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Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes: An International
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Mayawati and memorial parks in Lucknow, India: landscapes of empowerment
Amita Sinhaa & Rajat Kantb
a University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA
b Gautam Buddh Technical University, Lucknow, India
Published online: 21 Jul 2014.
To cite this article: Amita Sinha & Rajat Kant (2015) Mayawati and memorial parks in Lucknow, India: landscapes of empowerment, Studies in the History of Gardens
& Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly, 35:1, 43-58, DOI: 10.1080/14601176.2014.928490
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14601176.2014.928490
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Mayawati and memorial parks in Lucknow, India: landscapes of empowerment
amita sinha & rajat kant
In the state elections in Uttar Pradesh, India, held in early 2012, the Election
Commissioner ruled that statues of elephants, the symbol of the ruling Bahajun
Samaj Party (BSP), and Mayawati, the Chief Minister, be draped so as to avoid
unduly influencing the voters. This unprecedented ruling speaks to the power of
images in swaying the masses, not surprisingly given the dominance and impact of
figural imagery in the visual culture of India. Statuary has been a very significant
element in the recently built large urban parks in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar
Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Known popularly as the ‘city of Nawabs’
alluding to its nineteenth-century Muslim rulers who were great patrons of
architecture and performing arts, Lucknow has a distinct cultural identity that
had survived the colonial urban development and expansion in the post-indepen-
dence period in the latter half of the twentieth century. The recent urban
insertions in the form of memorial parks, plazas, and streets have created a new
look for Lucknow, at odds with its historic Nawabi character and its colonial past.
This new urban landscape is an expression of the political ideology of the
BSP, seeking to fabricate heritage for the historically disenfranchised Dalit
community. The term ‘dalit’refers to the untouchable castes that have been
socially and economically marginalized for a millennium in Indian society.
They constitute 22% of Uttar Pradesh’s population and together with other
castes low in social hierarchy termed as ‘backward’, comprise a substantial vote
bank. The BSP provides them with a voice and platform to overturn centuries
of exploitation and repression by the higher castes. With their support the BSP
has come into power several times with Mayawati as the Chief Minister. First
elected to power in 1995, she immediately began her campaign of building
memorial parks and tirelessly pursued it every time she came into power
thereafter (1997,2002, and 2007).
A critical reading of this new memorial landscape in Lucknow’s public realm
reveals it to be suggestive of power through monumental scale, visibility
through prominent locations, use of expensive building materials and specta-
cular effect, and control over access. Statuary of Dalit leaders and ancient
Buddhist architectural elements add imagery associated with Dalit pride.
Memorial parks produce symbolic capital for the Dalit community in the
public sphere but are remiss in creating social and environmental capital, all
three forms of capital being important dimensions of the public good. Surveys
of visitors to the memorial parks and focused interviews with Dalits in
Lucknow and its rural hinterland confirmed that the parks are perceived as
symbols of Dalit heritage but are not conducive to building face-to-face
communities and are not environmentally friendly. To add social and envir-
onmental capital should be the goal of park maintenance and renovation.
Mayawati
A teacher by profession, Mayawati joined politics in 1984 after meeting Kanshi
Ram, founder of the BSP. She rose swiftly through the party ranks and was
elected its leader within a decade. Her rapid ascent to power speaks to her
political acumen, strong determination, and excellent leadership skills. The
party’s strongest base is in Uttar Pradesh where chamars (leatherworkers) form a
substantial minority of OBC (Other Backward Castes) and to which Mayawati
belongs. Perhaps no other Indian leader has so consistently and vociferously
promoted her legacy through an aggressive program of statue and monument
building as she has, demonstrating a determined personal and political agenda
and its ruthless implementation in a surprisingly short time. Her impressive
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building record has been controversial, as have been her other administrative
measures, often making headlines in the media and causing public outrage.
Needless to say, the media have overwhelmingly reacted negatively to the
memorial parks, describing the statues as ‘just one clue as to the extraordinary
cult of personality that has grown up around the “Dalit Queen”’.
1
Columnists
and bloggers have called attention to the vast amount of public funds that were
spent on questionable projects, comparing ‘the extravagancy of Ambedkar
Sthal a la Taj Mahal appears a mockery of people living in funds-deprived
Bundelkhand and Poorvanchal regions of the State’.
2
Others have called her
the ‘Lutyens of Lucknow’, asserting ‘her giant parks must rank among the
greatest new public spaces created in any Indian city since independence’.
3
A populist by temperament, Mayawati has not hesitated to use every ploy
available to promote her party’s ideological rhetoric. Projecting herself and the
BSP as instruments of social change in the caste-ridden structure of Indian
polity, she has pushed for rural development through low-income housing,
accessibility to higher education through universities and colleges, and schemes
for women in education. The success of these programs is yet to be evaluated
but what is manifestly visible is her effort to inject into the urban space of
Lucknow a memorial culture celebrating the successes of social reformers and
her own party in improving the condition of Dalits by building parks dedicated
to BSP leadership.
Among the five memorials —Kanshi Ram Smarak Sthal and Green (Eco)
Garden, Buddha Vihar Shanti Upavan, Bhimrao Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan
Sthal, Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan, and Prerna Kendra —two were begun
during Mayawati’s third term and the other three in her fourth term (figure 1).
