This is the time of the year when one of the most impossibly dense neighbourhoods in one of the world’s strikingly crowded and dense cities manages to squeeze more space out of itself in a miraculous way. Hundreds of streets reorganize themselves, divert the flow of traffic and the movement of people to allow the creation of sacred niches where shrines for the elephant headed god Ganesha become a reason for creating the most colourful, sometimes outlandish and mostly fun performances, shows, musical events, and installations one can imagine. It was in the late 19th century when a political leader and freedom fighter, Lok Manya Tilak, decided to transform a simple domestic ritual worhship into a public extravaganza in Girgaum Chowpatty to mobilize Mumbaikars so that they could unite against a colonial government. Since political rallies were banned, and ritual processions allowed, he converted one into the other. Since then, Mumbaikars celebrate the festival with gusto and it has become more politicized than ever before. For quite a few years, it has become a stronghold of the right wing parties and ideologies, though there is nothing intrinsic so about the festival. In many ways, the failure of the city’s left and progressive forces to harness moments like these was one reason they lost support. In fact, until well into the seventies and early eighties, socialist grassroots movements were pretty strong. But soon after, festivals like these were taken over by right wing groups and became the basis of mass defections in terms of ideoology and party affiliations.
Urban spaces and cities do not subscribe to linearities of any kind. And cities like Mumbai are even further away from any linearity. They embody within them the most chaotic of time zones and historical sensibilities. Their built-forms are a jumble of styles, both stylistically and historically. People themselves may occupy very different cultural sensibilities and not all of these can be reduced to political differences. It is important for many of us engaged and involved in the city’s public spheres to come to terms with these differences. It may be easy to simply dismiss the Ganesh Festival as a space that has already been co-opted by a right wing agenda. What would really more productive would be to reclaim that space. And there is a lot in the grammar of the festival that allows for such a reclamation. It is carnivalesque, it allows different groups and affiliations to find their own way of expressing their aesthetic and political values. It’s a great way to communicate different notions of urbanism through the space of installations that the pandals (shrines) allow. This year, due to various factors the festivities have been low key. On an average year however, the skills and abilities that each group shows in creating images, futuristic fantasies, mythological constructions, is considerable. Maybe the year will come, when along with the pandals, the installations will become the space for transmitting different notions of urbanism through architectural models and constructed urbanscapes that usually lie around in architectural studios and offices!
