When buildings collapse in warzones, they make global headlines. But when heritage vanishes whether through fire, neglect, or deliberate destruction it often fades into oblivion in silence, unnoticed, ungrieved. And yet, the loss of a sacred temple, a centuries-old song, or a vanishing craft is not merely symbolic; it is a rupture in the soul of a people, a wound that bleeds across generations.
Across the world today, cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, is under relentless assault. From stone relics reduced to dust by bombs to ancient traditions silenced by exile, the devastation of culture stretches far beyond the battlefield. Its impact is quieter, slower, but no less permanent.
As I watched footage unfold from Kathmandu, Nepal, over the last few days chaos, fury, buildings engulfed in flames my mind did not just linger on the political crisis. It turned, painfully, to the monuments, the palaces, the heritage sites being reduced to rubble in real time. Amid the smoke and rage, young men danced and paraded on social media, smiling against a backdrop of burning history.
What happens when a generation forgets the stones it was built on? How will the youth of today identify with their surroundings when there’s nothing left to hold on to?
Some of humanity’s most iconic structures have fallen prey to conflict. In Syria, the magnificent 2,000-year-old ruins of Palmyra were obliterated by ISIS in a campaign of cultural terrorism. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the graceful Mostar Bridge, an Ottoman-era marvel, was destroyed during the Yugoslav Wars, its fragments sinking into the river like the shattered hopes of a fractured society.
Conflict doesn’t always destroy culture, in many scenarios it commodifies it. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, the National Museum in Baghdad was ransacked. Priceless artifacts: cuneiform tablets, Sumerian sculptures, relics from the cradle of civilisation were stolen or destroyed. Many have never been recovered.
Syria’s archaeological treasures now reside in the vaults of private collectors, far from their homeland, their context lost, their stories silenced. The black market for cultural artefacts continues to thrive, driven by instability and greed.
India, too, has seen thousands of idols, bronzes, and manuscripts vanish from its temples, particularly in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. Smuggled during times of weak enforcement or political distraction, these artefacts now sit in foreign museums, admired but dislocated. While diplomatic efforts have led to the repatriation of a few, the looting continues in the shadows.
But not all heritage is carved from stone or cast in bronze. Some of the most profound expressions of identity are ephemeral: songs, dialects, dances, rituals, oral histories. When communities are torn from their roots, these fragile traditions evaporate.
In Myanmar, the forced displacement of the Rohingya has left their cultural legacy teetering on the edge of extinction. Generations of oral storytelling, traditional music, and foodways are being erased by exile.
In India’s northeast, home to more than 200 tribal communities, insurgency and ethnic strife have disrupted sacred festivals, masked dances, and communal enactments. Manipur and Nagaland, rich in tradition now face the slow unravelling of their cultural fabric, as youth grow up severed from ancestral knowledge.
In Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, Adivasi communities caught in the crossfire of Maoist insurgencies and state crackdowns have fled their sacred groves, their ceremonial grounds, their seasonal rituals, the very pulse of their identity.
Sometimes, cultural destruction is not collateral damage, it is intentional. In 2001, the Taliban reduced the Bamiyan Buddhas which had watched over the Afghan landscape for over 1,500 years to rubble. The act was both ideological and political, an attempt to wipe out a chapter of Afghanistan’s rich, pluralistic past.
Authoritarian regimes often engage in systematic rewriting of history. They ban practices, rename cities, demolish monuments, or distort textbooks, tools not just of control, but of identity reprogramming.
India, too, grapples with this. Cities like Allahabad renamed to Prayagraj, historical monuments contested, textbooks edited to serve political narratives, these acts may not destroy stone, but they chip away at memory, replacing complexity with convenient certainties.
And yet, amid the ruins, there is resistance and renewal. The resilience of culture.
After the war in Bosnia, the Mostar Bridge was reconstructed stone by stone, a symbol not just of architecture, but of healing. In post-ISIS Iraq, communities are painstakingly restoring churches, mosques, and Yazidi temples, determined to reclaim what was stolen, not just from their land, but from their spirit.
In India, idols have returned from foreign museums to their home temples. In Nepal, one hopes the fire-ravaged Singha Durbar Palace will rise again, as it has before, defying the flames that tried to erase it.
In times of social collapse, when leaders are attacked, homes set ablaze, and mobs run the streets, it may seem naïve to speak of heritage. But, it is precisely in these moments that heritage matters the most.
Cultural heritage is not ornamental. It is the anchor of identity, the echo of ancestors, the connective tissue between past, present, and future. When it is destroyed, that link is severed. Without it, we risk becoming rootless, adrift in a world with no memory.
As the world braces for new waves of conflict, displacement, and extremism, the question becomes urgent: What are we willing to do, not just to save lives, but to protect the legacies that define them?