With the exception of Prerna Kendra, the other four, designed by Jay Kaktikar
of Design Associates, a Noida firm, are located at a distance from the city core
on the road from the airport and on the banks of the River Gomti, where
large empty expanses of land were easy to acquire. The memorials are large
precincts of buildings, plazas, parks, streetscapes, and assortments of statuary,
fountains, gateways, public conveniences and parking lots, named after Dalit
leader Bhimrao Ambedkar and BSP founder Kanshi Ram. Their function
varies from image gallery (Kanshi Ram Smarak, Prerna Kendra and
Ambedkar Sthal), museum (Ambedkar Sthal), library and monastery (Buddha
Vihar), to rally grounds (Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan).
Bhimrao Ambedkar was author of the Indian Constitution that gives equal
rights to all citizens, irrespective of caste or religious affiliation. He was born
into a low Hindu caste but converted to Buddhism in protest against
Hinduism’s caste hierarchy. The Buddhist design vocabulary of ancient India
has therefore been adopted as the appropriate style for celebrating Dalit
heritage with many architectural details such as stupa, railings, and arches
used in profusion in memorial parks. Built of expensive materials such as
marble, sandstone, and granite, the structures are expected to last for a ‘thou-
sand years’on ‘land banks’on the urban fringe precluding any other use. They
are largely hardscape urban insertions on a gigantic scale and extend into the
busy crossroads of the city. With a clever manipulation of symbols, Mayawati,
in keeping with her persona, has succeeded in making defiant monumental
gestures that have irrevocably altered the path of the city’s growth pattern.
Making history
I am not inventing history; I am only highlighting history that has been con-
sciously suppressed. (Mayawati in an interview to India Today,11 August 1997,
p. 33)
Mayawati and her architect, Jay Kakitar, are making history through design by
building new urban foci.
4
The memorial parks are designed to extend the
collective social memory of the Dalits by enlarging the ‘specious present’, i.e.
by bringing the past within the immediate perception.
5
This is also done
through aggressive promotion of statue building throughout Uttar Pradesh,
thereby enhancing the cult of the mahapurush (great soul) —charismatic
medieval saints, hero-warriors, or social reformers of the last two centuries.
This mythologizing of history —medieval saints and social reformers embark-
ing on the quest for social equality and spiritual enlightenment —resonates
with the archetypal myth structure of romance.
6
The reconstruction of cultural
memory requires the creation of a social milieu within which the glories of the
mahapurush can be sung, and the metaphorical return of the hero can be re-
enacted collectively. In this endeavor the built environment becomes the
catalyst for facilitating the specious present, providing the vivid richness of
the ‘here and now’in settings for iconography that instruct and inspire through
mimesis. The ensemble of Dalit statuary in Lucknow is part of the monu-
mental complex of buildings, their forecourts, and the urban streetscape.
Through its sense of permanence and sheer physical size, the monumental
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figure 1. Location of memorial parks in Lucknow (image courtesy of Amita Sinha).
mayawati and memorial parks in lucknow, india
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complex fulfills its function of reminding one of the Dalit leader’s exalted
status in society.
7
Memorial parks create sites of memory —lieux de memoire —
that reinforce the Dalit collective self, i.e. the capacity to imagine, construct
and inhabit a monumental space.
8
The making of subaltern memory of a shared glorious past and its repre-
sentation in elite urban spaces is a very visible act of empowering the
community that for centuries had been rendered voiceless and made invisible
through erasure from public spaces of urban and rural India. Scholars have
predicted that the memorials and statutes will build an ‘imagined Dalit
community’, that will transcend religious, caste and linguistic differences.
The arrival of a Dalit presence in urban public spaces from where they had
been excluded for centuries is empowering, an ‘incentive for democratic
mobilization’,a‘remarkable tool for the pedagogy of the oppressed’, and a
‘focal point for ceremonies that build grass roots mobilization skills’.
9
The
statues of Dalit local heroes, saints, social reformers, Ambedkar, and Buddha
are described as creating a new visual and oral sphere of memories that
together with commemorative rituals are a cultural resource for arousing
political consciousness among Dalits.
10
By reclaiming public spaces through
Dalit symbols and iconography, Mayawati is not only asserting Dalit identity
but also building collective memory, instilling pride in their past, and helping
them gain self-respect. She is fabricating heritage by updating the past, i.e.
‘anachronistically reading back from the present qualities we want to see in
past icons’.
11
Landscape of empowerment
What exactly is Dalit memory and how is it inscribed in urban spaces and
encoded in the built form? Heritage, that which is valued from the past, is, in a
sense, manufactured, residing in symbolic capital created through the built
environment and thus a form of empowerment of the hitherto powerless Dalit
community. Power is communicated through location, visibility, enfilade,
architecture, scale, statuary, and spectacular affect.
Location and visibility
With the exception of Prerna Kendra, all other parks are located away from
the urban core and are on the outskirts of the growing city. This ensures
availability of vast land acreage, prominent locations along the major urban
arteries —Buddha Vihar and Kanshi Ram Smarak on the Airport Road,
leading to Cantonment and Civil Lines, Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan on
Ring Road that encircles the city and connects with the state highways, and
Ambedkar Sthal on the banks of the River Gomti on the south-east margin of
expanding Lucknow. The large cone of visibility from the major traffic arteries
ensured by the absence of high-rise development around the parks, means that
the building domes dominate the skyline and command attention over long
distances. Their dominant verticality denotes symbolic power as do the long
horizontal stretches of Buddhist style railings enclosing vast precincts where no
other land use is allowed. Their location, size and imageability give them a
landmark status within the city.
