The archivist’s VINAY LAL

ALTHOUGH an extraordinarily copi- indeed, new technological interfaces ous literature has developed around the offer various extensions of the visual life, thought, and work of Mohandas experience. Gandhi, comparatively little has been There can scarcely be any doubt done by way of exploring his presence that Gandhi has a singularity among the in diverse strands of visual culture. most universal icons of modern India: This is all the more surprising in view if in ancient times it was the circula- of the fact that the study of visual cul- tion of the image of the Buddha, com- ture – which intersects with, and draws mencing with the Gandhara and upon, an equally broad array of fields, Mathura schools, that rendered India from film and media studies, art history, proximate to Central Asia, China, and performance studies, and cultural stud- Southeast Asia, Gandhi is supreme ies to anthropology, critical theory, phi- among those Indians whose names losophy, and psychoanalytic theory – have earned the country some meas- has come along quite far in the last ure of cultural capital. His statues, three decades and has even acquired which began proliferating in India the paraphernalia that, at least in the since his assassination and are now western (and increasingly if haltingly encountered in the smallest towns, are in the Indian) academy, suggests the increasingly to be found in countries institutionalization of a field of study. around the world. Gandhi’s face Moreover, as those who are not inat- adorns the postage stamps of over 100 tentive to the considerations of peda- countries: no other Indian comes even gogy are aware, the present generation remotely close to claiming such fame. of students the world over is increas- An enormously rich calendar art has ingly attuned to the notion of the grown up around representations of the visual. The visual is no longer encom- Mahatma; there is similarly a treasure 2 passed solely by the idea of the image; trove of nationalist prints, which origi- nated around 1920, and had a good * [email protected] run until shortly after the attainment

SEMINAR 662 – October 2014 of independence, in which Gandhi fig- Cebu City jail near Manila holding up ured pre-eminently. The work of a wide a huge picture of Gandhi as they array of artists – among them Nandlal danced to a song by Bonnie Tyler, Bose, M.F. Husain, Gulammohammed ‘I Need a Hero’ (p. 5). In the aftermath Sheikh, Atul Dodiya, Nilima Sheikh, of the massive demonstrations at Ramkinkar Baij, and others far too Tehran’s Tahrir Square, where Gan- numerous to mention – suggests Gan- dhi’s name was routinely invoked by dhi’s profound presence in the Indian protesters gathered in opposition to imaginary. a regime charged with the theft of an election, there would be much talk of Iran’s ‘Gandhian moment’.4 He is, To cartoonists the world over, the Gan- it seems, everywhere – even on the dhi of the shining bald head and the separation wall at the Kalandiya Mickey Mouse ears was nearly an checkpoint in north Jerusalem. irresistible attraction.1 His walking stick, the pair of round spectacles, the sandals, the shawl wrapped loosely What, then, are the various ways in around his shoulders in the cold months, which we might read images of Gan- the timepiece tucked into his dhoti, the dhi, and how would one go about assem- pet goat: these constitute an iconogra- An iconic Gandhi dhoti with timepiece. bling a visual archive of Gandhi? phy of the Mahatma that is now part Cartoons, prints, oil paintings, water- of the national imaginary. It is not too disembodied timepiece, walking stick, colours, photographs, moving images, much to say that Gandhi is the only per- or sandalled feet have no parallel in graffiti, murals, comic strips, and sculp- son in Indian history who is not the his- the life of any Indian in the twentieth tures are of course different mediums torical founder of a religion around century. by which Gandhi is made a palpable whom a distinct iconography has deve- presence to the viewer, but they also loped. True, as Christopher Pinney’s differ from each other in various other work amply shows,2 such an iconog- Gandhi is also, it can be freely admit- respects. Sculptures of Gandhi, for raphy might seem to have formed ted, the pre-eminent Indian icon of example, are likely to be viewed as around his younger contemporaries, protest: indeed no other global figure, requiring little by way of interpretation, such as Chandrashekhar Azad – dis- barring perhaps Che Guevara, has insofar as the thousands of statues of tinctly marked out by his wristwatch been so visibly appropriated around Gandhi that dot the country appear to and his handsome moustache – but the the world for political purposes in the be cast in a largely similar mould. The present phase of human history. When Indian Malaysians, some constituted into a new political entity called Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF), took to the streets in December 2007 to demand political rights and entitle- ments, they held aloft pictures of Gandhi – not of Nehru, Mao, Che, or Marx.3 Similarly, Tibetan protesters – in Delhi, Bangalore, San Francisco, London, and elsewhere – have over the years galvanized around pictures of Gandhi and the Dalai Lama as they seek to bring awareness of Beijing’s repressive policies in Tibet. Gandhi’s image turns up in unlikely places: The 3

