There may also be the Prime Minister’s evident need to gain some legitimacy through Gandhi, and seek to broaden his appeal among those who do not hark back to the PM’s ideological family. That made them parrot the official Modi propaganda. Changing your clothes to suit the occasion and to wear coats that cost lakhs of rupees was a disqualification. The name of Nathuram Godse is wholly absent. It is they who assassinated him. The photo-feature on the Mahatma’s life and work continues outside the rooms, spilling over on to the verandah, not far from the Modi panels. Tourist-guides conduct group tours. It’s worthwhile asking if Mr Modi could ever have qualified to be an inmate of Sabarmati Ashram. They seemed to have been taught to give set, tutored, answers to easily anticipated questions. Modi has risen, and to followers of the Hindutva ideology more broadly. Whether the installation of panels to highlight the Modi regime’s programmes pre-dated his visit or followed it needs to be ascertained from the Sabarmati management.Journalist friends in Ahmedabad, when asked about how the BJP, the ruling party in Gujarat, views Gandhi now that it is in government, point to the example of the so-called “Mahatma Mandir” in Gandhinagar, the state capital very near Ahmedabad. at face value. What’s missing is the real story of his death.
If storming the electoral turf on the Ganga at Varanasi was done in public glare with energy and a rampaging will three years ago, Narendra Modi, now in the avatara of the Prime Minister, chose to insinuate himself into Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad, with practically no one noticing. Welcome to BJP’s Gandhi!Maybe, it is this underlying spirit which informs the recent decision to mix the flavour of Gandhi’s memory enshrined at Sabarmati with other, more mundane, things like governmental popaganda. These were apt to give the impression to the uninitiated that the work being done by Mr Modi is a natural extension of the Mahatma’s experiments with truth, which the old photos endeavour to depict. This Mandir is lavishly appointed.Enquiries revealed that the media in Ahmedabad had not reported this invidious attempt of the government to encroach upon the Sabarmati Ashram which has been in its present location since 1917, although the institution was founded two years prior at a place nearby called Kochrab and had to be moved on account of the spread of plague in that village. Professionally mounted rare photographs on Gandhi’s life with appropriate annotations in a series of rooms lead to an open verandah where the Modi panels stood. Eligibility rules were stringent, and enjoined on everyone daily physical labour and spartan living, not to mention celibacy.
