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Research ArticlePeer-Reviewed Articles

Myth, Memory, and Placemaking

Reclaiming Ramjanmabhoomi in Ayodhya, India

Amita Sinha
Landscape Journal, November 2022, 41 (2) 59-72; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/lj.41.2.59
Amita Sinha
Amita Sinha is a former professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (1989-2018) and has taught in the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, IIT Kharagpur, and in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at IIT Gandhinagar in India. She is the author of Landscapes in India: Forms and Meanings (University Press of Colorado, 2006) and Cultural Landscapes of India: Imagined, Enacted, and Reclaimed (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). She is also coeditor of Cultural Landscapes of South Asia: Studies in Heritage Conservation and Management (Routledge, 2017).
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Abstract

The contested site of Ramjanmabhoomi in Ayodhya, India, has been reclaimed for building a Hindu temple following years of litigation and occupation of the site by Babri Mosque for more than three centuries. This temple is projected to be a monumental complex, a grand statement of Hindu faith in the divine king Rama. The site, while of immense significance as his birthplace, is projected to be a theme park designed as a visual spectacle. The article outlines an alternative conceptual framework for site design predicated on the idea of placemaking as a process for memory retrieval in the present and encoding memories for the future. Place images in literary and pictorial narratives depicting Rama’s life are building blocks of collective memory and have shaped actual landscapes in their likeness in the past. They are integral to memory formation and recall, and as such they have a significant role in reclaiming Ramjanmabhoomi as the legendary place of his birth and domicile. The temple is proposed to be situated in a narrative landscape that can speak of Rama’s person and deeds, its design language inspired by place images and ritual practices. Collective memory of Rama’s story can be recalled and reconstituted with the amplification of memory traces in site design, anchoring the emergent landscape narrative. The mnemonic landscape of Ramjanmabhoomi can be sustainably managed and become a model for reclaiming other sites across India that are associated with Rama’s story and help communicate the lost environmental ethos of living in harmony with nature.

KEYWORDS
  • Narrative
  • memory
  • place images
  • cultural landscape
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In this issue

Landscape Journal: 41 (2)
Landscape Journal
Vol. 41, Issue 2
9 Nov 2022
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Myth, Memory, and Placemaking
Amita Sinha
Landscape Journal Nov 2022, 41 (2) 59-72; DOI: 10.3368/lj.41.2.59

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Myth, Memory, and Placemaking
Amita Sinha
Landscape Journal Nov 2022, 41 (2) 59-72; DOI: 10.3368/lj.41.2.59
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  • Article
    • Abstract
    • INTRODUCTION
    • LANDSCAPE, MEMORY, NARRATIVE
    • PLACE IMAGES
    • MEMORY TRACES
    • RAMJANMABHOOMI RECLAIMED
    • CONCLUSION
    • PEER REVIEW STATEMENT
    • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    • Footnotes
    • REFERENCES
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  • Guerrillas in Our Midst
  • Transdisciplinarity and Boundary Work for Landscape Architecture Scholars
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Keywords

  • narrative
  • memory
  • place images
  • Cultural landscape
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