Colonial to Neoliberal Governmentality in Monument Governance

Organised monument governance in India began during the colonial rule. The colonial governance enterprise was bureaucratic and worked through stringent laws which often came down heavily on the monument-adjacent communities. The totalising nature of Indian colonial governmentality fractured the local community, disabling their engagement with the State either as civil society, as individuals or as social groups, while on the other hand enabling such engagement through a “community” constructed on religious lines. Colonial continuities in monument governance meant that a roughly similar position continued in the post-colony. On the international plane, however, there has been a discursive shift in valorisation of monuments leading to some sort of reification of community’s cultural attachment to the monuments. Such a shift, though may be informed by the local resistances to the colonial project, is sought to be operationalised in highly disrupted terrains of post-colonies where the colonial and post-colonial governmentality has been instrumental in shaping the field of possible actions. Contemporary critical heritage scholarship has engaged with the idea of “neoliberal governmentality” in analysing the shifts in heritage governance regimes globally. Inspired by this idea, the authors in this piece study the contemporary shifts in the monument governance sector in India and how the uneasy interactions of “neoliberal governmentality” with its colonial and post-colonial counterparts shape its techniques and the subjectification of the monument-adjacent communities

Bureaucracy · Colonialism · Corporate governance · Governmentality · Scholarship · Subjectification · Technocracy · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Archaeological Research and Protection · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation