and access to them. Activism as an indicator of meaning shows how collective ownership is understood and renegotiated in times of disaster or difficult social, economic or political times. With this panel, we hope to assemble contributions that critically illuminate and explore the subtleties and nuances of the relationship between a “culture-bearing community” and identity-forming cultural heritage across a range of relations, from “tribal” to “shared” to “post-migrant” to “transcultural” dynamics of heritage making in, across and beyond (yet connecting with) the South Asian region. We invite contributions that explore: • questions of democratic an undemocratic consultation processes, • state/non-governmental-led prescriptive heritagisation • iconoclasm, heritage erasure • provenience and restitution • Heritage as a political mobilisation device • Social coherence and social divergence as a reflection of cultural heritage • politics of recognition (e.g. UNESCO, World Heritage) and local communities' relationship to their heritage

Convenors

Stefanie Lotter
Christiane Brosius
Monica Mottin

Presentations

Heritage as placemaking through artistic means
Brosius Christiane - HCTS, Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
Practice-based approaches to urban built heritage in the historic centers of the Kathmandu Valley
Jaimes-Niño Diego - Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
#BringOurGodsHome: Political mobilization and civic engagement in reclaiming India’s stolen cultural heritage“
Pai Gita V. - Department of History, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, La Crosse, United States
Festivals and melas: activism and aesthetic commons in Janakpurdham, Nepal
Mottin Monica - HCTS, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
Reshaping and promoting the Muslim identity through the transformation of architectural vocabularies?The case of Keralan mosques
Mondini Sara - Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
When Preservation Silences:The Heritization of a Women’s Musical Tradition in Nepa
Palanchoke Pushpa - Mutri Doctoral School, Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Understanding activism through the process of heritage reconstruction: A case study of Kasthamandap
Magaiya Binita - Social Science Baha, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
Heritage, Mobilisation, And Resistance: Reclaiming The Poundra Legacy Through Dhurjati Naskar’s Locally Empowered Initiatives
Sanfui Abhiri - IIT Bombay, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India