Enfilade
Enfilade, or the linear structure of space as in a sequential arrangement of
spatial segments, offers the potential for a high level of control over movement
and social interaction. The degree of accessibility in nested urban precincts and
enfilade of rooms in buildings correlates with expression of power.
12
Hillier’s
analysis of space syntax is useful in understanding the sequence of urban spaces
that provide points of potential control over access and plazas at the cross-
roads.
13
Historic buildings and urban spaces in Lucknow (as elsewhere in the
Indian subcontinent) controlled physical access, punctuated movement, and
framed vistas through elaborate gateways. The linear series of walled courts in
the historic Imambaras (religious buildings for Shia sect rituals) were accessible
though gateways that were thresholds to increasingly private and controlled
sacred spaces. Enfilade is employed deliberately in forecourts in Ambedkar
Sthal, Prerna Kendra, Buddha Vihar and Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan. A series
of gateways control access to inner courts of Ambedkar Udyan, Kanshi Ram
Smarak Sthal, and Buddha Vihar, entry to which is only possible by purchasing
a ticket (figure 2). The lack of pedestrian access to memorial precincts from
streets with heavy, fast-moving traffic creates a moat-like effect whereby a
series of enclosures have to be penetrated before the memorial building can be
entered.
14
Memorials extend into the main crossroads (chauraha) of the city and
symbolically appropriate them through statuary in giant plazas. Parivartan
Chowk, north of Kaiserbagh and east of Begum Hazrat Mahal Park, an
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figure 2. Ambedkar Sthal Gateway (image courtesy of Amita Sinha).
mayawati and memorial parks in lucknow, india
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urban insertion by Mayawati in 1995, received negative publicity since it did
not fit in the Kaiserbagh Heritage District. A tall vertical structure holding a
globe at its summit and sheltering a seated statue of the Buddha marks the
center of a huge plaza that acts as traffic roundabout in the heart of Lucknow
(figure 3). Statues of three nineteenth-century social reformers and of
Ambedkar with inscriptions on pedestals mark the cardinal points in the
circular plaza where a number of streets converge. This location not only
ensures high visibility and landmark status but also marks the arrival of socio-
political change through BSP leadership in the historic core of Nawabi and
colonial times. Monumental plazas such as Bhimrao Ambedkar Chauraha
announce entry to the gateway on the Airport Road. Samtamulak Chauraha
at the convergence of five streets is an ensemble of statues of BSP icons, a
symbolic threshold to the kilometer long spine (part of it a bridge over the
River Gomti) punctuated by imposing, handsome gateways. The highly visible
statue plazas afford panoramic vistas into the urban landscape of converging
streets, access to which can be potentially controlled. More significantly they
assert the symbolic presence and gaze of BSP leaders at the major nodes of the
city.
Architecture
Mayawati’s memorial buildings in Lucknow appear to be unique in post-
colonial India, where memorialization of national leaders has largely
occurred using the medium of landscape design not architecture.
15
At
Rajghat in New Delhi, for example, groves, lakes and gardens commem-
orate Gandhi and Indian prime ministers. Indeed the closest parallel seems
to be the Victoria Memorial in colonial India in terms of monumental
grandeur and iconography that created a past for the British Raj.
16
Mehrotra includes Ambedkar Sthal in the category of counter-modernism
and resurfacing of the ancient in Indian architecture since the 1990s.
17
Ambedkar’s rejection of Hinduism’s exploitative and hierarchical caste
structure and his conversion to Buddhism is the raison d’etre for the
Buddhist architecture revival in BSP buildings. The neo-Buddhist style is
very evident in Sanchi stupa inspired domes, boundary walls as Buddhist
railings, chaitya window relief pattern on walls, free standing square pavi-
lions, and Ashokan pillars (figure 4).
figure 3. Parivartan Chowk (image courtesy of Amita Sinha).
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figure 4. Buddhist architectural elements in Ambedkar Sthal (image courtesy of Amita Sinha).
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The adoption of the Buddhist mantle comes via New Delhi where Sir
Edward Lutyens (1869–1944) and Herbert Baker (1862–1946) used a neo-
classical imperial style of architecture to legitimize the soon to be waning
British Empire. The dome of Rashtrapati Bhavan designed by Lutyens,
double height façade of Baker’s Secretariat buildings, upturned saucers,
fountains, and flat sheets of water in tanks have been unambiguously copied
in three memorial parks —Ambedkar Udyan, Kanshi Ram Smarak Sthal,
and Buddha Vihar (figure 5). The architecture of imperial Delhi houses
government institutions and is literally the seat of legislative and executive
power while the sole function of memorial architecture in post-colonial
Lucknow is reconstruction of collective memory. Buddhist and imperial
architectural elements imbue the memorial buildings in Lucknow with
borrowed associations of sacred and political power from India’s ancient
and recent history thereby legitimizing the empowerment of the Dalit com-
munity in the public sphere.
