Mumbai, January 1

Today we went to one of the several Gandhi Museums in India. The Mani Bhavan Museum and Research Instituteis a two story building and was the place Gandhi used to stay whenever in Bombay between 1917-1934. The museum is moving and enlightening: the room where Gandhi stayed has been conserved and maintained, complete with the mat on which he slept, the spinning wheel on which he spun and on which he based his spinning campaign and boycott of British goods; another room offers a replica of his prison cell. You can stand on the terrace where Gandhi was arrested in 1932, and browse through photos, letters, and books and writings both written and read by Gandhi. The most unique and effective feature of the museum is the section which shows Gandhi’s life through mini figure dioramas. This is a great way to make history accessible, especially to children.

Speaking of Gandhi and museums, our tour guide’s introduction to the Gandhi museum was a reminder of the relationship between history and current events, between the past and the present. It was a reminder of how the Hindu-Muslim violence and division that Gandhi fasted against, and for which Gandhi was ultimately killed, remains strong half a century later. Our tour guide revealed a pro Hindu anti Muslim bias, which I would find disturbing under any circumstances, and especially disturbing coming from a tour guide. While the guide emphasized the anti Hindu violence, which followed the partition of India into India and Pakistan, he made no mention of the anti-Muslim violence. He said that the person who killed Gandhi did so because he felt that Gandhi had made too many concessions to Muslims. The guide explained that this was a view held by many Hindus at the time. But his comments suggested that this was a view which he himself shares today, almost 60 years later. The guide called Gandhi a fanatic and insisted, almost obsessively, on over five occasions, that the man who had killed Gandhi did not do it for personal gain, but for political reasons. The guide’s apologist mantra was a sad contrast to the museum and research center, which is dedicated to teaching not only history, but tolerance, compassion, and non violence for which Gandhi gave his life. More disturbing yet, the third electoral victory of Narendra Modi, the Governor of Gujarat, who supported a sustained massacre of Muslims in 2002, proves that our guide’s opinions are hardly an anomoly.