Response to post on church demolition.

First of all I must thank the readers for the response to my post ‘Churches on the demolition line’.

Reproduced below is comment by Mr. Bhattacharya: “I sincerely hope that you will be able to mobilize the support of adequate numbers of like minded persons to save this beautiful, historic Church:
"You could approach the following three Organisations for intervention.
1. The Archaeological Survey of India, which has the authority under the AMASR Act, to bring ancient monuments under its protection.
2. The Kerala State Department of Archaeology which can declare ancient monuments as protected monuments under the as The Kerala Ancient Monuments and Archaeological sites and Remains Act of 1968.
3. INTACH which files PIL ‘when actions of the local or national administration are a threat to the heritage of the country.’ They have 5 Chapters in Kerala.
You can get more information from their websites.
From: Bipul Bhattacharya. April 28, 2007 12:38:00 PM IST”

I have already communicated the details to INTACH. This is an NGO which has been doing great work in preserving India’s heritage. I had mentioned about this organization in my post ‘Armenian Catholicos in India’:

http://parayilat.blogspot.com/2007/03/armenian-catholicos-in-india.html

INTACH is likely to help in the restoration of the Armenian Church (built in 1772) in Chennai.

It will be effective if more people write to them. In fact, the twin churches of Ramapuram are on their list of protected sites. The email ID of INTACH is:

intach@del3.vsnl.net.in

I know of two other old churches, which are also facing demolition. In all likelihood, there would be more on the bulldozing list.

Ends.