Scale
Although the urban landscape is only a medium for communicating authority
and is not inherently powerful or powerless, it can feel coercive in the
grandeur of its scale. The extra-human scale is created spatially and formally
though building structures and elements. At large sites —Ambedkar Sthal
(107 acres), Kanshi Ram Smarak Sthal (86 acres), Eco Garden (112 acres),
Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan (50 acres), Buddha Vihar (32.5acres) —are
built as huge rectangular and long linear plazas, oval and square greens, and a
radiating amphitheater. In the vast spatial expanses, there is little to establish
human scale and no enclosure except that afforded by a few buildings,
separated by large distances. The proximate senses —tactile, olfactory, and
haptic —are not stimulated and vision becomes the dominant sense in
experiencing the physical environment. The eye travels far along visual
axes established by linear elements —columns and rows of stone elephants.
The long vistas to buildings and other focal points are impressive in their
command of physical space and the sense of power that is communicated in
gazing at this landscape.
The extra-human scale is employed in buildings as well. The domes
soar —for example the height of the Kanshi Ram Smarak building dome
is 177 feet and is said to be one of the world’s largest. The high building
plinth leads to the soaring interiors (figure 6). The tall bronze fountains
(30 to 52 feet), 18-foot high marble and bronze statues, high gateways and
boundary walls, massive elephants, the 71-foot high stambh (column) in
Ambedkar Sthal, the larger than life animals in the Eco Garden, all dwarf
the individual and reinforce the extra-human scale of the buildings. With
the exception of palms, there are few trees to bring down the scale or
give enclosure. The building textures and the large-sized paving
patterns do not relate to the human body. The consistent use of extra-
human scale in space and building elements results in diminishing the
sense of physical self and making the physical environment appear domi-
nant and powerful.
Statuary
Mayawati’s memorials have been described as ‘architecture of statues’.
18
While
buildings frame statues in open spaces within the memorial parks and outside at
figure 5. Buddha Vihara (image courtesy of Amita Sinha).
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the city cross-roads, statues in plazas and lawns become nodes and termini,
creating a system of visual and physical axes that structure urban space, and
become focal points of vision and movement. The ensemble of four statues
facing the four cardinal directions —of Buddha, Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram and
Mayawati —gestures to the concept of chakravartin, the world-ruler, whose
power radiates out to the horizon. The figures gaze out into the public in a
mise-en-scene that lends a theatrical touch to the urban spaces (figure 7).
Iconographic representations of Dalit saints, social reformers, and leaders
build symbolic capital embedded in the personal charisma of the mahapurush.
This may appear as an anachronistic gesture given that memorial parks in post-
colonial India have followed an abstract and modern design vocabulary, but is
in keeping with the age old Indic ethos of veneration through figural imagery.
The function of statues goes beyond embellishment of architecture and
landscape, they are meant for darshan (ritual sighting of the divine in deity,
person, or place) and form objects of felicitation rituals on anniversaries and
other occasions. Statues of medieval saint poets —Kabirdas, Ravidas,
Ghasidas —and warriors —Birsa Munda —are very visible reminders of
greatness achieved in the face of extreme adversity. This deification of great
people, deeply rooted in Indic culture, converges with the colonial tradition
of erecting statues in parks and urban squares, thereby extending the sacred
embodied in mahapurush iconography into civic spaces.
19
Mayawati, however,
is celebrating not only social reformers and leaders of her party but her own
personality cult as well.
20
Etchings with vignettes of major events in her life
(and that of Kanshi Ram and Ambedkar) are found in memorial interiors,
supplementing the freestanding statues in a rich visual archive. This self-
glorification demonstrates a shrewd grasp of how visual culture can be
manipulated to garner support, win allegiance and thus votes in a populist
democracy.
figure 6. Kanshi Ram Smarak (image courtesy of Amita Sinha). figure 7. Buddha statue on Gomti Boulevard (image courtesy of Amita Sinha).
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With the rise of the BSP and Mayawati to power in Uttar Pradesh, statue
installation of Ambedkar and other social reformers not only received an
impetus, but also elevated the folk art into a monument. The little statue of
Ambedkar, about 15 000 of which were installed in the last two decades in
villages, towns and cities across northern India, has given way to an
ensemble of marble and bronze statues in memorials and urban cross-
roads, signaling the transformation of community-based movement to a
state-sponsored building enterprise with seemingly endless funds at its
disposal.
21
The insertion of statuary and its associated structures into elite
urban spaces in the city mark their appropriation and expresses the BSP’s
central agenda of building symbolic capital in the imagined Dalit commu-
nity. Other political parties in Uttar Pradesh —the Samajwati Party and
Lok Dal —have also built parks in Lucknow and dedicated them to their
leadersbyerectingstatues—but not with such abandon as Mayawati, who
seemed to have lost all restraint in her obsessive bid to fill the landscape
with statuary.
Spectacle
Tasteful lighting of buildings, parks, and plazas in memorial precincts
creates spectacular scenes at night time, enhancing their status as major
landmarks and nodes of the city. The multi-hued lighting of domes, walls,
and columns enhances architectural form; that of fountains, columns, and
statuary modulates space, recreating the monumental feel when daylight
fades. In Gomti Park, the dancing colorful fountains synchronized with
music create a dazzling dynamic landscape. Viewers are mesmerized by the
show, speaking admiringly of the spectacular effect and taking photographs
with their cell phones. The mood created is festive, different from that
experienced in the daytime and a major attraction to tourists who choose
to come back to the memorial precincts at night. The spectacular land-
scape, object of tourist gaze, is focused on the glorification of the BSP
leadership. This landscape communicates the symbolic power of Dalit icons
through colorful dynamic imagery and illusionistic effects. The audience is
awed and mesmerized into silence or reduced to social communication
focused around the object of their gaze.
