At the risk of sounding anti-national, when one reads in The Indian Express of a two tonne slab falling off an architectural marvel like the Sun Temple of Konark, one wishes the Raj had never ended. Set up in 1876 by Alexander Cunningham, the fate of the well-conceived Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is that of all the guardians of our heritage. What even Lord Curzon reiterated--that it is the elementary obligation of the government to conserve ancient monuments- is a lesson lost on the political and social elite of the nation today. Vandals deface our tomb walls and slum dwellers threaten our forts, but our establishment is more interested in building monuments of the divisive kind even as its picture postcard sites fall about in disarray.