About Calicut Heritage

Calicut Heritage Forum (CHF) was formed in January 2008 as an informal body of persons who love Calicut and want to ensure that the history of this fascinating cultural cauldron is preserved for posterity. We set for ourselves the following ambitious aims and objectives:

• Preservation and protection of the objects and symbols that embody the history and culture of Calicut;
  
• To identify, evaluate, and document such objects and symbols like buildings, monuments, artefacts, documents, photographs, oral traditions etc.
  
• To assist and support research into the history and culture of Calicut;
  
• To promote digitisation of manuscripts and other written material for better preservation;
  
• To create a sense of awareness and belonging for the city’s heritage among the local community - and among students in particular - and thereby generate social responsibility for their preservation;
  
• To facilitate the preparation of guidelines on impact assessment of new building activities on heritage buildings and sites;
  
• To canvas support for adopting heritage regulations and preparation of a heritage manual;
  
• To design and promote heritage tours of Calicut and its environs

CHF has two Patrons - The Zamorin Raja of Calicut and the District Collector, Calicut. Although we do not have a formal governance structure, Prof. MGS Narayanan, renowned teacher and author of history, former Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research and at present the Director General of the Kerala Centre for Heritage Studies, has been guiding the activities of CHF as its President. C.K.Ramachandran, formerly of the Indian Administrative Service acts as the Convenor and M.Radhakrishnan Nair as the Joint Convenor.

As part of our efforts to generate awareness among the citizens of Calicut, including students, about their rich and composite cultural heritage, CHF conducts monthly meetings where eminent speakers lecture on selected topics. Archived proceedings are available at https://sites.google.com/site/calicutheritageforum. Another venture of CHF is the DIGITAL RESOURCE CENTRE FOR MALABAR STUDIES, which is a unique resource centre for the study and research of the social, economic and cultural history of Malabar. It seeks to: assist Indian and foreign researchers in locating resources in the form of digitised documents, literary collection, private manuscript collection, engravings and other tangible and intangible cultural heritage; document the list of available resources (period-wise) to facilitate easy access to researchers; provide research guidance to scholars from a panel of eminent researchers to be maintained; assist scholars with translation from Malayalam, particularly in Vattezhuthu and Kolezhuthu scripts.
The DRC and this web site has been made possible by a generous grant from TATA COFFEE.