World Heritage Day: Conserve and preserve your heritage
Well, World Heritage Day is also known as the International Day for the Monuments and sites. On 18th April, World Heritage Day is celebrated across the globe. This helps in restoring and preserving the varied cultural heritage which makes the world what it is.
Undoubtedly, each country and community has its own historical significance that is quite interesting for studying. However, the remnants of the same are present in the form of monuments in a museum. Monuments now play a quite important role. Thus, it is extremely important for conserving and protecting them from all the harmful things which can tamper with their integrity.
This special day is an opportunity to spread the public’s awareness of the diversity of cultural heritage. However, the efforts are needed for protecting and conserving it and also drew attention to its vulnerability.
Additionally, monuments and ancient buildings are an asset to the world. This makes the biggest heritage of the nation. This day is celebrated for maintaining the legacy and protect the rich heritage that is gifted by the ancestors.
History of World Heritage 2021
Eventually, this is specifically suggested by the International Council of Monuments and Sites in 1982. UNESCO has currently accepted their proposal in the year 1983 at the time of the 22nd General Conference.
As per the ICOMOS, “essential aspect is to mark this day so that it becomes not only a day to celebrate your National Heritage but also a day of International Solidarity in favour of strengthening and safeguarding Heritage worldwide.”
Theme of World Heritage Day
In this year, the day’s theme is ‘Complex Pasts: Diverse Futures.’ Currently, everything in history is now positive or rosy. There are some who have been highly violent and probably best to be forgotten. This is community may think of this way and others may look at this from some other point of view. However, the monument is erected for representing it which may be a contested point of view. Further, in-length discourses and debates will bring about unbiased opinions about it. This might be the pathway that is rather safe, secured, and diverse future.
“This day invites all of us to reflect on, interpret and review existing narratives,” reads the UNESCO article.
Significance of the World Heritage Day
Notably, the day’s aim and significance which is limited to various historical monuments and sites. It plays a significant role in preserving the cultural integrity of a community or country. Now rich and diverse culture, the onus is also on us to save it from harm. This will come together and history has the chance to survive for its own.
Quotes
“Our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our nation”–Nelson Mandela
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots”—Marcus Garvey
“You don’t stumble upon your heritage. It’s there, just waiting to be explored and shared” – Robbie Robertson
“A people’s relationship to their heritage is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother” — John Henrik Clarke
“A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies — all the things that quite literally make us who we are” — Steve Berry
“Happiness is a very proud word of our whole cultural heritage”–Erich Fromm
“In the coming decades, questions of identity, meaning cultural heritage, language, and religion will play a central role in politics”–Samuel P. Huntington
“What we deplore is not that the gate of western knowledge was thrown open to Indians, but that such knowledge was imported to India at the sacrifice of our own cultural heritage. What was needed was a proper synthesis between the two systems and not neglect, far less destruction, of the Indian base”–Syama Prasad Mukherjee
