October 4, 2020 7:00:17 am
Gandhi mural at Delhi Police Headquarters, painted in 2014 by German graffiti artist Hendrik Beikirch. (Photo: Enrico Fabian)
Thinking of Gandhiji today leaves you in a state of despair, as the voices of sanity and civilized conduct in our public life have been pushed aside, if not extinguished. We watch in total disbelief how aggression and violence rule every aspect of our life, how every form of dissent is muzzled, how freedom continues to be restricted, leaving the civilized population in defenseless limbo. Let us not forget that Gandhiji practiced human behavior in his public and private life, listened to those who often insulted him, defending his right to defer with respect and humility.
His absence is sorely missed in this world that has become increasingly violent. I often turn to Gandhiji in my work. I quoted him in a dialogue with Kabir, with both of them on opposite ends of an ark floating in an endless ocean. His Satyagraha and Ours (2006) shows Gandhiji as a young lawyer before returning to India from South Africa. In the Gandhi and Gama triptych (2014), Vasco da Gama confronts a young Gandhi who contemplates the collapse of British rule through a mappa mundi.
Gigi scaria
Scaria’s Men at Work (2015)
When I think of Mahatma Gandhi in 2020, my heart bleeds so badly from the permanent wound inflicted by the intense community politics developed in this country that it will never recover. Gandhi, through his life and actions, analyzed the idea of ”truth” in a diverse religious, ethnic, cultural, philosophical and political nucleus of this land. His vision was based on democratic principles. What we have become For us, the truth has become a myth.
We have systematically removed each and every stone placed by the Mahatma. This is a country where women are raped and murdered, migrant workers are a non-existent entity and a historical monument of religious importance is crushed. We have created our banana republic, one in which we should not pronounce the name of the Mahatma.
Reena kallat
Blind spots (2017-19) at Iris Dreams / Reena Kallat Studio and Chemould Prescott Road.
All over the world, democracies are under increasing stress and facing new challenges. It becomes more urgent for us to review Gandhi’s ideals: tolerance, truth, equality, justice. In this multi-channel video installation Blind Spots, viewers encounter 13 pairs of Snellen’s eye diagrams through the disjointed letters that form the preambles to the constitutions of countries like the United States-Cuba, Serbia-Croatia, Sudan-Sudan. South, India-Pakistan, Bangladesh-India, North and South Korea, among others.
In the act of reading, as the foundational promises of equality, justice, freedom, common to the preambles of both nation-states, are revealed, they are transformed into Braille-type dots. The work invites us to reflect on how it seems that we have lost sight of these shared human values and universal aspirations, which run through the idea of sovereign nation-states.
watercolor and automotive paint on paper; The Sheik’s Ark (2007),
Anpu Varkey
In this age of strife and unrest around the world, Gandhi the pacifist, who stands outside law-abiding government buildings, and his views of denying violence as a means of dominating conflict are even more relevant now.
As he told Vandana Kalra
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