Hyderabad: Army preserves Aurangzeb’s pounder guns – Brigadier Ranveer Ram Kumar

Hyderabad: Brigadier Ranveer Ram Kumar of the Commandant Artillery Centre, Golconda, Hyderabad, said that the pounder guns which were brought here by Aurangzeb to break up the Golconda Fort have now become the very guns that help them preserve and protect the Fort.

Brig. R.R. Kumar was addressing a function organised by Archaeological Survey of India, Hyderabad Circle in collaboration with INTACH, Hyderabad at Golconda Fort to celebrate the World Heritage Day on Thursday.

He said there was a need to familiarise our children with the monuments and buildings which were constructed by our ancestors, and argued that although school children are brought to such monuments during educational trips, they eventually disregard it as an insignificant memory. “Our students need to know that our ancestors constructed such marvelous structures without machinery or mechanised facilities, that they used only natural and locally available resources to construct such structures which are still standing after four centuries. They must learn that we are the owners of these moments and heritage structures and therefore, it is our duty to protect them,” he said. M. Gopal Krishna, Convenor, INTACH Telangana, said that the monuments and heritage structures continue to remain the best outputs of human effort and that our ancestors have put a lot of effort to erect the tremendous structures by employing thousands of men for many years. “If we want our next generation to recognise our wealth of heritag, then we must preserve it,” he said.

He said that the world is mostly dependent on the tourism and education industries. Unfortunately, however, he said, we were not treating tourism as a revenue-generating industry despite our treasure of cultural heritage.