By Sahil Bansal
Prologue
This academic work intends to explore the ideas of Patrick Geddes who was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, philanthropist, city planner, and educationist. The aim is to unearth Patrick Geddes’ thoughts and experiments in city planning, technology, environment, education, and knowledge systems. This unearthing will be done in juxtaposition to the thoughts of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Indian freedom fighter. So far, the engagement with these two men, and especially with Geddes, has been a very formulaic one. In such formulaic approach one sees a very subdued version of these two men where they are paraphrased, presented and that’s the end of it. Therefore, attending to the call of pedagogical anarchy, I have chosen to write this paper in an unconventional manner. I wish to shed the run-of-the-mill style of reading these men in a sanitized manner and see how an opponent of ‘verbalistic empaperment’[1] speaks to an avid writer. This exploratory expedition will unfold as a dialogue between three fictional characters – Scot, Mohan, and Guru – who are academician friends employed at a prestigious university in London and are in India for a seminar. The conversation below takes place over a dinner in Delhi before the trio heads out to catch their flight to the UK. This conversational style wishes to return to these genii the wonderful eccentricity that they have been robbed of. It wasn’t only logic that was driving them; it was also a strong power of imagination. The idea is to take the audience of this conversation along not by the pull of rationality but by the strength of vision.[2]
The three characters will give voice to the viewpoints of Geddes and Gandhi, along with those other doyens like Rabindranath Tagore. The reason why I wanted to engage with Geddes on the touchstone of Gandhi and vice versa, is to reveal the hidden gems that lie in the idea of both these men with respect to India. Gandhi is someone who offers a very well-reasoned critique of the ‘West’ in its effort to impose its ideas on the ‘rest’. Therefore, it only sounds rightly rigorous to put the ideas of this Scottish man through a sieve of Gandhian ones, to reveal how culturally informed the former was in his ideas about India.
A.K. Ramanujan, the scholar and poet, notes, “Walter Benjamin once dreamed of hiding behind a phalanx of quotations which, like highwaymen, would ambush the passing reader and rob him of his convictions.”[3] But this piece, is not an attempt to follow in the footsteps of Benjamin. This writing is quotation heavy but for the twin aim of defending itself against the characterization of being a charlatan scholarship and to avoid paraphrasing the actual nurturers of the idea to say something that they have put in words much better than my own. The reader must engage with this as if they are themselves sitting at the table with the trio, thereby not referring to the footnotes with the very first superscript that one may come across. I urge the reader that only after having read (or rather heard) this dialogue for the first time as a conversation, they should only then go on to do a pedantic dissection of its pregnant imagination to serve the purposes of an education system that this conversation so critiques.
The Dialogue
(The trio is sitting surrounded by Harry Winston tapestry right under a Viennese chandelier hanging from a 23-ft-high ceiling at the United Coffee House in Connaught Place.[4] As their server for the evening walks away leaving behind the sillage of Vegetarian Platter, Guru speaks.)
Guru (while helping himself to a Falafel, exclaimed): Have you guys heard what fresh imperialism they are ushering in with their Central Vista Project! The Government Building Act, 1899, itself a British construction, allows the central government to build anywhere without permission of the urban local body. Despite the government’s much trumpeted abhorrence of colonial rule that made it target the Central Vista in the first place, this old colonial law is activated.[5] One can now only put hope in the prophecy “whoever builds a new city in Delhi will lose it.”[6]
Scot: Indeed, Guru. But interestingly, this isn’t the first time that a controversy has stirred up over the design of the Central Vista. Immediately after independence a stern demand was raised in the parliament to evict statues of British colonizers from the whole of Central Vista area. While most parliamentarians were eager to replace imperialist projection with a nationalist one through largescale demolitions, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to take a more Geddes-like approach of “conservative surgery.”[7] He said, “Our general attitude has been, first of all, to remove (those statues) as might be considered offensive, and that too, gradually without too much fuss.”[8]
The Indian Haussmann, Bimal Patel, with his Central Vista Project is a victim of the ‘crippled-mind syndrome’[9] and has fallen into a banality of routine. Through projects like this the aim is to impose the one-fits-all solution in the name of making India “world-class.”[10] This, I would say, is nothing but the colonised mind breeding a neo-colonialism of its own.
Mohan: I agree, Scot. In fact, the whole drama[11] concerning the renaming of August Kranti Park back in the day as Swaraj Chowk was done by the elite to satisfy themselves with (false) attainment of Swaraj[12], instead of locating Swaraj within themselves as Mahatma Gandhi proposed. This is a testament to the fact that India re-invented itself “in the shadows of an ever-departing but never-departed Empire.”[13] “The tiger’s nature but not the tiger.”[14] The Central Vista Project of today is no exception.
Scot: Charles Abrams, the worldwide housing expert, remarked that if you scratched an Indian urban planner, you would find a fascist.[15] It is amply true today, when one is not even allowed to photograph the construction underway at the Central Vista. The Project “views the public with paranoia and kneecaps any institution that purports to undertake lawful process.”[16] Need is to take stock and embrace what Patrick Geddes had said about city planning with fascinating amount of brilliance and eccentricity. Although expressed back in the day, his ideas still hold great relevance today. Especially when the gridiron of thoroughfares is being laid as a solution that will not only cauterize the problems but with them also the cities.
Mohan: Who even is Patrick Geddes to offer ideas for Indian development?
Guru (looks eagerly at Scot and speaks): Wasn’t he a friend of Rabindranath Tagore who played a part in the planning of Shantiniketan? Those two men had a long relationship built on “common interests in an integrated and experiential approach to learning, by their internationalism, by their love of nature and their deep respect for the limits of human knowledge.”[17] If my knowledge serves me right, Geddes once asked Tagore to write a song for their party to represent international sympathy and good-will.[18] But Geddes, oh man! he was like “jack of all subjects.”[19]
Scot: Yes, Guru, it is that Patrick Geddes I am talking about!
Mohan, “if one dropped in on a luncheon group at a faculty club of a metropolitan university and asked a dozen scholars: Who is Patrick Geddes, there would probably be a dozen answers, and though some of the answers would be hazy, they would all, I think, be different; and one might get the impression that Professor Geddes is a vigorous institution, rather than a man.”[20] He “combined ecology and locality, to emphasise that the region was the ideal unit of planning.”[21] He was a proponent of anarchic pedagogy.[22] Through his Place-Work-Folk method, Geddes gave the world Bioregionalism, much before the 1970s semiosis of the idea took place.[23]
Mohan: He does sound like a playful planner. But why would one want to transplant his Scottish ideas in India, Scot? There are many instances in Indian history where cross-cultural translation of ideas has been done in a wackadoo manner. The 1970s madness of ‘beautification’ like that of Turkman Gate was anything but a skewed transplant of Daniel Burnham’s City Beautiful movement?[24] Moreover, from what I infer, he with his blinkers on was fixated on the City. Although I do not, but I believe a lot of Indians would see city as a “parasitic growth on the rural countryside, siphoning away its surplus, draining its manpower, without recompense for the village.”[25] Why not instead turn to Gandhi for advice? I am sure he has a lot to offer on social planning, on colonialization of the Indian mind, on technology and temple, on science and supernatural, on west and westoxication,[26] you name it. As much as he was comfortable at the GD Birla mansion, so was he at the Sabarmati Ashram. The man was a living laboratory! I guess we need someone who can juggle together his astronomy and astrology. One who can “read the Gita religiously having bathed and painted on his forehead the red and white feet of Visnu, and later talk about Bertrand Russell and even Ingersoll.”[27]
Scot: Mohan, I am not denying that Gandhi has a lot to offer us. In fact, I would love to discuss him further on. We might as well discover that Patrick Geddes and Mahatma Gandhi shared much more in common than just birthdays. You would be amazed at how aptly Geddes is ‘the one’ who you have explained so many attributes of. Geddes would never agree for a transplant of the kind that you so abhor. While operating on a city, he would rather begin with a “diagnostic survey”, wherein he would “unravel the old city’s labyrinth and discern how it has grown up”,[28] instead of first pouncing right on the design of the new parliament building. He understood the great importance of walking and realizing that the focus of a town planner, if he really wanted to breathe life into the city, must be the child. He wrote, “the child should obviously be strong, healthy, mentally developing and full maturation and participation in life will follow and so also with the home. The same sequence is true for a city, and all others are false.”[29] Geddes very well understood the importance of harmony between the town and the country. He understood that “as no two regions are alike but all different in their conditions, each requires a varied degree of de-centralization.”[30] Moreover, Mohan, he isn’t as foreign as you may think him to be. Irrespective of the vigilant and enterprising Emden of the Germans, his ideas made their way to India.[31] He spent a good decade in India from 1914 onwards, during which he penned almost fifty detailed and holistic town planning reports for various Indian cities and towns.[32]
Although he was invited by Lord Pentland of Madras but was then he was commissioned by various officials and Rajas to make sense of those who they governed – the Indians.[33] But Geddes being true to his beliefs and loyal to the trust of the ailing city held the methods of British engineers and sanitarians to be the problem and not the solution. He wrote a report on Calcutta’s Barabazaar in which he exhibited his impeccable understanding of the hybridity of indigenous modernity of India which could neither be wholly identified with British logic nor with the Indian one.[34] As Ramachandra Guha writes: “In the Changar mohalla of Lahore, he was appalled by a scheme for redevelopment which planned to destroy five mosques, two dharamsalas, tombs and temples, and shops and dwellings. It spared only one building: the police station. Geddes condemned the scheme as an “indiscriminate destruction of the whole past labour and industry of men, of all buildings good, bad and indifferent, and with these, of all their human values and associations, profane and sacred, Police Office only excepted!”.”[35]
Mohan, let me also address your point about his cultural awareness, through one of his civic planning experiments. Geddes has very successfully “laid hold of an imagination of a whole community – of the population of an entire city and its surrounding villages.”[36] This city was Indore. Sudipta Kaviraj, a scholar of postcolonial and subaltern studies, while developing a concept of “conceptual boundary”, to understand the Indian interplay of cleanliness, space, and religion, writes, “the household’s internal space had to be cleaned at the hours which coincided with time for worship (puja). Thus, cleaning chores were considered quasi-religious duties for household members. Yet the garbage collected from this obsessive house-cleaning would be dumped on a mound right in front of the house. It is thrown over a conceptual boundary. The street was the outside, the space for which one did not have responsibility, or which was not one’s own, and it therefore lacked any association with obligation, because it did not symbolize any significant principle, did not express any values.”[37] Indore of 1918 was one that was ‘decimated by plague’, ‘depressed by malaria’ and with fugacious life expectancy of mere 18.6 years. The Maharaja had already spent hefty sums before he considered the most economical and effective solution of all – Patrick Geddes! Upon his arrival Geddes began with his ‘diagnostic survey’ of Indore. Every corner he turned in the streets of Indore he was met with hostile people referring to him as the avant-courier of plague. Although Geddes penned a two-volume report to repair the town, he also took the hostility of locals as a challenge and with a plan in his mind he asked the ruling prince to make him the Maharaja for a day.[38] The prince agreed. Geddes very well understood the culture of the city and with that the notion of “conceptual boundary” that was so embedded in the Indian psyche. He decided to extend the bounds of conceptual boundary to the whole of Indore. Maharaja Geddes announced, “that on next “Diwali” day a new type of pageant would be given; and that instead of following customary sacred route, it would take a new one—through those streets the houses of which should be judged by us as best done up for the occasion. Diwali, it must be understood, is a holiday more important than can be any of ours, for it represents four or five great days in one. It is the day kept as Harvest Home; it commemorates Rama’s slaying of a terrible giant; it is also the New Year’s day of a very ancient and sacred calendar; and, for our purposes most appropriate of all, it is the signal for that strange and terrible domestic cataclysm, that annual insurrection of the women, from which all men can but flee, and which is as well known in West as East—here as spring-cleaning!”[39] This pageant of Gods and Goddesses was the most venerated presence of god that the householders felt they could ensure. Therefore, the mohallas of Indore and not just the households came within the ‘conceptual boundary’ and the cleanliness drive to welcome the divinity began. “Advertisements were posted for the removal of rubbish from homes and courtyards without charge; and soon had a big squad of carters busy. In six weeks of preparation residents of Indore took out some 6,000 loads of rubbish, with much inconvenience to the rats formerly housed therein.”[40] Finally, on the day of pageant along with the divinities were the floats of evils of the city and a new goddess, ‘the city of Indore’. And now as Geddes walked the plague-free streets of Indore, the locals said, “There is the Old Sahib who charmed away the plague!”
