With only a few hours of warning, the residents of the village of Hampi were informed by district officials that their homes and businesses would bedestroyed. ... Within hours, the entire Hampi bazaar had been reduced to rubble, leaving hundreds of families without homes or jobs.
While such colonnaded bazaars fashioned out of granite are found in the abandoned imperial 16th century temples at Vijayanagara, like the Vitthala, they occur nowhere else in Southern India. Only at Hampi has a living historical bazaar been linked with a living historical temple. It is very unfortunate that authorities have now expelled the local people and demolished their shops, hotels and houses. What was a unique living monument, linked with Southern India’s greatest kings, has now been reduced to a lifeless ruin.
Yeah, fuck people losing their homes and livelihoods. What about our cheap holidays.