Which of the following is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, India Gate. Two of the three named structures sit on UNESCO's World Heritage List and the third does not, and the List itself settles it. 'Qutb Minar and its Monuments, Delhi' was inscribed in 1993 as property number 233 under cultural criterion (iv); UNESCO's own citation describes a red sandstone tower 72.5 m high, tapering from 14.32 m in diameter at its base to 2.75 m at the top, standing in an archaeological area that also holds the Alai Darwaza of 1311 and the Quwwatu'l-Islam, the oldest mosque in northern India, built of material reused from some twenty Brahman temples. The 'Red Fort Complex' was inscribed in 2007 as property number 231 under criteria (ii), (iii) and (vi); the inscribed property is not the fort alone but Shah Jahan's palace fort of Shahjahanabad together with the adjoining Salimgarh, built by Islam Shah Suri in 1546, and the citation singles out the Nahr-i-Behisht, the water channel running through the private pavilions. India Gate appears nowhere on that List. It is the All India War Memorial on Kartavya Path in New Delhi, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and raised for the Indian soldiers who died in the First World War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War — a national memorial of the first rank, but a memorial that has never been nominated for World Heritage inscription. Inscription is not a prize for fame, scale or age: under the 1972 World Heritage Convention, which India ratified on 14 November 1977, a property must first be placed on its country's Tentative List, then formally nominated by the State Party, then evaluated by ICOMOS (for cultural property) or IUCN (for natural property), and finally judged by the 21-member World Heritage Committee to carry Outstanding Universal Value against at least one of ten criteria. India Gate has never entered that pipeline. Because (c) names a genuine non-listed structure, option (d) cannot stand.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Qutb Minar has been a World Heritage Site since 1993 — one of India's earliest inscriptions and one of Delhi's three. The option tempts candidates in two ways: a negative stem invites you to tick the first famous name you see, and the listed property is technically 'Qutb Minar and its Monuments', the whole Mehrauli complex, which makes some candidates wonder whether the tower on its own qualifies. It does; the tower is the core of the inscribed property.  (b) The Red Fort Complex was inscribed in 2007, fourteen years after Qutb Minar and Humayun's Tomb, so a candidate whose mental list of Delhi sites was formed from an older textbook may genuinely not have it. It is also the site of the Prime Minister's Independence Day address, which makes it feel like a political landmark rather than a heritage property. Both intuitions are wrong: it is property number 231 on the List.  (d) Choosing this asserts that all three named structures are World Heritage Sites. That fails on India Gate, which is not on the List and has never been nominated to it. BPSC offers 'None of the above' as option (d) throughout this paper, and it is correct only when every named item satisfies the stem — here one plainly does not, so the option collapses.

Concept: The World Heritage List is created by the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in 1972; India ratified it on 14 November 1977. A property enters only through a fixed sequence — the country places it on its national Tentative List, nominates it, an advisory body evaluates it (ICOMOS for cultural sites, IUCN for natural ones, ICCROM advising on conservation), and the 21-member World Heritage Committee decides. The test is Outstanding Universal Value, established against ten criteria: (i) to (vi) are cultural, covering human creative genius, interchange of values, testimony to a tradition, an outstanding type of building or landscape, traditional settlement, and association with living traditions or ideas; (vii) to (x) are natural, covering natural beauty, earth history, ecological processes and biodiversity. Properties are accordingly classed as cultural, natural or mixed. The List today holds 1,273 properties — 991 cultural, 240 natural and 42 mixed — of which 61 are also on the separate List of World Heritage in Danger. India has 45 inscribed properties, sixth in the world behind Italy (62), China (61), France (56), Germany (55) and Spain (50).

State PCS 2023 Q56 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q56 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer