Second assassination POLITICS AND PLAY | Defiling the Mahatma https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/second-assassination-defiling-the-mahatma/cid/1822792 Ramachandra Guha | Published 17.07.21
The Sabarmati Ashram as it stands today is a perfectly adequate memorial to Gandhi and what he stood for. The charming low buildings existing still from Gandhi’s time, the trees and the birds, the open ingress and lack of guards or of an entry fee, the absence of policemen in khaki carrying rifles or even batons, the view of the river — all these give the place a special, welcoming character absent in every other monument or museum in India today.
When a regime known for its aesthetic barbarism and its worship of monumentalism uses the word, ‘world-class’, in connection with the Sabarmati Ashram, it sends shivers down the spine
if a single architect gets awarded all prestigious State projects, paid for by the taxpayer, then there is indeed a problem. It is only in authoritarian States that particular architects have come to be associated with particular leaders and their cults of personality. That the same person can be seen as uniquely qualified to re-design an ancient temple city, a modern capital, and Gandhi’s ashram is a commentary on the nepotism and cronyism of the Modi regime. Indian architecture, and India itself, deserve better. The plan for ‘redevelopment’ was drafted by Modi’s inner circle with no inputs from architects knowledgeable about conservation and heritage, and without consulting Gandhians or scholars either. Even the Trustees of the Ashram were kept entirely in the dark about the plan and its contents.
Modi is not ‘redeveloping’ Sabarmati out of love or regard for the Mahatma, but to seek to burnish his own image and rewrite his past. A politician whose entire life’s work has been antithetical to Gandhi’s, and an architect whose prime qualification is proximity to that politician, have no right to mess around with the most hallowed of all the places associated with the Mahatma.