Statue misrepresents Gandhi’s legacy

Giant head in Peace Garden doesn’t embody Gandhi’s values

LAST WEEK I said I would be looking at the statues in the Peace Garden and talking about how they relate to our own social ideals, and I have decided to start this series of articles with the most confusing inhabitant of our garden: the giant head of Mohandas Gandhi.

Now, I can’t blame you if you’ve always thought that the giant head staring at the Student Union from the west end of the Peace Garden was that of Ben Kingsley, the actor most famous for his stunning work in such award-winning films as “Sexy Beast,” “BloodRayne,” and “Suspect Zero.”

Seeing as how it is just a bald head, practically begging to be rubbed for good luck, there really is no way of knowing that it is in fact Gandhi and not Kingsley except for the engraving that appears on the statue’s pedestal: “Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi/ October 2, 1869 — January 30, 1948,” followed by the quotation “My life is my message.”

But when you look at the giant head with its expressionless face, you have to ask yourself, “What life? What message?”

Before we start judging our statue, first let’s ask ourselves, “Can a full statue of Gandhi tell us more than just a head can?”

Looking at the Gandhi statue in New York’s Union Square, we can learn a good deal about Gandhi at first glance.

He is a frail, old man, supporting himself upon a cane, his body so emaciated that his ribs stand out where his robe sags below his collarbone and his knees bulge from his rail-thin legs.

His gaze falls out of a serene face and lies on the ground in front of him, and his legs are positioned so that he seems always about to take the first of many steps forward in his simple pair of sandals.

We can see the values that Gandhi embodied: perseverance, abstinence and serenity.

Not only that, we can see what Gandhi would have looked like as a real man walking among us, a real human being whose very body forces us to recognize that he lived a radically different life from us, making us see our own unspoken values in comparison with others.

Let’s try taking a closer look at our university’s statue in the same way.

Our Gandhi has a mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows and ears, all well proportioned on a relatively large head, which sits atop what we can assume to be the portion of his robes that cover his upper chest and back.

Where did his neck go? Where are his shoulders? Let’s let those go and just see if we can get something out of his face.

His eyes point straight ahead, his mouth and eyebrows are relaxed and reveal no tension, his face has enough wrinkles to get the idea across that he is an older man; there isn’t much more to it than that.

Do we see perseverance? No. We might see the perseverance to win a staring contest, but not that perseverance we see in the knob-kneed legs of the Union Square Gandhi as he pushes his frame forward with one more step.

Do we see abstinence? No. We see no willfully emaciated body, no flesh that clings to its skeleton like the old man clings to his cane.

Do we see serenity? No. We see in his eyes a mystic apathy, a blind stare into nothingness, which certainly isn’t the same as the Union Square Gandhi with his eyes calmly directed at the earth in front of him.

So yes, the full statue can tell us things about Mohandas Gandhi’s character that just a head can’t.

The real problem with our statue is that it isn’t a representation of Gandhi; it’s a symbol of Gandhi. This giant head can’t tell us anything about Gandhi because it is nothing like him.

It has to have that inscription telling us his name so that we can look him up on Wikipedia and find out what his life and his message were.

Even if we do know something about Gandhi‘s life and message, we can’t look at our statue and see that knowledge artistically reflected there.

It’s the equivalent of tying a string to your finger so you can remember to pick up milk after work; nothing in the string suggests the purchasing of milk or why it’s important to purchase milk, it’s just there to make you wonder “Why is there a string tied to my finger?” and interrupt your rush to get home long enough for you to remember.

We see the giant head and we wonder, “Why is there a giant head out here?”

Then we vaguely remember that Gandhi was alive, that he was mentioned in a textbook somewhere, that he mattered to someone because he did something or other a long time ago and then we forget.

I reasoned last week that the purpose of a statue is to convey enduring values, often in praise of civic, moral or religious virtue.

By these criteria, our Gandhi statue is clearly a failure. It tells us nothing about Gandhi, humanity, or peace,and it certainly doesn’t inspire feelings of greatness or admiration. We keep asking, “What life? What message?”

Maybe next week….

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