Why ISIS wants to destroy our history

Many years ago when I used to produce a TV programme called Capital View. We had a segment in it which was about the various monuments in Delhi. This is close to 20 years ago, and we were worried that monuments lay neglected and in ruins and needed to be preserved. So a young man called Ratish Nanda, who knew all about architecture and preservation and history was asked to come in and become an anchor with us. This was a small production house run out of my home in Delhi. Ratish knew nothing about TV anchoring, or speaking into the camera, and we knew nothing about preservation, but somehow we created a very authentic show, largely due to his knowledge and passion.

Every week Ratish would bring us some brilliant finds... Forgotten, hidden monuments, scattered all over the city that he would lovingly film, and then tell us the story about them. More often than not, the camera team would catch people encroaching the monuments ( all "protected" by the Archaeological Survey of India!), stealing bricks and stones, breaking walls, and even living within them.

However, one hopes that things have changed in India, and in Delhi, and that if everyone might not have learnt about preservation, at least wonderful people like Ratish have gone onto create history, literally, by preserving the Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, and now scores of monuments in Hyderabad, as well. He has also done, for the Aga Khan Foundation, work in Afghanistan, and many other places, where through greed, carelessness or through strife, we have lost our world heritage... It has either been destroyed or people have taken it away in suitcases to be sold to collectors.

People like Ratish, are valuable and needed, especially when there is little recognition or appreciation of the fact that our history and art is always endangered, and needs protection.

And now the threat is coming from elsewhere, and in a different way. Those areas taken over by the so called the ISIS have seen their cultural heritage and museums destroyed. Already in Afghanistan, we lost the Bamiyan Buddhas, and now we are seeing wanton, wilful destruction by these cultural terrorists who believe that they can reinvent the world by destroying the past.

Fanatical about what they consider "idolatrous" they would like a world where there has never been, and never will be, art or architecture where figures are depicted.

Neil MacGregor, the outgoing director of the National Museum in London, has raised a serious alarm over what the ISIS militants might plan to do next. And he fears that there might be serious attacks on museums and other areas where collections exist. The same fear is now being raised by other European curators, as the ISIS has been on a destruction spree in the ancient Assyrian cities of Nineveh and Nimrud, and other sites in Syria.

While the UNESCO is beginning to realise the immensity of the problem (why is the UN always the last to wake up?) doesn't the world need to ensure that our collective civilisational heritage is not destroyed?

This is not to create a false sense of impending calamity, but hasn't the time come for our museums and other sites containing valuable historical heritage to be properly preserved and, if necessary, properly guarded?