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Australian-born academic George Michell is renowned for his research on the Chalukya kingdoms in southern India. In an exclusive interview with Asian Affairs' Shyam Bhatia, he speaks about his research and his hopes for the newly formed Deccan Heritage Foundation that seeks to safeguard India's priceless centuries-old heritage.

Asian Affairs: Could you tell us something about your research into the early Chalukyas.

George Michell: The early Chalukyas were a dynasty of rulers and they ruled over Karnataka, Andhra and parts of Maharashtra in the sixth to eighth centuries, and they had fantastic temples in the area of Badami, which people visit. My studies are on those temples — architecturally. Badami itself is in the north of Karnataka. It was once the capital of these kings and is a spectacularly beautiful spot and a good reason to do some studies. It's a living town with remnants of these 1500 year old buildings in and around it. It's also quite close to Hampi.

AA: Was Hampi the capital of the famous Hindu empire of Vijaynagar?
GM: Hampi is the way this site was once known and was the capital of this great south Indian Vijaynagar empire for about 250 years (from the 14th to 16th centuries) and it's not just temples there. There are remnants of fortifications and store rooms, bath houses. There's a whole range of stuff to give you a feeling of what the capital was like.

It encompassed many different regions. It was a truly south Indian kingdom with at least three languages spoken there — telugu, tamil and kannada. So you see it was more than just a one zone sort of place. It encompassed almost one half of India, the bottom half. It was the great south Indian kingdom to which the Portuguese and others came. It lasted until the middle of the 16th century, when the capital was sacked by the sultans of the Deccan people from Bijapur and Golconda. The Moghuls were just beginning in the north, so it was pre-Moghul.

AA: Where do Haieder Ali and Tipu Sultan fit in?
GM: Well, they usurped the Hindu Mysore throne in the 18th century, by which time Hampi and Vijaynagar were long gone.

AA: Why does public interest tend to focus on north India rather than the south?
GM: I think you find Tamils focus on their area, but this just between those interest groups, it's in the heartland of the peninsula and it seems to have been overlooked. When people think of India, they think of the Taj, or Benares, or they might think of the great temples of Tamil Nadu, but they never think about this in-between zone. What's so interesting for us is there are plenty of remnants of heritage sites there and it's where the Islamic tradition met the Hindu tradition.

AA: Why is it overlooked, is it because it's geographically in between?
GM: Yes and because specialists tend to be North India people, Hindi and Urdu specialists, and then you have Tamil specialists. Then you have people who are European history specialists. Somehow this falls into a black hole between.

Some people who study Hindu art and architecture, they think that once the Muslims arrived all that came to an end, whereas this was during the Muslim period. So it falls outside the established categories. They are valid categories, but they're not well established.

AA: How did you get involved with the Deccan Heritage Foundation?
GM: I'm an architectural historian, so I'm someone who is really involved with documenting and studying and of course we've seen many distressing things happen. We feel that with our special interest and experience, we could try and make some contribution to saving these places in a better way. Myself, I'm not a conservationist. But if all goes well we would raise money and employ specialists like that to get involved in some project.

AA: If there was one particular site you would like to focus on, what would it be?
GM: Hampi is a hard one to beat because it's got so many things going for it and it's also going through a distressing time right now.

The district commissioner of the area decided he wanted to get rid of all the people in the bazaar street just off the main Hampi village, not realizing they were living in an ancient bazaar. They haven't worked out how to — how shall I say — take the ancient heritage and make it a living heritage.

They want to make it a lifeless ruin, which I think is a huge shame. Also, these people are living and using a place the way it was originally used. It's not totally inappropriate. You've been to parts of Europe and England where ancient town centres are used in quite an imaginative way. I think of those Italian hill towns with lovely 15th and 16th century buildings that are re-used as shops and houses. They have a living presence and the heritage is respected.

AA: Why are these people being moved out and where are they going to?
GM: No provision has been made. They've bulldozed the bazaar and various people lost their houses and shops and they were abandoned thereafter. It has appeared in some Bangalore papers, but in Karnataka they've had problems with politics and chief ministers, that's more exciting. Heritage issues are not very current.

AA: How many people are we talking about who have been displaced?
GM: I can't answer that very accurately — probably about 100. But they're threatening the whole village and not just the street. There's an issue of legality. In the master plan it was not about having people removed. We feel as a project we should tackle it in some way if we can.

It's not a democratic process. It's not as if they sat down with the people and said, 'We're not happy about this' — and listening to them. People just go in with bulldozers — and we've got to know if some ancient structures have been damaged. We have no idea because the archaeological authorities haven't provided a report and were not there to supervise it. It's outrageous, scandalous.

AA: Does the Deccan contain some of the best examples of Hindu-Muslim fusion architecture?
GM: I would say it contains one of them, though I wouldn't say it's one of the best because there's Hyderabad and Golconda and Bijapur. Great, great places that give us an idea of Indian Islamic and not Persian-Islamic architecture. You could say that's part of Bengal and Gujarat as well.

AA: If you look at the Chalukya temple period of the fifth and sixth centuries, how does that compare with what was going on in Europe at that time?
GM: Well, we're talking about the late Roman, Byzantine era, Constantinople etc. Nothing was happening in the UK.
Back in south India it was all tremendously sophisticated, the sculpture in these temples is some of the most wonderful to be seen anywhere in India and none of them are outside India. So unless you go there you won't know what or where they are. So it's a very exciting group of sites, these Chalukya sites, which is one of the reasons why I was attracted to them. When I first came to London I had to select a subject and nobody in London knew anything about them.

AA: When you compare the Chalukya sculptures with Rome and Constantinople, were they the same sort of level, or was one more advanced than the other?
GM: It's one of the great moments of world art if you are drawing a chart from the sixth to the eighth century — China, Japan, the Middle East etc, you could put this part of India right there for technical and artistic accomplishments from what we know of their civilizations. They have a spot there. It's a great moment of Asian art architectural history.

AA: How does Egypt compare?
GM: Egypt was at a low ebb at that time because of the Roman period being in decline. Egypt was no longer in the ascendant. But the sixth century was BI Justinian, they built beautifully in Istanbul, Syria and what is now Turkey. But if you think of West Europe, there was nothing much going on in the sixth century.

AA: And the UK?
GM: Caesar had come and gone, and they'd reverted to all these Goths and Vandals and Saxons coming and going...there's barely anything worth looking at from the sixth to eighth centuries.

In fact the amazing thing about India is how much of the past is still there to be seen in one way or the other. If you look at drawings done in the 18th century in India and what's still standing there, 90 per cent is still there.

AA: So is there an opportunity to salvage something of India's global heritage?
GM: Yes, it's there and just needs to be better looked after and people have to be sensitized to their heritage, especially young people. So we're going to promote children's programmes in various places to get them sensitized because it's too late to get the adults.

Lots of young people are not feeling happy about how things are but they're not sure how to go about it.

One programme we want to promote in Hampi is to get the kids out in the environment, getting them educated in some preliminary way about their heritage and telling them to clean up. Then, take this project to other cities where there are children who have no background in this, but I'm sure they're willing to learn and enjoy it. Why not? There's so much energy and willingness to learn, it's just that government agencies aren't the way to do it.

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