Geddes very consciously also uses indigenous metaphor of Nagar-Yoga in his Indore Report. Instead of imposing an abstract plan he relates and identifies his work with the Indian heritage of Nagar Yoga.[41] He wrote, “India, with its high individualism of the spirit, calls each to organise for himself his religion and his life-education together; hence Karma Yoga, Gyan Yoga, Raj Yoga; and Bhakti Yoga, through work, intellection, vision and love. Family life and Village life have each reached high developments, and true Paribar-Yoga and Gram Yoga have thus long been in prowess… but this widening, and deepening of individual life; and stage farther, into social life-that of the Town, the City. But this is nothing short of Nagar Yoga.”[42]
So Mohan, what do you make of this man now?
(Been vying for a pause was their server for the evening. As soon as Scot stopped the server chipped in and asked the trio if they were ready for the main course to be served. The men chortled at each other and nodded their heads in affirmation. In came Chicken Ala Kiev, Hari Bhari Asharfian, Changezi Murg, Navrattan Korma, Peepe Wale Chole, Ambala Meat Masala, Hyderabadi Gosht, and a basket of assorted Naans and Kulchas)
Guru (once the servers had begun serving, speaks abruptly): I think what this country needs is a reawakening of science, art, aesthetic, nature, nationalism, and especially anarchism, not as different notions but as a whole which will not enforce a teleological progression but an everyday evolution of desire as causation. Phantasmagoria, I believe, will be at the heart of this causation. For it is in the phantasmagoria that “there lie our main possibilities of Art and science.” This phantasmagoria passes “each of us before the windows of our lives.”[43] “Most of us, are soon called back to the workshop or the book-room, to the bed and table of our lives, and thence too seldom return. But now and then some chosen or forgotten child stays by his window all his life. Hence it is that at times we hear some strange voice of joy or sorrow and hail a new poet; or if his gaze be silent, but he make for us some colour-note of the phase of beauty he has seen and felt, we call him painter. One tells us of sky and trees, another sketches the passing faces, a third the incident; whence landscape, portrait, genre, and the rest. While all these mainly observe and feel, others observe and wonder; and thus your curious child wanders away from the world of Art to re-discover that of Science… One fixes his eyes upon the siege-scarred castle, and by and by we call him historian; another puzzles himself about the crags below, and becomes a geologist; another sees only the trees and birds – the naturalist; a fourth sits peering into the mist and listening only to the wind – the meteorologist.”[44] “Some people have strange ideas that they live by money. They think energy is generated by the circulation of coins. Whereas the world is mainly a leaf-colony, growing on and forming a leafy soil, not a mere mineral mass: and we live not by the jingling of coins, but by the fullness of our harvests.”[45]
The other day I was reading the work of Ananda Coomaraswamy, a pioneering historian, metaphysician and philosopher, and he writes, “you see this loss of beauty in our lives is a proof that we do not love India: for India above all nations, was beautiful once and that was not long ago. It is the weakness of our national movement that we do not love India.”[46] We need an integration of the laboratory and the garden as one sees happening at Bose’s Basu Vigyan Mandir.[47] We need not be luddites or technophiles. We need a mix of Gandhi and Geddes. Our education needs the Outlook Towers, the Hollow Globes, and the Valley Sections.[48] What we do not need is knowledge and interest like that of a barrister, who gets up in a few evenings the general ideas, and technicalities, of a subject necessary for his case, and then forgets them; just like too many matriculates or graduates, when the day of urgency or examination is over.[49]
Mohan: I do catch the drift of what you two are saying. It wouldn’t after all be bad that a Gandhi, Geddes, and Tagore amalgamation becomes ingrained in the way we understand, think, and do things in India. A lot of people who fail to understand him think Gandhi was a Luddite who wanted Indians to grind away in villages. As a part of his Swaraj, Gandhi wanted Indians to develop a self-conscious and equal relationship with technology and environment. Unlike Karl Marx, who put all his faith in benign influence of fully realized technology,[50] Gandhi wanted an individual to emulate the will of self-control and draw a line with respect to his desire for technology.
Gandhian thought on technology brought together the material and the moral. You should not forget that everything that Gandhi was thinking was built on the foundation of freedom from colonialism (both outwardly and inwardly). Lewis Mumford, an American philosopher of technology, said, “the weight of megamachine itself was the chief burden of civilization: not merely did it turn daily work into a grievous penalty, but diminished the psychical rewards that compensate the hungers, farmers, and herdsmen for their sometimes-exhausting labours.”[51] He understood that the everlasting contribution of megamachine is the myth of its irresistible nature. So did Gandhi. That is why he saw hope in the tool of self-control against the myth of irresistibleness of technology. Gandhi welcomed any machinery which does not deprive masses of men of the opportunity to labour, but which a man can handle at will without being its slave.[52]
To burst this myth of Ludditism that has come to surround Gandhi, it needs a trip through the gossip of history. Get this! Roughly one hundred degrees were awarded to Indian men by Massachusetts Institute of Technology during colonialism in India. Interestingly a lot these men were from the families who were closely aligned with Gandhi. In this gossip lies the idea of Indian national movement that runs deeper than what meets the eye. Although there were engineering colleges in India, but their curriculum was only limited to the extent that served the purpose of colonialism. “In contrast to its position on engineering, the British encouraged scientific training to improve agriculture, which would then lead to higher crop yields and higher tax revenues. In fact, the government of Bengal sent eight students to Cornell University to study agriculture between 1905 and 1909.”[53] Bal Kalelkar, son of a close associate of Gandhi and himself one of those chosen ones who participated with Gandhi on Salt March, was sent off to MIT by Gandhi along with a letter in which he wrote, “This is to introduce young Kalelkar to all my friends in America. He was brought up under my hands. He is one of the most promising among the boys brought up in Satyagraha Ashram. Any help rendered him will be appreciated.”[54] In a follow up letter to Kalelkar, Gandhi wrote, “I can understand that western music has claimed you. Does it not mean that you have such a sensitive ear as to appreciate this music? All I wish is that you should have all that is to be gained there and come here when your time is up and be worthy of your country.”[55] These MIT engineers did come back to India and fought alongside Gandhi and initiated national movements to free the country from the clutches of colonialism. They participated in Quit India movement and went to jails without second thoughts. This connection is subtle but important in understanding the India that a group of nationalists was fighting for—a technological India.[56] If I were to acquaint you to the larger picture here it would be that Gandhi was developing a critique of the Western modernity which was heralded by an uncontrollable snowballing of capitalism and imperialism. This is why Gandhi wanted to usher in the Swadeshi movement, because he wanted such kind of machinery and production which kept in mind the individual and not the capital.
Guru: Mohan, I feel yours is a very Tagore like position. Tagore gave a criticism at the opening of his “Sadhana” that in the West Nature and Man have come to be viewed apart. Geddes too, in fact, agreed with this critique. In fact, he quotes Tagore in one his reports as follows, “For in the city life Man naturally directs the concentrated light of his mental vision upon his own life and works, and this creates an artificial dissociation between himself and the Universal nature within whose bosom he lies.”[57]
But Swadeshi, I must point out, was a tricky terrain! “On this issue of shunning foreign goods Gandhi had a profound disagreement with Tagore. Tagore’s argument was that given the price and the quality of imported cloth, asking people to buy local cloth amounted to seeking a lowering of their standard of living. Both in his writings and also in his classic novel Ghare Baire Tagore argued that the peasants were better off with imported cloth than the locally-produced one, and that insistence on swadeshi amounted to a callous disregard for their welfare.”[58]
Mohan: Guru, this idea of individual welfare (the self-centeredness of it) at the expense of your neighbor’s welfare which was brought in by the ‘English system’, is what Swadeshi movement wanted to challenge. The violent and egotistical colonial science wanted to engulf the indigenous knowledge systems. Let me give you an example that Coomaraswamy uses. He “saw proletarianization by science as a process of deculturation through appropriation and standardization. The introduction of synthetic dyes had destroyed these craft traditions, and the art of dyeing, rather than being a celebration of variegated techniques differing from family to family and district to district, became a standardized set of scientifically ordained procedures to be applied mechanically from packets distributed by visiting German salesmen.”[59] “It is sinful for me to buy the latest finery of Regent street when I know that if I had but worn the things woven by the neighbouring spinners and weavers, that would have clothed me and fed and clothed them.”[60] Even Geddes, you see, wanted “life to be Eupsychic or in an older word Religious – a term which was familiar to Indians, till “Western Education” enlightened her, as the serpent did Mother Eve in the western city. And religious, he said, is where man is helping man.”[61] An example is “of an Indian woman who refused to buy a washing machine because, she said, then ‘what would become of my washerman’s livelihood?’.”[62] Therefore the relation between individual and social must be, as Geddes would say, “like flower and butterfly wherein they are bound by an abiding partnership of mutual aid.”[63]
Scot: Mohan, I believe, that these thoughts on technology, knowledge, and Western imperialism that you have expressed, are a lot like those held by Geddes. But Geddes was not as accusing as Gandhi when the people failed at self-control against the temptation of the English-staan (Capitalism). He realistically considered the strength of lure and desire. But he did want to embed a spiritual pushback in people. For him this spiritual pushback could be ingrained through inculcation of an everyday-ness in the education systems. He wrote, “A community of individuals thus educated would, of course, be still exposed to lure of property, lust of body, pride of race. But these temptations, instead of falling on a seed-bed prepared for their growth, would meet and struggle with countering mental habits. Yet it is a common fact of experience that interest in the things of the spirit, in order to determine action effectually, must be deep-rooted in the routine of everyday life and its labours of maintenance. In other words, all education worth the name has been and must be at once realistic and idealistic.”[64] Geddes in that sense was Eutopian as opposed to a Utopian Gandhi. Geddes’ Eutopia lies in the city around us and it must be planned and realised, here or nowhere, by us as its citizens – each a citizen of both the actual and the ideal city seen increasingly as one.[65] Sounds almost like a multidimensional understanding of Gandhi’s Swaraj, does it not?
But, to not peddle a falsely-sanitised view, for Geddes too Utopias were indispensable to his social thought. Both these men had an identical aim, of eradicating the evils of industrialisation and capitalism. “Geddes once observed that he was not against Indians travelling abroad for science, but he warned against the insidious power of western thought.”[66] Geddes’ nuanced understanding of interplay between society, environment, and technology is revealed in his distinction between Paleotechnic and Neotechnic worlds.[67] It was a distinction built in the phantasmagoria of utopias between Kakotopia and Eutopia.[68] Utopia and Inferno both, for Geddes, make up the needful chiaroscuro of the city.[69] For him “there were two Wests, the Paleotechnic West of the mechanical-colonial era and the neo-technic, vitalist, ecological West.”[70] Education was employed as a crucial tool in persistence of this ‘parasite (of technology) in transit’.[71]
Neotechnic age is all about economisation of national resources, about planting trees and taking stock of ‘real savings’. Geddes said, in Neotechnic age for a man ‘his forest is a true Bank, one very different from Messrs Rothschild’s “credit”’. As the Neotechnic order comes in, the working man will turn into a productive citizen – he will set his mind towards house building. He will demand and create noble streets of noble houses, gardens, and parks; and “temples of his renewed ideals.”[72] Geddes futuristically suggested the usage of tides and water as energy resources as part of his Neotechnic order.
If one were to think about it, Gandhi, Tagore and J.C. Bose were the harbingers and productive citizens of the Neotechnic order in India. Be it Gandhi’s Phoenix Settlement, Sabarmati Ashram or Sevagram or be it Tagore’s Shantiniketan or be it J.C. Bose’s Laboratory, Basu Vigyan Mandir, what were they if not ‘temples of these renewed ideals’ of the Indian Neotechnic order. They realised the currency of forest and indigenous knowledge. They saw life in their surroundings instead of subscribing to the life-giving myth of industrial science. They realised that it is all an interplay of facts, memories, plans, and acts. That you play in the garden, you let it come in with you at night, you plan its future and then you sustain its future.[73]
Geddes himself taught sociology in the University of Bombay “through discussions, public conversations, seminars, and excursions with students to parts of Bombay. His enthusiastic support of social and educational experiments and encouragement of scientific work and creative thinking made the intellectual circles in India look upon him as an Indian rishi if old.”[74] Geddes wanted to rejuvenate the Sarasvati, the Pallas Athena and the Wisdom of Solomon.[75] The way to do this was replacing examination with estimation.[76] In estimation he wanted a continuous assessment and thesis-writing be done instead of the practises of cram and commonplace. He advocated diffusion of fresh ideas in everyday conversation of the salon and café and he rejected the rote learning technique that is adopted at ‘well-endowed moral vacuums’.[77][78] Books are, for him, dry dung-cakes of the cram-trade publishers.[79] He wanted a synthesis of fields that were so far treated to be specialised as if they had blinkers on. In his Report to the Maharaja of Indore, Geddes laid out a detailed plan for a ‘University Militant’ that would anarchise and free the Indian education system from the clutches of western mimicry.[80] He proposed a Central Tower like the Outlook Tower for this University Militant of Indore which would further this synthesis of all the various specialisms. He verily suggested a Eutopian way forward for Indore. He said that in Indore itself “are already present much of the needed resources. Here are the students, teachers too, for one of the vitally reconstructive centres of the University Militant, and thus for developing the needed active nucleus of the future University of Central India. All this only needs fuller mobilisation and better equipment.”[81]
Guru: I too believe that there is a lot for one to learn from the Geddesian ideas of university and education. Especially when the present education system, to prepare students for “original research” saturates them with “long rituals of previous lecturings and memorisings. As if to ensure the spontaneous flow of a well, we first fill it up as fully as may be.”[82] In fact, both Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru would agree with me. Tagore wrote to Geddes in May 1922: “I have often wished for my mission (of Shantiniketan) the help of men like yourself who not only have a most comprehensive sympathy and imagination but a wide range of knowledge and critical acumen. It was with a bewilderment of admiration that I have so often followed the architectural immensity of your vision.”[83] Nehru wrote, to teenage Indira from Almora Jail, that the Scotsman’s approach to education and learning, of how he “wanted children to grow up with a first-hand knowledge of the worlds of nature and of man and to develop an unspoiled appreciation of life [and] the beauty of nature.”[84]
Take Charles Darwin, the biologist, whose “peculiar success as an investigator was in association with his deep feeling of ignorance of nature, and even of technical branches of natural science, both of which he humbly, yet actively, recognised. Geddes said every true investigator knows that he is still a child-questioner.”[85] As much as Gandhi didn’t want movements to be mere dreams,[86] Geddes too realised the long term nature of his education reform. He in the meantime wanted to make sure that those who were caught in the existent University system, be taken care of. He practically proposed that those who fail Matriculation or later examinations, and who fall rather than rise must be rescued by taking steps like increasing provision of alternative courses at the school level which will offer outlets in agricultural, technical, and artistic fields etc., for the non-matriculates and others.[87]
In fact, I would also go ahead and tell you about Sister Nivedita who ran through this interconnected circle of people. She had various exchanges with Geddes. She was a disciple of Swami Vivekananda and she befriended both J.C. Bose and Geddes and their wives too.[88] Sister Nivedita acted “as the main mediator and promoter of Okakura’s Pan-Asian aesthetic, trying to harness it to the cause of nationalism and an artistic revival in India.”[89] She was a teacher, social activist, author, school founder. Truly, the lady with the lamp.[90] But seeing you get impatient and lest my Changezi Murg get cold, I will stop!