Vinay Lal Indian Express of 27 April 2008 car- Vinay Lal Brilliant Gandhi at Tavistock Square, London. ried a photograph of prisoners at the Buddhist Gandhi at Nalanda.

SEMINAR 662 – October 2014 bespectacled Gandhi is shown with a installed in public places, their signifi- sculptor was thinking perhaps of Gan- staff in his right hand, a shawl flung cation alters over time: if the Gandhi dhi as a worthy successor to the Bud- loosely around his torso; his timepiece murti is the place where the activists dha, as two of history’s most eminent is tucked into his dhoti; and, in a varia- are asked to convene to issue forth practitioners of . Yet the image tion of this pose, Gandhi appears to be their dissent, it is also the spot from and the text may be at cross-purposes: taking a vigorous stride forward, an where one hangs the next right or left. curiously, though Gandhi wrote volu- image rendered famous by Nandlal Legend has it that more than once a minously, he had little to say about Bose when he sought to capture Gan- cobra would quietly slip away upon the Buddha. dhi’s purposeful march to freedom. seeing Gandhi at Sabarmati as well as his ashram at , but pigeons do not differentiate between statues Much more could be said, of course, The seated Gandhi is less common of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Vivekananda, about the statues of Gandhi, from the but not infrequently encountered, as is or Bhagat Singh when they drop their barrister Gandhi of Johannesburg’s the case with his statue on the main stool. Gandhi Square aptly and uniquely road leading into the town of Pushkar: dressed in a lawyer’s robe and the the staff here is replaced by a book, peasant look-alike in Motihari to the which, considering what we know of The German writer Robert Musil is wonderfully serene Gandhi sculpted Gandhi’s life and the books that were there to remind us, stunningly, that ‘the by Fredda Brilliant in London’s Trafal- his daily companions, was most likely most striking feature of monuments is gar Square. The archivist’s Gandhi, either the or Tulsidas’s that you do not notice them. There is however, rarely takes us beyond the Ramacaritmanas. Many will suppose nothing in the world as invisible as a immeasurably rich world of photo- that these statues render homage, monument. Like a drop of water on an graphs, though even these have been often state sanctioned but sometimes as oilskin, attention runs down them little explored. Gandhi was, for his an expression of the common will, to without stopping for a moment.’5 How times, one of the most photographed the ‘Father of the Nation’, a Mahatma often has one walked by statues with- men of the world, and he cannot be who led his people to freedom, one of out even registering their presence? described as camera-shy: indeed, he the last representatives of the coun- The gigantism that drives Mayawati – was acutely aware of what is nowadays try’s great sant traditions; and there my Ambedkar is bigger than your Gan- called ‘the media’, and some have even may yet be those who would interpret dhi – is animated partly by the fear of argued that the very success of non- a statue of Gandhi much like a murti invisibility, but there is little awareness violence was predicated on Gandhi’s of their ishtadevata, making him pal- that much else might contribute to the skill in working the press and arousing pably present to them. conspicuousness of a statue. Outside the conscience of the world. Far less pious and more critical Nalanda, once the seat of learning in Photography from the outset even cynical readings of statues are India, stands a folksy statue where created regimes of classification, possible and certainly desirable. What- Gandhi is enveloped in a Buddhist robe. order, and appropriation, but it has ever the intent with which statues are There is more than a hint here that the since its inception also – perhaps pre-

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Deewaar’s Vijay with framed Gandhi poster (dir. Yash Chopra, 1975). Gandhi at Separation Wall.

