The King’s and Queen’s Tomb in Ahmedabad: Cartographies of contested heritage precincts

Numerous historical monuments in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, such as the King’s and Queen’s tomb, are immersed in a complex web of conflict. These are places where, beyond the building itself, we find the presence of inhabitants with very different notions of what the concept of heritage means, so that dispute and resistance are more than guaranteed. The article looks at these extremely heterogeneous and controversial territories through a method —“narrative cartographies”— capable of making the space, its history and social strata visible from an ethnographic point of view. A method that brings to the surface the tensions and disputes between citizens who are marginalised by the institutional power, but who share a spatial reality that is usually ignored and made invisible. In this way, the cartographic analysis presented in both the King’s Tomb and the Queen’s Tomb redefines the way in which these places can be understood and studied, suppressing a dominant and/or imposing vision for one that is much more sensitive to the voices of the inhabitants. The aim is to disseminate a process that can help reveal different narratives that lead to heritage practices that are as inclusive as emancipatory.


Introduction
The walled city of Ahmedabad is recognised by UNESCO 1 as a world heritage site since 2017 and it is the first city that has been formally accorded the status. It has some of the most iconic heritage monuments and amongst them are the King's and Queen's tombs that form a part of the heritage complex in the centre of the walled city. They are recognised by ASI (The Archaeological Survey of India) as monuments of national importance and they are also religious monuments for the Islamic community. The management of the sites is contested as on one hand is the family who claims to have lived there for centuries and manages the monument and on the other the larger question of how to conserve these sites. With the backing of the religious community, the history of dialogues shows that there is no consensus amongst the stakeholders and the municipality.
Beyond the tomb occupation, the challenges are accelerated with what is happening in the periphery. To elaborate particularly, the Queen's tomb is surrounded by markets with blue plastic covers attached to the tomb walls, cooking and parking areas, extended living quarters and many other activities. These everyday uses, the needs of residents and their actions override what might be the permissible use of this heritage space. The issue goes beyond the conservation and protection of the mosque itself but how to take care of the many conflicting dynamics and voices.
To comprehend this extremely heterogeneous and contested territory the article will approach the sites of these two tombs: Rani no Hajiro (Queen's Tomb) and Raja no Hajiro (King's tomb) and analyse the two areas through a methodology that employs cartographying the space and its historic layers from an ethnographic viewpoint. In this way, the cartographies highlight the kind of activities, the use of space in the tomb premise, the different types and times of occupation, the way the bodies are settled in, the parts of the monument that are damaged because of inappropriate use, thus revealing the overlapping conditions. The paper is interested in reading and understanding these tensions, messy situations, claims and cultural dynamics at play that can help in conservation and development of these heritage sites. Further taking into account not only the architecture or the conservation of the building but the intangible and living cultural heritage that is tied to protecting these areas. In this way, cartography will be understood as the method able to unveil such hidden dimensions in contested environments.

