When a regime known for its aesthetic barbarism and its worship of monumentalism uses the word, “world-class”, in connection with the Sabarmati Ashram, it sends shivers down the spine. That the chosen instrument of this “upgradation” is the architect, Bimal Patel, makes one more nervous still. Patel’s work is undistinguished. His cold, concrete structures are cut of a cloth very different from that which marks the homes and dwellings in Gandhi’s ashrams in Sabarmati and Sevagram.

Bimal Patel is apparently the only architect the prime minister has heard of. As with other sarkari projects in Delhi, Varanasi, and Ahmedabad, here too Patel has been assigned the makeover of the Sabarmati Ashram almost automatically. Modi has also deputed, to work on the project, some Gujarat civil servants whom he likewise personally trusts. The plan for “redevelopment” was drafted by Modi’s inner circle with no inputs from architects knowledgeable about conservation and heritage, and without consulting Gandhians or scholars either. Even the trustees of the Ashram were kept entirely in the dark about the plan and its contents.

The Modi plan for Sabarmati is steeped in secrecy and characterised by cronyism. It is in striking contrast to an earlier (and admirably modest) intervention that dates to the 1960s. When the then trustees decided that the Ashram needed a small museum, they chose not a fellow Gujarati but Charles Correa from Bombay. That the architect was from a different religion and a different part of India were in keeping with Gandhi’s own lack of parochialism. Besides, he was an architect whose work was widely admired. Built on the human scale, with spacious corridors open to the elements and trees all around it, the museum designed by Charles Correa blends quite beautifully with the structures of Gandhi’s own time.

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