<p>I’ve just completed a 15-day visit to London. Deposing the muppet-haired PM was not on the itinerary, only a lucky coincidence.</p>.<p>Actually, in anticipation of India’s 75th, I was on a pilgrimage to sacred sites: the Inner Temple, where Gandhi had been called to the bar, and Gray’s Inn, where Ambedkar had been called to the bar; the India Office of the British Library, where thousands of handwritten and signed letters by Ambedkar, Gandhi, Nehru, et al, remain stored in boxes, simply waiting to be handed over to you for the asking; the statue of a seated Gandhi in Tavistock Square, not far from University College London, his alma mater, as well as the more recent, towering 9-foot Gandhi bronze at Parliament Square (and, of course, the bust of Basaveshwara right across the Thames); the delightfully unexpected Thiruvalluvar statue placed bang at the entrance of University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies; and, yes, the recently created Ambedkar Museum, located at the house that Ambedkar had lived in during the early 1920s while completing his Doctorate at LSE.</p>.<p>These are truly houses of the holy. They may have begun secular, but they are surely sacred now. Not without reason, Dalit entrepreneur Kalpana Saroj suggested that Ambedkar’s former London digs should be esteemed as a ‘temple of education for Indian students in the UK.</p>.<p>Moving from sacred to profane, if not profanity, the iconic English rock band Led Zeppelin’s 1972 Houses of the Holy captures quite nicely how any desi might feel when encountering these many statues and monuments in lush London parks:</p>.<p>There’s an angel on my shoulder/In my hand a sword of gold/</p>.<p>Let me wander in your garden/And the seeds of love I’ll sow/You know.</p>.<p>But as the philosopher William James once quipped, there are two sides to every mystical experience. For Zeppelin, it’s sinister that often occupies the sanctum sanctorum:</p>.<p>From the houses of the holy/We can watch the white doves go/</p>.<p>From the door comes Satan’s daughter/And it only goes to show, you know.</p>.<p>Yes, I think we do know. We know that each of these sacred sites is not only a potential source of national pride, or at least fascination and wonder, but all also trace their genesis in political machinations, chauvinism, tokenism, or – put the most favourable spin on it – a healthy sense of irony.</p>.<p>When the Gandhi statue was first unveiled by Arun Jaitley in 2015, Ram Guha wrote: “That Gandhi and Mandela now stand alongside a slew of white men in Parliament Square is proof of how much England itself has moved away from Winston Churchill’s views on racism and imperialism”. Some might beg to differ. During the 2020 BLM protests in London, the statue of Churchill was vandalised. But the statue of Gandhi was not spared: a protester spray-painted ‘Racist’ in bright red across the cenotaph.</p>.<p>The Tamil Nadu government had donated the Thiru sculpture to SOAS, a university that no longer offers the Tamil degree. The Karnataka government funded the Basaveshwara statue, which PM Modi unveiled in 2015, and the Maharashtra government purchased the Ambedkar House, also inaugurated by the PM on the same trip. In the case of the latter, the tokenism seems to reach dizzying heights.</p>.<p>It’s not that the Ambedkar House Museum is not worth visiting – it is, very much so. It is a profoundly moving, possibly even mystical experience. But that so little effort has gone into reconstructing the life and times of early 1920s Ambedkar is deeply disappointing. Given the abundance of historical materials available, for example in the aforementioned India Office, and given the number of Indian-origin scholars at London’s premier universities, among so many others, and given the significance of those London years for the formation of young Ambedkar as a soon-to-be world-historical figure, it does not take long wandering the narrow floors of the museum to realise that the place has been designed as a hoax. The fake personal effects (reading glasses, books, ink pens and so on that were not actually his own) don’t help either.</p>.<p>But then again, I guess all this just makes it a lot like so many other sacred sights, or like other token projects. That Ambedkar deserves better hardly needs to be said. But that the rest of us don’t put in more sincere efforts after 75 years possibly does.</p>.<p>Said there ain’t no use in crying/Cause it will only, only drive you mad/</p>.<p>Does it hurt to hear them lying?/Was this the only world you had?</p>