Why do we need a different lens? Heritage, conflicts and beyond
The walled city of Ahmedabad was founded in 1411 by Sultan Ahmed Shah on the banks of the Sabarmati river. At the eastern edge centrally located sits the Bhadra citadel looking onward into a public space, today known as Bhadra plaza. The central axis originating from the Bhadra further leads to the Jama Masjid and the Tombs of the royal family. The tombs 'raja no hajiro' (Kings tomb, the burial place for King Ahmed Shah) and 'rani no hajiro' (Queen's tomb) are monuments of national importance that hold significance both in terms of Islamic architectural construction and articulation and for religious and cultural significance. They are situated on either side of the mercantile square known as Manek Chowk along a linear axis.
Both are approached through a gateway that opens into a courtyard space and is surrounded by predominantly residential communities. These typologies typically known as pol houses align next to each other and form a dense clustered mass around the tomb where the space between the monument and houses becomes a vital ventilator and social core for the communities around (Fig.1). To describe more specifically the context of the King's tomb, it is approached through a small gateway that is topped by a naubat khana (a small drum room) that was specifically used for playing traditional orchestra on special occasions.
On passing through the gate the lane opens into an inner court with the King's tomb (a square-shaped structure with porticos around and edged with lattice stone windows).
The structure itself is a functioning mosque where the interior chamber is the tomb of Ahmed Shah and is the most protected part of the monument and capped with a large dome. The structure is currently managed by a family who claims to be custodians and have been residing inside for centuries. Beyond the structure, the tomb is surrounded by parking areas, storage units, many informal activities and the residual space is used by the community living around as a space for playing, gathering and working. Many private residential spaces have extended out into the public space through 'otlas' and plinths which form a discontinuous edge around. Several families own goats and sheep and those can be seen resting on the edges and the base of the monument. Further, vendors who sell and work at Manek Chowk (which is known for its night food market) store their laris (small movable carts) in the periphery and cook as well in the public space. These dynamics reveal that the courtyard functions like an extension or a spillover of everyday activities. These patterns are tied to the context, lifestyle, smaller living spaces, increasing family sizes, economic activities, and the decay of existing houses, thereby producing an array of competing claims in the public space.
These actions become impediments when it comes to conserving heritage and harder to establish new patterns of mutual responsibility (Fig.2).  The Queen's tomb is more complex and is encroached more densely. The approach is lined with many tiny shops and the periphery of the tomb is tightly knit with vendors selling ethnic jewellery, parking, cooking and workshop spaces.
The informal vending shops do bring vibrancy and tourists to the place but the monument is hidden between the fabric canopies or plastic sheds of the shops. Six  On top of the activities, several houses (owing to lack of space and growing family sizes) have extended towards the tomb and a few touch the skin of the monument. So both, the interior and exterior are extensively occupied leaving only a sliver of narrow space to walk. To conclude, the Queen's tomb is a complex collision of several factors and most importantly it is a place of income generation for many families (Fig. 3).
In response to the challenges, there has been an effort to intervene, document and conserve these sites, the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) with the municipality have time and again sought a dialogue with the occupants of the tomb and the nearby residents but it has resulted in no conclusion and has further increased a feeling of insecurity.
So, in the context of the sites, the questions that are pertinent to us are: Cartography as essential and instrumental tool: Recording spatial and hidden dimensions This part of the paper elaborates our approach narrative cartographies 2 for reading conflicted sites and its application that can broaden discourse and create empirical evidence and data essential for decisions. As the anthropologist James Holston says, the form of the Indian public space is the conflict and this conflict is defined by "collisions of multiple and often contradictory claims, identities, and differences that both shape and are shaped by the commitments residents make to the city as their political community of belonging in their daily lives". 3 In this context, our target is to reveal these hidden spatialities through narrative cartographies; a medium through which we can get proper knowledge about the site from the perspective of history, users, and spatial ethnography. Narrative cartographies are not just interested in the forms -shapes-of space, but rather in the forces -usually invisible-which create the particular situation of every moment in this old city. Thus, as the geographer Denis Wood claims: "But the final possibility, that the maps be arranged narratively, to make a point, to tell a story, implies a movement from the simple desire to get things into shape to the more complex one of making of that shape something of its own". 5 So, how do you draw an architecture that is not distinguished by its forms, but by the development of the forces and sensations of the bodies that construct it?
Through narrative cartographies; an operative concept that is no longer a mere reproduction of current buildings, streets, or objects, that is, static forms, but the masked spatial dimensions based on unstable, invisible and immaterial principles that could broaden our spatial awareness. if the blackest line in the plan is not the section of the monument but rather the existing tension between two bodies or the violent relation between the body and the monument? Why do we not use our notation tools as designers not only to show the material constructions, but also the immaterial ones -such as events, actions and relationships-that every city contains?
The point is to detach from generalised representation to understand the spatiality of the usages and how this situation can be controlled and mitigated in the conservation of the tomb. It's a process that tries to simplify complex, unseen and relational stories and dynamics of the space. Dynamics where it is fundamental to understand how bodies inhabit and perform such places to recognise their importance as main characters in the design process. Dynamics which requires particular and radical notations to depict and communicate through visualisations the actions identified according to the reality of its inhabitants.
In this way, we have to emphasize the importance of the ethnographic drawing in this methodology. These kind of drawings, popularized by the japanese architect Wajiro Kon and being contemporary adapted by Atelier Bow-Wow, which create "an architecture that, far from attempting to control the surrounding environment, is itself defined and shaped by the accidents of the site and the participation of people who inhabit it". 6 A vision of architectural discipline that is very from the reality of Ahmedabad. But, what is ethnographic drawing? It is "a method of observing and drawing architecture and urban space from the viewpoint of the people who use it, rather than the architects and planners who are involved in its construction". 7 This drawing "[m]ore than just transmitting building data, drawing allows us to uncover realities that would otherwise remain unseen by those who experience them". 8 Realities where "object or place achieves concrete reality when our experience of it is total, that is, through all the senses". 9 Phrases that demonstrate the relationship between ethnographic drawings and narrative cartographies.

