Anekāntavāda, a concept discussed in Jain philosophy, signifies that reality is multifaceted and has infinite perspectives. A multiplicity of heritage discourses is explored by recording oral histories to understand the simultaneous yet paradoxical existence of the concept in reality. Conversations with community members from the Harrow Digamber Jain Temple about Jain artefacts at the Victoria and Albert Museum aid in viewing the objects, fragments and manuscripts in their original context, and with heritage meanings borne by the community.

The hypervisual approach of museum display and materialist historical records fail to project the anti-materialist philosophy of the community. Attempts are made to understand the hurdles and the beauty of a multiplicity of narratives through concepts of heritage discourse, material culture, colonial legacies, modernisation, transnational movement, identity fluidity and the vacuum of history.

To look or to pray? How do we link living traditions and inert objects in glass cases? The design intervention explores heritage paradoxes of both the objects and the community members by proposing a form derived by morphing the temple at Harrow into a section of the Khandagiri caves in Odisha, India.