2019年经济学人 印度阶梯井(4)（在线收听）

Meanwhile, the trust also turned to the adjacent, huge gardens belonging to Humayun’s tomb, a Mughal building of even more breathtaking beauty than the Taj Mahal. The lush grounds are covered in tanks and wells that the trust is restoring. With Ratish Nanda, the AKTC’s enthusiastic head in India, this correspondent recently descended to the bottom of a baoli that was being cleared of centuries of rubble and sludge, bucket by laborious bucket. Two weeks later, water was starting to gush in. One find, covered over by the British, is a 16th-century well built not to capture water, but to ensure it flows back into the underlying aquifer. Mr Nanda says the restoration work has helped raise the area’s water table by several metres.

与此同时，信托基金还转向了毗邻的巨大花园，属于呼玛雍陵墓，一座比泰姬陵更美得惊人的莫卧儿王朝建筑。郁郁葱葱的土地上布满了基金会正在恢复的水槽和水井。最近，本文记者和基金会在印度热情的带头人哈提斯·南达一起，来到一个baoli的底部，人们正在一桶一桶地费清理数百年的瓦砾和污泥。两周后，水开始涌进来。英国人发现一处16世纪建造的井，不是为了取水，而是为了确保水能流回地下含水层。南达表示，修复工作帮助该地区的地下水位提高了几米。

Next door, in Sunder Nursery, the trust has converted 90 acres (36 hectares) of abandoned land into the sooty capital’s first new park in years, laid out as a classical Persian garden. Again, tanks and wells are an essential component. “Delhi needed a refuge,” says Mr Nanda. The gardens have become one of the most popular spots for the city’s families and lovers. The AKTC is now taking on the most ambitious project yet: a 106-acre site in Hyderabad, where seven stepwells were built by the Qutb Shabi dynasty in ornate, white-plastered granite. As became clear during the restoration, they were linked by underground channels that also connect to aquifers.

在毗邻的Sunder Nursery，该信托基金已将90英亩(36公顷)的废弃土地改造成这座被煤烟笼罩的首都数年来的第一个新公园，规划为一座古典波斯花园。“德里需要一个避难所，”南达表示。这些花园已经成为这座城市最受家庭和情侣欢迎的景点之一。基金会目前正在进行迄今为止最具雄心的项目:在海德拉巴占地106英亩的土地上，库特布沙比王朝在华丽的白色石膏花岗岩上建造了7口阶梯井。很明显，在修复期间，它们通过接连着地下通道相连，地下通道也连接着含水层。

Some of the obstacles to this effort are not physical but political. To help pay for its conservation work, the trust seeks donations from Indian companies. Yet supporters of the Hindu-nationalist government of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, dislike the idea of a body headed by the Aga Khan, an Islamic leader, being involved in Indian cultural work; besides, the Hindutva agenda is to expunge Mughal influence from Indian life, as if it were an alien, Muslim carbuncle rather than an intrinsic part of the country’s inheritance. They are said to have been leaning on companies not to donate. That arid worldview is refuted by the joyful families picnicking in Sunder Nursery, and the devotion of pilgrims at Nizamuddin baoli.

而该活动遇到的障碍不是物质上的，而是政治上的。为了帮助支付保护工作的费用，该基金会寻求印度公司的捐款。然而，印度总理纳伦德拉?莫迪领导的印度教民族主义政府的支持者不喜欢由伊斯兰领袖阿迦汗领导的机构参与印度文化工作；此外，Hindutva的议程是要从印度生活中抹去莫卧儿王朝的影响，就好像它是一种外来的穆斯林红玉，而不是这个国家遗产的固有部分。据说他们一直要求公司不要捐款。那些在桑德尔托儿所野餐的快乐家庭，以及在尼扎穆丁保利朝圣的虔诚信徒，都驳斥了这种枯燥的世界观。