<p>I’ve just completed a 15-day visit to London. Deposing the muppet-haired PM was not on the itinerary, only a lucky coincidence.</p>.<p>Actually, in anticipation of India’s 75th, I was on a pilgrimage to sacred sites: the Inner Temple, where Gandhi had been called to the bar, and Gray’s Inn, where Ambedkar had been called to the bar; the India Office of the British Library, where thousands of handwritten and signed letters by Ambedkar, Gandhi, Nehru, et al, remain stored in boxes, simply waiting to be handed over to you for the asking; the statue of a seated Gandhi in Tavistock Square, not far from University College London, his alma mater, as well as the more recent, towering 9-foot Gandhi bronze at Parliament Square (and, of course, the bust of Basaveshwara right across the Thames); the delightfully unexpected Thiruvalluvar statue placed bang at the entrance of University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies; and, yes, the recently created Ambedkar Museum, located at the house that Ambedkar had lived in during the early 1920s while completing his Doctorate at LSE.</p>.<p>These are truly houses of the holy. They may have begun secular, but they are surely sacred now. Not without reason, Dalit entrepreneur Kalpana Saroj suggested that Ambedkar’s former London digs should be esteemed as a ‘temple of education for Indian students in the UK.</p>.<p>Moving from sacred to profane, if not profanity, the iconic English rock band Led Zeppelin’s 1972 Houses of the Holy captures quite nicely how any desi might feel when encountering these many statues and monuments in lush London parks:</p>.<p>There’s an angel on my shoulder/In my hand a sword of gold/</p>.<p>Let me wander in your garden/And the seeds of love I’ll sow/You know.</p>.<p>But as the philosopher William James once quipped, there are two sides to every mystical experience. For Zeppelin, it’s sinister that often occupies the sanctum sanctorum:</p>.<p>From the houses of the holy/We can watch the white doves go/</p>.<p>From the door comes Satan’s daughter/And it only goes to show, you know.</p>.<p>Yes, I think we do know. We know that each of these sacred sites is not only a potential source of national pride, or at least fascination and wonder, but all also trace their genesis in political machinations, chauvinism, tokenism, or – put the most favourable spin on it – a healthy sense of irony.</p>.<p>When the Gandhi statue was first unveiled by Arun Jaitley in 2015, Ram Guha wrote: “That Gandhi and Mandela now stand alongside a slew of white men in Parliament Square is proof of how much England itself has moved away from Winston Churchill’s views on racism and imperialism”. Some might beg to differ. During the 2020 BLM protests in London, the statue of Churchill was vandalised. But the statue of Gandhi was not spared: a protester spray-painted ‘Racist’ in bright red across the cenotaph.</p>.<p>The Tamil Nadu government had donated the Thiru sculpture to SOAS, a university that no longer offers the Tamil degree. The Karnataka government funded the Basaveshwara statue, which PM Modi unveiled in 2015, and the Maharashtra government purchased the Ambedkar House, also inaugurated by the PM on the same trip. In the case of the latter, the tokenism seems to reach dizzying heights.</p>.<p>It’s not that the Ambedkar House Museum is not worth visiting – it is, very much so. It is a profoundly moving, possibly even mystical experience. But that so little effort has gone into reconstructing the life and times of early 1920s Ambedkar is deeply disappointing. Given the abundance of historical materials available, for example in the aforementioned India Office, and given the number of Indian-origin scholars at London’s premier universities, among so many others, and given the significance of those London years for the formation of young Ambedkar as a soon-to-be world-historical figure, it does not take long wandering the narrow floors of the museum to realise that the place has been designed as a hoax. The fake personal effects (reading glasses, books, ink pens and so on that were not actually his own) don’t help either.</p>.<p>But then again, I guess all this just makes it a lot like so many other sacred sights, or like other token projects. That Ambedkar deserves better hardly needs to be said. But that the rest of us don’t put in more sincere efforts after 75 years possibly does.</p>.<p>Said there ain’t no use in crying/Cause it will only, only drive you mad/</p>.<p>Does it hurt to hear them lying?/Was this the only world you had?</p>