Intangible heritage of humanity

The Government of India’s Press Information Bureau declared proudly that the oral tradition of Vedic chanting has been declared an intangible heritage of humanity by UNESCO (Paris, France, November 12, 2003). In a meeting of jury members on November 7, 2003, at Paris, Mr Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, declared the chanting of Vedas in India an outstanding example of heritage and form of cultural expression. The proclamation says that in the age of globalisation and modernisation when cultural diversity is under pressure, the preservation of oral tradition of Vedic chanting, a unique cultural heritage has great significance.

The jury members included Dr Richard Kurun, Director of the Centre for Folklore and Cultural Heritage of the Smithsonian Institute (United Nations), Juan Goytisolo, Writer (Spain), Yoshikazu Hasegawa (Japan), Olive W M Lewin, Pianist, ethnomusicologist, Director of the Jamaica Orchestra for Youth (Jamaica). The UNESCO declaration brings international recognition to the excellence of the Vedic chanting tradition of India, which has survived for centuries encoding the wisdom contained in the Vedas through an extraordinary effort of memorisation and through elaborately worked out mnemonic methods. The purity and fail-safe technique devised for Vedic chanting in the olden days led to access to one of the ancient literatures of humanity in its entirety today. The Indian Department of Culture, Ministry of Tourism and Culture, took the initiative to put up the candidature of Vedic chanting to UNESCO. A presentation was prepared by Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts. The Department also prepared a five-year action plan to safeguard, protect, promote and disseminate the oral tradition of Vedas in terms of their uniqueness and distinctiveness, encourage scholars and practitioners to preserve, revitalise and promote their own branch of Vedic recitation as the custodians of their own traditions and direct the efforts primarily to making the tradition survive in its own context.

UNESCO’s Media Services went into further details about the recognition, where it stated that in addition to the Vedic Chanting, a thousand year old Chinese musical idiom that is mastered by a mere 50 people, the know-how of itinerant doctors in South America who are familiar with the properties of almost 1,000 plant species, a communication system among different language communities in Vanuatu using finger drawings in sand, are but three of the 28 cultural expressions proclaimed by UNESCO today as Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Director-General Ko?chiro Matsuura made the proclamations in a ceremony that was held in Paris, at UNESCO Headquarters, in the presence of members of the Jury and its President, Juan Goytisolo. “The proclamations are UNESCO’s first concrete response in meeting the pressing need to safeguard intangible heritage,” declared Mr Matsuura. He stressed that “the purpose of these proclamations is not simply to recognise the value of some elements of the intangible heritage, they entail the commitment of states to implement plans to promote and safeguard the inscribed masterpieces.”

The masterpieces proclaimed are: Azerbaijani Mugham (Azerbaijan), The Carnival of Binche (Belgium), The Andean Cosmovishion of the Kallawaya (Bolivia), The Oral and Graphic Expressions of the Vajapi (Brazil), The oral traditions of the Aka Pygmies of Central Africa (Central African Republic), The Royal Ballet of Cambodia (Cambodia), The Art of Guqin Music (China), The Carnival of Barranquilla (Colombia) — NOT TRINIDAD’s CARNIVAL, — La Tumba Francesa, Music of the Oriente Brotherhood (Cuba), The Al-Sirah al-Hilaliyya Epic (Egypt), The Kihnu Cultural Space (Estonia), The Tradition of Vedic Chanting (India), Wayang Puppet Theatre (Indonesia), The Maroon Heritage of Moore Town (Jamaica), Ningyo Johruri Banruku Puppet Theatre (Japan), The Art of Akyns, Kyrgyz Epic Tellers (Kyrgyzstan), Woodcrafting Knowledge of the Zafimaniry (Madagascar), The Indigenous Festivity dedicated to the Dead (Mexico), The Traditional Music of Morin Khuur (Mongolia), The Pansori Epic Chant (Republic of Korea), Lakalaka, Dances and Sung Speeches of Tonga (Tonga), The Arts of the Meddah, Public Storytellers (Turkey), Vanuatu Sand Drawings (Vanuatu), Nha Nhac, Vietnamese Court Music (Viet Nam), Arab States: Iraqi Maqum (Iraq), Songs of Sanaa (Yemen).

This year, the Proclamation is especially significant because of the recent adoption by the 32nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO of a Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The proclaimed masterpieces will be inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity provided for in the Convention, as soon as it enters into force, ie once it will have been ratified by 30 states. The jury, comprising 18 members, met to examine 56 national and multi-national candidatures submitted by Member States of UNESCO from November 3 to 6. Each case had already been evaluated by specialist NGOs such as the International Council for Traditional Music, the International Social Science Council, the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Sciences, the International Puppeteers Union, the International Theatre Institute and the International Council of Museums. The goal of the Masterpieces of the oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity programme is to raise public awareness of the value of this heritage and encourage governments to take legal and administrative steps to safeguard it. In the first Proclamation, in 2001, 19 masterpieces were given recognition. The third Proclamation is scheduled to take place in 2005. The Vedas are the revelations of God and hence form an inexhaustible treasure of Hinduism. They reflect the cultural and religious life of the ancient Hindu holyland and have been suitable codified and presented as aphorisms, which in turn have been interpreted subsequently by sages from their experiences. These stalwarts enjoyed the presence of the Divine in the glories of the universe. These Vedic chants have been transmitted orally and refer to man’s duties, his approach to issues and about the significance of rites, which when performed, will fetch peace.