"This initial essay proposes that monuments have afterlives. The study of the afterlives of monuments encompasses how, where, when and why monuments have been re-modelled, re-used, re-sited, re-made, cast aside, destroyed or abandoned to accommodate changing political and social climates; how they survive through re-invention and transformations. Afterlives accrue through material alteration and they accumulate in representation. The diverse ways in which monuments survive, it is argued, depends on definitions and listings of monuments, practices of monument-making past and present and recent debates over history and memory. The concept is proposed to capture afterlives that co-exist as well as those occur sequentially, and to suggest a model of greater complexity and plurality than a linear or quasi-biographical trajectory. Conflicts over monuments especially over their survival, it is suggested, are as much concerned with projections of a future, as with reconstructions of the past or mnemonic recollection. Monuments -- ancient, modern and contemporary -- have taken centre stage as different and competing South-Asian communities claim a stake in the making of national, religious, cultural and local histories and identities. In their varied afterlives, monuments emerge as extraordinarily mobile, marked by material change, put to new uses and interpretations, and travelling through image-banks, archives, collections and exhibitions. Their afterlives, like monuments themselves, are multi-media"--Provided by publisher.