Sevagram: On March 12, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi embarked on a 390-km Salt March from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to Dandi, a sleepy village in Gujarat. It was a historic march in protest against the steep tax the British levied on as basic a commodity as salt and their complete monopoly over its trade.
Gandhi had vowed not to return to the ashram he had founded in 1917 till India attained independence. He and his associates completed the march on foot in 24 days and produced salt at Dandi in defiance of the British laws, giving tremendous impetus to the nationwide civil disobedience movement. He continued the process at several places along the coast while travelling southward till the British arrested him.
True to his words, Gandhi did not return to Sabarmati after being released from Yerwada Jail in Pune a year later. He travelled across the country covering over 20,000 km to campaign against untouchability and other social ills. The extensive tour convinced him that a place in central India had to be the epicentre of the freedom movement.
In 1934, he moved to Wardha in Maharashtra. Jamnalal Bajaj, who had invited him there, donated a building with a spacious orchard where Gandhi started the All India Village Industries Association (AIVIA). The place later came to be known as Maganwadi after Maganlal Gandhi, his cousin and staunch follower who died in 1928.
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Through AIVIA, Gandhi focused on restructuring villages, reviving rural crafts, promoting rural agro-industries through innovative methods and scientific research. Cleanliness of the village and drive against untouchability were also important components of the restructuring process so as to make each village a throbbing economic unit and an ideal place to live in. Villagers were trained in spinning khadi clothes, pottery, beekeeping, making jaggery, dairying, oil pressing and other economic activities.
Two years in Maganwadi were quite fruitful. But Gandhi felt the need to live like a simple farmer in a village and get directly involved in rural re-construction work. He chose Shegaon, an arid and backward village around 10 km from Maganwadi, to set up an ashram. Bajaj owned most of the land in the area and the ashram came up on the land donated by him. Gandhi named it Sevagram or ‘village for service’ and shifted AIVIA there.
The final decade of Gandhi’s life was spent in Sevagram, where he completed his journey from ‘Monia’ to Mohan, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhiji, Mahatma Gandhi and finally to Bapu, the father of the nation. In 1946, he left the ashram on a peace mission to riot-ravaged Noakhali (now in Bangladesh) and never returned.
Step into Sevagram Ashram and you get a feeling of being transported back in time. Modest huts dot the landscape amidst lots of greenery. The ashram, in fact, looks like a meticulously structured self-reliant and self-sufficient planned village as envisioned by Gandhi.
Most of the over five lakh people who visit the premises every year are awestruck by its pristine glory and serene environment. To any visitor, it would seem incomprehensible that someone could leave an established ashram in prosperous Ahmedabad when he is past his prime and start another one from the scratch in Wardha, one of the remotest and poorest areas of the country at the time, at the ripe age of 67. But Gandhi was no ordinary man.
The prayer ground flanked by Adi Niwas, Bapu Kuti and Akhri Niwas. The daily evening prayer is on. Credit: Priya Ranjan Sahu
When he founded the ashram, a cart road from Wardha led to Shegaon. Gandhi walked all the way to the proposed site along with a handful of followers. Kasturba Gandhi, Mahadev Desai, Bajaj, he and other associates lived in makeshift huts made of bamboo in the barren land for several days before the first hut, Adi Niwas (first residence), was constructed.
Later, as the hut started becoming crowded with volunteers, Gandhiji moved to a little hut – now named Bapu Kuti – which Mirabehn had built for her use and to impart training in spinning and cording to local village women. Other huts gradually came up to accommodate Ba and other associates, and for the community kitchen.
Why did Gandhi choose one of the most backward areas in the country to be his headquarter?
Gandhian thinker Chinmay Mishra says that Bapu and his associates had found their most important laboratory of social engineering in Sevagram. “Gandhiji believed that Nai Talim – or ‘new education’ – was his best innovation for evolving a new social order before India attained independence. He successfully implemented it in Sevagram and later it was replicated in other ashrams across the country,” Mishra says.
Gandhi’s last and the best gift to the nation, Nai Talim aimed towards holistic development of a child through 3Hs – head, heart and hand. The concept revolves around a learning process through crafts and skill training integrated with life. “Nai Talim focuses on education’s transformational role in the sustainable growth of individual, society and nature, which are complementary to each other. It promotes the real world as classroom,” says Sushma Sharma, director of Anand Niketan School in the ashram complex managed by Nai Talim Samiti.
In front of Bapu Kuti in Sevagram Ashram. Gandhi had planted the pipal tree in 1936 when the ashram was founded. Credit: Priya Ranjan Sahu
The reflection of the idea of Nai Talim is found in Sevagram Ashram and the cluster of huts in it. Every inch of the ashram radiates the simplicity, spirituality and ideology that Gandhi preached and practiced. The huts with red clay tile roofing, mud walls and wood and bamboo pillars, the pebbled pathways, the prayer ground, the huge pipal trees and tiny tulsi plants – all bear the stamp of the Gandhian non-violent struggle for independence.