22
Tourism serves Mayawati’s
dictum that the parks further her administration’sagendaof‘Sarvajan
Hitay va Sarvajan Sukhay’—benefit and happiness to all (as opposed to
Bahajun literally meaning many but referring to other backward castes
only) —‘doublethink’in which pursuit of power is disguised as public
service.
23
The rally grounds of Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan remain closed to the
public and are the only one among the memorial sites so far not open to
casual visitors. Their stated function has been to host political rallies only but
not to accommodate social events such as marriages and concerts. The land-
scape unambiguously expresses power enacted periodically in political
speeches to mass gatherings of up to 800 000 that affirm faith in party
ideology and reinforce solidarity among party cadres. Although named
Maidan, denoting a vernacular landscape of large empty grounds serving as
public commons, the rally grounds are designed as a paved amphitheater with
gently rising tiers, fitted within a trapezoidal site (figure 8). All site lines focus
on the person of the leader addressing the rally from a domed pavilion on a
raised platform. Statues of Bhimrao Ambedkar and his wife Ramabai under
domed kiosks on circular stepped plazas in trapezoidal lawns flank the central
pavilion. The emotional bonding between the leader and the masses is
facilitated by the design and validated by the iconic presence of Ambedkar
(and his wife), author of the Indian constitution that gave the power of the
vote to Dalits.
24
Fabricating heritage
The landscape vocabulary of the memorial parks/plazas is one of power
established through extra-human scale, neo-classical and revivalist architecture,
citadel-effect, and spectacle. In this Mayawati and her architect, Jay Kaktikar,
have fallen back on a universal idiom of power encoded in the built environ-
ment by autocratic, imperial and even democratic regimes. Imperial Delhi of
the British Raj, Chancellery, the proposed Reichstag in Berlin and Nazi
Rallies in Nuremberg, Germany, and other national capitals, Washington,
DC, Canberra, Islamabad, to name a few, have employed some of all the
above elements in symbolic display of power and legitimation of authority.
While these are or were functioning centers of administration, the memorial
landscapes of Lucknow celebrate the heritage of the newly constructed sub-
altern past.
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Imperial rulers in India’s history —Maurayas, Cholas, great Mughals, and
British —sought to leave their legacy in stone. The architectural history of
the Indian subcontinent is read primarily in its monuments, creating a
strong precedent that even late-twentieth-century regional leaders such as
Mayawati have sought to emulate. She has indeed done a remarkable job in
using the means of the elite and privileged in the past who sought to leave
a mark through extensive building programs. Although she has attempted
to encourage archival research and the discipline of history by building
museums in Prerna Kendra and Ambedkar Sthal, library and lodging for
Buddhist monks in Buddha Vihar, fabrication of Dalit heritage was her
most important agenda. This heritage is embodied in neo-revivalist
Buddhist architecture of ancient India, not Lucknow’s historic hybrid
Indo-Islamic and colonial architecture, although it did employ the nested
urban precinct idea from its urban past.
The Sanchi domes, elephant galleries, and Buddhist ornamentation and
railings of the memorial parks exist in an uneasy juxtaposition with the
historic Nawabi Lucknow. The recent spate of Mayawati’s memorial parks
and a few others memorializing regional parties and their leaders in the
recent past has highlighted the segmented nature of Lucknow’spublic
realm. While this layering reveals the passage of time, it nevertheless
interferes with the image of a visually coherent city. Few lessons for
building a cohesive public landscape can be found in going back further
in time. Historic Lucknow was oriented to the Gomti River with monu-
mental palaces, mosques, mausoleums, and gardens built on its southern
bank between 1781–1856 CE. In the aftermath of the uprising in 1857
bringing colonial rule in its wake, the urban center shifted to its south
with the building of cantonment in proximity to the railway station and
civil lines for the colonial bureaucracy. The Nawabi gardens were private
enclaves accessible to the wealthy and privileged; the colonial park was also
exclusive to the European and Indian gentry. As the population grew to be
about three million in the post-colonial period since 1947, the city has
expanded in all directions, especially in the north across the River Gomti,
and parks are being built on the urban fringes. Parks in the post-indepen-
dence era did seek to memorialize national leaders and build place identity,
but those earlier efforts have given way to contested and conflict-ridden
urban landscapes commemorating regional leadership, particularly along the
Gomti Riverfront towards the southeast.
25
Memorial parks and the public good
Among the many collective values that are expressed and promoted
through the built environment, the public good, inclusive and universal
as a shared resource of the public realm, is salient. It is proposed that the
public good is contained in three forms of capital —symbolic, social, and
environmental —produced and sustained by public spaces. Symbolic capital
is built from prestige and recognition garnered through display of wealth
and fulfillment of social obligations. It is a crucial source of power when
embodied and legitimated through objects and the built environment.
