The replacement of lost wood-work as part of the restoration of the Ratneswara Temple in Kathmandu using the skills of traditional Nepali craftsmen, in breach of the Eurocentric norms that govern the preservation of monuments, highlights the paradoxes of globalisation and." the need to adopt indigenous, culture-specific norms in the conservation of heritage.
One of globalisation's paradoxes is that even as it imposes trans-national values and processes on local cultures, it simultaneously gives them a 'presence' they never had before. The more globalisation disrupts and displaces local traditions, the more the significance of what is being lost stands out. The interdisciplinary and intercultural scholarship encouraged by globalization has unearthed the existence and logic of hitherto obscure indigenous knowledge systems and practices. This scholarship creates provocative voices of dissent which question the very premises underlying globalisation, and provides the raison d'etre to resist—or at least influence—its further progress. The Sulima strut story exemplifies this process.
This is the story of the restoration of the 13th century Ratneswara Temple in Sulima Tole of Patan town in Kathmandu Valley, undertaken by the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT), an internationally funded group involved in architectural conservation. The issue is about the replacement of lost carved timber elements as part of the restoration work. These replacements were carved by contemporary craftsmen on the tiered temple at Sulima Tole and purport to be "authentic" equivalents of the original.
Such a restoration challenges the hallowed principles of conservation, which prohibit any form of replication of lost architectural elements. The orthodoxy of conservation practice requires that ancient buildings be kept in roughly the same state that they were found, as stabilised ruins. In this view, "good" conservation procedure means minimal intervention to maintain the original integrity and authenticity of the remaining fabric of the building or ruin.