Summary

Landscape planning, design and management proposals for Govardhan Hill in Braj are described in this project. The Hill is designated as a protected cultural landscape with a 500 feet buffer zone where development is regulated. Reclamation of the Hill with sustainable management practices for conservation of cultural and natural heritage and development of eco-cultural tourism is proposed. Restoration of kunds (water tanks) and vans (groves), sites associated with Krishna legends, is planned. The existing but inadequate and poorly maintained pilgrim infrastructure along the parikrama (circumambulatory) routes is improved with rest facilities and interpretive signage for eco-cultural tourism.

Introduction

Legendary associations with Lord Krishna have imbued the cultural landscape of Braj with great religious significance drawing over 50 million pilgrims annually who go on circumambulatory tours of the landscape. Its marvelous heritage is neither that of age old historic monuments nor of astonishing scenic splendors but of place based oral traditions that celebrate the life of Krishna through ritual enactment and festivals. Braj and especially the sacred Govardhan Hill has been the subject of a magnificent oeuvre of poetry and paintings in medieval and late medieval India. The living traditions of Braj are encompassed in its unique dialect, folk dances and songs, and folk arts and crafts. The sacred hills, groves, and ponds of Braj are facing loss of forest cover and drying up of water bodies. New development in Govardhan threatens to disrupt the ecological stability of the pastoral landscape and overly commercialize the sacred ambience. The NGO Braj Foundation based in Vrindavan invited the Landscape Architecture Department to collaborate on developing a framework for conservation and eco-cultural tourism at Govardhan. A team of 7 graduate students travelled to Braj in the first fortnight of January 2010 to undertake field work and do a design workshop.

Govardhan Hill has been venerated since ancient times, and receives the largest number of pilgrims in Braj. In circumambulating the landscape, pilgrims visit sacred tanks and groves, temples and shrines located around the Hill. Scholarship on Braj has emphasized the (re)construction of sacred landscape in pilgrimage and a continuing re-enactment of rituals that affirm an idealized vision of that landscape. The incongruence between the imagined and real landscapes lessens the psychological impact and reduces the quality of engagement with the sites. During the site workshop and subsequent work in the design studio at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign campus when 8 more students joined the team, planning, design and landscape management proposals were developed. Complex web of relationships between texts, visual cultures, and movement patterns were untangled to understand the multi-faceted nature of landscape experience. Visual and linguistic texts, ritual behaviors, oral place traditions were interpreted to understand how the Govardhan landscape is conceptualized, visualized, and inscribed in the body. The landscape design proposals are guided by archetypal landscape imagery and local practice of nature veneration. They are based upon the premise that traditional belief systems can be harnessed in the promotion of environmental health of degraded sites. Reclaiming the sites will in turn lead to active encouragement and sustenance of traditional practices.

Photo-montages in the project depict the traditional belief systems that guide current landscape practices—worshipping the hill, bathing in tanks, circumambulations done through body prostrations on the ground, and chanting in temples and sacred sites. Natural features of Govardhan Hill—its forest cover, flora and fauna, site hydrology—and its land use patterns that create a mosaic of fields, groves, and villages clustered tightly around tanks, are mapped. The complex web of paths and trails with the main circumambulatory route around the Hill are traced and the visual and haptic experience of movement is represented in collages. Sacred sites categorized into vans (forests), kunds (water tanks), raas sthalis (sites for Krishna lila), temples, shrines. They are interpreted as narrative place markers and mnemonic devices that invite ritual enactment of Krishna stories and worship constituting the intangible heritage of Braj. It is argued that this form of heritage can be conserved and promoted though cultural landscape protection and management.

A framework for conservation of Govardhan Hill is proposed for guiding policy programs, planning regulations, and design interventions. The objective is to reclaim, remediate, or restore not just individual sites but to set a standard for protection and development that can be followed throughout the conservation zone. The Hill is designated as a protected cultural landscape with a 500 feet buffer zone for regulated development. Design proposals depict ways in which the idealized landscape of Govardhan can be realized by restoring the grove and the kund that form the archetypal landscape unit. Reclaiming space for the prostrating pilgrim and holy wanderer is the goal for organizing movement in the landscape. Kunds that are the primary public space for the community as well as sites of ritual ablutions by pilgrims, and lined with temples and shrines are redesigned using the principle of ‘constructive surgery’ such that they become the major nodes on the circumambulatory tour of the Hill. Interpretive signage for guiding visitor movement and experience is proposed and a welcome center for visitors is designed at Dan Ghati. A sanitation action plan is outlined for public spaces and for the local community and prototypes designed for toilets and recycling centers.

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