The picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping sitting on the verandah of Hriday Kunj at Sabarmati Ashram, which was Mahatma Gandhi’s residence from 1917 to 1930, is both well composed and deeply coded. There are many messages embedded in the photograph, and since China is the theme of the moment let us try decoding them using Confucius’ saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” A student of realpolitik would see in it a high level of comfort between the two world leaders with no awkwardness and no sign of one being daunted by the reputation of the other. The body language conveys respect for each other. From a state centric perspective, this is a perfect photograph. A public relations officer could not ask for more for it has all the soft power elements needed for such a meeting; two heads of government relaxing on a verandah exchanging opinions on world, domestic, or perhaps even personal affairs. In form it is similar to the highly choreographed photographs of G7 heads of government heading out for a game of golf.
Symbols and societyIn this perfect picture, Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping, representatives of 2.5 billion people, look so relaxed as they sit on the verandah talking. It seems that they could be sitting on a bench by the Sabarmati riverfront gossiping. To an analyst of realpolitik, the photograph announces India’s acceptance as a global power. The message that comes across, loud and clear, is that for the two heads of government the picture alone was important, the location was not. It was a statement of state power. It needed to tell the world that the two leaders, and therefore the two countries, can, and will, do business with each other. For the purposes of the photograph, the verandah could be anywhere.
But it was not anywhere. And that is where the problem of another reading comes. The verandah is that of the Mahatma’s home at Hriday Kunj. To complicate matters further, this is not just any home, say a place like Birla House in Delhi, but his home in the Sabarmati Ashram. Why is the fact of two state leaders, sitting casually on the verandah of Gandhiji’s home in Sabarmati Ashram, with their back to the home, worthy of such detailed analysis? Why does one want to give the photograph more semiotic content than it can apparently support?
The answer lies in the importance that symbols have for any society. Symbols give a society a sense of worth and purpose, allowing it to distinguish the special from the ordinary, the valued from the worthless. Symbols play a significant part in the making of a culture. A modern state needs to add elements to its culture that are consistent with its philosophy. This it does by conferring meaning on a new act or place. Any society, especially the ones as ancient as India and China, have, in their history, created many sites on their territory that they come to regard as hallowed land. This sacred status is given either because an event of importance has taken place there, such as Jallianwalla Bagh, or because an important moral statement, that went on to define the core of that civilisation’s weltanschauung, was enunciated there, such as Buddha’s sermon at Sarnath, or because an iconic figure is buried there, such as the shrine to the Sufi saint Moinuddin Chisti at Ajmer Sharif.
To finesse the argument, we must distinguish between hallowed sites and important sites in the symbolic landscape of a society. A hallowed site requires one sort of behaviour from the visitor and an important site another. At Red Fort, for instance, an important site where the Prime Minister gives the Independence day address, one would expect one sort of behaviour, while at Deekshabhoomi, where Dr. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism, a hallowed site, one would expect another. When the 12 gram sabhas at Niyamgiri in Odisha voted against mineral exploration at Niyamgiri hill, they were voting to preserve the sacredness of the hill and in opposition to capitalist behaviour which they considered disrespectable of their sacred site. Sacredness was more important than wealth. Sometimes, societies establish such preferences.
The question then arises is whether Hriday Kunj merits the status of a sacred site. From the biographies of Gandhiji, one learns how central it was in the struggle for freedom. You read of how he chose the site, between a jail and crematorium, “as he believed that a satyagrahi has to invariably go to either place.” You learn of the morning prayers that were, and are, held there. The ashram website tells you that his vision for the ashram was for it “to serve as an institution that would carry on a search for truth and a platform to bring together a group of workers committed to non-violence who would help secure freedom for India.” It was one of the main centres of India’s freedom movement. It was a site from which satyagraha emerged as a moral statement against state power, especially imperial power.
The moral with the politicalThe ashram is a moral message in material form. When you walk into its campus, you definitely feel you are in a hallowed place. It is simple in its construction and yet you can see in its layout a thing of beauty. It gives you a feeling of spiritual power. Even a non-believer would feel this. In Gandhiji’s home, a simple charka , complete in its minimalism, sits on the verandah. When you look at it, you are astounded by the thought that the spinning of this simple instrument galvanised a nation. From this humble abode, a dream was launched that brought an imperial power to its knees. The sacredness of Hriday Kunj is so palpable. The demonstration of state power, the photograph, seems so out of place here since this is a site that combines moral force with political power. It embodies the spirit of India’s freedom movement. It is to contemporary India what, I suppose, Mao’s mausoleum is to contemporary China, a place of reverence, a site from which its new civilisation will be constructed.
What makes it even more hallowed is that, in addition to it being so central to our struggle for swaraj, it is also an ashram. This gives it a double sacredness. The ashram was to Gandhiji a place where its members were required to practise certain observances if they were to qualify for public service. If the members acquired the habit of these observances then, and only then, would they serve the cause of Truth. From this other reading, the picture we are discussing seems to disregard the sacredness of the site. It should have been taken on another verandah, perhaps at the Nehru memorial.
The other storyOne could argue that I am overstating the case. Two powerful heads of government in casual conversation amounts to no offence. But the body language tells another story. It is too suggestive of the strategising that marks state power. Be casual. Appear relaxed. Convey confidence. Communicate parity. It shows, to the discerning viewer, the new posturing that heads of government must adopt in this age of instant communication. Every gesture is important and choreographed because it gets carried worldwide instantaneously. So don’t yawn, demonstrate power causally.
What I was hoping to see, instead, was humility in the photograph. When anybody visits Gandhiji’s Ashram, even the U.S. President, they must feel humbled for they are in the presence of a sacred space from which a moral civilisational movement was launched with the tools of satya and ahimsa. What can be seen in the photograph, the thousand unspoken words, is in its place the arrogance of state power. You get a sense of a place commandeered by state diktat. Rather than the visitors submitting to the codes of the ashram, the ashram is compelled to submit to the instructions of the state, given by some state babu. Gandhiji would have gone on a fast against this arrogance.
Again I may be accused of exaggeration, of being the cantankerous academic. So let us look for more clues in the picture. Notice that there are no other people in the picture. For example, none of the trustees of the ashram are there, as one would expect to be showing the dignitaries around, demonstrating the wonders of the Charka and its philosophy. Should not at least one of the trustees be in the picture? Had they been asked to move away when this photograph for history was being taken? That is exactly the point. Should not the state have submitted itself to the codes of the ashram or do we not think about these subtle but important matters in this new order? Here is a civilisation that prides itself on its rituals, read U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara , so much so that we penalise social transgression. But in this historic photograph, the ashram, its trustees and workers do not have even a token place.
China and India are both old civilisations in which the symbolic has an important place. The new states we are building are unmindful of the core moral message that state power will not, I repeat, will not get primacy in all spaces. Old cultures give a lot of value to sacred spaces that have codes of behaviour that must be respected. This photograph reveals that state power imposed itself on the ashram, blanking out the latter’s presence. Gandhiji wanted the ashram to be a training ground for politics, where the observances of the ashram would serve as the bedrock of a moral polity. The photograph, reverses this fundamental relationship, imposing, in contrast, the state’s values on the ashram. Is this something to think about?
(Peter Ronald deSouza is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. The views expressed are personal.)
