Anniversary: Remembering a Great Soul

Anniversary

Remembering a Great Soul

By Jill Sinclair

Many memorials have been created to the founder of the Indian nation in the 70 years since his assassination.

On 30 January 1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was shot dead in India’s capital. The 78- year-old had led his country’s campaign against British rule and lived just long enough to see India gain independence. His assailant was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist, who blamed Gandhi’s religious tolerance for the violence between Hindus and Muslims that surrounded the British exit. Reflecting national and international shock at the murder, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru called Gandhi the “greatest man of our age” and said that, “The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere…the Father of the Nation is no more”.

Born in western India in 1869, Gandhi had trained in London to be a lawyer, then practised in South Africa, where he campaigned for fair treatment of the resident Indian community. It was here that he was first given the honorific title Mahatma – from the Sanskrit for ‘great soul’ – by which he is most commonly known in the West. Once back in his homeland, Gandhi became leader of the movement for Indian independence, and developed a style of non-violent protest and civil disobedience that inspired activists around the world, including Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr, who called Gandhi’s approach the “guiding light” for the civil rights movement in the US.

It is remarkable how, 70 years after his death, Gandhi continues to be widely celebrated and memorialised as a saintly figure and symbol of righteous protest against statesanctioned injustice and inhumanity. Above: The Gandhi memorial in London’s Tavistock Square. Opposite page: Above: Gandhi at 10 Downing Street in 1931, about to meet the British Prime Minister. Below left: The marble slab in the centre of the sunken memorial garden at Delhi’s Raj Ghat. Below right: The sunken garden at Raj Ghat. (All photos by the author except where indicated.)

Memorials to Gandhi are commonplace in India: many parks, schools, markets, roads and temples have been named after him, and many museums created. The capital city of Gujarat, the state where he was born, is called Gandhi-nagar in his honour, and the country celebrates a national holiday, Gandhi Jayanti, on his birthday (2 October) every year. More surprisingly, Gandhi’s face appears on India’s banknotes, and his name endorses a Hyderabad bus station, a Mumbai swimming pool and a 2012 coal-fired power station in Haryana. At least three separate peace prizes are offered in his name, and memorials outside India include a school in Fiji, a 2002 statue in Milwaukee, a district in Houston, Texas, and squares in Johannesburg, Mauritius and Florida. As recently as two years ago, a major new memorial was erected in the heart of London.

But the continuing memorialisation of Gandhi is not without its controversy. Some argue that his image has been misappropriated and that he would be uncomfortable with expensive statues and displays dedicated to him, given his austere lifestyle and resistance to the idea of Gandhism as a movement. “I have nothing new to teach the world,” he argued. “Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills.” Indeed, Nehru contrasted the traditional approach to “great men” who “have monuments in bronze and marble set up for them” with the way he thought Gandhi should be remembered: as a man who “managed in his life-time to become enmeshed in millions and millions of hearts”.

Others resist his memorialisation on the basis that his contribution to Indian independence has been overstated, and his responsibility for sectarian violence overlooked. Indeed, some members of the current governing party in India have gone so far as to consider memorials to Godse, Gandhi’s murderer. There is also an increasing outcry about some of his beliefs and practices – from referring to black

South Africans in derogatory terms to his allegedly abusive treatment of young female relatives. In one recent example, a memorial statue of Gandhi donated by India to the University of Ghana in 2016 was removed a few months later after professors and students labelled him a racist, and argued that to accept the memorial would be to “kowtow to the wishes of a burgeoning Eurasian super-power”.

The main Gandhi memorial in Delhi is at the site of his cremation on the banks of Delhi’s Yamuna River and known as Raj Ghat, which means the riverbank of the king or leader. It was designed by Vanu G. Bhuta, a US-trained Indian architect who won the government-sponsored competition to create a suitable memorial to the lost leader. It is a stark, modernist design, intended to reflect the profound austerity of Gandhi’s life. The memorial, which was completed in around 1956, is a sunken, square garden surrounded by walls that serve as viewing platforms. In the centre of the garden is a monolithic, black marble slab, inscribed simply with the phrase ‘Hey Ram’ (meaning Oh God), supposedly Gandhi’s last words. An eternal flame burning in a large lantern is a later addition.

Originally, the surrounding garden was red earth, but it has undergone several changes since its installation 60 years ago, and is now grass, punctuated with trees planted by visiting foreign dignitaries including an ashoka (Saraca asoca) planted by President Tito of Yugoslavia and a peepul tree (Ficus religiosa) by President Obama in 2015. There is much to admire in the proportions and scale of the Raj Ghat memorial garden, and the way it can be experienced first in a broad sweep from the viewing platforms above, then intimately (and barefoot) at the marble memorial itself. The bright marigold and rose petals arranged on the black marble add a typically Hindu touch, and on occasions the whole memorial is smothered in

Wilson Loo Kok Wee.

Far left: Footsteps lead to the place where Gandhi was shot at Birla House. Left: A courtyard at the India International Centre in New Delhi.

Below: An empty plinth on New Delhi’s Rajpath, long discussed as the site for a new memorial to Gandhi.

intricate petal patterns. For many visitors, however, the dignity and repose of the space are somewhat marred by the bright green matting laid over the paths (presumably to protect bare feet from the sun-baked stone) and by the retractable barriers that discourage visitors from getting too close to the memorial.

Just last October, a larger-than-life (1.8m/6ft) statue of Gandhi by sculptor Ram Sutar was added to the site, in the adjacent parking area. It includes an inscription ‘Be the Change You Wish to See’, one of Gandhi’s most-quoted sayings. The Indian government judged that the design of the original memorial was too austere, as it lacked a representation of Gandhi, and that visitors would welcome a further spot in which to pay their respects.

