The dominating concepts and practices of preservation and conservation of heritage in
Bangladesh take autonomous and self-conscious agency for granted. This notion of
agency has a genealogy in the history of the translation of various concepts by the
modernizing and secularizing projects in Bangladesh under both colonialist and
nationalist regimes of modern power. The points of application of modern power
include the domain of the past and its discursive formations such as heritage,
history, property, and archaeology. We attempt to understand the transformation of
the conditions and structures in which the response to particular forms of
narratives - in this case, of heritage and the past and actions by different parties
- is shaped and reconfigured. This article focuses on the world heritage site of
Somapura Mahavihara as the frame of reference and negotiates the data collected from
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