The Ambiguities of Preservation: Bodhgayā, UNESCO, and the Making of a World Heritage Site

Abstract

On June 30, 2002, dozens of Buddhist monks walked in a procession through and around the Mahābodhi Vihāra at Bodhgayā. They were celebrating the announcement, three days earlier, of the designation of Bodhgayā as a World Heritage Site (WHS) by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The WHS designation was hailed as a great triumph for Buddhists throughout the world; it was a recognition, by the world’s most prestigious arbiter of history and culture, of the significance of Bodhgayā, placing the Mahābodhi Vihāra among the ranks of over 800 other World Heritage Sites, including the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, Macchu Picchu, and the Great Wall of China. The monks paraded around the temple and town with huge banners, attracting a small crowd of followers. Although it was a rather sober sort of celebration, to anyone who had been in and around Bodhgayā consistently over the prior decade, this celebration would have stood in sharp contrast to many of the processions at the temple in the 1990s: a series of protests and conflicts over control and management of the temple complex, which, although never escalating to actual physical violence, always carried with them the threat of conflagration. In the weeks and months after UNESCO’s designation, as the implications of this honor began to emerge, questions and anxieties began to surface.KeywordsWorld HeritageNatural HeritageWorld Heritage SiteRitual PracticeUnited Nations EducationalThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.