Walking from Dandi in Search of Vikas

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A book like this could only have been wrought in and with love: without Sushmit Prabhudas and Chirag Mediratta walking by my side day after gruelling and wonderful day, I would never have been able to finish this walk, even if I had been foolhardy enough to begin it, and you would not be holding this book. I wish comrades, interlocutors, and 'oddkin' like these two upon everyone: they make life worthwhile. They may not take me seriously, but I meant it when I warned them that they have now signed up for a lifetime of walking the land, on routes of Gandhi's making and otherwise, alongside me. Without them, the road is long and cold, and I am nothing. Thank you, C and S: I am eternally beholden to the warmth and wonder that is you two.

I am immensely grateful to the Dean and Director at MICA-Dr Preeti Shroff and Dr Shailendra Mehta-who have supported this project from the moment of its inception, and done so much to make it so that I see it through: thank you for all you have done and continue to do to make MICA the beautiful home to scholars it is. Aabhar.

There were many who wanted to walk this road with us but could not: Anirban and Shormishtha Mukherjee, Dhananjai Sinha, Rishabh Mall, Anahita Ginwala, Mathangi Krishnamurthy, Naman Govil-carried you each with me all the same, promise. Tridip Suhrud, Megha Todi, Avanti, Tina, and Rusi Mehta, Marc Damania, Vispi and Nilu Siganporia: these were the sets of loving arms I got to fall into upon my return from Dandi-thank you for making the last stretch of the walk the most joyous one possible. Manik Acharya and the wonderful folks of E-57, upar and neechey: thank you for letting me talk your ears off for most of 2018, as this project slowly took possession of my being; thank you most of all for the love and the light that you continue to bring to my life.

Vivek Chaudhary may have been spared the worst of the lot of being around when my first draft was being constructed, but he has been a wonderful discussant since we met, and the Afterword in particular owes much to our conversations: thank you, Vivek. We have a river to trace and stories to tell, and I cannot wait to tell them with you. Together.

Vispi and Nilu Siganporia let me walk away, and found in my stead a broken, bewildered creature who did not know how to continue to be a daughter, a sister, a teacher, a partner or even much of a person really, upon my return. They filled my life, as they have always done, with cheer and music, and allowed me to wander until I learnt that most important of all lessons: to walk is to walk away is to return. You are my home, Wherever you are, is where I will 'return'. Likewise, for Melody Siganporia and Harshraj Leuva, and Mahnaz Damania, in whose delightful company and homes this book was painstakingly birthed: thank you, family. You are my world.

My aunt Hema Karkaria had designed the stunning 'Gandhi in Ahmedabad' exhibition which served, over the decades it was up at the Satyagraha Ashram, as an introduction to the Gandhi story, to the mil-lions of visitors who have made their way to this unassuming little collection of buildings (once) along the banks of the Sabarmati. The Salt March diorama she worked on may now be gone, but her daughter, my cousin Hazel Karkaria, is responsible for the cover of this book, so as you can see, our engagement with the old man remains an inter-generational family affair: he has that effect on people, if they let him. And we let him. Thank you, Hazel-you are an inspiration in more ways than you will ever know.

To all the people we met enroute, who gave us so fulsomely of their hearts and homes and time and selves: Kamleshbhai who made us the best pakodas I've ever eaten, Jitubhai who made Ankleshwar resound with love, Bharatbhai who rode all the way to Jambughoda to say 'hello' again, Ileshbhai who tends the flame in Borsad-I hope you see some-thing of yourselves in the pages that follow.

This book is for Tridip Suhrud, who came closest to making the Ashram sing again; Ankit Chadha who could have narrated a dictionary and still held an audience spell-bound; and Dhun Karkaria who continues to demand that all who were touched by his genius spend our lives giving a damn about the world we live in, and every creature in it.

For a young academic, I occupy an exceptionally privileged position: I was granted a sabbatical from my home institute, MICA, between January and June 2019, so as to be able to work on the project that led to this book. 2019 marked the 150th centenary celebrations of MK Gandhi's birth, and anticipated the ninetieth anniversary in 2020 of the Dandi March, held in some quarters to be the apogee of his political career. My project was a simple one: in February 2019, alongside two dear comrades, cultural researcher Chirag Mediratta, and medical doctor Sushmit Prabhudas, I walked from Dandi to Ahmedabad, retracing the route of the Salt March, in reverse. This route-the 'Dandi Path' is the setting against which I set out to explore what I believe to be the story of modern Gujarat. We walked this route of just under 400 kms over the course of twenty-five days, covering anywhere between 16 and 29 kms a day, stop-ping at one place mid-morning, and elsewhere for the night following a dusk-time walk, much as the original band of Marchers did in 1930.

Why? Because Gujarat has come to be described as something of a social laboratory-more specifically, in the words of the (former) Vishwa Hindu Parishad's Praveen Togadia, 'the laboratory of Hindutva' (Bunsha 2006: 12/25)-over the past few decades. I was keen to engage with this Gujarat, but I also wanted to see if there remained in it any competing visions to these epistemes: memories of the region's prior avatar as the base that served as the setting against which Gandhi put into practice his 'experiments' with truth, non-violent civil disobedience, satyagraha, mass political communication, and more, during the heyday of the Indian Nationalist Movement in the early-20th century. In 1930, Gujarat was also the site of one of the most enduring chapters of this Movement, the Dandi March and subsequent Salt Satyagraha, undertaken to con-test what Gandhi held to be the most unjust tax levied on Indians: the British Indian government's tax on that most essential of all food articles, salt. The March saw Gandhi leave his Satyagraha Ashram (better known since as the Sabarmati Ashram, after the river along whose banks it was founded in 1917) in Ahmedabad with a band of seventy-eight dedicated marchers (the last two to make up the front ranks would join them from Matar, two days into the walk). Together, they wound their way across nearly 400 kilometres of varying terrain to get to the sleepy coastal town of Dandi, where they broke the law by 'making' their own salt.

As alluded to above, my intention was to explore two main themes: to see what (if anything) remained of the Salt March in cultural memory and oral history; and perhaps even more importantly, to attempt to discern the shape of this Gujarat I now inhabit but have little access to the rich lived inner realities of, owing to my multiple positions-along religious/caste/class/educational/urban-location lines of privilege. This made my endeavour one which forced upon me simultaneously and competingly insider and outsider-what ethnography would call emic and etic-positionalities. As Kottak defines it, 'the emic approach invesigates how local people think'; how communities make sense of their world from inside-out (2006: 47). The etic or 'scientist-oriented' approach on the other hand shifts the focus from 'local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist (or specialist)' (2006: 47). I was born in Gujarat, speak Gujarati, and have lived in this State for most of my life: this makes me an insider. However, since I am not Hindu (and therefore caste-bound), not male, and an English-speaking, urban location based academic to boot, this makes me an outsider, constantly forced to account for my 'self' in the place I have for so long called home. The number of times en route people began con-versations assuming I was a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) attests to this othering. I would proceed to disabuse them of this fallacy in chaste Gujarati, only to have them insist it simply had to be true: by day twenty-two on the road, it may as well have been, because I stopped feeling the need to correct them or prove that I was, indeed, as much of Gujarat as anybody present there.