Architect fights to save India’s significant historic sites

For three decades, Abha Narain Lambah has pioneered efforts to preserve some of India’s most significant historic sites — from ancient Buddhist caves and Islamic tombs to Hindu temples and Mumbai’s imperial-era Gateway of India.

“My journey began as a concerned citizen,” the 56-year-old architect said. “I felt very strongly about the way heritage was completely left to decay.”

In the world’s most populous nation and one of its fastest-growing major economies, urban development is advancing at dizzying speed.

Conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah, center, discusses a project design with employees in Mumbai, India, on Sept. 22.

Photo: AFP

“It’s only in the last 30 years that we’ve managed to have city-wide listings and heritage regulations, and even those are very limited to cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata,” she said. “Historical buildings are neither protected by government, nor do local communities or owners have the funds to look after them.”

Lambah’s career began partly as an activist, after she worked with US architect Joseph Allen Stein, whose modernist buildings in Delhi set concrete and local stone among courtyards and gardens.

“He showed me this interface between old and new,” she said.

After moving to Mumbai in 1995, Lambah encountered a city where hundreds of historic buildings stood outside government protection.

“A lot of colonial heritage was technically considered too young to be declared national monuments,” she said. “The challenge was: What do you do about historic buildings, that are not protected under central government rules and have no funding?”

She has since also supported conservation plans for more than 20 world heritage sites.

That includes a 15th-century Hindu temple at Hampi, Le Corbusier’s 20th century masterpieces in Chandigarh, Rajasthan’s Amer Fort and Bodh Gaya, where Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment.

In Mumbai, where ornate Victorian Gothic facades and geometric Art Deco buildings face salt air, neglect and redevelopment, she turned to the challenge of saving the city’s wider architectural fabric.

“Every city faces this challenge — there is a warp and weft of new and old, and a tug of war between development and conservation,” she said. “These are cultural assets.”

At Mumbai’s 19th-century David Sassoon Library and Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, Lambah helped bring together private donors, foundations and community groups to rescue the Victorian heritage site and the blue-and-white house of worship after their restoration stalled due to lack of funds.

“When people have been working, living and even commuting through these historic buildings, they feel intensely passionate about them,” she said.

Her work to restore Mumbai’s 19th-century Bandra railway station had to be carried out around trains and commuters.

“Random people commuting past would tap me on the shoulder and say... ‘We know what you’re doing — you’re doing it for us.’”

She pointed to her work at Mumbai’s Royal Opera House, once facing demolition, but with its ornate gilt interiors and grand auditorium now intact.

“We could have lost it entirely,” Lambah said. “Instead, its life has been extended and it has become a cultural space that is actively used by people.”

Lambah is also working to conserve Mumbai’s most recognizable landmark, the Gateway of India, built under British rule, but shaped by Indian architectural traditions and embraced by generations since the country’s independence.

People at times ask her why India should conserve “a vestige of colonialism,” to which she responds: “These buildings are as Indian as they get, because they’re built from the stone, tears and sweat of Indians.”

“I have to look at the entire palimpsest of 6,000 years of India’s built heritage. What doesn’t seem convenient can’t be left out or forgotten,” Lambah said.

When she started working in Mumbai, there were only two qualified conservation architects in the entire city, she said.

“Today, there is a larger number of young architects who are studying conservation, who are practicing,” she added.

That growth is welcome, but the task remains enormous, she said.

“We have to catch up,” Lambah said. “It’s a long, arduous road ahead.”