Impressions from Ahmedabad

Images I could not take.

In the streets of Ahmedabad, heavy loads on wooden carts are pulled by dray animals of various kinds: donkeys, oxes, camels that seem outsized for the task ... and men, one on each side of the shaft, bent forward, strenuously pushing a yoke at the height of their waist.

Our car passed a strange procession of perhaps 40-50 people. In front were carriers of brightly colored flags and banners, then musicians and singers followed by elaborately dressed people and, at last, a man sitting on a grey horse, in a long white tailored jacket and light blue silk pants, his head adorned by a golden turban, looking lost and out of place at the end of that procession that moved slowly down the street, at the rythm of a rather mocking tune.

My Indian colleagues in the car explained this scene to me. The man on the horse was a groom on his way to his wedding ceremony. The tradition requires that his entourage of friends thus make fun of him, as he is about to make the biggest mistake in his life. It occurred to me then that his golden turban was like a dunce cap.

In Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat about 20 km north of Ahmedabad, I visited with an Indian colleague a temple of the Akshardham sect, which has many followers here, but also in far-away places, including Chicago. Since a terrorist attack that occurred about five years ago, tight security measures have been put in place, and I had to relinquish my phone and even my belt as a guard frisked me at the entrance of the temple complex.

The place has been built on a grand scale, and looks very new. It is in fact only about 10 years old and obviously very well maintained. A central alley leads to the main temple of light color stone, standing large (with a rather ugly dome) straight in front of us, perhaps 400 meters away. On each side, there are at first playgrounds for children and families. Then the alley cuts through a very green lawn in the middle of a huge square surrounded by buildings. We have to leave our shoes in a "shoe house" on the left side of a few wide steps leading to the entrance of the temple.

In the center, immediately visible, is a large golden statue of the founder of the sect, Lord Swaminarayan, in a sitting Buddha position. He lived from 1781 to 1830, and inscriptions on the walls retracing his saintly life inform us that he reached mastery of the Vedic arts very early. We went upstairs, and walked around the octogonal gallery, adorned at each corner by a wide and rather ugly stone basin. On top, a plastic cover with back-lighting coming from a neon lamp inside, displays various designs and inscriptions in sanskrit. These must reproduce words of wisdom and devotion from Lord Swaminarayan. The scale of the building and the noble materials used in its construction are impressive, but I found the neon-lighting of religious inscriptions on plastic lamp-covers in very poor taste and out of place.

Leaving the temple and retrieving my shoes, I notice an inscription in large letters on the top level of a side-building: AARSH - Akshardham Center for Applied Research in Social Harmony. A noble and worthy pursuit of an elusive goal the world over, but in particular in Gujarat, which has been riven for decades by atrocities committed in sectarian riots between Hindus and Muslims.

I wonder: how can applied research in social harmony be conducted? And do the followers of Lord Swaminarayan, attacked not so long ago in this temple by Muslim terrorists, have the answer?