My investigation began right away on the first day as we visited some of the main Gandhi sights in Ahmedabad.  We started the day at the Kochrab Ashram.  As we arrived, there was a group of westerners waiting around to visit the ashram and do a spiritual study of Gandhi’s teachings.  Gandhi is held on such a high pedestal in the west that he has become a mythical figure.  His message of ahimsa, or non-violence, has placed him with figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa as representatives of the struggle for human rights.  I wanted to understand the person behind the symbol, which began to be revealed to me throughout the day.

We followed our visit to the ashram with a visit to Gujarat Vidyapeth, a university dedicated to Gandhi’s teachings.  As we walked on to the beautiful campus we noticed all of the students wearing khadi, or the home-spun clothing that Gandhi promoted as a way to resist dependency on the British for their clothing.  We met the director who gave us a beautiful talk about the values of ahimsa in modern day life, particularly in relation to the exploitation and destruction of our bodies, over fantastic cups of masala tea.  After discussing Gandhi with the director we were invited to visit a prayer session where all of the young students came to spend an hour each day spinning khadi and saying their prayers.  Finally we ended the visit by touring a small tribal museum and eating a delicious Gujarati lunch at the cafeteria.  The campus was beautiful and I left with a sense of peace, but this place also  started to make more concrete the feeling that I had that Gandhi is becoming more and more irrelevant to modern Gujarat, or modern society in general.  The university offers the students, most underprivileged, a great opportunity to continue their education, but they are also dedicating a great deal of time, energy, and effort to tasks such as spinning khadi and wearing traditional clothing that seem to have very little space in today’s society.  They are symbolic gestures, which I am beginning to feel sums up Gandhi’s role in the 21^st century.

We ended the day by visiting the Sabarmati Ashram, the main Gandhi ashram in Ahmedabad.  We were given a tour around the ashram and got a lot of insight into Gandhi’s life, particularly the problematic relationship that he had with his wife, Kasturbai.  After the tour, we met with the director who had many great insights on Gandhi.  He reaffirmed the fact that Gandhi has been reduced to a symbol and that the Gandhi movement is not really a movement anymore, but rather is just a series of institutions.  Many of my conversations throughout the rest of this trip have started to reinforce this idea and refocus my thoughts on this topic.