Mohan (chuckles and speaks): When has my impatience ever stopped you, Guru?
But yes, I have been eager to share with you some very interesting observations based on my inference of what you two have said at length. When Gandhi went to Shantiniketan he asked that the service of paid cooks be dispensed with and the students be made to cook their own food. He said, “it would enable the teachers to control the kitchen from the point of view of the boys’ physical and moral health, and it would afford to the students an object-lesson in self-help.” When Gandhi asked Tagore’s view on this suggestion he said, “the experiment contains the key to Swaraj”.[91] Gandhi writes of this experience that all alike took the thing up with zest and Shantiniketan became a busy hive.[92] From Shantiniketan, Gandhi said, we infer that the scavenger’s work would be our special function in India. Gandhi
much like Geddes wanted to conduct a ‘diagnostic survey’ of his own. On being asked, by one of his companions on his way from Shantiniketan to Poona, as to when will the time for Swaraj in India come, Gandhi replied, “For one year I am to do nothing …I should travel in India for gaining experience, and express no opinion on public questions until I have finished the period of probation. Even after the year is over, I will be in no hurry to speak and pronounce opinions. And so I do not suppose there will be any occasion for Satyagraha for five years or so”[93].
Scot, of what you have said about Geddes’ ideas on interplay of technology, environment and education, I believe, the only problem with Geddes’ method is that it requires a Patrick Geddes to carry it out![94] But there is no doubt in the fact that his ideas will do good to the India of today and one of the major reasons for this will be the fact that his were not ideas that were altogether foreign and culturally misplaced. He understood the importance and value of the indigenous systems unlike the Macaulays and the Lutyens of the British Raj.
In fact, he is much like Gandhi both of whom unabashedly stood by their experiments, conducted in the laboratories of the city and the body respectively. Gandhi too was not opposed to “technology per se but to technologism, which was a condition that created a hierarchical relationship between man (those who possess technology) and man (those who do not), and man and nature.”[95] Gandhi had understood that colonialism and its capitalism was nothing but a rule of various professionals who aimed at suppressing any alternative indigenous knowledge system. His Hind Swaraj is a testament to this inference of mine.[96] Be it nature cure against the bio-medicalisation of pills and doctors or be it the indigenous order against the colonial law of Macaulay, the accounts of such imperialist wars are endless. “However, Gandhi was of the firm belief that if people followed a correct lifestyle, one that ensured that they did not suffer any ailment, they would help to reduce the role of the doctor and decentralise the entire process of bio-medicalisation.”[97] For Gandhi the ideas of health, science, education, technology, and environment were all rooted in his ideals like that of non-violence and in his end goal of de-colonising India and Indians. Therefore, although Geddes and Gandhi had the aim of betterment of the quality of life, their motivations were slightly different as were their standpoints in the whole drama. “Gandhi’s concern with his body cannot simply be understood as an obsessive compulsion to exercise self-control in the interest of public service by tapping into the spiritual power of shakti… these were as much an issue of public health as one of politics, morality, and religion.”[98] Think of it this way, Gandhi would absolutely hate Eno or any sort of antacid for that matter because it is while banking on Eno that we let our appetites run wild, like we are doing right now. We lead ourselves to ailments that call for bio-medicalisation and a life dependent on colonial medical intervention.[99] Gandhi clearly writes, “I over-eat, I have indigestion, I go to a doctor, he gives me medicine, I am cured, I over-eat again, and I take his pills again. Had I not taken the pills in the first instance, I would have suffered the punishment deserved by me, and I would not have over-eaten again. The doctor intervened and helped me to indulge myself. My body thereby certainly felt more at ease, but my mind became weakened. A continuance of a course of a medicine must, therefore, result in loss of control over the mind.”[100] “This view of Gandhi is a lot like that of Foucault who argues that bio-medicalisation seemed to have occurred in the beginning of 19th century, when the focus of modern medicine shifted from being health-centric to one that defines normal and abnormal body conditions. What Gandhi visualised, Foucault explained through the archaeology of discourse on medical practise.”[101]
But please don’t think of Gandhi as a fanatic with biased vendetta. He was at the same time critical of indigenous knowledge systems too. Ayurveda, he said, is “a classical Indian system of humoral medicine, for several reasons: it placed the agency of healing outside the reach of everyone; it had become an elite, upper-caste urban system of medicinal healing and, as he put it to the physician Vallabhram Vaidya, ”Ayurveda has not yet become a science. In a science there is always room for progress. Where is any progress here?”.”[102] As Geddes in his Neotechnic order wanted one to realise the latent strength in nature around us, so did Gandhi. In fact, air was one of the most important elements of Gandhi’s natural pharmacopoeia.[103] But today, as the sad state of affairs has it, the Aarogyadham where Gandhi experimented with Nature Cure too has been bio-medicalised. It now operates as an institutionalised hospital employing doctors with degree and diplomas and is equipped with
modern machines and technology which function to restore health at a price which is hardly affordable for many.[104]
On technology and its future in India, Gandhi’s wisdom was well ahead of his time.[105] Much before the invention of airplanes Gandhi said “it has been stated that, as men progress, they shall be able to travel in airships and reach any part of the world in a few hours. Men will not need the use of their hands and feet. They will press a button and they will have their clothing by their side. They will press another button and they will have their newspaper. A third, and a motorcar will be in waiting for them. They will have a variety of delicately dished-up food. Everything will be done by machinery. Formerly, when people wanted to fight with one another, they measured between them their bodily strength; now it is possible to take away thousands of lives by one man working behind a gun from a hill. This is civilisation.”[106] Unlike Geddes’ delusional optimism about the dawn of Neotechnic order, Gandhi could predict that Paleotechnic order of his day will probably grow into a megamachine. Therefore, he knew that Swaraj will need a well-disciplined sense of “self-control” (swaraj) to fight the myth of technology (remember Mumford!) and mere “countering mental habits”[107] won’t sail us through. Therefore, Gandhi wanted people to make use of renewable resources instead of non-renewable ones because once the madness of technology initiates it serves not the need of people but the greed of its possessors by utilising even the very last non-renewable resources. The aim was to not build a necropolis for ourselves.
