Author: Amrit Dhillon
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 4, 2009
Building Dalit memorials, Mayawati bungles
a rare opportunity
Standing beside the dirty Gomti river in Lucknow,
looking at the structures Mayawati has built on its banks in her quest for
immortality, is enough to make you weep. Not over the hubris behind the self-aggrandisement.
Nor over the idea of building memorials to honour Dalit leaders such as B
R Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. Nor even the colossal cost or the efforts of an
army of poor workers labouring under a pitiless sun.
It is the way she has squandered a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity. With acres of land and billions of rupees at her disposal, this
was Mayawati's chance to go down in history as the woman who gave birth to
a piece of architecture rivalling anything that has come up in the past 60
years. It was a chance to be bold and daring, to create something beautiful
and unique. A chance to hold a nationwide competition of architects and order
them to let their imaginations soar. The competition would have animated Lucknow
residents. A lively debate would have ensued on what they desired for themselves
and future generations. What did they want in the city? A stadium, a museum,
a university, a hospital, a park or a monument?
For Indian architects, bored with designing
shopping malls and farmhouses for the rich, Mayawati's memorials would have
been a dream project, a stab at prosperity by creating something as spectacular
as the Bird's Nest in Beijing, the Guggenheim Museum, the Sydney Opera House,
the Louvre Pyramid or the Pompidou Centre.
Most Indian cities are still symbolised by
pre-independence buildings - Kolkata by Victoria Memorial, New Delhi by Rashtrapati
Bhawan and Mumbai by Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Gateway of India. The
reason is not lack of talent but of opportunity and near-total absence of
any aesthetic sense among the political class, coupled with lack of a desire
to create objects of enduring beauty that can become the new icons of India.
Mayawati has bungled by giving Lucknow a collection
of gigantic bronze statues, colossal domed structures housing Lincoln Memorial-style
statues, and immense stone plazas and walkways stretching as far as the eye
can see. Lifeless and insipid, they fail to move the spectator because they
speak of nothing but their creator's lust for grandeur. So many trees have
been felled and mountains of stone brought in from Rajasthan that residents
in the surrounding neighbourhoods say the temperature has risen a couple of
degrees.
Instead of a beautiful building that would
have put Lucknow on the world map, Mayawati has bequeathed the city a memorial
with as much charm as her handbag. Grandiose and massive, pink sandstone structures
offer a mishmash of styles - East European Stalinist gigantism, Pyongyang's
ponderousness, columns of Imperial Rome, mausoleums of European kings - all
suffused with the pretentiousness of a provincial housewife trying to emulate
the majestic sweep of a pharaoh.
What will families do at these memorials once
they have seen the 60 stone elephants, the statues and domed, temple-like
structures? The vast expanse of stone, unrelieved by greenery, water or grass,
will repel visitors. The stone walkways are so hot that they are almost steaming.
If India Gate has endured as a popular landmark, it's because families congregate
in the evenings to enjoy the lawns, water bodies and trees. Mahatma Gandhi's
samadhi at Rajghat is simplicity itself and, with its lawns, refreshing. But
Mayawati, it appears, is only interested in exuding power. Delhi's graceful
Lotus Temple would find no favour with her; her intention is not to draw people
but to awe and intimidate.
Mayawati had a choice: erect something original
or create a landmark cohering with Lucknow's rich architectural heritage.
She failed on both fronts. Moreover, as the 'Dalit Queen' whose heart bleeds
for UP's downtrodden, the conditions in which her memorials are being built
are shameful. Admittedly, they are no worse than the conditions at construction
sites across India where labourers build the mansions of the rich while living
in squalor and filth.
But Mayawati claims to be different. The very
least she could have done was to create a new model and show the rest of the
country the decent way to treat construction workers. Why have her labourers
been sleeping under tarpaulin sheets and makeshift tents with no clean drinking
water, doctor or ambulance at hand, and relieving themselves in the open?
Why did she not issue instructions for massive temporary awnings to protect
workers from the sun as they slaved for her greater glory, along with a crèche,
a canteen turning out three meals a day, tankers of cool drinking water and
Portacabin toilets for privacy and dignity?
Instead, she has displayed the same contempt
towards these workers as their earlier high caste oppressors, forgetting that
both the devil and God lie in the details. Mayawati has built a memorial honouring
Dalits and Dalit leaders through the degradation of Dalit workers. She is
unlikely to grasp the irony, just as she failed to understand her own limitations
and the poverty of her imagination when she started conceiving her imperial
city.
- The writer is a freelance journalist.
