With the objective of documenting and analyzing the architectural resources, a team of 20 students from Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) university in Ahmedabad - equipped with diverse skill sets ranging from architecture, interior design, civil engineering, conservation, urban design and regional planning - were led by faculty Kamalika Bose and Gaurav Banerjee to the former Bengal capital (Murshidabad) for an intensive field program. The students brought an additional dimension to the study, coming from a region where Jainism, its philosophy, tenets and architectural expressions have shaped the cultural milieu significantly.

The course, titled “Jain Heritage in Bengal: Chronicling Cultural Confluences from its Mughal capital aimed to venture beyond mere academic objectives of documentation to expose students to real on-ground issue sthat plague such contexts, so common to Indian historic cities and towns. Students grasped the anatomy of a community-specific settlement, in their adopted land – by recording its formations, typologies and cross cultural strands as echoed through living patterns, architecture and stylistic developments.

The idea was to develop a deeper understanding of issues and challenges facing the revival of this unique heritage while empowering the community with a set of newly created records to steer further action and be agents of change..