Ahmedabad has been at the centre-stage of India’s diplomatic engagements ever since Narendra Modi’s prime ministership began in 2014. Time and again, Modi has personally and quite warmly hosted world leaders in Ahmedabad, including Xi Jinping, Shinzo Abe and Benjamin Netanyahu. This list has just found a new name on it: Donald Trump, whose visit will cost 1.5% of Gujarat’s annual budget for maintaining law and order.
Barring Abe, all other foreign leaders hosted in Ahmedabad have common dictatorial traits – ranging from suppression of dissent and xenophobia to referring to one’s self in the third person.
It’s almost as if Modi’s diplomatic realpolitik has installed Ahmedabad as a “city in the world”, to use the title of Amrita Shah’s biography on the city.
If Gujarat is the laboratory of Hindutva politics, then Ahmedabad is where Modi personally experimented with development (capital) and Gujarati asmita (pride). It’s the city where the much-touted Gujarat Model crystallised, merging masculinist Hindu (sub)nationalism with elite-friendly developmentalism. It’s where an anti-Muslim and anti-poor urbanism took shape at the behest of Modi’s socio-economic policies. For instance, Hindus and Muslims are not allowed to transact residential properties to each other in many parts of Ahmedabad without government sanction.
Politics by spectacle
Sabarmati river’s gentrified waterfront in Ahmedabad, where Xi was hosted in 2014 and from where Modi-Trump’s cavalcades will pass by during their roadshow, epitomises this development model of Gujarat.
Sabarmati river has been central to Gujarat’s and India’s political imagination. Ahmed Shah I of the Gujarat Sultanate decided to establish Ahmedabad – lending his name to the city – on the banks of the Sabarmati for political and economic reasons. Home to diverse religious groups, Ahmedabad became one of the ten most populous cities in the world in the later part of the 17th century (and remained in this league for close to seven decades). In contemporary times, Sabarmati is remembered in public memory through M.K. Gandhi, often called the Saint of Sabarmati, who established an Ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati, where he stayed for 13 years of his life.
During his chief ministership (2001-14), Modi, with the help of architect Bimal Patel, transformed the riverfront in Ahmedabad. This new schema of urban planning, in essence, converted Sabarmati river into an artificially managed lake causing tremendous ecological damage. In the process, over 10,000 houses of slum-dwellers were demolished, without a well-thought relief and rehabilitation programme. These slum-dwellers, Hindus and Muslims alike, were resettled only after civil society’s intervention. However, Gujarat’s Hindutva politics ensured slum-dwellers’ segregation on religious lines at relocated sites, breaking inter-community bonds of several decades.
Narendra Modi with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife at the Sabarmati riverfront. Photo: PTI/Files
Now, the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad features an event centre, multiple parks, a cycling track and special zones for recreational activities (including once-in-a-while zumba classes), among others. Various empty patches of reclaimed land are up for sale to build luxurious hotels and upscale commercial spaces. In December 2017, two days before much of Gujarat went to polls, Modi flew in a sea-plane from this waterfront to freshen up the memory of Gujaratis about his developmental model.
Likewise, in the late-2000s, Kankaria Lake which fell in the Vidhan Sabha constituency represented by Modi was re-developed on similar lines, restricting entry to a public site through a ticket.
Motera cricket stadium, where Trump and Modi will address over one lakh people, is another such site of spectacle. Motera Stadium has been the epicentre of political battles – from Modi’s personal rivalry with Narhari Amin to the stadium’s successful takeover by Amit Shah and his son Jay Shah. The theme of displacement witnessed during the re-development of Sabarmati riverfront recurs here: just days before Trump’s visit, slum-dwellers living next to the cricket stadium have been asked to vacate their houses.
Using Gandhi and his Ashram
On top of displaying the re-developed (not so) public spaces of Ahmedabad, Modi has used these visits by foreign leaders to introduce a new phase in his public image.
For example, in the immediate aftermath of 2002 anti-Muslim carnage, Modi projected himself as a Hindu Hriday Samrat (King of Hindu hearts) for whom interests of Hindus mattered the most. Later on, in his bid to foster support in Gujarat and nationally, he fashioned himself as a Vikas Purush (development man). Sites like the Sabarmati Riverfront, Kankaria Lake, GIFT city, alongside Vibrant Gujarat bi-annual investor meets and Special Economic Zones (SEZs) for industries were central to this new narrative of developmentalism (with a subtle anti-Muslim messaging for the constituency lured by Hindutva).
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However, after his elevation to the national scene, Modi has increasingly presented himself as a saintly figure – someone who is above the Machiavellianism of everyday politics and has left the murky political dealings to lieutenants like Amit Shah, Ajit Doval and Yogi Adityanath.
In this new trajectory of public life, Modi exhibits personal affection to Gandhi and his ideology, at least in words if not in deeds. To do so, Modi privileges certain ideals espoused by Gandhi such as cleanliness, ignoring other crucial principles of Gandhi’s ideology, including Hindu-Muslim harmony and economic self-reliance.
Almost immediately after becoming India’s prime minister in 2014, Modi launched a nationwide cleanliness and sanitation initiative, Swachh Bharat Mission, based on Gandhi’s moral doctrine.
When China’s Xi visited Ahmedabad in September 2014, Modi took him on a personal tour of Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram before settling down for an entertainment programme at the Sabarmati Riverfront. Similarly, he accompanied Netanyahu and Abe to the Sabarmati Ashram. It is still unclear whether Trump will visit the Sabarmati Ashram or not. Interestingly, Modi did not give company to Canada’s Justin Trudeau – whose centrist ideological bearings put him at odds with Modi’s — on his visit to Sabarmati Ashram.
Senior police officials arrive to examine security arrangement at Gandhi Ashram, where U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to visit during his trip to India later this month, in Ahmedabad, India, February 13, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Amit Dave/File Photo
On October 2, 2019, Gandhi’s 150 birth anniversary, Modi paid tributes to Gandhi by visiting the Sabarmati Ashram while the Union government announced a plan to re-develop the Ashram at the cost of Rs 287 crore. This renovation plan – whose final sketch has been prepared by Bimal Patel – envisages to restore Sabarmati Ashram to its original shape and make it tourist-friendly. Residents living in the Ashram precincts fear eviction of the kind faced by slum-dwellers with the Sabarmati Riverfront project.
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If the plan to re-develop Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram goes through, it will only embolden Modi’s claim to be the most genuine custodian of Gandhi’s legacy – and host more foreign leaders at the Ashram.
All in all, Modi in these visits showcases a hyper-capitalist city to foreign leaders where finance capital and industries call the shots; where public spaces are specially reserved for urban middle-classes and elites; where the poor are hidden behind a smokescreen-like wall, physical or otherwise; where Muslims are pushed to ghettoes, including India’s largest called Juhapura; where historical facts are deliberately turned upside down for political ends; where the world of politics is invariably communal.
Sharik Laliwala is a researcher on contemporary Gujarat’s politics and history. He has been associated with Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi and Ashoka University, Sonepat.