About the Workshop

This ensemble of towns along the Hooghly has great potential to not only be developed as a tourist site but also showcases that with sensitive heritage integrated development, how communities can be given a chance at a better quality of life while preserving and enhancing its cultural heritage. There is a great opportunity to demonstrate how the funds available from urban renewal schemes like JNNURM II, District and Local Administration as well as external sources can be judiciously channelized towards the sustainableurban development of the town of Chinsurah.

The Digital Humanities Centre at Presidency University will complement this effort with an interdisciplinary research project focusing on how Dutch history in Bengal can receive new illumination through a juxtaposition of tangible and intangible heritage such as monuments, texts, charters, linguistic traces and even performative rituals. The aim is to research and record such resonances using digital tools and to integrate them into a website. Such a website will function as an educational toolkit for a variety of purposes, including university-level research, promotion of tourism and even teaching history in schools. Presidency is one of the first institutions in India to apply Digital Humanities research to the preservation of culture, architecture and built-environment and once created, such a resource would also become an integral part of the History curriculum in the university, thus perpetuating widerengagement.

The purpose of this workshop is to provide a platform for a proactive dialogue between the various governmentinstitutions, stakeholders and professionals in order to develop a practical and sustainable plan for theurban development of Chinsurah. Dutch experts in the field of city planning and heritage conservation shallinteract with local experts and administrators to develop a way forward towards creating sustainable approach towards development.