SEMINAR 662 – October 2014 eminently – been summoned as fur- work of two generations of scholars gle in the Orient’. Mohandas and nishing evidence: for example, to those and critics has gravitated towards a Kasturba are individuated prominently, who aver that Gandhi was hostile to dramatically altered understanding of arrayed against the forces of militarism; science, one can point to the photo- photography which sensitizes viewers in the foreground are men and women graph, surely the only one of its kind to its politics and its manipulation of in chains. It is that eternal struggle of in the world, of the ‘half-naked’ fakir- reality – photography as yet another freedom versus servitude. However, scientist poring through a microscope. form of simulacra. No single photograph a much less adulatory view of Gandhi For all of his stringent critique of rail- can convey the totality of Gandhi’s life, is encountered in an exuberantly erotic ways in Hind (1909), the what was evidently the ambition of comic, one of some 700-1000 so-called barely probed photographic archives nationalist biographical prints – some ‘Tijuana Bibles’, that was circulating of Gandhi’s love affair with the rail- captioned as ‘The Evolution of Gan- clandestinely in the 1930s and 1940s. ways,6 poignantly celebrated by a dhi’ take the viewer on a journey from ‘Oh Peaceful Mahatma’, says a dam- statue of Gandhi outside the railway the cradle to the evening of January 30 sel to ‘Gandi’ who ‘has them handy’, station in Wellington, New Zealand, – which circulated widely especially in ‘I come to tell you of the arrival of two offers voluminous testimony not merely the aftermath of his assassination; con- fair maidens to see you.’7 A slave to of his extraordinary mobility but of his versely, what is captured in a single his own ideas of sexual puritanism, intimate familiarity with large swathes moment, as in Margaret Bourke- Gandhi is now set free. of the country, his extensive engage- White’s photograph of Gandhi at his ment with Indians from all walks of spinning wheel, seems to carry within life, his articulation of new itineraries it the majestic plenitude of an entire life. The Marxists, feminists, liberals, mod- of travel, and his negotiation of many ernizers, Dalits, nudists, vegetarians, registers of temporality. peaceniks, social workers, and many Gandhi had become, in his lifetime, others each have their own Gandhi. a world historical figure: the visual But a visual archive suggests other What Gandhi gave shape to was what archive is much deeper than we have arrangements as well: the seated Gan- I would like to call a biorail politics. imagined, and artists the world over dhi, the martyred Gandhi, the sartorial But as we speak in this vein, we should were puzzled, intrigued, and mesmer- Gandhi, and so on. Let me turn here to not be railroaded into obscuring some- ized by accounts of Gandhi’s activities the ‘framed Gandhi’ in an attempt to thing much simpler: the view of the in India. Cyrano (Paris), Le Petit Pari- unravel some implications of studying photograph as something that captures sien, Kladderadatich (Berlin), Der visual culture. Growing up in India in a slice of reality and speaks to the truth Wahre Jacob (Hamburg), La Prensa the 1950s and the 1960s, one was most continues to resonate in popular con- (Madrid), and De Zaterdagavond likely to encounter the ‘Father of the ceptions of photography, even if the (Haarlem, The Netherlands) are a Nation’ as a framed photograph – in handful among the European periodi- cals and newspapers that routinely commissioned their resident cartoon- ists and caricaturists to suggest some insights into that slight brown man, and a vegetarian to boot, who had taken on the might of the British lion. Over the years, in assembling a digital archive comprised of over 5,000 distinct images of Gandhi, many stark contrasts have forced themselves upon me. The Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), who commenced his career during the Mexican revolution as a political car- toonist, accepted a commission from 5 the New School (New York) in 1931 Martin Luther King with framed Gandhi. and painted a large mural called ‘Strug- Nandlal Bose, Ekla Chalo Re.

SEMINAR 662 – October 2014 government offices, police stations, very instance, as Vijay sips tea, that he Congress party offices, university build- takes the decision to resist the extor- ings, and in the classrooms and corri- tion to which workers at the Bombay’s dors of tens of thousands of schools. docks are subjected.

