'You I could not save...': Exhibition revisits Gandhi's final walk through riot-torn India

Kochi: If photos of a dilapidated home in Bangladesh’s Noakhali are a reminder of the massacre of a family in 1946, the small railway station in Bihar's Masaurhi stands witness to the killing of many in the communal riots.

Torn between these two locations and many others burning in the communal fire was Mahatma Gandhi. He tried his best to restore peace following the severe communal riots that broke out in late 1946 and continued till long after Independence on August 15, 1947.

Gandhi lived a mere 169 days of life in independent India. He was killed on January 30, 1948 by Nathuram Godse.

'You I Could not Save, Walk With Me', an exhibition running parallel to the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale, pays tribute to Gandhi through quotes, photographs, letters, videos, posters, poetry, talks, conversations, and installations. A collaborative effort of artist Murali Cheeroth, photographer Sudheesh Yezhuvath, poet P N Gopikrishnan, and human geographer and urbanist Jayaraj Sundaresan, the exhibition presents itself as a walk down memory lane of the Father of the nation, chronicling the places, people and words associated with Gandhi in his last two years.

Gopikrishnan, whose poems about Gandhi’s struggle and message hang on the walls of Cube Art Spaces in Mattancherry, said that it was a crucial period in Indian history when the British were ready to leave and communal riots had spread across the country.

"Then Gandhi takes a very great responsibility to stop this communal assault and actually he was alone in this journey. No other leaders with him, only a band of women and he has no clear plan to stop this bloodshed. The only thing in his hand is his ahimsa and truth,” Gopikrishnan told PTI.

During this period of continuous travel between Calcutta, Noakhali, and Bihar, Gandhi would cry at times only to find solace in his belief that “ahimsa (non-violence) does not fail”.

The chief manager in Kerala State Financial Enterprises said in 2024, the four artists decided to embark on this journey of reconstructing Gandhi’s last two years as they felt the time was right when “hatred has become the language of the land”.

"Hatred is the topmost emotion, building all the political sphere. So, I think art always has some kind of resistance in its heart. From the 20th century onwards, in every great art, there is a resistance. Resistance against the enemies of mankind, enemies of humanism, enemies of our peaceful life.

“So, we thought it was a great time to reconstruct this journey. We went to Kolkata, we went to Noakhali, now it is in Bangladesh, but we had a chance to go there before those political changes took over Bangladesh,” he said.

The exhibition essentially chronicles the period from August 16, 1946, when the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah called for ‘Direct Action Day’ to reinforce their demand for a separate nation, Pakistan, which led to communal clashes and bloodshed in Calcutta.

As Gandhi rushed to Calcutta to talk about peace and harmony, violence erupted in October in Noakhali and later in Bihar and other areas.

Gandhi stayed in Noakhali for four months, restoring peace and “proving that it can be attained through humane ways”.

"Developed through a year of research and travel across sites marked by riots, places Gandhi once walked in moments of deep communal crisis, the exhibition remembers a stark truth: we allowed him only 169 days of life in the land of our independence. This exhibition stands as a culmination of his resistance,” Cheeroth said.

The quartet documented what remains of riot-affected locations in Noakhali, where Gandhi travelled to 47 villages on foot, places that remain important for their association with Gandhi, and interviewed people who were little children when Gandhi visited.

Among the photographs is the school ground in Paniala in Noakhali where “Raghupati Raghav Rajaram” was sung in public for the first time, the temporary mound-shaped grave of Reddypalli Satyanarayana (Thakur Bhai) who remained behind to continue Gandhi’s work and insisted nothing is erected upon his death, location of Gandhi’s speech in Bihar’s Okari village, and the now-ruined Gandhi ashram in Bihar’s Nourangabad.

"We traced the path of the last two years of Gandhi, spoke to people who had seen and been with him, recorded their thoughts, feeling empathy and hope in humanity as we realised that Gandhi’s faith in goodness spurred him on. The experience showed us the power of Ahimsa and truth, the qualities that help understand complexities of a situation and empathise with different views,” Gopikrishnan added.

Yezhuvath noted that the exhibition was also an attempt to record history that is now being “misrepresented and misappropriated”.

“Today, misinformation on Gandhi is being passed around in social media. We believe that history must be recorded as it’s slowly being erased. For instance, when we visited Gandhi Smriti in Birla House, we just saw the words, ‘Gandhiji was assassinated’ in many places and saw the words ‘assassinated by Nathuram Vinayak Godse’ only in one corner,” he said.

The photographer added that the names of other accused, including Narayan Apte who was executed along with Godse, are not mentioned.

"Our exhibition is an effort against these moves.” While a range of photographs, art works, and writings convey Gandhi’s simplicity and depth, large screens feature the trial of those complicit in his assassination, including Godse, Apte, Vishnu R Karkare, Digambar R Badge, Madanlal K Pahwa, Shankar Kistayyana, Gopal V Godse, Vinayak D Sarvakar and Dattatraya S Parchure.

The justification of Godse for the heinous crime also finds a place in the exhibition, which comes to an end with Kochi-Muziris Biennale on March 31.