Both Gandhi and Geddes realised that technology in a Neotechnic order is the cause of all unemployment and misery.[108][109] “Gandhian notion of invention had a sense of communities fighting obsolescence inventively. In that sense khadi was not a Luddite act of resistance but a theory of invention and inventiveness. Gandhi was a master citizen and inventor. One must emphasise that inventiveness demands irony and humour. Jamnalal Bajaj once donated a car to Gandhi’s ashram, which refused to function after a while. A pair of bullocks pulled it on occasions. Gandhi called it his own Ox-FORD.”[110]
(While the men were taking in Gandhi’s humour. Mohan suddenly looks at his swiss watch and speaks)
Okay you two, there is so much more about this conversation which can be said but if we do that now we will all miss our flight. So shall we call for the check and I promise to bore you while we are aboard Etihad?
Scot and Guru (laughing in unison): Yes, let’s do that!
(The trio paid the bill. Got the leftovers packed in premium quality plastic boxes and distributed them to the ragpickers outside the restaurant. Having dispensed with their guilt with leftover boxes, the trio hopped into their Black Mercedes and drove off to the Indira Gandhi International Airport to catch their Etihad flight to the UK.)
Peroration
The trio after the dialogue, has abruptly departed from one ivory tower to another. But they leave the reader with a curiosity to take their conversation into one’s ‘in-world’ and then render it with a plan into the ‘out-world’, as Geddes suggested we do with the garden.[111] The teleological obsession with conclusions has curbed people like Geddes and Gandhi, and their readers. Therefore, I have chosen to leave the reader suddenly, standing alone in the Connaught Circus as the trio drives away. The reader is left filled with ideas and yet in need for a closure. This need for closure is what I intend to fuel with a question: how far one can assimilate the Zoom meetings of today with Geddes’ Outlook Tower?[112]
[1] Indra Munshi, ‘Patrick Geddes: Sociologist, Environmentalist and Town Planner’ (2000) 35(6) EPW < www.jstor.org/stable/4408911 > accessed 24 May 2021
[2] Wendy Lesser, ‘Patrick Geddes: The Practical Visionary’ (1974) 45(3) TWPR < https://www.jstor.org/stable/40103012?seq=1 > accessed 21 May 2021
[3] A.K. Ramanujan, ‘Is there an Indian way of thinking? An Informal Essay’ (1989) 23(1) CIS < https://profcohen.net/reli113/uploads/texts/ramanujan.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
[4] Sourish Bhattacharyya, ‘ Why Delhi’s United Coffee House remains forever young’ (DailyO, 26 may 2018) < https://www.dailyo.in/variety/united-coffee-house-restaurant-delhi-connaught-place/story/1/24443.html > accessed 24 May 2021
[5] Alpana Kishore, ‘Bit by bit, trick by trick: How Central Vista became a reality’ (Newslaundry, 19 may 2021)
< https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/05/19/bit-by-bit-trick-by-trick-how-central-vista-became-a-reality > accessed 24 May 2021
[6] William Dalrymple, City of Djinns (Penguin Books 2003) 80
[7] Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India (Lund Humphries & Co., 1947) 40
[8] Kelly D. Alley, ‘ Gandhiji on the Central Vista: A Postcolonial Refiguring’ (1997) 31(4) MAS 967, 973 < https://www.jstor.org/stable/312851?seq=1 > accessed on 24 may 2021
[9] AG Krishna Menon, ‘Imagining the Indian City’ (1997) 32(46) EPW 2932, 2932 < https://www.jstor.org/stable/4406063?seq=1 > accessed 24 May 2021
[10] AG Krishna Menon, ‘Modi’s Central Vista Plan shows Indian urban planners are as complicit in destroying heritage’ (The Print, 8 March 2020) < https://theprint.in/opinion/modis-central-vista-plan-shows-urban-planners-complicit-in-destroying-heritage/377464/ > accessed 24 May 2021
[11] Kelly D. Alley, ‘ Gandhiji on the Central Vista: A Postcolonial Refiguring’ (1997) 31(4) MAS 967, 973 < https://www.jstor.org/stable/312851?seq=1 > accessed on 24 may 2021
[12] Ranajit Guha, ‘On Some Aspects of the Histiriography of Colonial India’ in R. Guha and G. Spivak (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies (OUP 1988) < https://pages.ucsd.edu/~rfrank/class_web/ES-200C/Articles/Guha.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
[13] Mithi Mukherjee, India in the shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History 1774 – 1950 (OUP 2010) 218
[14] Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press 2010) iv
[15]AG Krishna Menon, ‘Modi’s Central Vista Plan shows Indian urban planners are as complicit in destroying heritage’ (The Print, 8 March 2020) < https://theprint.in/opinion/modis-central-vista-plan-shows-urban-planners-complicit-in-destroying-heritage/377464/ > accessed 24 May 2021
[16] Alpana Kishore, ‘Central Vista is an illegitimate monument to deceit’ (Newslaundry, 13 May 2021) < https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/05/13/blind-men-at-work-central-vista-is-an-illegitimate-monument-to-deceit > accessed 24 May 2021
