The Role of Local Cultural Institutions and Policies in Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage: The Case of Kerala, India

This thesis gives an overview of the landscape of cultural institutions and policies for safeguarding ICH in postcolonial India and Kerala in specific. Through a combination study of the historical context of India’s and Kerala’s cultural institutions in the background of an unclear unified and structured policy, the present local institutional perspective in Kerala on ICH, the analysis of the National Inventory of ICH pre and post BJP’s power at the centre, and examination of the selection and safeguarding activities undertaken for Kutiyattam in Kerala- this thesis stakes a claim that local cultural institutions have influenced safeguarding activities of ICH in an inadequate and inefficient manner. These institutions have been driven by a combination of factors such as the politics of representation and institutional patronage for Indian ICH shifting from nationalist cultural elitism to a more religious nationalism, bureaucracy, political and individual agendas, and performative safeguarding due tack the necessary infrastructure, knowledge, resources, or genuine concern and understanding for the protection of ICH communities. The thesis further argues that UNESCO’s 2003 ICH Convention has only been superficially adopted within these institutions and therefore questions the need of this organisations’ standard definitions and criteria within the complex landscape of India. With its institutional and political processes, UNESCO is only aggravating nation building, glorifying representation of dominant communities and ICH practices through the ways in which their tools are being used in India, thereby strengthening the politics of selection. This research recommends that Indian cultural institutions should work on these deficiencies and set up its own decentralised ICH agencies, understand how to apply dynamism in Indian ICH practices based on every case and region, give power to the communities, acknowledge its past institutional patronage that had biased support and history of marginalisation in order to truly represent the diverse ICH of India without being coercive , overtly popularising outside its context or freezing these practices in time.