Relations between both monuments
Before going to cartographies of the tombs, figure 4 shows the context of the

Cartography of the King's Tomb
The King's tomb cartography reveals the spaces occupied by a family of six members (one old woman, her two daughters, his son, and her two granddaughters) who claim to have lived there for centuries. The study shows the use of spaces in the tomb premise, the use of alcoves as spaces for storage and cooking and the  as they claim to be the protectors of the monument. The cartography shows the web of relations, everyday dynamics and opens it for interpretations (Fig.6).
The cartography also expands and shows the occupations outside the tomb. As seen the limits about public and private domains are worrying as lots of storage, parking, vending is abuting the tomb walls. Representing these spatial occupations allow one to simultaneously analyse and get knowledge about the site and the community's use of the public space.
Application to rethink contested heritage sites "Working cartographically -not to be confused with simply working with cartographies implies a particular orientation, one which displays at once both a social and a disciplinary project. And it enacts this possibility not by representing a particular condition, but by subverting dominant oppositions and hierarchies currently constitutive of the discourse. Cartographic work (…) cannot be accounted for by reapplying the conventional categories of formal or functional, critical or complicit". 10 The cartographies reveal contemporary challenges, bodily occupations and the overlapping realities that can adequately equip decision-makers to meet the real issues. With this awareness, we also recognise the variety of situations one could not then imitate western typologies, strategies and interpretations to discern utterly specific problems of the Indian context. The homogenizing wave that is currently flooding the European and American designs cannot be followed in a different spatial culture. The most interesting and mainly disregarded Indian urban morphology by designers is the how of bodies in actions, and such bodies -rebel or normative ones-should be the principal concern for urban interventions.
Extending the cartographic analysis could mediate between what is imperative in terms of heritage protection and projects that could indirectly be instrumental in heritage management -such as provision for alternate sites for tomb occupants in the same vicinity, rearranging informal structures encumbering the monument while incorporating their economy, improving the small intermediary open spaces for the community, strategic design interventions that control the expansion of private realms towards the monument, seating areas for the community and workshop areas for traditional crafts.
Therefore, drawing these realities can catalyse actions in relation to a particular place and can influence decisions that are often left unseen or disregarded as encroached or tagged as illegal activities. The issue is more than preservation and it is through the cartographies we see the livelihoods in context and the wider meaning of this place. The conservation of the heritage monuments is integral but also the integration of the families in the productive dynamics of these spaces. And, the voice of inhabitants plays a key role in the protection of the monument and can lead to overall planning and recovery.
Eventually, we question the need for absolutely deterministic decisions, the potential of these cartographies reveal the dynamism and complexity that both need to be acknowledged and celebrated.

Conclusion
To conclude, contested heritage sites are real and wicked problems of Indian cities and are challenging for designers, planners, conversation architects and custodians. Through the paper, the attempt was to show how cartographies can move us closer to the answers by making visible unrepresented voices, by identifying issues of space vis-a-vis the dynamic changes and bringing together the different narratives.
10 Robert E. Somol, "Dummy Text, or The Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture", 23. We have changed the concept of 'diagram' from the original text, by the notion of cartography.
It broadens the traditional ways representing a space can be used as a tool that can connect designers to unexpected possibilities, outcomes and possible hybrid programs-such as alternatives to everyday occupations, or new ways to organise marginal productivities or everyday activities supported through the provision of new infrastructures.
In such a context, further to heritage, it is the complex set of relationships that are revealed through the process-that is being mindful of the inclusion of forgotten city agents and acknowledgement of vulnerable groups. It can unlock positive influences for placemaking and management for contentious heritage sites. Finally, we think that conflicts are often avoided in design processes, and we put ourselves amid messy reality, to offer a way of cartography that can lead to an emancipatory practice.