The Chennai Metropolitan Area or KTCC as it is better known, that acronym standing for Kanchipuram, Thiruvallur, Chennai and Chengalpattu, is around 5,900 sq km in extent. As the city has now expanded to its fringes and seeks to take in more of the CMA, it is vital that what heritage those locations possess is documented for posterity. Experience has shown us that as the city expands, the built, cultural and natural heritage of the newer areas are the first casualties. Much has already been lost and yet, there is a considerable amount still standing, or hidden in plain sight as the adjoining Heritage Watch column will show. Will the authorities, the educational institutions and the residents of these places rise to the challenge? Or will they allow it all to vanish in the face of real estate demand?
Madras that is Chennai has been singularly lucky by way of its heritage. Ever since the 1890s there has been an almost continuous stream of documentation of what is today the core city by which we mean from George Town in the north to Adyar in the south and Egmore in the west. Beyond that it is sketchy at best. What for example to do we know of the histories of Shenoy Nagar, Anna Nagar and KK Nagar before they became localities with those names? Who owned the lands there? What were the landmarks in these places before the plots and layouts took over? History in these places has come to mean essentially those of the temples located there. And even those are hagiographic and belong to the realm of legend.
The colonial city core may seem better off. But even here, myth-making has become a full-fledged industry, beginning with ‘informed explanations’ on the etymology of place names. This is followed by exaggerated antiquity for religious precincts, and in this we include all the ancient faiths. There is also too much dependence on English accounts with scant respect for those in Indian languages. That the latter lack in citations and references and depend largely on hearsay is another matter altogether. Taken overall, we rarely draw a line between myth and fact. The present age of AI and Insta reels has only added to the chaos. These are believed to be absolute truths by the gullible and that creates a fresh wave of dissemination of these fake narratives.
Today, the new areas stand exposed to this risk in a big way. They represent a greenfield for the syllabus writers of the WhatsApp University and other similar institutions. The tragedy is that these ‘new’ areas are actually historic localities, even more so than Madrasapattinam. A Madhurantakam or a Chengalpattu town has a far richer past than the colonial city. And as these places get absorbed by the metropolis, they will lose this entire narrative, without any documentation. Which means the history is lost for good. As is well known, we are still groping for the story of Madras and Chennai before the British came along. Why allow for the same ignorance to prevail over the newer areas when we have the opportunity to set this right?
Until the 1960s, it was the District Gazetteers that fulfilled this role. They painstakingly documented the stories behind practically every village in their district. This practice seems to have been given up of late, but what is noteworthy is that the older publications of this series are available online. These need to be taken up as reference and used by educational institutions and volunteers in each area to record their history. And in today’s era of the internet, it costs nothing to chronicle that past and make it available for a larger audience. The only caution is that sources need to be cited for authenticity. If this is done, our city’s history will get richer.