26
Mayawati’s autocratic power is explored through analysis of architectural
forms and spaces of memorials that celebrate heritage, commemorate mem-
ory, and thus reinforce collective identity. Social capital as ‘aggregate of
actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable
network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquain-
tance and recognition’can lead to the reproduction of inequality.
27
However, the public realm can be a catalyst for building social capital the
benefits of which include trust and cooperation in imagined and local
place-based communities. Social networks formed and sustained in face-
to-face encounters in public spaces can lead to civic engagement and
develop bridging and bonding forms of social capital.
28
In Lucknow, social
capital of the imagined Dalit community is reinforced by political rallies in
memorial parks leading to bonding within the group that does not bridge
gaps between caste groups. Another significant dimension of the public
good is the environmental capital built from natural resources and services
of sustainable ecosystems.
29
Parks, as urban settings where individual or
collective encounters with ordered nature occur, build the environmental
capital of the city —this is examined by analyzing specificdesignfeatures
of memorial parks and their assessment by visitors. It appears, however, that
the symbolic value of memorial parks in Lucknow overrides their social use
and environmental value. This hypothesis was tested in a survey of visitors
in Ambedkar Sthal, Kanshi Ram Smarak Sthal, Gomtifront Boulevard
(popularly known as Marine Drive), the Eco Garden, and Buddha Vihar.
30
Fifty visitors, randomly selected, responded to questions about symbolic,
social and environmental values, and improvements they would like to see
in the memorial park. The symbolic value of the park was interpreted from
their responses to open-ended questions regarding the role of the park in
mayawati and memorial parks in lucknow, india
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representing Dalit heritage and in improving Lucknow’s image. They were
asked to rate (on a scale of one to three) specificfeaturesoftheparkin
contributing to Dalit history and improvement of public spaces. Social and
environmental values were tested in a self-reported range of activities,
evaluation of the park as a place to meet other people, a place to enjoy
nature, and its environmental friendliness. Visitors were asked how often
and why they came, and what they liked and disliked about the park. The
majority of respondents were residents of Lucknow and of non-Dalit
background.
Symbolic value
Only half of the respondents at Ambedkar Sthal agreed that Ambedkar
Sthal represents Dalit heritage; only one fifthbelievedthattobetrueof
Kanshi Ram Smarak and that it raised the profile of Dalits; although
Ambedkar Sthal and Buddha Vihar were rated highly as a place to learn
Dalit history. The Eco Garden and the riverfront boulevard received the
lowest rating in this regard with a majority saying that they did not
contribute to Dalit heritage. One of the disliked features of Ambedkar
Sthal and Buddha Vihar was Mayawati’s statue that appeared to be elevat-
ing her to the level of Lord Buddha. The parks were, however, over-
whelmingly seen as improving Lucknow’s image through their
architecture, plazas, gardens and streetscapes as well as their connection
with the inserted monumental chaurahas. The resistance to acknowledging
memorial parks as symbols of Dalit heritage is curious given the very
visible presence of Ambedkar and BSP statuary inside memorial halls and
in plazas and streets. Since the majority of respondents were non-Dalits,
perhaps the explanation lies in the lingering antipathy and the refusal by
higher castes to give Dalits their due in the public sphere. To the visitors,
the symbolic value of parks appears to lie primarily in enhancing
Lucknow’s image, not in memorializing Dalit heritage, thus only partially
fulfilling Mayawati’s intentions.
Social value
Mayawati’s goal was to increase tourism through spectacular effects and
Buddhist-revival architecture in memorial parks. The extensive system of
plazas and parks commemorating Dalit identity bring Lucknow residents and
tourists in large numbers to gawp at the statuary and memorials. Most respon-
dents agreed that the parks did indeed bring tourists. But do they facilitate
recreational subcultures of exercise, play, and festivals that together with
informal socializing are responsible for building local communities? Social
value appeared to be lacking according to the respondents. The spaces are
designed for viewing buildings, statues, fountains and other objects and it is not
surprising that photography is a popular activity. The range of activities is not
large since the parks lack features that would promote play and interactions
figure 8. Ramabai Ambedkar Maidan (image courtesy of Amita Sinha).
studies in the history of gardens and designed landscapes: sinha & kant
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with the environment. People engage mostly in walking, sitting, and talking
with friends and family. Young couples seeking privacy in public spaces
dominate.
Lack of public transportation to the parks and the fact that they are large sites
surrounded by streets with heavy vehicular traffic precludes daily visits for
morning and evening walks and informal socializing that make small neighbor-
hood parks such people-friendly places.
31
Lack of food courts and vendors also
means that social gregariousness revolving around eating together is absent.
Respondents in all parks wanted seating, play facilities, drinking fountains, and
food vendors. These features not only fulfill immediate needs but also promote
sociability and can be installed to increase social value of the public parks. Both
indoor and outdoor spaces can be programmed for marriage and other cele-
brations; for example the Meditation Hall in Buddha Vihar, already a popular
place with the elderly, can host lectures and sermons that draw the public in
large numbers.
Environmental value
The new memorial landscape is not environmentally friendly. Parks do not
have much tree cover and the large built up mass creates a heat-island
effect requiring large bodies of water in hot summers to cool the micro-
climate.
