Skip to main content

Disney is coming to Sabarmati

 Imagine a statue of Nathuram Godse welcoming tourists to Mahatma Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat. What is being planned for Sabarmati by Narendra Modi is quite as bewildering as that. Having killed the soul of Jallianwala Bagh with the renovation of the historical site, Modi, with the Chief Minister of Gujarat, is all set to convert Gandhi’s Ashram into an Indian version of Disneyland.

A sum of Rs 1200 crore has been set aside for the project. Apart from modernised museums and a modified amphitheatre, the Ashram will now have food courts and shopping complexes besides a parking space for 200 cars. Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in a prominent public place in Ahmedabad, sculpted by none less than Kanti Patel, will be transferred to the new Sabarmati. That’s a clever strategy for reducing the visibility of the statue!

The sparrows and squirrels that now share space with human beings will vanish with their habitat-trees.

Human beings were already dispossessed of their lands for the construction of the Sabarmati Riverfront Park when Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat. The remaining few human beings will be thrown out from the area now by the current new project. Gandhi will move out by himself, I guess.

Hriday Kunj

Gandhi’s beloved residence, Hriday Kunj, will also vanish when Bimal Patel’s firm, HCP Design, Planning and Management, will bring its bulldozers and earthmovers to the 54-acre land. This is the same firm that is building the Central Vista in Delhi, Modi’s pet project, a palace for himself – a project which felled 1838 trees from the world’s most polluted city.

Modi usurps Gandhi at Hriday Kunj

Modi dared to replace the Mahatma in Khadi India’s calendar in 2017. He dared to sit on the same veranda of Hriday Kunj where Gandhi used to sit with his charka, yes the same one Modi usurped. The irony becomes shocking when you realise that Modi is an RSS man, the same organisation to which Naturam Godse belonged.

Recently Modi bhakts evicted Nehru from posters of freedom fighters. Will Gandhi be now evicted from his own Sabarmati? One thing is certain: Gandhi won’t like the Disneyland that Bimal Patel will build in Sabarmati. Who cares, right? We are in a new India, one which is Disneyfying history itself.  

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanSeptember 2, 2021 at 6:48 PM

    Hari OM
    Shocking. I had not heard this news before reading this. I am aghast. That photo had also escaped my notice - and all I see in it is mockery. That Godse is now being 'worshipped' by RSS and other strong nationalists is beyond bizarre... and I see nothing on the diplomatic horizon to demonstrate that other world powers are paying any proper attention to what is going on, to have a word in his ear, "look here old man, this just isn't cricket..." ai-yoh... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 2, 2021 at 7:20 PM

      The current India frightens me because a vast majority of people including some of my own friends are supporters of all that Modi is doing. India is moving in a wrong direction altogether.

      Delete
  2. Pooja MahimkarSeptember 6, 2021 at 1:57 PM

    I didn't know about this and this is just horrifying. The Jallianwala Bagh pictures upset me deeply. I remember visiting the place a few years ago and just walking through that lane made me tear up because it made me feel real and imagine the things that happened there, the new pictures barely summon any emotions

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 6, 2021 at 4:50 PM

      Perhaps the most grievous tragedy is that all these changes have ulterior motives whose impacts on the nation's psyche are going to be long-lasting.

      Delete
  3. Rajeev MoothedathSeptember 6, 2021 at 10:57 PM

    These days news persons do not cover these things widely and so much is happening so fast that most people do not know of the many steady changes being made...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 7, 2021 at 5:03 AM

      One of the tragedies in India now is that popular news media have become lapdogs. Others are driven underground almost.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...
11 comments
Read more

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Egregious

·       Donald Trump terminated all trade negotiations with Canada “based on their egregious behaviour.” ·       Pakistan has an egregious record of assassinations among its leaders. ·       Benjamin Netanyahu’s egregious disregard for civilian suffering has drawn widespread international condemnation. Now, look at the following sentences. ·       Archias is an egregious and most excellent man. [Cicero’s speech in 62 BCE] ·       “An egregious captain and most valiant soldier.” [Roger Ascham in 1545] U p to about 16 th century, the word egregious had a positive meaning: excellent or outstanding . Cicero was defending Greek poet Aulus Licinius Archias’s request for Roman citizenship. Archias had left his country out of disgust for the corruption of its Seleucid rulers. Ascham was speaking about the qualities of valiant soldiers when he used the ...
6 comments
Read more