On March 12, Prime Minister Narendra Modi performed the 'Ashram Bhoomi Vandana' at the Mahatma Gandhi Sabarmati Ashram Reconstruction Project in Ahmedabad. As part of the event, the prime minister unveiled the masterplan for the Rs 1,200-crore Gandhi Ashram Memorial and Precinct Development Project. He also inaugurated the redeveloped Kocharab Ashram in Ahmedabad.

The Sabarmati Ashram holds immense significance in Gandhi's life and work. Therefore, in light of this development, below are some excerpts from a new book titled Gandhi's Places: An Architectural Documentation.

Comprising 131 drawings meticulously crafted with architectural precision, this book offers a comprehensive exploration of 27 significant locations intertwined with Gandhi's remarkable journey. Eleven primary sites are presented in meticulous detail, while the remaining 16 are elegantly indexed with representative drawings.

Each drawing is accompanied by archival text, offering poignant insights into the significance of these spaces, as narrated by Gandhi himself and those who shared in his experiences.

The architectural renderings are complemented by three insightful essays penned by the editors – Riyaz Tayyibji, Neelkanth Chhaya, and Tridip Suhrud. These essays delve deeper into the built environment of Gandhi's world, his unique experiments in dwelling, and the profound symbolism of "home" for a man dedicated to the service of humanity.

Here are some excerpts from the essays in Gandhi's Places: An Architectural Documentation.

The Built World of M.K. Gandhi by Riyaz Tayyibji

The Satyagraha Ashram at Kocharab would be a short experiment as the handsome house in which it was based was on a plot of land that was insufficient for all the activities that Gandhi had in mind. In June 1917 he would shift to a site measuring ‘55 bighas’ on the banks of the river Sabarmati near the central jail. Aghors, with their naked ash covered bodies would have been seen walking along the river to and past a nearby crematorium on the path that Gandhi would take when leaving the ashram for good, on his march to Dandi in 1930. In 1933 he would dismantle the Ashram referring to it as an Udyog Mandir: A temple to Industry whose programs would now revolve around production.

Construction at the Ashram would start in 1917, but would proceed slowly due to the plague, the Ahmedabad mill workers strike, the Kheda Satyagraha and his own continuous travels across the country. He repeatedly visits Bombay and Delhi, Bengal and Punjab while paying special attention to Madras and the south, only taking breaks for illness or when civil disobedience was suspended. So intense is Gandhi’s touring that by early 1920 he is visiting 20 towns a month sometimes giving three speeches a day to an ever growing and reverent audience. When Gandhi did intermittently spend time at the ashram the school and weaving program with an emphasis on self-reliance would receive his most attention.

In his absence the construction of the buildings at the Ashram were managed by Maganlal Gandhi. The school and the weaving shed were the first to be taken in hand. The latter would be used for living in the absence of other accommodation1. Soon communal farming, weaving and animal husbandry would also begin. In a letter to his friend in South Africa A.H. West, Gandhi would write, “The Ashram is beautifully situated on the banks of the Sabarmati river. We daily bathe in it. All the children can swim now. The school is under an able Principal who was a distinguished professor of the Gujarat College. The Ashram, of course, is under Maganlal’s management."

Gandhi’s Experiments in Dwelling: An Architecture of Liminality by Neelkanth Chhaya

The Sabarmati Ashram was built at a place north of the village of Juna Vadaj, beyond the seasonal stream Chandrabhaga, on the route out of Ahmedabad northwards. To the south of the Ashram is a crematorium, and further north of the Ashram is the Sabarmati Jail. To the east, across the river, was Shahibag, then a residential suburb for colonial officers and the colonial army Cantonment as well as upper class Indian merchants and industrialists. The native walled city was also on the eastern bank. Gandhi’s selection of this location is significant. He says:

This is the right place for our activities to carry  

on the search for Truth and develop  

Fearlessness—for on one side, are the iron  

bolts of the foreigners, and on the other,  

thunderbolts of Mother Nature. 

Yet the location might hold more meanings than Gandhi’s semi-humorous statement betrays. From the open spaces of the ashram on the western bank of the Sabarmati, from Gandhi’s house, or from the prayer ground, the dwellers at the ashram could see a distinct panorama. On the opposite bank of the river, clearly and continuously visible, stood the skyline of the city, marked by the many chimneys of textile mills. The walls of the historical city and the suburb of Shahibag were also visible, as was the south-western edge of the British army cantonment.

Positioning the ashram at this location shows to the ashram resident the ways of life and the structures of society and economy which the colonial settlement, the industrial city as well as the tradition-bound walled city demonstrate. To city dwellers, the ashram demonstrates an entirely different idea of how life might be lived. It offers to the dweller of the traditional city, the worker and owner of industry as much as the colonialist not only an alternate model but it presents a challenge to them as well. The view from the ashram was a constant question to the ashramites, just as the presence of the ashram presented questions to the city dwellers, both native and colonial.

Home for a Mendicant by Tridip Suhrud

The Phoenix Settlement and the Tolstoy Farm in South Africa had ‘ashramic character’ especially after the advent of Satyagraha in 1906. The community at Sabarmati was ashramic, in the full sense. That is, each member was aware of the Ashram observances and the ideal conduct that they were expected to strive towards, if not attain in every instance.

The Ashram and its community were Gandhi’s greatest experiment and the site for his experiments. It was a community that had its foundations in Truth. It was the Satyagraha Ashram. In absence of truth, or even in case of violation of it, the Ashram could not be. It was simultaneously a community that aspired to ahimsa, not only as a negation, as non-violence but as active working of love. This community sought to lead a life of non-stealing, which included in its understanding ‘Bread-Labour’ and non-acquisition. This community sought to cultivate equability or samabhava, about religion and on the practice of untouchability. samabhava, Gandhi knew, is possible only when the sense of mamabhava, of ‘mine-ness’, of possession disappears. Gandhi had hoped that his Ashram would be like the sthitprajna, a person whose intellect is secure as described in the Bhagvad Gita.

‘When it is night for all other beings, the disciplined soul is awake! When all other beings are awake it is the night for the seeing ascetic.’1 Such an Ashram Gandhi believed was his only creation, the only measure by which he would be judged and would like to be judged. He said of the Ashram in 1925, ‘It is my best and only creation. The world will judge me by its results.'

Gandhi had one deeply felt need, desire, want and aspiration; to be an ashramite in the sense of living for a length of time in the communities that he had created. His oft repeated lament was that his work and obligation to myriad causes made him an itinerant ashramite. The ashram observances went with him, but the community of co-religionists could not. This was true not only of ashram at Sabarmati, but also of the Phoenix Settlement and the Tolstoy Farm.

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