The house built by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, is located in the Malabar Hill area of the city. After Independence, it passed into the Indian government’s possession, but was locked up for the last two decades. Only recently, has it been converted into a government cultural centre.

The bungalow where Rudyard Kipling was born, has been part of the J.J. School of Arts complex and for decades, has housed senior members of the faculty as a residential quarter. Of late, a proposal to convert the place into a municipal office has caused a furore among heritage activists.

The biscuit brown building where freedom fighter Lokmanya Tilak stayed and died in Crawford Market, is still the official address of the Kesari newspaper he started. All that remains of the firebrand patriot is a clutch of memorabilia — photographs, letters and a majestic white bust.

Then there are structures like the Congress House on Grant Road and Raj Griha, the home of the Father of the Indian Constitution, Babasaheb Ambedkar in Dadar. The latter, occupied by some ‘paying guests’, is in complete disrepair, pending a proposal with the government to turn it into a memorial.

The Congress House is in a still worse shape. Once a beehive of India’s freedom fighters, the enclave of seven buildings is now choc-a-bloc with residential tenements and shops. Only the names give away their exhilarating past — Sarojini Sadan, Dadabhai Manzil, Jinnah Hall, Congress Restaurant and Beer Bar...

Observes Cyrus Guzder, a heritage activist: If this was Warsaw and half the city was bombed out in World War II, perhaps we would be trying hard to restore the past. But people have their own sense of gods and history... their own sense of what is important."

One serious problem here is that the law does not allow the government (or any third party) to step in and take over a neglected heritage property. "There are laws to limit violations, but no law to prohibit negligence," Tasneem Mehta, another heritage activist, points out.

Mehta has been campaigning for years to save writer Mulk Raj Anand’s house at the city’s southern extremity of Cuffe Parade, but with little success. "It does not take much for a builder to deliberately sabotage a heritage structure by allowing it to collapse, only to erect a high- rise in its place," she explains.

Just as a heritage listing does not automatically translate into conservation, state ownership does not guarantee a public monument. Hundreds of heritage buildings in the city are occupied by government offices and completely out of bounds for tourists and the public at large.

"We can certainly promote these places as tourist attractions, but they will have to be well-maintained," says Prithviraj Patil, the General Manager of the State Tourism Development Corporation. "Left to themselves none of these structures could be self-sustaining."

One way out is to invite corporate sponsorship for the restoration and maintenance work. Another is to involve the people and communities living around heritage structures like the Congress House and Raj Griha. Patil has yet another suggestion.

"Some heritage houses can make use of the Central fund to convert themselves into tourist attractions," he recommends. "So far, the fund has largely been used to transform palaces and forts into hotels and resorts in neighbouring states. Other innovative projects are possible."

It all boils down to having a sense of history. The question is, does Mumbai have time for it?