Having stayed in Ahmedabad for about two weeks, I decided that it was about time I made a visit to Sabarmati Ashram. Ahmedabad is a city with a lot of culture and quirkiness, from stories of a Baba who has been fasting for years on end and yet who is perfectly fit, to a café on a gravestone which is supposedly lucky. The city has some of the most exquisite old houses and havelis, with distinct British, Maratha, Mughlai and Jain influences sometimes even sandwiched within the same courtyard but otherwise distinct by the “pols” for each community in the old part of the city. It is also a gastronomic delight, especially if you are a vegetarian (not in my case) with pav bhaaji and pulav soaked in butter, endless thaalis where even the karela is not bitter, and an array of desserts sometimes mistaken for entrees.
While most of this prologue sounds as if I am writing an introduction for a Lonely Planet piece, this essay is essentially about my visit to the ashram, one rated as a “must do” in any guide to the city of Ahmedabad. I don’t quite know what excited me about visiting this particular place. Was it the thrill of its role in our great freedom movement or was it the relevance of such an ashram within the confines of a city badly scarred only a few years ago by riots, or was it just the excitement of travelling alone to a place and discovering it by myself?
Being a sloppy new age traveller, I did not carry around maps even though in Ahmedabad, with nearly all its signages in Gujarati, it meant that an outsider could understand only arrows and little else. I did, however, do the next best thing and googled the route on my computer before I left. The map showed me that the ashram was only about 6-7 km away from my guest house. Fully armed with this knowledge, I flagged down an auto and asked to go to Sabarmati Ashram. The driver immediately switched on his meter and drove off with an air of accomplished know-how of a place frequented ever so often by almost anybody visiting the city.
The map detailed that it would take about twenty minutes from my guest house, but having a pretty good idea of the traffic in the city, I budgeted for about half an hour. Earlier, on arriving at the railway station at Ahmedabad, I had asked around for the whereabouts of the Ashram and had developed a vague sense of where it would be. It was an early Saturday afternoon and the roads seemed rather empty. We drove and drove, passed Ellis Bridge, one of the landmarks of the city, and then went past some busy crossings. We seemed to be on the right track and as we kept driving , I began to see a very different city. Ahmedabad struck me as a queer mix of a city and a town; a city bustling with the riches of a thriving middle class, good restaurants, fancy cars, and brands sprouting from everywhere and then almost in complete contrast, an area, distinct with buffalo carts, paan shops, even a roadside barber under a most magnificent banyan tree, a town with all the trappings of a place disconnected from the previous urban locale.
I wondered then whether the Mahatma’s Ashram was really within the rural part of the state and not in its city. The surroundings were not something I expected. There were people fixing cycle tyres in small nondescript shops, some were resting on diwans listening in on a discussion in a big congregation of what looked like a village meet. I passed a couple of factories which looked out of place in the surroundings presenting a contrast that was both puzzling and interesting. Having been in the auto for a while now I was sure we were almost at Sabarmati Ashram. The vast rural expanse, however, continued for what seemed like an extended period. This meant either Google had goofed up or I was clearly going somewhere else. Now you don’t mess with Google, so I asked the auto driver again if we were on the way to the Ashram and he replied, inquiring again, whether it was Bapu’s ashram that I was talking about. I replied in the affirmative. He stopped for a moment and asked a passer-by, who nodded knowingly saying that it was only 2 kms away. He pointed to the Sabarmati River on my right thereby assuaging my fears that we were on the wrong track. We were now in an even more rural expanse and in the far distance I saw a complex of some sort, surely now this had to be the Ashram.
I was finally there. I berated the auto driver for taking me on such a long route and making me, a broke student, even more broke if that was at all possible. He politely apologised and then, as we approached the gates, told me triumphantly that we were there. I got off and, for a few moments, was dumbstruck. I was told the Sabarmati was close by and there were imposing gates right in front of me. But where was Bapu? There was nothing that would make me connect this place with Gandhiji. Clearly puzzled and somewhat disoriented I looked up and saw big signboards mostly in Gujarati but with a picture of a man who didn’t look anything like Gandhiji. I wondered if we needed to go through the gates but this just seemed too odd. I then asked a man selling something outside if this was Sabarmati Ashram to which he said yes. I then asked: Is this Bapu’s ashram? Again he said yes. It was then I realised, and with a sense of absolute astonishment, that I was indeed at those two places except that it was the ashram of not the Mahatma but of someone else— of Asaram Bapu, the controversial godman who had been in the news.
The vendor sensing that something was amiss then realised where I had intended to go and asked the auto driver to take me to Gandhi’s ashram. The driver scolded me and told me that I should’ve told him that in the first place. I stood my ground and protested that I had not only specifically asked to visit Sabarmati Ashram but also re-confirmed that he understood by clarifying that we were going to Bapu’s ashram.
From our conversation it was now clear that I was the one who had bungled up the trip. I should’ve asked for Gandhi ashram and none of the other names, that I was brought up to believe, had only one address. I then requested him to take me to Gandhi Ashram, suddenly aware that I had only a couple of hours before it would shut. I spent much of the auto ride with a mixture of bemusement and sadness that such a strange and ridiculous mix up could happen in the Mahatma’s own state. Was he now only known by one name? Was the space he held in public consciousness now getting slowly usurped?
After about 10-15 minutes of driving back into the city side of Ahmedabad with all the hustle of a bustling metropolis we stopped in front of a gate which had a big sign post displaying Sabarmati Ashram. I had been right, at least according to the board.
There was something quite marvellous about the Ashram for as soon as you entered, you felt a sense of calm and serenity. The museum which is towards the entrance has been designed very tastefully, it tells the story of the ashram and the freedom struggle. It has large open spaces, allowing people both young and old to sit in corridors to study, read, reflect and argue about what they have witnessed. The steps leading out of the museum direct you to an open prayer hall, the Upasana Mandir, a place of prayer and self-examination which has the river flowing quietly in the background.
The house of Gandhiji is also open to the public and there was an old Gandhian who sat in the veranda kind enough to show those eager how to use the charkha, or the spinning wheel. The house itself was a humbling experience. It conveyed a sense of such simplicity, with its spartan rooms, its small kitchen, and yet it carried an enormous historical weight. Here was where Gandhiji began the salt march, where he established his principles of living, of satyagraha, of self sacrifice, of humility, of renunciation. It was from here that the national movement got its impetus and also from where great leaders like Vinoba Bhave, who also had a small house in the complex, wrote their theories of education. Having studied about the freedom struggle in school, and having watched how Gandhiji’s relevance had been reignited through movies such as Munnabhai, this place seemed to provide a context even if only a bird's eye view of the life of the Mahatma.
On the far side of the Ashram, a lot of young children played with student volunteers as part of the ashram programs, towards the front of the house the River Sabarmati flowed along, gently being watched by many visitors, couples and photographers as the evening turned to dusk . As if to complete the spectacle, on the steps leading down to the river was an old man, a shepherd, dressed in a white dhoti walking alone on the banks of the river with a stick in his hand calling out to his flock.
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Siddharth Peter de Souza is a student at Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi
