India’s havelis are back in business, but at what cost?

Atul Khanna is a Delhi-based entrepreneur with no ancestral connection to Shekhawati. He and his wife Devna bought a pair of 19th-century havelis, and in 2010 opened them as Vivaana Culture Hotel, a 32-room property in the village of Churi Ajitgarh near Mandawa. He later restored a second, near-derelict haveli nearby and opened it as Vivaana Museum Hotel, an eight-room property in Nawalgarh with an in-house museum of Shekhawati art and history. Khanna came to this work as “a collector and heritage enthusiast” rather than a conservation architect or hotelier, and has since formalised his approach through the Kathika Trust’s Shekhawati Revival Project.

Khanna is unsparing about what happens when someone decides to invest in a haveli without the right information. “Well-intentioned but ill-informed interventions can be more harmful than neglect,” he says. “At least with neglect, the original fabric of
the building may still survive. Poor restoration can permanently erase historic features, cover original frescoes or strip away the character that made the haveli special in the first place.”

He is not speaking abstractly. The International Institute for Conservation, a global organisation for conservators and cultural heritage professionals, has documented that only a handful of craftsmen today still practise the arayish lime-plaster technique that defines Shekhawati’s painted surfaces. When those craftsmen are gone, so is the knowledge required to correctly restore, rather than simply refinish, what they made.

But, Khanna says, “Traditional skills can only survive when they provide a viable livelihood. If artisans are able to earn a sustainable income through conservation and restoration projects, they will be encouraged to pass their knowledge on to the next generation.

“Preserving a haveli is like saving a life,” Khanna says. “Once lost, an irreplaceable part of our history disappears forever.”

Rohet Garh, the fort at the centre of House of Rohet’s four-property portfolio, has been Avijit Singh’s family’s ancestral home since 1622; Singh is the 15th generation to live there. His grandparents converted part of it into a hotel in 1990, with “no established playbook for heritage hospitality in Rajasthan” to guide them.

His perspective and his family connection to heritage properties cannot be separated, and he is extremely passionate about how havelis are treated. He does not dismiss outside investment altogether—“They brought investment, creative thinking and better infrastructure to conservation efforts,” he says of the newer wave of independent buyers—but he is blunt about where it goes wrong. “If the aim is to make quick commercial returns, there is always a risk that heritage gets commodified, architectural shortcuts get taken, local narratives get overlooked and the property will eventually lose the very authenticity that gives it value. Heritage assets should be viewed as cultural responsibility first and commercial enterprises after.”

Singh points to two individual properties—Samod Haveli in Jaipur, and Jagat Niwas Haveli and Amet Haveli in Udaipur—as proof that old buildings can be restored “in synergy with modern times” without losing what made them worth restoring in the first place. He also credits Bharat Singh, who runs the Instagram accounts @jaipur.houses and @jodhpur.houses, with a different but equally necessary kind of work: photographing and documenting havelis before they are altered or lost, creating an informal public record in the absence of any official one.

For Singh, there is a need to understand the building before touching it and resist doing more than is absolutely essential. “The guiding principle [for Rohet Garh] was to intervene as little as possible. Existing spaces were adapted rather than rebuilt, traditional materials and local craftsmen were employed, and great care was taken not to alter the character of the fort for commercial convenience.”

A haveli put in the wrong hands disappears the way an unprotected species does: not all at once but gradually. But in the right hands, with someone willing to put in the research needed to protect their essence, these buildings can last for generations to come. As Singh puts it, “You cannot create something that is enduring without being authentic.”

Abedin Sham’s company, Abode Boutique Hotels, was brought in to design and operate Abode Jaipur, a 300-year-old haveli above Kishanpole Bazar in Jaipur’s Walled City; the property belongs to Ashish Golcha and Nikhil Jain of the Saksham Group. The 21-room hotel opened this year as the brand’s fourth property.

