Pushbutton Gandhi

Gandhi is now available at the push of a button. The frail, half-naked ascetic who fought British colonial oppression with nonviolence and austerity is the focus of a multimedia museum here...

Gandhi is now available at the push of a button. The frail, half-naked ascetic who fought British colonial oppression with nonviolence and austerity is the focus of a multimedia museum here, his life, values and words popping out from computer screens, laser beams, musical bamboo poles and other hands-on electronic gadgets.

The Eternal Gandhi museum seeks to bring the nation8217;s founding father to people growing up in an India the ascetic never envisioned, one filled with foreign cars, cellphones, fast-food chains, malls and multiplex theaters.

8220;Gandhian values of nonviolence and truth are relevant for all times. The challenge was to get the message across to the younger generation. So we used the medium of technology they are so fascinated with,8217;8217; says Savita Singh, director of the Eternal Gandhi museum and memorial.

The exhibition is an expansion of an older, more solemn memorial, the sprawling colonial-style house where Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life. It was on its grounds in 1948 that Gandhi, walking to a daily prayer meeting, was shot dead by a Hindu radical.

For many years, the house has been a pilgrimage destination for millions of Indian and foreign visitors. At the entrance, a large statue of Gandhi with two children holding a dove greeted the visitor with a sign saying 8220;My Life Is My Message.8217;8217; Visitors reverently took off their shoes to enter the grassy grounds. The things in his room8212;his glasses, walking stick, sandals, spinning wheel and wood cot8212;were preserved as they were when he was alive.

Now the house also has what claims be India8217;s first hands-on, multimedia museum. But in a society where officials closely guard their authority, it is largely hands-off for visitors. Instead, about 18 young docents, picked from underprivileged families, clad in Gandhi8217;s trademark handspun clothes, control the buttons and the visitor8217;s experience.

8220;We don8217;t encourage the visitors to touch, because these are sensitive and expensive machines,8217;8217; says Singh. 8220;Our visitors are not as disciplined and sophisticated like those visiting the Smithsonian or the New York museums. A number of our visitors are villagers and are unfamiliar with computers.8217;8217;

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The museum uses archival film footage extensively in several exhibits. In the first gallery, a small touch-screen computer slides along a mud wall that, in a blend of tradition and the modern, is coated with cow dung that in Indian villages is traditionally viewed as a purifying agent.

Moved along the wall by a docent, the screen presents a tableau of events from Gandhi8217;s life in film and photographs8212;his childhood, sepia-toned family portraits, the scene from Richard Attenborough8217;s 1982 film Gandhi when he is thrown out of a first-class train coach in South Africa, and many others.

In a section about Gandhi8217;s tireless campaign against India8217;s caste system, a docent encouraged visitors to form a human chain around a carved pillar. When the visitors held hands, the pillar lit up. The mere act of people touching strangers whose caste was unknown to them was meant to remove biases at this exhibit, called the 8220;Pillar of Castelessness8217;8217;, the docent explains.

8220;The light comes on, and the caste prejudice vanishes,8217;8217; he says.

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8220;Gandhi can be discovered in many ways, this is just one,8217;8217; says Singh. 8220;What makes his message eternal are not these computers anyway.8217;8217; Rama Lakshmi