Our 25th hOur: 12/09

WELCOME TO A [WORLD] HERITAGE CITY: AHMEDABAD

Paris, Rome, Moscow and now Ahmedabad…Yes Ahmedabad is all set to take its rightful place in world history. A city which is rich in customs, culture, cuisine and more than that in architectural civilization, is standing on the threshold to become India’s first World Heritage City. Indeed, the city is a living heritage, and the journey has begun for that coveted tag. We ‘Amdavadis’ celebrated World Heritage Week just recently by holding road shows and art exhibitions, cultural dances and experts’ talks, craft workshops and heritage walks. Rather, Ahmedabad was the first cityin India to have started a Heritage Walk way backs in 1997, now almost a daily event. So here we invite you to join the ‘talk’ that we attempt to ‘walk’.

Founded in the year AD 1411, Ahmedabad will be celebrating600 years of its existence just over one year from now. Naturally many stories and legends are associated with this city. Jab kutte pe sassa aya, tab Badshah ne Shaher basaya’. [When the hare chased the dog, the emperor built the city, impressed by this act of bravery]. Ahmedshah Badshah was camping on the banks of river Sabarmati then. It is said that the water of Sabarmati turns its people not just brave, but good businessmen and art lovers too. From a medieval trading hub the entrepreneurs like Kasturbhai Lalbhai converted this city into country’s textile capital. Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Vikram Sarabhai were other architects to give the shape to the city which rode the industrial revolution and provided a base for India’s freedom movement. From Badshahs to city’s textile barons-everyone was fascinated by good art and architecture and attempted to construct some of the most beautiful monuments and the best carvings in the world.

If the world today recognizes Mahatma Gandhi as the apostle of peace, Ahmedabad has a major role in making of the mahatma. It was here on the river banks that ‘Sabarmati ka Sant’ incubated his experiment with truth [Satyagraha]. When he left his this karmabhoomi to launch the freedom struggle, he also left behind two ashrams and a string of institutions. Kochrab Ashram at Paldi and Satyagraha Ashram at Sabarmati, built earlier in the last century, are the places of pilgrimage for the believer in Gandhianphilosophy and nonviolence.The ‘Gandhi Smarak’ was designed by a well known architect Charles Correa. Experts say that he adapted an open grid plan with minimalism and functionalism from another legendary architect- Le Corbusier, who designed landmark buildings like ‘Sanskar Kendra’ and ATMA building in Ahmedabad, which are on the world map now. One of the foremost architects of twentieth century, Louis Kahn, also left his foot prints in IIM building in sixties which is best described as a fusion of “brick masonry and concrete’. These all are now considered milestones in Ahmedabad’s architectural saga. But what gives Ahmedabad a unique character is the lovely heritage of the Walled City and the glorious master pieces of ‘stone- weaving’ at Sarkhej Roza and Adalaj Stepwell.

Bhadra fort, and then Jama Masjid, were the first buildings built in the city by Ahmadshah Badshah. The fort wall and 12 gorgeous gates were completed by 1486 AD by his descendant Mohmmad Begda, and the ‘walled city’ with semi circular form was born. Today, these 12 monumental sentinels of security act as a gateway to the city’s glorious past. There are almost hundred Jain temples in the old city, some of which are architectural ornaments from medieval Gujarat. Swaminarayan temple too has some of the best wooden carvings in the country. The other celebrated monuments of the walled city are the majestic mosques, which are supposed to be most elegant of the various forms of Sultanate and Saracenic architecture, evolved during middle ages in India. Most of these Islamic structures bear subtle undertones of the Hindu architectural principles. If the historian James Douglas is to be believed, Emperor Shahjahan was inspired by these edifices here during his stay as The Governor of Gujarat and conceived the designs of buildings to come up in Agra.'The bud was in Ahmedabad, it blossomed in Agra to bear the fruit of Taj Mahal, the greatest monument of love anywhere in the world'.

It is in this old city that 10,000 ancient houses stand, arrayed in the celebrated ‘pols’. These 600 pols of Ahmedabad are the exuberant riots of beautiful wooden facades, lovely wooden brackets, lovingly carved fenestrated windows, magical balconies, talkative ‘otlas’, whirring ‘chabutaras’, community wells, action packed chowks and the maze like interconnecting narrow streets, with secret passages too. Thousands of years of Indian traditions of making buildings, streets and towns continue to exist in these densely packed clusters of pols. The resulting urban architectural heritage of the walled city, spread over the area of 550 hectares with a population of more than four lac inhabitants, is unparalleled in the world and it still wows one and all across the globe. No wonder that many historians and travelers in 17th and 18th centuries found Ahmedabad as big as London and as beautiful as Venice; having more grandeur than Acropolis of Athens, even.

Over the last 600 years rulers changed-Sultans, Mughals, British,Dutch and Marathas- but what remained intact was the spirit of the common man which proved a core pillar of strength in the city’s growth. Anarchy during maratha rule or downfall of the textile industry or the earhquake and riots in this decade…,’Amdavadi’ has fought every crisis with courage and emerged as a winner. He has kept his past alive and looks forward to a promising future.

The ‘pol’ houses, which capture the essence of community living, are unique to Ahmedabad. Here every house has a story to tell and every carved panel on the door propagates rich values and reflects the lofty ideals of religious yet progressive society.

Say, in this panel a girl and a boy are depicted as reading books. This just does not speak about the value of education, but also emphasizes the gender equality in those days in Ahmedabad. But to me, it is something beyond that- the intellectuality of these chubby children confirms safe birth, healthy neonatal stage and cared early childhood in that era. Were the health care providers of the bygone times aware about the significance of our ‘Neocon-2009’ slogan? May be or not. What ever-it can be perceived that these children are reading and conveying loudly the same message of we Neonatologists- ‘Committed to Survival- Intact’ to one and all in the community. They may be Health Activists, Human Sociologists, Hardcore Ecologists or even Heritage Conservationists!