32
They are popularly known as ‘stone gardens’because of their
vast expanses of paving, presumably built to avoid the maintenance
costs incurred in keeping nature under control. Instead of lawns, a non-
sustainable landscape, other kinds of ground cover could have been used
in Kanshi Ram Smarak, the Eco Garden and Buddha Vihar. The Gomti
Parks built on the floodplain do not physically connect with river nor
addressitsecology.TheEcoGardenappearstobedesignedasaJurassic
theme park with exotic flora, larger than life fauna and greenhouses
(figure 9).
Visitors to the Ambedkar Sthal, Kanshi Ram Smarak and Buddha Vihar are
conscious of the absence of environmental values in their design. All three
parks were rated low in being environmental friendly and as places to enjoy
nature. When asked what they disliked about the parks, visitors remarked
about the lack of canopy trees, excessive use of marble, and a lack of greenery.
The Eco Garden, however, was rated highly on environmental friendliness but
did not score as well on its natural value. The riverfront boulevard between
Ambedkar Sthal and the Gomti was also rated low on its environmental
friendliness and presence of greenery. Visitors want better views of Gomti
and more trees on the boulevard.
The landscape management of Gomti parks and the Eco Garden will
require huge resources that the city may not choose to commit. Besides
environmental sustainability, social sustainability is also questionable as the
parks are too large to be appropriated and maintained by local communities.
mayawati and memorial parks in lucknow, india
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Environmental values did not guide memorial park design; however, keeping
in mind the expressed needs of park users for shade and connection with the
river, tree planting in all parks will increase greenery, provide shade that will
also reduce the scale, and create a sense of smaller spaces that can be easily
appropriated by people. Some of the best used public spaces can be found on
the Gomti floodplain acting as maidans —the lawns over time can become
sites for cricket and other games and public gatherings. Although it would be
difficult to restore flood plain ecology, it may yet be possible to build ghats
(steps) and piers that would bring people down to the river and actively
engage with it.
Conclusion
Mayawati and the BSP were voted out of power on 6March 2012. Within a
week a new government was formed by the Samajwadi Party, with the
support of OBC (other backward castes) and Muslims, 21% and 29%ofUP’s
population respectively. Mayawati was accused of abusing her power as the
chief executive of the state in building this landscape of empowerment.
Diversion of state funds, pressing the state institutions into service, and giving
building contracts to Dalits and OBC have been criticized but none in
themselves are illegal acts. Resistance through filing by public interest litigation
(PIL) by citizens resulted in Supreme Court rulings in her favor. Critics say that
Mayawati’s government showed democracy at its worst because it brought an
autocrat into power, although voting her out of power in the past election has
demonstrated that democracy in India works within the context of caste
politics, the driving factor being balance of power in the long run among all
caste groups. It could be argued that there are other and more effective ways of
empowering the subaltern though education, government employment, and
slum rehabilitation schemes. Given that 85% of India’s population falls in the
OBC category, the needs are vast and the resources never enough to fulfill the
demand.
Mayawati’s central mission of memorializing Dalit leaders through devel-
opment of public spaces designed around statuary in the state capital has been
successful and will likely endure. The parks cannot be altered or building
structures demolished readily due to the extensive use of stone and building
technologies such as concrete raft foundations in a predominantly hardscape
environment. Mayawati has ensured that dismantling will occur at a huge
cost and will likely incur the wrath of Dalits, who presumably take inordi-
nate pride in the monuments. However, focused interviews with 29 Dalits in
April 2014 in Lucknow and its rural hinterland revealed a range of opi-
nions.
33
For the rural Dalits, memorial parks are symbolic of BSP achieve-
ments and a harbinger of economic opportunities for them, promising social
mobility and elevation. Among the urban Dalits, memorial parks have less
symbolic significance for those belonging to the lower socioeconomic strata
than for those occupying senior-level positions in the bureaucracy and the
economically prosperous. The younger respondents in their twenties are
impatient with the state of Dalit progress in society and do not view parks
as symbols of pride and hope.
The changed political reality requires a critical examination of the complex
set of interactions among symbolic, social, and environmental values and how
they may be negotiated in the planning and design of public spaces. This
appropriation of the public realm —which in theory is a collective space
owned by all, not just the Dalits —represents a segmented, perhaps even a
figure 9. Eco Garden (image courtesy of Amita Sinha).
studies in the history of gardens and designed landscapes: sinha & kant
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fractured Indian polity. Finding a center is ensuring the convergence of multi-
ple values for promoting the public good in the on-going, dynamic process of
urban landscape change.
34
Adding social and environmental capital to the
memorial parks, hitherto focused exclusively on buttressing the Dalit symbolic
capital, will make them more inclusive and be a step towards repairing the
deep fissures in society.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge readings and discussion in David Hays’seminar
Making History in developing the conceptual framework for the essay.
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA
Gautam Buddh Technical University, Lucknow, India
notes
1.Hindustan Times,14 March 2012.
2.The Economic Times,6March 2008.
3. Subramaniam Swamy, ‘Behenji’s Raj: Mayawati, the
Lutyens of Lucknow’,The Times of India,26
February 2012.
4. David Hays, ‘Making History’,Chicago Architecture
Club Journal Envisioning the Bloomingdale: 5Concepts,
11,2009, pp. 111–112.
5. Carl Becker, ‘Everyman His Own Historian’,
American Historical Review,37,1932, pp. 221–236.
