Reinventing Gandhi

Photos and Text by Ino Manalo

The visitor to India will find numerous references to the life and teachings of its founding father – Mohandas K. Gandhi. There are statues of him in many city squares, streets and schools are named in his honor, just like with our very own Jose Rizal. What I find impressive, however, is the fact that the Mahatma’s ideas are internalized and cherished by his people. This is so unlike the lip service that many of us pay to our national heroes.

In India, I have come across images of Gandhi gracing the living rooms of private abodes. There are even affectionate nicknames for him – he is clearly a part of the family. How many of us in the Philippines can honestly say the same of Rizal?

More significantly, we can see that the admonition by the wise man in a loin cloth to use locally woven fabrics continues to be taken to heart. Indian men and women proudly wear outfits confectioned from their country’s traditional textiles. Gandhi clearly believed in the dignity of crafts. He liked to point out that the subcontinent’s future development required the revitalization of the age-old skills of the villagers.

The great statesman did not settle for empty statements. He literally took matters in his own hands, personally producing the spun thread that would be woven into his clothes. For this reason, the flag of India has at its center a circle with many spokes evoking not only essential classical tenets but also Gandhi’s humble spinning wheel.

It is not surprising then that in several major Indian cities there are crafts councils dedicated to preserving ancient techniques. In the same vein, one will find in the capital a wonderful showcase that celebrates the products of the artisans’ hands: the Delhi Craft Museum.

The Museum, ran by the Ministry of Textiles, was designed by a prominent Indian architect: Charles Correa. I have had the good fortune of seeing another of Correa’s exhibition spaces – the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal. I still recall exploring broad spaces filled with light and grassy roof top terraces with an exhilarating view of a lake. I recall the care with which hand-fashioned items from faraway communities were displayed, allowing viewers to appreciate their intrinsic qualities: the humorous expression of a statue, the sensuous curve of a pot. It is the museum’s mission to ensure that craft pieces dialogue with contemporary paintings and sculpture.

Similar concerns may be discerned in the Museum in Delhi. The walls of the buildings are festooned with the colorful murals and relief work that decorate residences in rural areas. The displays are said to be organized along a central spine which traces a progression from the home to the village to the temple to the palace.

This spine provides a series of spaces for comprehending the contexts in which crafts are embedded in the lives of the people. There are exhibits of singular objects: a palm leaf fan embellished with intricate patterns, a granary of dried mud animated with marvelous figures molded by unschooled women. But there are also spaces filled with temple art as well parts of palaces illustrating how craft suffuses every sphere of life, from the personal to the political to the sacred.

Another institution dedicated to keeping alive Gandhi’s legacy is the Birla House, located in a tony section of Delhi. It used to be owned by one of the biggest industrialist families in India. The Birlas’ business empire has investments all over the world including the Philippines. At present, however, the House is better known as the Gandhi Smriti, to honor another former resident - the Mahatma who, sadly, was assassinated here.

Walking around the grounds I felt an odd sense of familiarity. This puzzled me until I realized that these gardens had been depicted in the 1982 Richard Attenborough film about the life of the beloved statesman. By virtue of the cinema, it almost felt that I had already seen this broad lawn, these bricked paths. It seemed like I had actually glimpsed the Mahatma’s face as the bullets tore into his chest.

Interestingly, the movie was released months before the Philippines would be plunged into its own epiphanies with the murder of Senator Benigno Aquino in 1983. Friends have told me that the vast crowds attending Gandhi’s funeral march as shown in the film reminded them of the masses of people that lined the streets as Ninoy’s and then later on, Cory’s, cortege passed by. Was life, again, imitating art?

Fully conscious of what these walls had once enclosed, I entered the mansion reverently. I fully expected a quiet, solemn shrine. To my surprise, I would find a glorious explosion of color and creativity.

Though the ground floor was conventional enough, all the action was on the second level. The exhibits here, inaugurated in 2005, utilize a wide range of media to make visitors understand the life and philosophy of Gandhi. What struck a cord was the fact that despite the contemporary forms, the spirit that reverberated throughout the different tableaux was vibrant with the village aesthetic.

I smiled when I saw relief stuccowork reminiscent of the walls of the Crafts Museum juxtaposed with computer monitors. Evidently the designers had wanted all India to take part in honoring their adored Mahatma. As the Museum website explains:

The works of scholars, artists, craftsmen, sculptors, carpenters, wood carvers, electronic designers, digital artists, animators are like a dedicated prayer towards a remembrance of the Gandhian vision.

I loved the little painted boxes inside of which were looping clips of the landmark Salt March. To challenge the Raj’s monopoly on this essential commodity, Gandhi organized non-violent resistance. Along a Museum corridor one will find a large jar filled with a fine white powder. Visitors were urged to feel salt in their hands, a sensation that no authoritarian power should be able to take away.

My favorite was a large frame of Gandhi’s smiling face. When you peered more closely it was revealed that the points of light in his glasses were really tiny screens. On these screens are replayed scenes from India’s recent history. So the sweeping events were just glimmers in the eyes of India’s loving Father. He knew that all existence was but a feather in the breath of Truth.

There were games to play, a train to ride. Everywhere multi-hued spinning wheels were turning. Children had been commissioned to design a kaleidoscope into which one could peer and be filled with wonder. There was even a harp shaped like the Mahatma’s silhouette with strings that, when plucked, played nationalistic songs. One was invited not just to observe Gandhi from a safe distance. We are asked to embrace him, laugh and enjoy with him, recreate and reinvent him.

Returning to the ground floor, this joyful cacophony was suddenly stilled. Here was Gandhi’s room as if he had just left it for his encounter with immortality. One is confronted with a life pared down to the spirit. The room is almost empty except for a mattress, three small tables and a spinning wheel. On the bare wall leans his walking stick.

Coming down from such a lively place filled with distractions, one is abruptly required to contemplate the benediction of simplicity. I could only sit in silence, mercifully, providentially, alone.

Then I saw it. On a white stand was the statue of the Three Monkeys, an exception to the Mahatma’s rejection of possessions. All at once, I was a child again, spellbound, listening to my own father. He was intoning the names of a trio of simians carved on the wall of an old stable in Japan’s Nikko: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.

How strange that an image from so far away, from so long ago could suddenly span distances and decades to engender new meanings. Perhaps Gandhi saw these three as a reminder of the law of karma and the organic justice of the cycles of existence. Indeed, the epic film on the Mahatma’s life ends with his resonant quote:

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always."

Yes, we should all think of this.

Always.

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Website for the Gandhi Smriti is www.eternalgandhi.org, the paragraphs on the Delhi Craft Museum utilize information provided at the corporate website of Charles Correa, www.charlescorrea.net