NOT FAMILY SILVER, IT’S CRUMBLING
MASONRY By Arvind Kala
If European countries can sell their castles to foreigners, why can’t
India do the same with its crumbling forts and palaces? The idea seems
outrageous but it makes economic sense. Letting foreigners buy the palaces
will enrich both India and the impoverished royals who own these palaces.
The royals will get good money and our priceless heritage buildings will
be restored free of cost. Because the foreign buyers will renovate and
refurbish them to re-create their old glory. This happens in Europe and
it’ll happen in India. Typically, fixing a heritage building costs twice
as much as the purchase price. So we’ll have gora money preserving our
palaces. What more can we ask for?
Would Indian forts and palaces excite
potential buyers in Europe or America if sales were permitted? An answer
can only be tentative till a market is tested. But one buyer could have
been the India-loving Beatle George Harrison, a dollar billionaire, able
to spend $ 5 million (Rs.23.5 Crore) on an Indian fort without blinking
Harrison apart, there are thousands of rich foreigners adventurous enough
to set up second and third homes in distant lands. They buy islands in
Seychelles, coastal villas in Spain, and Casbahs in Morocco. Why wouldn’t
they be tempted by a Maharajah’s palace?
Rich foreign buyers just need to be
approached by skilled marketing.
Selling our forts and palaces to foreigners is the only way to preserve
them. They are crumbling because ex-royals cannot maintain them. Nor can
the government with scores of heritage buildings in its possession. So
there’s no alternative and we should learn from Europe’s example. What’s
better? . Our palaces with foreign owners restored to their old grandeur
or the same palaces in Indian hands falling apart?. Even backward Pakistan
has more commonsense than India. The Islamabad government has invited
domestic and foreign buyers to bid for a 3720-room Prime Minister’s
secretariat it cannot maintain.
Nor do Britain, Ireland, France, Germany,
Spain or Portugal mind their castles and other historic estates passing to
foreigners. These properties cost anything from $ 200,000 (Rs 94 lakh) to
$ 750,000 (Rs 3.52 Crore), renovations extra, but they are snapped up by
Americans who feel thrilled that a 20-room castle with a 20-acre forest
costs less than a cramped Manhattan apartment. Owning a Maharajah’s palace
could excite these buyers because they are pulled by history, which is why
pop star Madonna chose to get married in a 13th-century Scottish castle.
Fortunately for India, it has history plus
a Raj halo that we should capitalize upon.
Europeans and Americans apart, our mountainously rich NRIs from Laxmi
Nivas Mittal to Swaraj Paul could also be customers for the forts and
palaces if rules allowed it. Our goal should be to pass these heritage
properties to whoever can afford to look after them. Buyers could be
overseas hotel chains. In fact, India’s best-known restorer of historic
properties, Francis Wacsiarg, the Frenchman of Neemrana fame, says the
very survival of India’s old forts, palaces, and colonial bungalows
demands that they become commercially viable. Wacsiarg and his business
partner, Aman Nath, should know. Their 42-room Neemrana Hotel, 122
kilometres from Delhi, was a roofless ruin when they bought it from its
raja owner and converted it into a destination resort. Today, a night in
this 14th-century Rajasthani fort costs between Rs 2200 to 6600. Neemrana
even attracts charter flights of Europeans who spend a long week-end there
and fly back. Wacsiarg and Nath have replicated Neemrana’s success by
converting six other heritage properties into resorts. Two of them are in
Rajasthan, one in U. P., two in Uttaranchal, and one in Pondicherry.
What Neemrana has done, castle-buyers have
done for decades in Europe. Many castles in Ireland are full-fledged
five-star hotels. Here too, maybe a couple of dozen royal properties have
been converted into hotels and resorts, the latest being the Tehri Garhwal
royal palace in Narendranagar, Uttaranchal, where the Oberoi group has
opened a spa. Then there are some cosy inns in some royal properties, one
of them being the Nawab of Pataudi’s. By and large, however, India’s forts
and palaces become more derelict.
Unlike India, other countries are very
innovative in preserving heritage properties. Three years ago the
government of Saxony province in Germany decided it couldn’t afford to
look after 20 castles in its possession. So it put 17 of them up for sale
and three castles which were utter ruins it offered for free to anyone who
committed himself to restore their original grandeur. But here in India,
Wacsiarg and Nath re-erected Neemrana Fort from a roofless ruin, but when
they tried to open the resort in 1991, they needed 40 different
permissions from the Rajasthan government.
Luckily for India, things have improved since then. Wacsiarg says he’s
delighted that Maharashtra’s Department of Tourism actually undertakes to
get all the official permissions for any group wanting to acquire a
heritage property. And incredibly, the Pondicherry government vacated a
1790 French colonial bungalow where it was a tenant when the Neemrana
group expressed interest in buying it.
How many historic forts and palaces does
India have? Thousands, but most are falling apart. We can’t fix them
ourselves and we cannot accept their being repaired by new foreign owners.
Cut the nose to spite the face, as the saying goes. Can’t sell family
silver to foreigners, leftist intellectuals will shout. Selling crumbling
masonry would be a more accurate description.
