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

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
35 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...
13 comments
Read more

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...
8 comments
Read more