For We Did This
Mayanagari is about a Promised Land, about a Dalit legacy
Sudhir
Sitapati<http://outlookindia.com/peoplefnl.aspx?pid=11371&author=Sudhir+Sitapati>
The really surprising thing about the Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar
Samajik Parivartan Sthal aka ‘Mayanagari’ in Lucknow is not its extravagance
but its understated elegance. On the banks of the Gomti river, stretching
from the whimsically mannered La Martiniere School to the ersatz colonial
Taj Residency, ‘Mayanagari’, spread over 123 acres, is a majestic sight.
Constructed entirely with pink sandstone and red Agra stone, the site (with
some exceptions like two rows of squat, white elephants) romances the
Lucknow light quite lyrically. Indeed, one could be forgiven into imagining
one were in Mesopotamia or Nalanda or Fatehpur Sikri. I exaggerate, but only
a little.
Not since the days of Shah Jahan has something been attempted on this scale
in India. Early British architecture, like the Residency in Lucknow, have a
tentative, almost sorry-for-intruding, grace about them. The later, more
assertive buildings of the 20th century, like the Victoria Memorial or the
Rashtrapati Bhavan, have a grandeur that gets somewhat sullied by imperial
and orientalist overtones. Post-independence, the first round of national
memorials dedicated to Gandhi and Nehru were self-effacing
works—unimaginatively modernist or restorations of older buildings. The
second round, with a more blatant political agenda like the Valluvar Kottam
monument in Chennai or the pastiche BJP convention centre in Lucknow, are
just plain ugly. The Lady with the Armani handbag clearly has an aesthetic
vision in quite a different league to what has been seen in modern India.
What then accounts for the one-sided vituperative that has been flung at
Mayawati?
On a plaque in Persepolis, there is a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini: “I
salute the talent of the ancient Iranians who created such beauty but
condemn the cruelty of their kings who drove their people into creating
this.” But Behenji is not quite a slave-driving Darius. She has won legal
battles that allow her to use the state exchequer into the creation of
Mayanagari and its sister sites across UP. At an estimated expense of Rs
3,000 crore, a criminal waste of resources one could say, but then, how
different from the Keynesian nregs which is appositely accused of “digging
trenches and filling them up”. Certainly not very different from the baroque
and purposeless Bada Imambara here in Lucknow itself. Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah,
in response to the 1784 drought, paid people money to build it by day and
then break it by night!
It is the motive of self-aggrandisement that lends the whole venture a
sordid air. Sans that, Mayanagari and its allied sites would have changed
Lucknow’s landscape for the better and Behenji could have safely written
herself into a pantheon containing Ashoka, Shah Jahan and Lord Curzon. But
the pantheon she’d rather be part of is narrow. She’s immortalised, in stone
and metal, along with herself, Ambedkar, Phule, Birsa Munda, Narayana Guru,
Kanshi Ram and Shahu Maharaj. Associating oneself with a group of safely
dead, carefully reconstructed historical figures is one of the oldest tricks
in the book of gaining political legitimacy. Arrogating a bit of the divine
to oneself by paying obeisance to a reconstructed divinity is almost as
well-known. But the scale of construction in Mayanagari is far greater than
what is required to merely build political legitimacy. Mayawati must know
this, and the setback in the recent LS elections must have further driven
home the message. Yet, she goes on constructing at a frenzied pace, almost
knowing that she may have just three more years to complete her dream
project. There is more than mere extravagance or vanity or politics at play
here.
It’s an unfair caricature to say Mayawati is merely building statues of
herself all over UP. In fact, she is building massive public spaces
(something Indian cities are desperately in need of) in which there are
statues of leaders who have worked for the Dalit cause. Is Mayawati merely a
cynical, vain politician or does she see herself as a Moses leading her
people to the Promised Land? And once in the Promised Land, don’t people
need their myths, their prophets and their greatness cast in stone? For a
Hindu can go to Taxila at the Khyber’s mouth and say “We did this”, or an
NRI can wax eloquently about the Taj but what does a Dalit, now come of
political age, have to establish the greatness of his identity? In a single
sweep, Mayawati hopes to transform Dalit identity from that of an oppressed
people to one of a great people capable of building grand monuments, for
what else makes in history a great people?
Mayawati knows that if Mayanagari survives in stone and in the Dalit psyche,
so will she. In the long run, thanks to their grandeur, they would have
become an integral part of Lucknow’s landscape—bringing them down will be
seen as ‘barbarous’. Behenji also knows that in the short run a demolition
will be politically explosive. Canny politicians will know how important it
is to let sleeping monuments lie.
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