More often than not, the framed Gan- It is tempting to think that, from his dhi was to be seen in the home of the lofty position on the wall, Gandhi is pious teacher, the dedicated social there to inspire men and women to do worker, or the plain old-fashioned good: and such, surely, is the impres- patriot. If, as is sometimes argued, the sion conveyed by one of the more mainstream Hindi film has been par- famous photographs of Martin Luther ticularly adept in capturing the pulse King, who stands at his desk over which of popular sensibilities, we should not hangs a framed photograph of Gandhi. be surprised that the framed Gandhi But perhaps Gandhi is also there to cast should also have become nearly as a look, as we shall see, at all that tran- essential to the Hindi film as songs, spires in his name and under his pho- the staged fights (orchestrated by the tograph. Though the ‘Father of the ‘fight master’), or the suffering mother. Nation’ did not much believe in surveil- One might argue, of course, that the lance, and was notoriously indifferent Hindi film was merely following the to considerations of his own security, script set by the state: the protocol Nationalist print, Gandhi merged with India. eventually surrendering his life to an apparently required that Gandhi’s assassin who had absolutely no diffi- photograph be hung visibly in the dir. Yash Chopra) belts out a patriotic culty in penetrating the Birla House most prominent office of a government song before his college classmates, gardens where Gandhi held his evening institution. Gandhi is there on the wall behind him, prayer meetings, the framed Gandhi Yet, as scores of popular Hindi holding what is likely the Gita in his yet appears to peer down from his lofty films amply suggest, the framed Gan- right hand. Dilip may well be thinking position on mere mortals. However dhi does not hang from the wall merely that he is following in the footsteps of critical one may be of Gandhi at times, in easy fulfilment of state-sanctioned Gandhi, calling on India’s youth to even his worst enemies would have a homage. As the firebrand and rabble- offer selfless service to the nation, but hard time thinking of him as a ‘Big rouser Dilip in Dharamputra (1961, Gandhi’s Gita is a summons, which Brother’. Dilip is most reluctant to embrace, to confront the demons within oneself. Little does Dilip, who is driven by the desire to expunge the Muslim from his worldview, know that he is himself born of Muslim parents. In Purab aur Paschim (1970, dir. Manoj Kumar), the framed portrait of Gandhi hearkens to India’s accom- plishments in the spiritual and scientific domains alike as Bharat reminds the crowd of deracinated resident non- Indians that those who would reduce India to zero are evidently not mindful of the power of zero. The large poster Vinay Lal of Gandhi, seen behind the back of 6 Vijay in Yash Chopra’s Deewaar Gandhi in lawyer’s robes, Gandhi Square, (1975), calls forth that Gandhi who Sartorial biography of Gandhi. Nationalist Johannesburg. waged war against injustice: it is at this print.

SEMINAR 662 – October 2014 Even Gandhi’s authoritarianism, elected office in either independent for such is how it is has been described India or even in the Congress party by some of his critics, was tempered after his one-year term of presidency by a radical catholicity of thought. of the Congress in the 1920s, and hav- Nevertheless, perhaps the framed ing no riches or possessions to his name, Gandhi is there to remind the thinker Gandhi cannot be bunched together or doer that Gandhi Baba’s eyes are with the netas, small and big, who popu- cast at their deeds: his blessings will be late the Indian scene. But Gandhi was showered on those who act ethically equally reluctant to being deified: he and his admonitions are there to trou- openly disowned the idea of being a ble those who are set on the path of Mahatma, and would have shuddered wrongdoing. One can understand why at the thought of being assimilated into Indian embassies and consulates ’s gods and goddesses. Gan- throughout the world prominently dis- dhi occupies, we may say, a position play the framed Gandhi: as I have sug- betwixt the politicians and the gods, gested, whatever India’s standing in and yet a position that is akin to neither. any particular country, the name of Vinay Lal Perhaps that old and tiresome ques- Seated Gandhi at Pushkar. Gandhi is calculated to earn India tion, of whether he was a politician in some goodwill. Similarly, the person dents for life’ – but Gandhi occupied saint’s garb or a saint who muddled his who puts up Gandhi’s photograph may an anomalous position in the immedi- way through politics, will never go away. be attempting to acquire cultural capi- ate aftermath of independence, hold- tal, suggesting to others that the admi- ing no office and yet being bestowed ration for Gandhi points to some with the epithet of ‘Father of the One keen observer of Indian politics element of nobility in his or her own Nation’. But, in India, framed photo- who has always remained aware of personality. If we are also associated graphs of the gods and goddesses are the framed Gandhi is the cartoonist in people’s minds with the friends we even more common than the photo- R.K. Laxman, famous among other keep, there is reason to suppose that graphs of netas, ‘leaders’ of the nation. things for his creation of the ‘common the photographs of venerable elders man’. In one cartoon after another, on display are meant to signify some- Laxman lampooned the netas, bureau- thing about us to others. Let us, for a moment, overlook the crats, and the sycophants who came fact that many of those canonized or to define ‘politics’ in the decades fol- celebrated as netas have been scarcely lowing independence; significantly, the The gesture of the framed Gandhi deserving of that honorific, and it is no framed photograph of Gandhi looms can, of course, be read in myriad other surprise that the word ‘neta’ is often large in his work, as the three cartoons ways. It is customary for states to hang used mockingly, not infrequently ser- reproduced here amply demonstrate. framed photographs of the highest ving as a thinly veiled term of abuse Laxman was keen to underscore the officials – often elected, just as often and vilification for those who are out hypocrisy of politicians, leaders, and self-appointed, as in the case of ‘presi- to plunder the country. Holding no party office holders, though ‘hypo-

