The crusaders behind Ramappa Temple UNESCO tag

For Panduranga Rao and Papa Rao, it was a long and arduous journey that started in the early 1980s

Warangal: The inscription of Kakatiya Rudreshwara Temple, popularly known as Ramappa temple, as the 39th World Heritage Site in India by UNESCO recently was achieved through the blood, sweat and tears of a handful of experts who were determined to place the Kakatiya heritage and Telangana State on the global tourism map.

But bagging the UNESCO tag was not an easy task, and was indeed a long and arduous journey that started in the early 1980s, with two admirers of Kakatiya heritage in this region toiling for two decades before getting the deserved recognition. The two are Prof M Panduranga Rao, a former professor of the civil engineering department at the then Regional Engineering College (National Institute of Technology), Warangal, and Biyyala Venkat Papa Rao, a film maker, sports administrator and a former IAS officer of Assam cadre. It all began with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) asking a team of experts from the Civil Engineering Department of the REC in 1984 to take up a research project covering geotechnical investigations.

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“The team included Prof S Raghava Chari, Prof N Babu Shanker, AUR Somayalu, and I was given the task of coordinating the team,” Prof M Panduranga Rao told Telangana Today, travelling down the memory lane.

“We completed this funded research project in five years and submitted a 500-page report to the ASI in 1987,” Prof Rao said, with a touch of melancholy as three of his fellow researchers are no more and could not witness these joyful moments.

Prof Rao, who is also the convener of the INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage), Warangal Chapter, said they had been trying to renovate and conserve the Kakatiya monuments and making people aware of the significance of the heritage structures since 1989 through several activities by the INTACH.

“Meanwhile, BV Papa Rao, a retired IAS officer and art lover, met me after and both of us resolved to continue with the efforts to protect and conserve the Kakatiya heritage to get a UNESCO tag for a monument. We floated the Kakatiya Heritage Trust (KHT) in 2009 for the purpose, which later was given the responsibility of coordinating the process of getting the UNESCO tag by the then State government in 2010 through a Government Order,” Prof Rao recalled as he gave chronological details of the process.

“A technical committee prepared the tentative list format after several consultations with the ASI and was forwarded to the Permanent Delegate of India to UNESCO on April 15, 2014.  A meeting was convened by the Advisory Committee on World Heritage Matters (ACWHM) on April 10, 2015, in New Delhi, wherein the Telangana government was asked to reconsider the proposal and to limit the nomination to Ramappa temple, removing others,” Rao said, adding that a revision was sought for in 2017 from World Heritage Centre and the same was made in 2018 after a thorough revision of Chapter -3 ‘Justification for inscription’ with the help of Dr Chudamani Nandagopal, a renowned scholar in Dance, Art History and Temple Architecture.
“In September 2019, a confirmation on the completeness of the dossier was informed by UNESCO World Heritage Centre, and visit of ICOMOS expert team headed by Vasu Poshyanandana, (a stone expert from Thailand), from the International Council for Monuments and Structures (ICMOS) visited Ramappa site on September 25 and 26, 2019.
G Suryanarayana Murthy, a conservation architect, played a key role in preparing the dossier on the monument,” Prof Rao said.

After several clarifications were submitted, the UNESCO’s  World Heritage Committee on July 25, 2021, inscribed this 800-year-old Ramappa temple as the World Heritage Site after a discussion for 1.29 minutes. “It was a nail-biting experience for the team from India including me, which witnessed the proceedings of the meeting,” Panduranga Rao added.
Rao thanked Vishal V Sharma, who is the Permanent Representative of India to the Permanent Delegation of India to UNESCO, Paris, for his efforts in convincing several countries and helping the Ramappa temple getting the tag.

 

Meanwhile, BV Papa Rao said the then Culture Minister J Geetha Reddy gave the initial impetus to the work of the KHT by officially forming a committee of all stakeholders with KHT as coordinator.  “With the formation of Telangana, there was a new thrust in KHT’s work to promote Kakatiya Heritage. With the help of the Telangana Government, the Trust started the Nomination Campaign in 2016. But only with the personal intervention of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao taking up with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Ramappa could become India’s nomination to UNESCO in 2019. We thank the Chief Minister, Minister for Culture, and all officials of Telangana government involved in the nomination process,” he added.

Papa Rao, who worked with the Culture Ministry with United Nations, had the opportunity to revamp old institutions and monuments in Kosovo established by Communist Yugoslavia into Modern Heritage Institutions with the help of the Council of Europe and UNESCO.
“The KHT has been very active in promoting heritage education and brought out several publications on Kakatiya’s history and heritage. UNESCO nominated two monuments from Kosovo as World Heritage Sites when Papa Rao worked with the UN.

“What is a wonderful surprise is that Kakatiya Heritage Trust was tasked by UNESCO to complete the research on a comparative study of Ramappa Temple to other Kakatiya temples and extend to other regional and international contexts. This is a feather in the cap of Kakatiya Heritage Trust, the Trustees feel,” Papa Rao said expressing his happiness for recognition to the KHT.

Born on June 14, 1954, in Munigalavedu village in Mahabubabad district to Biyyala Kishan Rao, a freedom fighter, and Biyyala Anasuya Devi, a homemaker, Papa Rao did his schooling and graduation in erstwhile Warangal district. He is currently pursuing his passion for filmmaking. He was an Advisor to Govt of Telangana, and also worked as the Home Secretary Of Assam (1994-1997). These two trustees of the KHT unanimously asserted that the inscription of Ramappa Temple as World Heritage Site was only a milestone but not the end of the journey. “In fact, there is much more to do in the journey ahead to work on several other Kakatiya monuments in the next decade,” they said.

Floating bricks, sandbox technology helps get tag

The temple construction was completed around 1213 AD during the rule of the Kakatiya king Gajapati Deva under the supervision of Recherla Rudra Reddy, who was the chief of the army of the Kakatiyas.

According to Prof M Panduranga Rao, the density of the floating bricks used in the construction of the temple is 0.85 to  0.9 gms/cc whereas the density of water is 1 gm/cc and the density of the normal bricks used today is 2.2 to 2.3 grams/cc. Since the bricks used in the Ramappa temple construction are lighter than the water, they float on water. This has impressed the UNSECO officials.

The Ramappa temple, which is standing majestically on a 6ft high star-shaped platform, was constructed using sandstone, granite, dolerite, sand, and lime using the ‘sandbox technology’ which involved filling the pit — dug up for laying the foundation — with a mixture of sand-lime, jaggery (for binding) and Karakkaya (black myrobalan fruit), as foundations before the stronger structures were constructed on these ‘sandboxes’ to absorb the waves of the earthquake as the site located under a seismic zone of the Godavari belt,” Prof Rao said and added that the sculptors had used very fine tools to chisel and sculpt the rocks on dolerite, which is the hardest rock in the world.  “Even the small thread can pass through the holes of the sculpture on the pillars at the temple.” Prof Rao said while glorifying the craftsmanship of the sculptors took part in the construction of this architectural marvel of Kakatiyas.