The huts are classic examples of minimalist architecture. Vibha Gupta, noted Gandhian and director of Magan Sangrahalaya, says that the speciality of the huts is that they had been constructed with local resources by locally-available manpower. “Gandhiji had specially instructed that none of the materials – wood, bamboo, palm mat, mud or stone – should come from beyond a radius of 5 km,” she says.
The responsibility for building the modest dwelling for Gandhi was entrusted with Mirabehn. Gandhi had an instruction for her too. He told her that he knew she would have a tendency to spend more on construction because of her affection for him, but he would like the hut to be made strictly within a budget of Rs 100. The ashram, Gupta says, was structured as a barrack, albeit of non-violent warriors with least belongings, who, in case of a crisis, could abandon it within the shortest possible time to move to another place.
The goshala at the ashram premises. It provides milk to the inmates and manure to the field. There is a gobar gas plant too. Credit: Priya Ranjan Sahu
In the heydays of the struggle for freedom, Bapu Kuti, where Gandhiji spent most of his time, and other huts of Sevagram Ashram buzzed with activity. Bagfuls of letters from across the country reached Gandhiji, who wrote the replies to most of them by using his both hands. The contents of the replies ranged from issues and messages related to the freedom struggle to as mundane matters as his stomach problem. Many important people who had the capacity to change the course of history came to meet him. Most crucial decisions, which steered the destiny of India, were taken in these huts.
Gandhi’s disciple J.C. Kumarappa aptly described Bapu Kuti as “the de facto capital of India since service of the country is the function of a capital city”. The then British viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, had installed a hotline in the little hut, not because Gandhiji needed the luxury but because the British wanted to remain in constant touch with him. The viceroy even spent a night under the open sky in the ashram with Gandhi.
Akhiri Nivas or The Last Residence with Gandhi’s Mad Rush quote on its wall. Credit: Priya Ranjan Sahu
Gandhi, in fact, never slept inside the hut. He always slept outside on a wooden plank and, if it rained, in the veranda. He took his bath outside though he used a toilet built inside, which also doubled as his study room.
When politicians of minor order are living in palatial houses and moving in swanky cars with a posse of security personnel today, one wonders how the most powerful man of India, who was the top enemy of the British, lived without any fear in a little hut whose doors could be ripped apart with a single kick. Besides, he had a lifestyle that matched that of the poorest of the poor.
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The model of Sevagram Ashram exemplifies Gandhi’s saying, “There is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed”. Gandhi’s teachings of self-reliance are still in practice in the ashram having over 100 acres. Most of the ingredients used in the ashram are grown in the farm organically. A dairy farm of around 70 cows takes care of the need for milk and manure for the fields. Khadi and village products produced in the ashram have great demand among the visitors. “Gandhian economy is best suited to our country and can usher in holistic development for all,” says Suji, a student from Kerala. “I wish our present rulers followed Gandhi’s principles rather than a development model that helps few people to be dirt rich while rest are left behind.”
Soji, part of a group visiting Sevagram on a study tour, may be right but probably the present development process seems to be irreversible. Rather, there is a danger of it encroaching upon the last vestiges of Gandhian legacy.
The dining area at Nai Talim complex. Gandhi’s principle of doing own work is on display here. Credit: Priya Ranjan Sahu
The encroachment has probably already begun. The concrete Yatri Niwas of the Sevagram Ashram Trust on the other side of the road may be the beginning of deviation from Gandhian philosophy, point out Gandhians. In the recent years, in its eagerness to make Sevagram a tourist hub, the Maharashtra government has started the construction of huge concrete buildings for accommodation, eateries, parking lots and lavatories adjacent to the Yatri Niwas with an investment of a whopping Rs 145 crore.
After completion, the structures will be handed over to the ashram trust. None of them are being built with local resources available within 5 km radius. The palatial accommodations for tourists have special rooms for VIPs, a concept contrary to Gandhian philosophy.
Sevagram town is a still, quiet, sleepy place with a small market with few shops. Visitors to ashram leave their vehicles at a long distance. But with the new structures to cater to “Gandhi tourism” (a concept Gandhians dread) in place, the tranquillity of the area surrounding the ashram may be replaced by the cacophony of vehicular traffic and pollution. A boom in real estate may also not be ruled out.
A young Sarvodaya activist, who prefers to be unnamed, is pained at the new developments. The ashram, which he has seen from close quarters from boyhood, has always drawn visitors by lakhs. The new concrete structures so close to the ashram and based on an economic model diametrically opposite to Gandhi’s model of primordiality of man-nature relationship may not add more visitors, he says. But it will certainly create an enormous amount of waste. “There is nothing called waste in Gandhi’s dictionary. We have been taught to effectively recycle waste and use them to enrich the soil. With the soil being replaced by concrete, how do we recycle the waste?” he asks.
Priya Ranjan Sahu is a senior journalist based in Bhubaneswar.