~ Neelkanth Chhaya
Transcription of Prof.Chhays’s talk in SNS 16.0: Exploring Gandhi’s Places,
hosted by Ethos Foundation
The essay is about what I call the architecture of liminality. Now that’s a difficult word. So I’ll just go into it a little bit. Liminality is the state of in-between neither inside nor outside, neither belonging to this culture or that culture, neither belonging to someone nor belonging to everyone. Liminality is the state that is adopted by those who are somewhere trying to say something else about their society or how society should be. So it is a movement away from and a movement into something or movement out of something. It’s not a static state. So what I want to say is that, Gandhi’s architecture is not something which is final and complete.
In the sense that normally we have architecture but is always in the process of coming into existence being used and being maybe given up. Victor Turner said, that the prophets and artists tend to be liminal or marginal people, edge man who strive with passionate sincerity to rid themselves of the cliches associated with status incumbency and role playing. Nobody could do this better than Gandhi. He infact rid himself every day of the cliches of the world in which he was situated.
In the essay I talk about the ashram at sabarmati. The first thing about the ashram at Sabarmati is that, it is in the city but not of the city, it’s an in between place. What do I mean by that? When Gandhi took up that land it was unimproved land along the river edge. To the north of it was the Sabarmathi jail and to the south of it was a crematorium. Gandhi wrote at that time that, 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, that’s the prison and on the other the thunderbolts of Mother Nature. So for some strange reason Gandhi chooses this middle space between these two very unpleasant, to the normal human being, locations.
But it also is a way of looking at the city differently because it is on the western side of the river. On the Eastern side is the old city, then the Mills that had developed all around it and the Shahibag which was the place where all the rich people stayed and the Cantonment where the Britishers stayed. You have this city which is in four different ways somehow not quite right. The old city and the old society has problems of social differentiation. The Mills, today we talk about all the sustainability aspects and it was already visible at that time, that they were a problem, smoke, use of all kinds of coal etc. Then the rich people’s houses in Shaibhag again, the differences in society are being reflected right there and then the Colonials who come from outside and are taking over and imposing a kind of world view on the society.
From the ashram you can look at the other side and you see these things but also the ashram is visible to those who are living in the old city or in the in Shahibag. They see an alternative way of living. Ashram is not a place of going away from the world, but the ashram is a place which is a challenge to the world. This is very carefully made, in the manner in which it is made because it’s not built of you know things which are rural, it doesn’t try to look non-technical, it is already the same as the rest of the city in terms of construction. However it shows that you can relate in a totally different way to economy, to politics, to social organisation and so on and so forth. It’s a challenge to the old city. So this is one thing about it.
The ashram is also a place in which the spatial and temporal rhythms of the individual and the collective are reorganised. First of all you have to notice, if you go to the to the sabarmati ashram there is no center, there is no main place. Where will you say is the cenre of ashram? There’s no such thing. Now this is something which is rare. In almost every such place, you would find that there would be one place which would be given preeminent importance.
Here, No !
It’s a grid. It’s a kind of grid but loosely implemented. The ashram doesn’t use an abstract and homogeneous grid but it is a grid which organises the pace of life, the time is also organised. You have to get up at at a certain time, have breakfast and so on. However there are periods in between where you do, what you want to do, where you explore the world for yourself and this kind of idea of a a grid and a freedom from the grid, a time schedule and a freedom from the time schedule, this is there in the ashram.
The third thing is that everybody thinks that Gandhi was was not interested in materials. If anything, there couldn’t be anybody more interested in materials than Gandhi. And he was interested in all kinds of materials. Finally the most important material is the body. And the body takes in food and excretes and Gandhi was interested both in the input and the output because he felt that the flow of material through every kind of phenomen of existence is something that is at the base of our interest in the world. And we can live in the world properly only when we see every single flow as a flow and not as a finished product. This is important.
So he makes a building makes buildings at the ashram which continually needed upkeep. You got to keep the wood free of termites, you got to varnish it, you got to clean, you got to change the bamboo. This kind of idea of material that breathes and needs periodic maintenance makes you attend to the architecture, which means that the architecture here no longer becomes remote and what they nowadays call maintenance-free. It is not something which is away from you, something which you control, but you are all the time in conversation with it and it is never finished. But it is always calling for an relationship to be established.
All this comes from the sense that one is there, one doesn’t possess the world but one enjoys the world. This is something really important in Gandhi’s philosophy. You may enjoy sunlight, you may enjoy the breeze, you may enjoy greenery and trees, you may enjoy water, you may enjoy so many things but you don’t try to possess them and you don’t try to control them.
And this happens to work on our body, on our buildings and everything that we do.
And therefore the ashram is a way of showing that if you don’t try to stop time because whatever we have got is a gift from the existing world and it’s not a resource to be used or stored and so on and so forth. Everything that we have is a gift. If you don’t consider it a gift, then you have to consider it something that you that you take from the world, that means it’s a kind of stealing and this was not acceptable. Therefore what happens with the architecture is that you make an architecture that receives the world rather than makes the world. The architecture does not become special in any way, does not try to enclose something, always tries to say I am part of this place because this place existed before I came, before I made a house and so on.
This is something very interesting. How are we going to make an architecture that receives the world rather than controls it? You inhabit the world rather than controlling the world. This is the the message of Gandhi’s architecture. If you look at the ashram, you will see this is all there. But that doesn’t mean a kind of woolly headedness about making. Gandhi was after all a shoemaker, a carpenter, a weaver, a spinner. He could do all these things with skill. So he’s not trying to make a wishy-washy kind of ashram, he wants to see there is a certain clarity of making and that clarity still allows the world and its changing status to all the time affect it.
So there is the suspension of polarities. If you look at Gandhi’s house, which is the front?
Is it the front of the courtyard which faces as you enter or is it the towards the river ?
If it’s towards the river, then why has he made the front towards the back and if not then why is the front which is the courtyard looking like a domestic space. So you suspend all these things and you say, look life consists of both, making how the house works – cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and so on is part of life, doing work is also part of life.I can look at the river while it’s going on. So in detail, if you look at how that house is made you will realise that it is one of the most ingenious works of architecture that we have at hand. And this applies not only to the house but to the whole ashram.
Finally there is an sense in which Gandhi’s architecture is not trying to say anything. Gandhi’s architecture is only being there, is being inhabited. It is not giving a message, there is no propaganda and there is nothing to be propagated. No message, there is no representation. Only existence !
Now this architecture students all of us we need to look at this because all the time instead of living it, we try to make something, say something about life. And I think this is some message in Gandhi’s work. How does that come about? There is a generosity and an inclusion of everything. There is a refusal to choose this or that. Therefore architecture here becomes the silent vessel of being alive on Earth, fully awake to the wonders and a fit place for one who wishes to experiment with truth.
And maybe all architecture or at least a large section of architecture should be one which helps you to experiment with truth.
Full video on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KheULlOgFQs&ab_channel=Arcause%7CEthosFoundation