A second Gandhi memorial in Delhi is at Birla House, where he lived during the last four months of his life, and where he was assassinated. Since 1973 it has been a national memorial and museum, known as the Gandhi Smriti, which has become a popular destination for school trips and tourist visits.

The simple room where he slept, with his bed and sparse personal effects, has been recreated. Footprints cast in stone mark his final walk from the house to an evening prayer meeting. They are not, as many visitors expect, gently sunken into the earth, as if preserving the exact tread of his final few steps. Instead, they are oddly raised and too numerous to bring much poignancy to the site. Apparently any child who sees them as an invitation to walk in Gandhi’s footsteps is quickly disabused of the idea by museum guards. The exact spot where he was shot is marked by a column, engraved with his final words and the date of his death, and protected by a stone veranda.

Elsewhere there is a statue of Gandhi by Ram Sutar with the inscription ‘My Life is my Message’,

a mass of information boards, giving extraordinary detail about Gandhi’s life and, in the house, a much-trumpeted interactive display.

Less well-known is the Gandhi King Plaza at the India International Centre in Delhi’s diplomatic quarter, designed by American architect Joseph Allen Stein, who was responsible for several important Modernist buildings in Delhi. The plaza is an open-air joint memorial to the Mahatma and Martin Luther King Jr, designed around a large pool, with pillars inscribed with quotations from both men, plus places to sit in the shade of two vast pilkhan trees (Ficus cordifolia). It is a quiet, reflective place, used for occasional exhibitions.

There has been talk of creating a further memorial to Gandhi in the capital, on an empty plinth on Rajpath, in the heart of New Delhi. This ceremonial thoroughfare was built by the British in the 1930s, even as control over their Indian Empire was waning, and the plinth once displayed a white marble memorial to the late King-Emperor George V under a fine baldachin (canopy). After Independence, the Indians did not relish having a British monarch lording it over this great thoroughfare and his statue was finally removed in the 1960s. Government proposals to place a statue of Gandhi there instead met with protests that the grand site and surroundings were not compatible with his principles and philosophy, and the plinth remains empty.

Gandhi’s legacy is also commemorated in South Africa, where he lived and worked from 1893 to 1914. In common with other countries outside India that have erected memorials, South Africa has opted for figurative statues as its way of celebrating his life. In Johannesburg, a 2.5m (8ft) bronze statue by Tinka Christopher was installed on Gandhi’s birthday in 2003. Standing imposingly on a 5m (16ft) plinth, the statue is unusual for

portraying Gandhi as a young man in his lawyer’s robes. It is located near the former site of the city’s law courts, where Gandhi worked and was later tried and sentenced for his role in opposing segregation laws. Although there was some opposition to the memorial, it was welcomed by former president Nelson Mandela as celebrating the man who started the fight against white minority rule in South Africa and whose work inspired the creation of the African National Congress.

In the United States, the presence of prosperous Indian-American communities and the strong ties between Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr have led to several memorials being created to the Mahatma. Of most note is probably the 2m (6ft 6in) bronze statue at the Martin Luther King Jr National Historic site in Atlanta, Georgia. Installed in 1998, it was the first Gandhi statue to be erected on federal land. A similar bronze statue was set up in 2000 on the street in front of the Indian Embassy in Washington DC and inscribed ‘My life is My Message’.

Other American memorials, many donated by the Indian embassy, have proved controversial. One erected in a public park in Davis, California in 2016 was met with widespread protests from groups claiming that Gandhi was racist, a child molester and cause of the violence during the British withdrawal from India. In the face of the protests, the City Council said the gift of the statue had been “mistakenly viewed as a noncontroversial item”.

In London, where Gandhi trained as a barrister and was called to the Bar in 1891, a memorial was installed in 1968 in the centre of leafy Tavistock Square, near University College, where he studied law. It is a statue of the seated Mahatma, created by the Polish sculptor, actress and writer Fredda Brilliant. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress

In 2009, as part of a restoration of the square, a new flowerbed was added, with the support of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which displayed plants from India, in further honour of Gandhi. The square also contains a memorial to conscientious objectors against military service, and a cherry tree planted in memory of those killed in Hiroshima by the atomic bomb. More recently, in 2015, a major new statue was installed in London’s Parliament Square, opposite the Palace of Westminster and alongside established memorials to Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. Designed by Scottish sculptor Philip Jackson, the 2.75m (9ft) figure is based on a photo of Gandhi outside 10 Downing Street.

Officially the memorial marked the 100th anniversary of Gandhi’s return to India from South Africa, but sceptics pointed out that its genesis had arisen the previous year when the UK government had done a deal to sell missiles to India. Gandhi’s great-grandson condemned the mismatch between his ancestor’s beliefs and the sale of arms, saying the two governments had agreed the statue as “a soothing balm to their consciences”.

Seventy years after his assassination, Mahatma Gandhi’s enduring legacy of non-violent activism continues to be celebrated and physically commemorated in many parts of the globe. Yet increasing scrutiny of some of his views and actions, combined with misappropriation of his image by governments and businesses, means that new memorials may prove controversial.

Jill Sinclair is a British landscape historian who spent four years living and working in India. She is a trustee of the Historic Gardens Foundation.

Above: Memorial outside the Indian Embassy, Washington DC.

Right: Statue of Gandhi in his lawyer’s robes, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Far right: The new memorial to Gandhi in London’s Parliament Square, with the Palace of Westminster in the background.

Tamaryn-Shepherd.

Mayagawa.