Monday 2 March 2015

The Elephant in the Room

Spectacular, yet sinister
I was lucky enough to attend my first Indian wedding last week. It was an experience I will treasure for a long time, and is the topic of my next post later this week. 

En-route to the wedding, we stopped off for a day’s sight-seeing in Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh (or 'the Northern State'). During the twilight of the mighty Mughal Empire in the first half of the eighteenth century, Lucknow emerged as a hub for Islamic arts and culture thanks to the patronage of the Nawabs of Awadh. The Bara (or Grand) Imambara, a complex built in 1784 and boasting a magnificent mosque - sadly closed to non-Muslims - the largest vaulted hall in the world and a labyrinth is the foremost monument dating from this period and was an interesting first stop on our tour. From an Anglo-centric perspective however, the city is most famous for being the site of a five-month long siege of the British Residency by Indian sepoys during the Mutiny of 1857. Empire folklore has it that the surviving female members of the garrison refused consolatory offers of tea from the Highland troops that broke the siege, as they didn't have any milk available! A gentle wander for an hour around the battle-scarred ruins and the museum in the afternoon heat prepared us nicely for a traditional lunch of delicious, spicy Mughal-style kebabs and parathas.

To round off the day, we went to the sprawling 107-acre Ambedkar Memorial Park in the heart of Lucknow. Named after Dr B.R. Ambedkar, a famous leader of the economically and socially-disadvantaged dalit (or Untouchable) caste and a framer of India’s constitution post-Independence in 1947, it was ‘constructed’ (the park is completely bereft of green space, and made entirely out of sandstone from Rajasthan and marble imported from Italy) between 1995 and 2008. It had been built during the ministry of Mayawati, a dalit politician who claims to champion the cause of her fellow Untouchables. She became (in)famous during her time in power thanks to her penchant for commissioning statues of herself and trying to have a shopping mall built next to the Taj Mahal. I had visited the park on a previous trip to Lucknow in October; my feelings about it had been ambivalent at best. The pantheon in its centre – containing a statue of Ambedkar uncannily like that of Abraham Lincoln’s in Washington D.C. – the rows of giant stone elephants and towering statues of Mayawati's associates littered about were certainly remarkable. Yet the conspicuous absence of greenery, the numerous security guards prowling about, the lack of children playing and the sheer scale of the place left me uneasy. Discovering that the elephant is the symbol of Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party further increased my doubts about the place, evoking in my mind an unpleasant comparison with the totalitarian, soulless architecture of Stalin’s Russia and the Third Reich.

A more thorough walk around the park last week helped to confirm my reservations. A giant plaque I found declared Mayawati to be ‘one of the most powerful women in the world’ (please let me know if you've heard of her before) and her creation to be ‘in the public interest in its every nuance.’ As I looked around, I did not see street-sweepers or rag-pickers (common occupations for dalits) enjoying a place supposedly dedicated to them and one of their heroes – the security guards had made sure of that. Instead I saw only middle-class families and the well-heeled, selfie-loving, gilded youth of the city strolling around in the evening light. Ironically, Mayawati’s 7-billion rupee pet project – with a 10 rupee (10p) entrance fee that’s an unjustifiable luxury for any beggars, sweepers or any other ‘undesirables’ who might dare to enter – further perpetuates the culturally-sanctioned segregation that is a hallmark of the lives of her fellow dalits. Built in a state in which a third of its approximately 200-million people live below the poverty line according to UNICEF, the park is in reality a shrine to misrule and megalomania, and an abysmal betrayal of the dalit community and the ideals of Ambedkar. To those who subscribe to the idea of India as ‘Shining’ (a campaign/marketing slogan coined by the now-ruling BJP party in 2004), Ambedkar Memorial Park is a sobering reminder that such optimism is lamentably naive. 

As we left, a familiar sight greeted us: three young female beggars, no doubt eternally grateful to Mayawati for having such grand surroundings in which to ply their trade, rushing towards us.





Abraham Ambedkar?! 





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