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Fungus has been out to see the Eternal Gandhi exhibition in Mumbai. He left disappointed. |
Gandhi. Now what can one say about the great man that has not been said a thousand times before and has not been reduced to textbook cliché? Be it his teachings, his life, even his weaknesses it is almost impossible to read through a newspaper article or magazine story without a certain foreboding. A ‘well-I-am-sure-there-is-nothing-new here’ feeling.
In this context any realistic new attempt at presenting the life and times of the Father of the Nation poses severe challenges. One will always have an audience, there is no doubt about that. After all it is the Mahatma we are talking about; the only man to this day the country unanimously lets appear on it currency notes without controversy. But how to talk about him with a new voice? In a new style that will engage the audience and make them think? To keep them from going through the same ‘ahimsa-salt-freedom-sacrifice-quote bank’ spiel?
So when we, at Hafta, heard so much about the Eternal Gandhi exhibition put up at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaja Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India) we knew we just had to go. It was with much anticipation that we walked in on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. The first thing you see as you enter the section of the museum dedicated to the exhibit is a life-size statue of the Mahatma in fibreglass. The amount of detail is unsettling and you half expect him to utter some words of wisdom as you walk past. Before the effect wears off you are greeted by an army of enthusiastic and well-trained collegiates, each eager to show off his/her trick - because tricks are all they have.
The exhibit is called Eternal Gandhi - Multimedia Exhibition. And that is exactly what it is - a multimedia exhibition. The Gandhi in the title is purely incidental. Imagine, if you will, wrapping paper with a Gandhi motif. Wrapping objects of different shapes with this paper would not an exhibition on Gandhi make.
Past exerience of Ranjit Makkuni, the Project Director for the Sacred World Research Project and the brains behind the exhibition, includes nearly two decades at the Xerox Palto Alto Research Centre. And it shows. All too much perhaps. There is a lot of interactivity in the exhibits. From cubes that spell out messages from the Mahatma to Xylophones that play Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram to clocks that relive incidents in the man’s life a wide variety of media has been incorporated. Each of the installations would make for interesting tea-time conversation. What these installations are supposed to convey, however, is a mystery. While it may be interesting to read Gandhi’s commentary on truth or ahimsa in ten different ways or read generic statements made about him by leaders, both Indian and foreign there is little any of these does towards arousing interest in Gandhi’s life or work. As you exit the exhibition having been herded through several exhibits the thought uppermost in your head is How did they do it? At which point you know that the exhibition, in so far as it was an exhibition about the Mahatma, is a complete disaster.
Maybe we are being too harsh. There is some serious content in the exhibition. Several Gandhians speak about the Bapu and there is homage paid to the seventy nine Satyagrahis who marched from Sabarmati to Dandi as part of the Salt march. But much of the content is lost in the novelty of the medium of expression. Video testimonials are relegated to corner walls with dim projection and subdued volumes. Too much stress has been laid on making visitors conform to the order and continuity of the installations despite there being no apparent connection. Audio and video is triggered by picking salt, strumming harps, waving hands within a field of criss-crossed lasers, casting shadows of fingers, pulling at bars of a prison cell and rotating overlaid discs on a cone - all very interesting except that the audio and video is monotonous, redundant and uninformative. Again and again the same messages of truth and non-violence flash before your eyes; just that sometimes you need to press buttons, stand in a circle holding hands and sometimes you need to arrange cubes in specific manners to see the messages.
And what is with the morbid fascination with e for electronic? From e-Harmoniums to e-Train to e-Charkhas to e-Harps the exhibition is a throwback to when it was cool to add e as a prefix to everything and you just could not get enough. That is so 20th century, Mr. Makkuni. The exhibit is slick but devoid of content. Devoid of content not in a quantitative sense, there is reams of text and reels of video and audio, but in a cognitive sense. It is a genuine challenge to leave the exhibition having internalized something about the Mahatma. Time after time we saw people gazing at exhibits and then turn around to ask a companion “Amazing! How do they make all this happen?”
An exhibition on a topic as widely known as Mahatama Gandhi coupled with media presentation this novel must create engagement and participation if it is not to overwhelm the visitor with science. Visitors should not be forced to follow a certain order or specific method of interaction. Information should be presented in such a way that each participant, for that is what each visitor is, can control the amount and medium of information presented to him/her instead of the didactic or dictatorial manner we saw at Eternal Gandhi. The army of volunteers could have been replaced with RFID tags on visitors’ passes and their passing through an installation’s display area could trigger and control the flow of the relevant presentation. The tactile nature of the exhibit would come through much better if visitors were encouraged to physically interact with the installations rather than being led through demonstrations by the volunteers.
It is not a bad exhibition. There is, however, glaring disconnect between the intent of the exhibitor and the expectations of the visitors. If you go in expecting to learn about the Mahatma or even for your curiosity to be stimulated you are in for a disappointment. If you go in with an open mind about media and expression you might come away feeling partially satiated. We say partially because, although it is a start, the installations and the sum total of the exhibit is, by no means, a complete essay on communication and interactivity. The promise is there but intents and expectations need realignment.
The techniques have been perfected. It is the content that needs work. And while it may sound like we did not enjoy Eternal Gandhi - Multimedia Exhibition we look forward to what Ranjit Makkuni and the Sacred World Research Project will put up next.
What we take great encouragement from is the fresh approach the exhibition brings to presenting elements of our history in a modern, pleasing and more accessible fashion. Our museums suffer from a lack of imagination, perhaps grounded in a lack of funds and a general disinterest in interpreting exhibits in a format pleasing, and comprehensible, to the visitor. Eternal Gandhi is a step in the right direction.
(The exhibition will be on at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaja Vastu Sangrahalaya till
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The critique of the blog is too harsh.
Plese conider,
For 50 years there has been many exhibitions, institutions and museums built on Gandhi, and by far this Eternal Gandhi show is the best exhibition on Gandhi that I have seen. I believe a million people have watched it.
I liked how village art and materials were part of the design of new computers and this is in itself a great and tremendous visionary message: as India becomes a computer giant it can, if we follow eternal gandhi examples, use folk creativity in the design of new technology — which was Gandhiji’s message.
The videos presented by top freedom fighters and Gandhians are one of the rare documentaries available on the subject.
The time line assembled for the time line of Gandhi was the first interactive time line database. This exhibition needs credit becasue it atleast put together a timeline of Gandhi which 50 years of independance and a host of insitutions which were funded with tax payer monies couldnt.
If there is a time line available on Gandhiji with all historical photos, video essays, texts all linked into a database, let us know where these are how many people accessed this. 1 million people have seen the Eternal Gandhi and if the department of education just took all the videos from the show, a fabulous course on Gandhiji would emerge.
There are over 200 scholars represented and I would like to see a class on Eternal Gandhi taught for a semester at all universities.
Congreatulations to the project team and the scholarship, and I hope the project staff wont get discouraged by such selfish, ignorant uninformed writing.
Congratulations to the team for doing what no one else could do in the last 50 years, and I am happy to know the exhibition will go to London and South Africa too, and I am also happy to hear that the Congress party has taken graphics from the show as symbols of Satyagraha.. All this show many people at all levels have appreciated by the visionary work.
Jai Hind.