Many in this country are likely to shake their heads at the SC’s judgment on Tushar Gandhi’s petition against the Government of India’s decision to spruce up the Sabarmati Ashram.The site is intimately associated not only with Gandhijee’s life work,but also with his vision and philosophy.Austerity and simplicity,his concept of ‘bread labour’,the obligation of everyone to discharge his share of manual labour to the national labour pool in order to deserve the services and goods produced by his countrymen to sustain life. These are the tenets that Sabarmati as a way of life symbolised for the whole country. And plutocrats wallowing obscenely in money naturally find it offensive.
If I understand him correctly,this is what Tushar Gandhi had in mind when he challenged the government’s proposed renovation in the court.But it got entangled in the meshes of a legal net like a whale in a murderous trawler’s monster net and could not breathe freely any more.To change the metaphor the application of legal standards to the contention was like an attempt to measure the sea with ladles.
One may speculate the reason for the plan for renovation.The idea is perhaps not to maintain its original and essential character as one of the nation’s most hallowed heritage sites,but to add glamour and grandeur to it so as to attract tourists numbering tens of thousands.
There is a further twist to the story.More tourists mean more revenue.And that is the shocking part of it.To treat the place as a source of profit on the amount spent on its development.The current stream of visitors consists of those who are attracted to it by respect based on knowledge. Though not negligible the numbers are not at all comparable to those who troop to watch the wonders of Disneyland.GOI however seems to think only that sort of crowd is the proper tribute to Gandhijee and his ashram which symbolises his ideal of a worthwhile life.
‘If you can’t beat them,join them’,goes the popular saying.That is precisely what GOI seems to be doing here.In 2014 when BJP swept into power,there was a thunderous clamour from its ranks to dethrone Gandhijee from the pedestal.There were vociferous proposals to erase his image from currency notes,raise temples to honour Godse and bring down his statues in public squares.One young lady in a BJP stronghold carried around a Gandhi portrait that would bleed when she repeatedly shot at it.But there followed a deep silent tide of public disapproval which unnerved the generals of the Hindutva army and they beat a hurried retreat.
But the plan had been shelved,not abandoned.The new strategy was not to oppose him but to appropriate Gandhi to BJP’s armoury.Hence the pomp and the glitter of the PM’s public homage to Gandhi on certain given occasions.
There is an ostentatious air of innocence about the saffron group and government’s rants against Gandhi in recent past. But the appropriation also involves re-making and re-branding of Gandhi.BJP’s mindset is that of an affluent mercantile class that believes that everything without exception can be packaged as commodity, This tames the object and robs it of its threat potential. And it rakes in profit. Art,nature, thought and science have been in some ways tamed to serve its interest and why not Gandhi.So they have started packaging and selling Gandhi.I had a taste of it when I had visited Birla House where he spent his last days a couple of years back.The place was well-kept but I was somewhat upset to find a roomful of contraptions that were meant to draw kids and people with mental level of kids.Like a rolling wheel that stops at various points ,but stops at a point named Gandhi only when rolled with a certain panache.And Sabarmati might be similarly ‘upgraded’ with 5-star amenities and facilities.complete with a kids’ section where Gandhi dolls would perform various tasks at command and communal riots that re-iterated the premises of Hindutva might be shown as a consequence of his real views.The subversive element in Gandhi’s thought might get put upside down.This is a cold outrage,an affront to the moral dimension of our larger social life,missed by peddlers and hucksters of a sick,watered-down view of human culture.
Pity that the courts appear to miss it.
Hiren Gohain is a political commentator