6. Hayden White, ‘The Historical Text as Literary
Artifact’,Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural
Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1978), pp. 81–100.
7. Wayne Dynes, ‘Monument: The Word’, in Donald
Martin Reynolds (ed.), ‘Remove Not the Ancient
Landmark’Public Monuments and Moral Values
(Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gordon and Beach
Publishers, 1996), pp. 27–31.
8.Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les
Lieux de Memoire’,Representations, 26,1989, pp.
7–24; Murray Schane, ‘The Psychology of
Monuments’, in Donald Martin Reynolds (ed.),
‘Remove Not the Ancient Landmark’Public Monuments
and Moral Values (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gordon
and Beach Publishers, 1996), pp. 47–52.
9. Nicholas Jaoul, ‘Learning the Use of Symbolic
Means: Dalits, Ambedkar Statues and the State in
Uttar Pradesh’,Contributions to Indian Sociology,40/2,
2006, pp. 175–207.
10. Badri Narayan, The Making of the Dalit Public in North
India: Uttar Pradesh 1950–Present. (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2011).
11. David Lowenthal, ‘Fabricating Heritage’,History and
Memory,10/1,1988, pp. 5–24.
12. Kim Dovey, Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built
Form (London: Routledge, 1999).
13. Bill Hillier, Space is the Machine: A Configurational
Theory of Architecture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
14.The citadel look is a common device in the layout of
twentieth-century national capitals as in the parlia-
mentary complex designed by Geoffrey Bawa in
Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the Capitol Complex by
Louis Kahn in Dacca, Bangladesh. See Lawrence
Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
15. Yuthika Sharma, ‘Memorial Design in India’,Journal
of Landscape Architecture, India,9,2004, pp. 17–21.
16. The Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, the capital of
colonial India, was designed by Sir William Emerson
in the Indo-Saracenic architectural style —combi-
nation of Palladian and Indo-Islamic forms —in the
early 1900s. It commemorated Victoria, Empress of
India, in exhibition galleries arranged around a cen-
tral hall, capped by a soaring white marble dome.
See Thomas Metcalf An Imperial Vision: Indian
Architecture and Britain’s Raj (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989).
17. Rahul Mehrotra, Architecture in India since 1990
(Mumbai: Pictor, 2011).
18. Ibid.
19. The life-like representations lend the famous name a
vivid image, in keeping with the dual significance of
name (naam)andimage(roop) in Indic religious thought
and political discourse. Iconographic representations
provide a visual object for veneration and ritual com-
memoration. See Richard Davis, Lives of Indian Images
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
20. Mayawati has justified the erection of her statue in
her lifetime (this is not the norm) by claiming that
she is following the wishes of her mentor Kanshi
Ram. See Amita Sinha, ‘Public Spaces in Lucknow
—The Influence of Power’,Architecture+Design,
India, XXVI/2, February 2009, pp. 80–92.
21.See Jaoul (2006).
22. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, Trans.
Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone
Books, 1995).
23. See Dovey (1999).
24. So far only the BSP has organized rallies here, the
last one in December 2011 in which Mayawati
described her sacrifices for the cause of Dalit uplift-
ment, including her decision to remain single.
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25. Amita Sinha, ‘Colonial and Post-colonial Memorial
Parks in Lucknow, India: Shifting Ideologies and
Changing Aesthetics’,Journal of Landscape
Architecture, Europe, Autumn 2010, pp. 60–71.
26. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1984).
27. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’,inJ.
Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research
for the Sociology of Education (New York:
Greenwood, 1986), pp. 241–258.
28. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 2000); Larissa Larsen, Sharon Harlan,
Bob Bolin, Edward Hackett, Diane Hope, Andrew
Kirby, Amy Nelson, Tom Rex and Shaphard Wolf,
‘Bonding and Bridging: Understanding the
Relationship between Social Capital and Civic
Action’,Journal of Planning Education and Research,
24,2004, pp. 64–77.
29. Galen Cranz and Michael Boland, ‘Defining the
Sustainable Park: A Fifth Model for Urban Parks’,
Landscape Journal,23/2–4,2004, pp. 102–120;
Robert Constanza, ‘Natural Capital’, in Cutler J.
Cleveland (ed.), Encyclopedia of Earth (Washington,
DC: Environmental Coalition, National Council for
Science and the Environment, 2008).
30.Gaurav Rana, Arunima Sharma, Shrankhala Saxena
and Sonali Singh, students in the Government
College of Architecture, Lucknow, carried out the
survey in August 2012.
31. Clare Cooper Marcus and Carolyn Francis (eds),
People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space
(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990).
32. A positive relationship between the density of urban
tree canopy at the neighborhood block group level
and the amount of social capital at the individual
level was found in a survey of Baltimore residents.
See Meghan Holtan, Susan Dieterlen and William
Sullivan, ‘Social Life Under Cover: Tree Canopy
and Social Capital in Baltimore, Maryland’,
Environment and Behavior, published online 27
January 2014, pp. 1–24.
33. Interviews were conducted in April 2014 with six
respondents each in the villages Arro Khamajipur in
Sitapur District and Pakhanpur in Sultanpur District,
and 17 from Lucknow.
34. Mayawati attributed her party’s defeat to Muslims
voting for the Samajwadi Party; perhaps if she had
erected memorials to Nawabi Lucknow she may not
have lost so heavily.
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