The Indo-Islamic garden: Conflict, conservation, and conciliation in Gujarat, India

Abstract

I begin with the passage from Rajmohan Gandhi's Revenge and Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History that inspires this chapter: "A word, finally, on Delhi, for we started this study by noting Delhi's djinns, its great load of unrepented cruelty and unshared sorrow. Can Delhi's accumulated offences be washed away? Can some atonement or penance - or some God-sent blessing or grace - expiate the guilt of centuries, and generate a breeze of forgiveness that blows away the smells of torture and revenge?" (Gandhi 1999: 410). A paragraph later, Gandhi suggests an answer, Every tree planted, or cubic foot of water conserved, is a celebration of life, a proclamation of the worth of the future, and a garden or a river may calm sad or angry hearts. Every caring act - of fellowship, considerateness, nursing, apology, forgiveness, greening, or flowering - perhaps heals something of Delhi's torment, maybe calms one of its djinns, and a healing process in Delhi might speak to all of South Asia (Gandhi 1999: 410) - and the world beyond. This chapter on planting trees and conserving water at the newly designated World Heritage Site of Champaner-Pavagadh in the state of Gujarat, which was shaken by violent cultural conflict in 2002, strives to envision new linkages between cultural landscape conservation and conciliation (Fig. 1). © 2007 Springer-Verlag New York.