Dambulla’s World Heritage status to be annulled?

This feline was not one bit surprised on receiving an email sent by a friend in Australia with the following news: ‘The UN’s cultural agency expressed concern Wednesday over the poor maintenance of a centuries-old cave temple in Sri Lanka, which risks being struck off the list of world heritage sites. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said she raised the maintenance issue at the Golden Temple of Dambulla with local authorities during her visit to the island’.

UNESCO Heritage Site

This cat’s non-surprise and even glum acceptance of the fact of our losing one site which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site is because she feels it is deserved and self inflicted.

Reason? Not only neglect of the ancient cave temples but because of the crude temple built at the bottom of the rock at Dambulla and worse, having pieces of rock made from plastic or whatever, placed beside its entrance.

This cat finds the decade or two old ‘Golden Temple’ imitative of a Thai temple with a garish Buddha statue to be ‘a monstrosity’. She is justified, though many would label her sacrilegious.

In fact, she has refused to visit the Dambulla rock caves after her first view of the newly built temple at the base of the rock because she felt it was an eyesore; an unforgiveable intrusion, which to her was so starkly jarring against the backdrop of the real solid rock and the serene, ancient temples above.

The article received continues thus: ‘The Sri Lankan government is bound by international treaty obligations to protect the cave monastery which is home to 2,000-year-old murals and 157 Buddha statues, she (DG of UNESCO) told reporters in Colombo at the end of her four-day visit.

A team of experts who visited the site in central Sri Lanka last year found the site poorly maintained and warned that new constructions have affected its heritage value, she said.’

A monk at the temple has been resisting Government efforts to take over the maintenance of the temple, but Bokova said it was the responsibility of the Sri Lankan State to ensure that the property was well preserved.

Twenty years ago

Menika spoke with an architect no sooner she saw the new temple, twenty years ago, about the travesty committed in Dambulla with this garish building, and inquired how a Heritage Site would be so imposed upon.

The architect said the monk who boasts of a degree in architecture or archeology goes his own way. His excuse was that the new temple was below the ancient caves.

It was this monk, this feline believes, who opposed the construction of Heritage Kandalama as environmentally injurious.

Nonsense. The hotel is completely complementary to the forest/wewa/ village ambiance of the place.

Also if this cat’s memory is OK, it was this building priest, or at least someone from the Dambulla temple, who marched with some men bearing clubs to a boutique owned by a Muslim trader and searched the fridge for stored meat. UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Sri Lanka, designated after stringent screening and having to satisfy strict criteria are: the ancient cities of Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura and Sigiriya (1982); the sacred city of Kandy (1988); Galle and its fortifications (1988); the cave temples of Dambulla (1991); the natural sites of Sinharaja Forest (1988) and the Central Highlands (2010).

Eight sites

Surprisingly Mihintale is not a Heritage site, neither is it included as part of the sacred city of Anuradhapura. Of these eight sites we will lose one, if the government does not act fast.

“UN officials have expressed fears that the cave temple could be struck off the prestigious list of heritage sites unless immediate corrective action is taken to preserve frescoes and remove the new construction that has been added by resident monks.”

Note the statement: “the new construction that has been added…” So this cat had the correct feeling, more gut than knowledgeable, when she felt abhorrence and outrage at her first sight of the new temple at the bottom of the Dambulla rock.

It was seen from the hill opposite Sigiriya and it was still a garish outsized pimple in the otherwise serene landscape. “The first site to be removed from UNESCO’s World Heritage List was the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman in 2007 after the government decided to reduce the size of the protected area by 90 percent - in contravention of the heritage convention.

The only other site to be removed was Germany’s Dresden Elbe valley due to the building of a four-lane bridge in the heart of the cultural landscape which meant that the property failed to keep its ‘outstanding universal value as inscribed’.” How tragic that due to one person’s obstinacy and the previous government looking the other way and the Buddha Sasana Ministry taking no notice, that we are going to lose one of our Heritage Sites. We hope this government will take immediate action.

The new temple will have to be dismantled; maybe do an Abu Simbel and take it apart piece by piece and reconstruct it far away.

- Menika