For Sham, “Restoration is about understanding what already exists and repairing it respectfully. Adaptation is about making a building work for a new purpose without losing its identity; aesthetic re-styling is often about appearance alone.” To restore Abode Jaipur, that meant applying lime wash throughout, retaining original surfaces wherever possible, and sourcing materials and craftspeople locally, on the principle of “nothing new, everything local”. When the building became a hotel, the ground-floor tenants and the everyday commercial life of the market outside remained. “The building was a family home woven directly into the façade of the market,” says Sham. “What interested me was not its grandeur, but its authenticity. It already belonged to Jaipur. Our job was simply to reveal that rather than replace it.”

This preservation of the original elements and the past is a crucial ingredient of Sham’s approach to heritage conservation. “What should never be sacrificed in the name of design is authenticity—not as a style, but as an approach,” he says. “It shouldn’t erase a building’s history, disconnect it from its surroundings, or prioritise aesthetics over the people who use it.”

Jitendra Rathore’s Fateh Collection, founded in 1990 and now encompassing eight properties across Udaipur, Kumbhalgarh and Ranthambhore, is “conceived, owned and operated” by his own family, the Kelwa Rathores; his approach involves dismantling structures elsewhere and rebuilding them as boutique hotels on family-owned land.

Rather than restoring a haveli where it stands, his Heritage Renaissance method involves dismantling a structure facing demolition, numbering every stone and component, and rebuilding it, using traditional techniques, on land his family already owns. Fateh Bagh, which opened in Ranakpur in 2004, was rebuilt from the remains of Rawla Koshilav, an 1802 palace in Pali district whose owner intended to demolish it and sell the land beneath it. Around 65,000 numbered stone pieces were transported and reassembled near the Ranakpur Temple by local master masons and Sompura craftsmen, a community of sculptors responsible for many of the temples of western India. “In-situ restoration is ideal where feasible,” Rathore says, “but many structures face demolition or neglect in remote locations with poor viability. Transplantation gives them a new lease of life in sustainable hospitality settings, ensuring active stewardship, public appreciation and long-term survival.”

The obvious counterargument is that a building’s history and meaning are not stored purely in its stones; they live also in its relationship to the landscape it was built on and the community that grew up around it. So the question remains: is a rescued building, relocated and cared for, worth more to India’s heritage than a ruin left exactly where it fell? After 35 years working in this space, Rathore believes the risk of inaction outweighs the risks of relocation. “Rajasthan still has enormous potential, with countless havelis, forts and palaces lying in destitute condition,” he says. “My concern is that without timely action—whether owners restore them themselves or partner with others—we risk losing them forever.” 

Priya Paul’s company, Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, operates Ran Baas—a 35-suite hotel that opened in January 2025 within the government-owned Qila Mubarak fort complex in Patiala, Punjab—under a public-private partnership with the state government.

Her approach illustrates what a more accountable structure can look like. “In heritage projects, some of the most important decisions are the ones you choose not to make,” she says. “There is always a temptation to add more—to restore more, design more, programme more. Often, restraint is what allows a place to retain its identity.” Because of the system under which Ran Baas operates, decisions are made collaboratively with government stakeholders rather than left to one owner’s taste, ensuring accountability. Most private haveli restorations have no such mechanism.

What’s more, Paul’s efforts extend from preserving the mere design and architecture of the hotel to the cultural practices carried out within its walls. Ran Baas originally served as a gathering space for a gharana—a community of performers of a particular style of music; memorialising that history could easily have been reduced to background muzak. Instead, the hotel hosts Sur Mahal, an annual platform, begun last year, that brings together classical, folk and contemporary musicians connected to the gharana and to Punjab’s wider musical heritage. “The traditions of Punjab ... are not presented as performances for visitors,” Paul says, “they are woven naturally into the experience of the hotel.”

For Paul, there is an important acceptance of the reality of expectations of those involved in the haveli economy: investors are but a blip in the history of the property. “Ownership implies control,” she says. “Stewardship implies responsibility. Buildings often outlive all of us. We only look after them for a short period of time.”

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