Architectural Heritage as Filming Location: Assessing the Impact on Conservation, Management, and Interpretation with the Select Cases from Rajasthan, India

Abstract

The phenomenon of using architectural heritage as a filming location attracts multiple effects, including site recognition, financial impact, and film-induced tourism, among others. The theorisation of this phenomenon is slowly evolving, primarily based on limited knowledge from the global West and with negligible scholarly reflection on India's heritage context. Filming operation policies and guidelines in India are loosely formulated and show implementation gaps, resulting in unfortunate accidents at such heritage sites. This research argues that, if not attended to urgently and professionally, these heritage sites are likely to lose their existing values. The thesis, therefore, aims to evaluate the positive and negative effects of the phenomenon on the conservation, management, and interpretation of heritage sites, using select cases from Rajasthan. It employs the ‘qualitative-exploratory-case study’ approach and uses stakeholders' experiences and perceptions to understand past situations across the three temporalities: the pre-, while-, and post-filming phases. The integrated theoretical framework guides the interpretative analysis of the interview insights, film clip readings, and the policy and guidelines study, which are discussed under different interpretative themes and further validated objectively through the Heritage Impact Assessment method. The inferential and inductive findings are: a) prioritisation of film script requirements, lack of interdisciplinary site-vigilance and lack of judicious use of monetary gains are posing threats to heritage structures; b) new taxonomy of film-induced tourism emerging from this study is specific to the tourism and heritage context of India; c) dominance of film-induced meanings and gradual erasure of historic significance of site validate key theoretical implications; d) all the stakeholders’s interests are mutually dependent, and therefore, filming projects should continue, while curating the layers of heritage interpretation and not compromising the ethics of heritage conservation. While devising recommendations or management strategies falls outside the scope of this study, thelast Chapter of the analysis provides indicative learnings and key insights in this area through a comparative analysis of the operational guidelines followed in the UK and India, which can benefit the decision-making process in India. It is further believed that this research, although a preliminary step towards the required theorisation of the said phenomenon, lays the groundwork for further studies and contributes to the scholarly movement seeking to depart from a West-centric approach in the heritage conservation discourse in India. Keywords: Architectural Heritage, Filming Location, Film-Induced Tourism, Heritage Conservation, Heritage Management, Heritage Impact Assessment, Heritage Interpretation.