| 18 | | . . . the Antiquities, Arts, Sciences and Literatures of Greater India’: the Indian Museum (1814) focusing on Art, Archaeology, Anthropology and Geology (apart from Zoology and Botany), and the Archaeological Survey of India (1861) meant to protect monuments under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act (1958), but foregrounding excavations, preservation and conservation, research into epigraphy and numismatics, training and publication. After independence and through the 1950s into the early 1960s, the Government of India sought within these disci- plines most of the institutions that determined an Arts and Culture policy, and also thereby deter- mined, for several other agencies, the dominant paradigms for the ‘arts and culture’ field as a whole. Among the major ones were the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (1950),Sangeet Natak Akademi (1953), National Museum, Sahitya Akademi, National Gallery of Modern Art and Lalit Kala Akademi (all set up in 1954, following a Parliamentary Reso- lution initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad). Arguably, all these institutions reflected, variously, the strong emphasis of national cultural policy on conservation, excavation, translation and dissemination of cultural heritage, reflecting indigenous cultural practices, and the importance placed on the modernist project of ‘recovering’ lost traditions.)]] ‘Each major culture and civilization has certain distinctive features, rooted in the past, which bear the impress of that culture’, it said. ‘India, with thousands of years of history, bears even now the powerful impress of her own distinctive features. They are today covered up by widespread and appalling poverty, the result of a traditional society and a static economy in the past’, but, and this is the central point, ‘these values |
| | 17 | In 1961, the opening chapter of the Third Five-Year Plan, entitled ‘Objectives of Planned Development’, put to use an entire range of modern technologies in reharnessing ancient national culture to specific contemporary meaning and purpose 21: ‘Each major culture and civilization has certain distinctive features, rooted in the past, which bear the impress of that culture’, it said. ‘India, with thousands of years of history, bears even now the powerful impress of her own distinctive features. They are today covered up by widespread and appalling poverty, the result of a traditional society and a static economy in the past’, but, and this is the central point, ‘these values |