Mangaluru :

Konkani Language and Cultural Foundation took the first step towards safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) of Konkani by organizing a national workshop at the World Konkani Centre (WKC) on Sunday.

Shubha Chaudhuri, associate director general, American Institute of Indian Studies, New Delhi, told TOI that dealing with intangible cultural heritage of any community is a big challenge. “No one can fully finish the process of documenting it,” she said, adding the first step in that direction should be making an inventory of what needs to be documented by consulting various stakeholders. “Community participation holds the key in this direction,” she said.

Explaining reasons for this approach supported by Unesco, which adopted ICH convention at its 32nd session in Paris from September 29 to October 17, 2003, Chaudhuri said, “There is no point in reviving the old. The focus is now on trying to promote existing cultural heritage and how best to stop them from going extinct,” she said.

It is always easy to document the tangible heritage of a community in terms of its buildings and other assets. But there are many communities in faraway islands tucked away in remote corners of the world, which have their own rich oral tradition.

Chaudhuri, who has worked in this area in Nepal, said: “If communities sans tangible assets have healthy transmission of their intangible oral tradition, that should suffice rather than worry about traditions dying,” she said.

Shigeru Aoyagi, director and Unesco representative to Bhutan, India, Sri Lanka and Maldives, said, “Safeguarding intangible heritage requires far more complex exercise than preserving a monument, because its survival depends on human factors,” he said.

He pointed out that the latest technologies cannot help much because intangible heritage by nature has to be safeguarded alive, and cannot be recorded or conserved as museum piece out of its social context. “What sustains intangible heritage is nothing but existence of a group of people – practitioners, scholars and public alike – who continue loving and giving sense to the tradition and perhaps this is the ultimate key to safeguarding intangible heritage,” he said.

Kiran Budkuley, HOD of English, Goa University, said, “We will be more than willing to share our experience with the World Konkani Centre to safeguard Konkani’s intangible cultural heritage,” she said. Goa University could moot signing MoU with the Centre if needed to formalize the same, she added.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Mangaluru / TNN / February 09th, 2015