The Indo-Islamic Garden: Conflict, Conservation, and Conciliation in Gujarat, India

I begin with the passage from Rajmohan Gandhi’s Revenge and Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History that inspires this chapter: “A word, finally, on Delhi, for we started this study by noting Delhi’s djinns, its great load of unrepented cruelty and unshared sorrow. . . . Can Delhi’s accumulated offences be washed away? Can some atonement or penance – or some God-sent blessing or grace – expiate the guilt of centuries, and generate a breeze of forgiveness that blows away the smells of torture and revenge?” (Gandhi 1999: 410). A paragraph later, Gandhi suggests an answer, “Every tree planted, or cubic foot of water conserved, is a celebration of life, a proclamation of the worth of the future, and a garden or a river may calm sad or angry hearts. Every caring act – of fellowship, considerateness, nursing, apology, forgiveness, greening, or flowering – perhaps heals something of Delhi’s torment, maybe calms one of its djinns, and a healing process in Delhi might speak to all of South Asia” (Gandhi 1999: 410) – and the world beyond. This chapter on planting trees and conserving water at the newly designated World Heritage Site of Champaner–Pavagadh in the state of Gujarat, which was shaken by violent cultural conflict in 2002, strives to envision new linkages between cultural landscape conservation and conciliation (Fig. 1).