Parking protest safely out of sight

Pasts without Prejudice

Time was, when thousands of people milled about the streets of Paris, walking between the iconic Place de la Republique and Place de la Nation during May Day rallies. Those raucous crowds in procession, the banners and flags, the colours and chants, were as much a tourist draw as the vast, ornamental circles to which Baron Haussmann’s famous 19th century boulevards led. A city’s life and heritage includes its processional culture, the ritual or unexpected uses of its space, whether in protest, display, celebration, or in piety. For instance, in a few weeks from now, Bengaluru’s old city area will come alive at night when the Karaga threads its way through a unique sacred geography of select streets of the Pete, between the Dharmaraya Temple and several other religious sites, including the Tawakkal Mastan Dargah. Johnson Market, on the edge of Richmond Town, similarly, is completely transformed during Muharram to become a site of somber commemoration of the battle of Karbala.

All cities work and rework the relationship between flesh and stone, bringing vibrancy to its monuments, thoroughfares and public spaces through occupation, movement, or even the dramatic suspension of movement (i.e. during bandhs). No doubt, not all such reworkings are designed to bring pleasure to commuters, pedestrians, and may even disrupt everyday life in myriad ways. But they are part of the narrative time of a city that asserts itself as importantly as its monuments.

Bengaluru is no exception, with its own share of political rituals that have shaped the use of squares and parks across the city. During the National Movement, the preferred sites of protest were the Banappa Park and Chiklalbagh on the edge of the Pete. Special Branch police in mufti mingled with protesters to file their reports on attendance, speakers and leaders at such meetings and rallies. Mysore Bank Square remained a favourite place for drawing attention to the nationalist cause, and some subaltern protesters, including the weaver Gundappa, lost their lives in firing during the 1937 Nariman agitation. Meera Iyer’s sumptuous INTACH volume on Bengaluru’s built heritage traces these memories of Mysore Bank Square, which have been commemorated in stone.

Other rallies, in more recent times, often debouched on the narrow Silver Jubilee Park. We know, too, that throughout the 1980s, Cubbon Park was routinely used for every shade of political rally; there was a historic mingling of the Farmers’ Jatha in 1981 with Bengaluru’s Public Sector workers, then on strike. Such protests – which addressed our political representatives in the Vidhana Soudha and caused them not a little discomfort -- have been progressively banned (beginning with Cubbon Park being made out of bounds for public rallies in 1997). They have been banished to less conspicuous spaces.

The Town Hall stands at the junction of the road leading to the Pete and those leading to the erstwhile Dandu Pradhesha, or Cantonment. It had been the site of interesting protests even in the past: for example, the feminist group Vimochana, which organised weekly ‘Women in Black’ silent demonstrations from 1992, protested the Iraq war in 2003 from the steps of the Town Hall. It has today become another space which is making the City ‘Fathers’ uncomfortable since it has sprung to life in the most unexpected of ways, its majestic steps a rallying point for those opposed to the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Since December 2019, persistent peaceful protests and performances have addressed the commuting public, using not just slogans and banners, but art, performance and speeches. It will certainly go down as the most creative and sustained ‘occupation’ since the Freedom Struggle.

That site now stands threatened by the ‘ban’ that has been imposed by BBMP. For now, the reasons cited are commercial ones, rather than the rights of the commuting public or even ‘beauty by banning’. The BBMP has proposed an ‘alternative’ site, well tucked away from the clash and roar of traffic, from the curious, or even furious, commuter.

But here, we well know, the protesters will largely be speaking to themselves. They will no longer be a reminder to elected representatives and the general public of what is at stake in their opposition to CAA. Such bans, if implemented, will be difficult for any political party to sustain, since our noisy republic relies as much on street mobilisations for its political existence as on elections. Above all, it will diminish the dynamic relationship between monumental city architecture and citizens, between flesh and stone.