India has launched a unique multi-faceted project ‘Mausam’ to rekindle long-lost ties across nations of the Indian Ocean ‘world’ and forge new avenues of cooperation and exchange among them.
Ravindra Singh, Secretary of the Union Culture Ministry which is implementing the project, presented the details of the ‘The Mausam: Maritime Routes and Cultural landscapes’ on Friday at the ongoing 38th session of the World Heritage Committee at Doha in Qatar.“One of the main deliverables of the project is nomination of maritime cultural landscapes across the Indian Ocean as a trans-national property on the World Heritage list of UNESCO,” said a senior official from the Culture Ministry. Project ‘Mausam’ is a Ministry of Culture project with Delhi-based Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) as the nodal coordinating agency.
He said that the project launched in partnership with member nations, will enable significant steps to be taken to record and celebrate this important phase of world history from the African, Arab and Asian perspectives.The endeavour of the project is to position itself at two levels.“At the macro level, it aims to re-connect and re-establish communications between countries of the Indian Ocean world, which would lead to an enhanced understanding of cultural values and concerns among them,” the official said.
At the micro level, the focus is on understanding national cultures in their regional maritime milieu, pointed out the official.The central themes holding the ‘Mausam’ project together are those of cultural routes and maritime landscapes that not only linked different parts of the Indian Ocean littoral but also connected the coastal centres to their hinterlands, he added. More importantly shared knowledge systems and ideas spread along these routes and impacted both coastal centres, and also large parts of the environs.
It will enable a significant step in recording and celebrating this important phase of world history from the African, Arab and Asian-world perspectives.Preliminary works on this new project has already been initiated. A monthly lecture series has been organised at Delhi-based India International Centre (IIC) in collaboration with IGNCA and National Monuments Authority (NMA) at Delhi and IIC, the official said.