Vinay Lal Format

The archivist’s Gandhi 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 ahimsa. 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 Sevagram, 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 Bhagavad Gita 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- 4 Deewaar’s Vijay with framed Gandhi poster (dir.

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