Porbandar – Birthplace of a Nation
On any normal reckoning, the Western borders of the Indian
state of Gujarat are benighted. A long way from anywhere,
the flat land of scrub and salt marsh has a single natural
resource - wind. According to the season it blows warm and
wet from the unholy sea, or scorching and dry from the
desert. Much of the coastline is now guarded by those tall
and handsome three-armed wind harvesters. No-one would be
very concerned about their effect on this landscape.
How much more benighted must it have been in 1869, when the
future Mahatma Gandhi was born here. Then Gujarat was
feudal, a patchwork of insignificant little kingdoms.
Gandhi's father is described as having been a Prime Minister
here, but that can't have made him anybody very much.
The house is a minor place of pilgrimage. On an ordinary
street, it would be indistinguishable from all the others,
except that an admirer bought up the surrounding square and
demolished them all to build a temple marking this sacred
spot. There isn't a National Trust consciousness here, so
the house is empty. There is only a picture of the great
man, and another of his parents, and a swastika set into the
floor in the front room to mark the exact spot of his entry
into the world. This isn't "heritage" - there is no sense of
wanting to recreate the great man's dwelling. All that is
important is to have it clearly identified as holy.
The few visitors take it in turns to climb the stairs, so
steep that we need the knotted rope to help us up and down.
At the top of the house is a cupboard where, we are told,
the young Gandhi with the big ears set earnestly to his
studies.
Even now Porbandar is a ten hour train journey from the
state capital of Ahmedabad.
Porbandar is a fishing town. It has two ports, adjacent to
each other. In one, a thousand fishing boats, all built to
the same ancient design, lie in appearance of idleness. Here
and there, a few boxes of undersized silver fish are being
unloaded. Gutting them is a smelly process out in the sun,
where they are then spread out to dry before being bagged up
and piled into the boot of a waiting Mercedes. Small boys
with sticks keep the dogs at bay.
This cannot be a profitable industry, yet biblical boatyards
ring the port, where fifty more ship skeletons are being
worked on by hand. It is a beautiful, if a sad, sight.
The other port, surrounded by military security - though it
is the bureaucracy that is more effective at keeping us out
- contains two ships. There is a magnificent coal ship of
enormous proportions, a gleaming white gunboat, and vast
empty warehouses. It is a very long time since Porbandar was
a major point of entry for trade with Arabia, but presumably
there is still a certain amount of smuggling along the old
routes.
Back into town, past a row of ruined Stalinesque taxis -
though each has its sleeping driver - to the Sudamaji
temple, where I witnessed a strange sight. I had met them
before, these one hundred Rajastani pilgrims, who had each
paid £50 for a month's pilgrimage in an old bus. Their merit
is being determined by the number of holy sites and
offerings they can chalk up, so they have set themselves a
cruel pace. After a week they are already looking tired.
They did not go into Gandhi's house, but only touched his
feet in the adjoining temple, before hurrying off again.
For them, Gandhi is a figure of little value. They are more
interested in Lord Krishna, whose legends fill this area,
being not far from his 5000 year old capital at Dwarka. The
Sudamaji temple has a miniature stone maze, its alleyways
just large enough to put one foot in front of the other.
Like bees on the honeycomb, the hundred pilgrims jostle
their way around the maze, periodically falling over like
dominoes. Their pujari urges them on, "Jaldi! Jaldi! -
quickly, quickly!"
I asked him what it was all about, but he would not be
interrupted. He thrust a plan into my hand, and I tried to
decipher the misprinted text. Ah, it was not a maze, but a
complicated mandala whose form allowed us to perform 8.4
million parikramas (sacred circumambulations) as we traced
its route round the central swastika. The same number of
sins could be forgiven thuswise, it proclaimed.
And as quickly as they had descended, they were gone. Off to
Dwarka, further along the coast, a much holier town, where
limitless merit could be acquired by those who know how.
Porbandar reverts to its quiet and normal demeanour, an
Indian town of no distinction, where no drama occurs worse
than a bullock and a bicycle trying unsuccessfully to occupy
the same piece at road at the same time. Only under its
surface seethes this extraordinary spiritual secret, that
out of this narrow and provincial backwater emerged a man
who went on to change the world. Like Porbandar itself,
Gandhi spent much of his time doing things that seem to us
pointless. Spinning by hand must be in the same category as
building beautiful ships for a dead industry. But the
paradox is that Gandhi could not have changed the world if
he had not been wedded to such anachronisms. How could one
not believe in humanity after a visit to Porbandar?
© Kenneth Wilson
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