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Oroczo mural: Struggle in the Orient.

SEMINAR 662 – October 2014 Dharamputra (dir. Yash Chopra, 1961). Purab aur Paschim (dir. Manoj Kumar, 1970). crisy’ is perhaps a banal and even rela- some hold him responsible for the par- Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, tively benign word to characterize tition of India; others for upholding 1970. 2. Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The those who, under Gandhi’s portrait, did caste, relegating women to the house- Social Life of Indian Photographs. University not hesitate to offer or accept bribes, hold, and allowing the bourgeoisie an of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1977, pp. 177-78; engage in horse-trading, engineer ‘dis- easy ride; and many others for betray- idem, ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Im- age and Political Struggle in India. Reaktion turbances’ in the interest of advancing ing his fellow Hindus. There are even Books, London, 2004, pp. 175-79. the party’s electoral prospects, and those who find the hand of Gandhi 3. See, for example, picture in Times of India engage in the various other shenani- behind the culture of dharna, gherao, (21 December 2007), p. 13, with caption: gans that have come to be associated hartal, anshan, andolan: Gandhi, on ‘ in Malaysia’. with Indian politics. Still, Laxman may this (what one can only call astound- 4. See the articles by Ramin Jehanbegloo and Mohsen Kavidar in Nader Hashemi and have missed out on one element in his ing) view, bred a culture of disdain for Danny Postel (eds.), The People Reloaded: representation of the Gandhi looming the law with his resort to The Green Movement and the Struggle for behind the frame. and extra-constitutional forms of pro- Iran. Melville House, Boston, 2010; also Mohsen Makhmalbaf, ‘I Speak for Mousavi. As I have had occasion to write test. And one could continue in this And Iran’, Guardian, 19 June 2009. elsewhere, there is no constituency in vein. So, when we frame Gandhi, we 5. Robert Musil, Posthumous Papers of a Liv- India – liberals, Marxists, constitution- do far more than enclose his photo- ing Author, trans. Peter Wortsman. Eridanos alists, Hindutvavadis, militants, femi- graph or portrait behind glass. Our Press, Hygiene, Colorado, 1987, p. 61. 6. A modest beginning, which never ventures nists, Dalits, Punjabis, Bengalis, habit of framing Gandhi has more to it beyond the descriptive mode, is made in Y.P. communalists, gays and lesbians, most than meets the eye. Anand, compiler, aur Rail- of all Gujaratis, and then a great many way [in Hindi]. Navajivan, Ahmedabad, 2002. Footnotes more – that does not love to hate Gan- 7. Bob Adelman, Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit 1. A small selection, drawn from newspapers in America’s Forbidden Funnies, 1930s- dhi. He has been framed for every in India and the English speaking world, is to 1950s. Simon & Schuster Editions, New York, imaginable ill that has afflicted India: be found in Durga Das, Gandhi in Cartoons. 1997, p. 128.

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Laxman Framed Gandhi.

SEMINAR 662 – October 2014