KVPT’s Patan Darbar Earthquake Response Campaign - Work to Date - September 2016

Department of Archaeology were not yet well-defined.
It was established simply as an administrative act in fulfilment
of the requirements of a modern state. The example
demonstrates that beyond maintenance and beautification,
the western concept of conservation appeared
to be alien to Nepal.
Nepal’s Potemkin villages: hurried activities on special
occasions
The Department of Archaeology and the Public Works
Department have repeatedly been allotted special funds
on certain occasions such as the coronation of the king
or the convention of SAARC (South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation) meetings. On the occasion of
King Birendra’s coronation in February 1975, the traditional
door leaves with simple, uncarved flat surfaces of
Sundari Cok in Patan and the Fifty-Five-Window Palace
in Bhaktapur were replaced by new ones with carved
decorative elements, which at that time were already
favored by the tourism industry. Moreover, the sixteen
protective deities of the niches that flank the courtyard
doors of Sundari Cok, which had got lost, were replaced
by replicas of inferior quality. On the occasion of the
restoration of Sundari Cok, these were removed and replaced
in 2013 by new ones, created by master carver
Indra Kaji Silpakar from Bhaktapur (Fig. 24). On the
occasion of the third SAARC summit in Nepal in November
1987, the pavement and the plinth around the
courtyard of Patan’s Mulcok were renewed with tiles and
incompatible modern-style bricks. These were taken out
in 2011 to reveal the original brick pavement; the plinths
were reshaped with traditional veneer bricks. Moreover,
two tympana were replaced in 1975 on the courtyard’s
south wing, as well as two struts and the bay window of
the north wing.
The beautification budget for the eighteenth summit
in Nepal in November 2014 was released too late and
ended in frantic activities with the slogan “face-lifting”,
which had already largely replaced the term “restoration”
as a term for state-of-the-art intervention. Most of the
budget was spent on paint, but in Bhaktapur the plinth
of the long L-shaped arcade (Laykuphalca) at the eastern
end of the Darbar Square was dismantled, the original
moulded bricks of the 1680s discarded and replaced by
new brickwork.
25, 26
Bhaktapur, Yaksheshvara temple,
portal east in 2008 with carved
wall brackets, and detail of the
northern end with an uncarved
wall bracket in 1990.
Photographs S. Klimek, 2008 and
N. Gutschow 1990
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