What the Foundation Aims to Do: Preserve and Promote the cultural, spiritual, and ancient scientific heritage of India — including its traditional arts, crafts, and textiles — both nationally and globally, while transforming & simplifying cultural, spiritual, and heritage tourism in India for people across the nation and around the globe.
About Us
The CultureandHeritage Foundation is a non-profit initiative founded by Mala Chandrashekhar, alumna of IIT Kharagpur (M.Sc. Chemical Sciences, 1981) and former professional at ONGC.
After more than a decade of corporate experience, she chose to follow her heart’s calling — chronicling India’s vast cultural, spiritual, and ancient scientific heritage, and sharing it with audiences across the country and around the world through her Culture and Heritage blog. Today, the blog attracts passionate readers from every corner of India and across the globe.
What began as a blog with over 4,500 posts for more than a decade has today evolved into a movement — building India’s most immersive tourism platform for cultural, spiritual, and heritage tourism.
Our Culture and Heritage blog and Heritage Tourism platform are the core activities of The CultureandHeritage Foundation, around which all other initiatives of the Foundation revolve.
The Culture & Heritage Blog
The blog, https://cultureandheritage.org/blog is a labour of love, dedicated to capturing and celebrating the richness of India’s glorious cultural heritage. It encompasses a diverse range of topics including:
- India’s ageless traditional arts, crafts, and textiles
- Cultural and religious festivals
- Ancient temples and their magnificent architecture
- Yoga, Ayurveda and Siddha
- Indian classical music and dance, folk music and folk dance
- Mughal and British colonial architecture
- Buddhist monasteries, Sikh gurudwaras, and Jain temples
- Heritage hotels, ancient palaces, forts, Havelis and Chettinad mansions
- Archaeological Sites and UNESCO World Heritage Sites
- Hindu scriptures, ancient Sanskrit and Tamil literature
- Art and architecture from various Indian dynasties of Indian history
The Heritage Tourism Platform:
The heritage tourism platform emerges from the rich insights and profound experiences chronicled by cultural blogger / chronicler Mala Chandrashekhar on her expansive blog, The Cultural Heritage of India. With over a decade of dedicated writing and 4,500+ blog posts, her blog stands as a monumental repository of knowledge, showcasing India’s timeless and ageless heritage, and serving as the very foundation of the tourism platform.
The heritage tourism platform is a revolutionary initiative to transform and simplify the cultural, spiritual, and heritage travel in India for new-age travelers. Here’s the platform: https://cultureandheritage.org/
The Platform Empowers Pilgrims, Tourists, Cultural Enthusiasts, Architects, Historians, Archaeologists, and Spiritual Seekers from Every Corner of India and Around the Globe to Embark on Real Journeys and Discover India’s Rich Heritage Firsthand.
What the ‘Heritage Tourism in India’ Platform is All About:
India — a land of timeless cultural legacy and profound spirituality — invites you on an extraordinary journey through its cultural and heritage landscapes. From ancient pilgrimage routes to majestic architectural marvels, from vibrant cultural and religious festivals to serene yoga retreats, every corner of this vast nation holds a story waiting to be discovered.
Whether you seek:
✔ The serenity of sacred rivers, holy cities, temple towns & spiritual retreats
✔ The magnificence of ancient temples & grand cultural & religious festivals
✔ The vibrancy of cultural markets, & craft and weaving clusters
✔ The wisdom of Vedic traditions, Ayurveda, Siddha & yoga
‘The Heritage Tourism in India’ platform brings together expert insights, thoughtfully curated itineraries, and essential travel resources to help you embark on deeply enriching journeys — and experience the soul of India firsthand.
We’re building something soulful, magnificent and timeless — India’s most immersive platform for cultural, spiritual, and heritage tourism. You’re warmly invited to explore it as it unfolds everyday, one meaningful experience at a time. This is a journey without end — a project so vast, even a lifetime isn’t enough to complete it.
Stay tuned for daily updates as the story continues.
Why It Matters
India’s cultural and spiritual heritage is not just history — it is living wisdom, timeless and ageless wisdom. It is a global legacy that inspires harmony, creativity, spirituality, sustainability, and resilience. By preserving and promoting it, the Foundation contributes to:
- Nation Building in India – strengthening cultural identity and pride.
- Tourism & Economy – transforming heritage tourism in India into a trillion-rupee industry.
- Education & Awareness – spreading knowledge across generations and borders.
- Preserving and Promoting Traditional Arts, Crafts & Textiles, Worldwide
- Global Diplomacy – presenting India’s cultural richness to the world stage.
Join Us
The CultureandHeritage Foundation welcomes partnerships, collaborations, and support from:
- Government bodies (Ministry of Culture, Tourism, External Affairs, Textiles, ICCR etc.)
- Corporate CSR departments & foundations
- UNESCO and international foundations & cultural organizations
- State & Union Territory tourism corporations, & ITDC
- HNIs, Philanthropic individuals and diaspora communities
- Volunteers dedicated to preserving and promoting the timeless culture and heritage of India
Together, we can preserve the past, enrich the present, and inspire the future.
Our Commitment: How Your Contributions Are Used and How the Foundation Utilizes Its Funds
All funds received by the Foundation from diverse sources shall serve noble causes. To begin with, they will be dedicated to procuring essential items for Hindu religious rituals and ceremonies — known as Poojan Samagri — for temples across India. These include sacred offerings such as oil for lamps, incense sticks, Dhoop, camphor, fresh flowers, Tulsi, Bael leaves, and fresh fruits and coconuts (For Neivedyam).
Countless ancient temples in India lie in desolation, deprived of even the simplest acts of worship: no lighting of the morning or evening lamp, no offering of fresh flowers, no fragrance of incense.There is no one to take care of the cleanliness of the temples. Together, we can restore the sanctity of these holy spaces and rekindle their sacred flame.
A portion of the funds will also support the purchase of traditional attire (Veshti, Dhoti, Angavastram) for priests performing daily worship in neglected temples, along with monthly provisions for underprivileged priests. Free from mundane worries, these custodians of faith can then focus on keeping ancient temples alive.
As the Foundation’s resources grow in the days ahead, there will be no limit to what it can contribute towards nation-building initiatives, while honoring and respecting all faiths of India.
Additional examples of future fund utilization include:
- Maintaining and preserving the ancient temples and holy shrines of all faiths in India.
- Conserving historical monuments and archaeological sites across the country.
- Constructing modern sanitary facilities and clean drinking water systems at pilgrimage centers, archaeological sites, and heritage destinations.
- Supporting the basic welfare of artisans, craftsmen, and weavers of India — including initiatives such as free medical insurance for them and their families to meet essential healthcare needs.
- And our team and volunteers travelling to ancient temples and heritage sites across India, gathering firsthand experiences and conducting authentic research that enrich both the blog and the platform.
Stay Connected
- Blog: cultureandheritage.org/blog
- Platform: cultureandheritage.org
- Daily Updates: Stay tuned as we build something soulful, magnificent, and timeless every single day of our journey.
Closing Note
“This is a journey without end — a project so vast, even a lifetime isn’t enough to complete it. But every step we take today will ensure that India’s eternal heritage continues to shine for centuries to come.”
“A country remains poor in wealth both materially and intellectually if it does not develop its handicrafts, and its handicrafts & handloom industries. It lives a lazy parasitic life by importing all the manufactured articles from outside”.
~ Mahatma Gandhi