[17] Ramachandra Guha, ‘A Common Thread’ (The Telegraph Online, 18 May 2020) < https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/a-common-thread-patrick-geddes-the-scotsman-who-befriended-swami-vivekananda-and-rabindranath-tagore/cid/1786620 > accessed 24 May 2021
[18] Ramachandra Guha, ‘A Common Thread’ (The Telegraph Online, 18 May 2020) < https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/a-common-thread-patrick-geddes-the-scotsman-who-befriended-swami-vivekananda-and-rabindranath-tagore/cid/1786620 > accessed 24 May 2021
[19] Philip Boardman, The worlds of Patrick Geddes: biologist, town planner, re-educator, peace-warrior (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1978) 243
[20] Lewis Mumford, ‘Who Is Patrick Geddes?’ (The Survey, 1 February 1925) < https://www.unz.com/print/TheSurvey-1925feb01-00523 > accessed 24 May 2021
[21] Shiv Viswanathan, ‘An ode to Planning Commission’ (The Hindu, 21 April 2016) < https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/lead-article-an-ode-to-the-planning-commission/article6350850.ece > accessed 24 May 2021
[22] Federico Ferretti, ‘Situated Knowledge and Visual Education: Patrick Geddes and Reclus’ Geography (1886-1932)’ (2017) 116(1) J. of Geo. < https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00221341.2016.1204347 > accessed 24 May 2021
[23] Daniel Christian Wahl, ‘Design and Planning for People in Place: Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) and the Emergence of Ecological Planning, Ecological Design, and Bioregionalism’ (Medium, 9 March 2017) < https://designforsustainability.medium.com/design-and-planning-for-people-in-place-sir-patrick-geddes-1854-1932-and-the-emergence-of-2efa4886317e > accessed 24 May 2021
[24] AG Krishna Menon, ‘Imagining the Indian City’ (1997) 32(46) EPW 2932, 2933 < https://www.jstor.org/stable/4406063?seq=1 > accessed 24 May 2021
[25] AG Krishna Menon, ‘Imagining the Indian City’ (1997) 32(46) EPW 2932, 2933 < https://www.jstor.org/stable/4406063?seq=1 > accessed 24 May 2021
[26] Prashant Khattri, and PC Joshi, ‘Bio-Medicalisation and Gandhi’s Vision of Health: Observations from Sevagram’ (2015) 50(10) EPW < www.jstor.org/stable/24481456 > accessed 24 May 2021
[27] A.K. Ramanujan, ‘Is there an Indian way of thinking? An Informal Essay’ (1989) 23(1) CIS < https://profcohen.net/reli113/uploads/texts/ramanujan.pdf > accessed 21 May 2021
[28] Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India (Lund Humphries & Co., 1947) 27
[29] Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India (Lund Humphries & Co., 1947) 26
[30] Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India (Lund Humphries & Co., 1947) 28
[31] Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the study of Civics (Williams & Norgate 1915) ix
[32] Indra Munshi, ‘On the Margins of Sociology: An Appreciation of Patrick Geddes’s Work in India’ (2013) 62(2) Soc. Bulletin < https://www.jstor.org/stable/23621062?seq=1 > accessed 24 May 2021
[33] Howard Spodek. ‘City Planning in India under British Rule’ (2013) 48(4) EPW < www.jstor.org/stable/23391350 > accessed 24 May 2021
[34] Martin Beattie, ‘ Colonial Space: Health and Modernity in Barabazaar, Kolkata’ (2003) 14(2) Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Rev. < https://www.jstor.org/stable/41758015?seq=1 > accessed 24 May 2021
[35] Ramachandra Guha, ‘Making Indian Cities Habitable: the Legacy of Patrick Geddes’ (The India Forum, 19 June 2020) < https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/making-indian-cities-habitable > accessed 24 May 2021
[36] Patrick Geddes, ‘The Outlook Tower: A Schoolboy’s Bag and a City’s Pageant’ (The Survey, 1 February 1925) < https://www.unz.com/print/TheSurvey-1925feb01-00525/> accessed 24 May 2021
[37] Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices about Space in Calcutta’ (1997) 10(1) Pub. Cul. < https://shekhar.cc/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/kaviraj.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
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[40] Patrick Geddes, ‘The Outlook Tower: A Schoolboy’s Bag and a City’s Pageant’ (The Survey, 1 February 1925) < https://www.unz.com/print/TheSurvey-1925feb01-00525/> accessed 24 May 2021
[41] Douglas E. Goodfriend, ‘Nagar Yoga: The Culturally Informed Town Planning of Patrick Geddes in India 1914-1924’ (1979) 38(4) Hum. Org. < www.jstor.org/stable/44126305 > accessed 24 May 2021
[42] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 169 – 170
[43] Patrick Geddes, ‘The Sociology of Autumn’, The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal (The Book of Autumn) (Patrick Geddes and Colleagues 1895) 27
[44] Patrick Geddes, ‘The Sociology of Autumn’, The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal (The Book of Autumn) (Patrick Geddes and Colleagues 1895) 28
[45]Philip Crowe, ‘ Patrick Geddes’ ideas of civic engagement in 21st century (Medium, 13 June 2017) < https://medium.com/spaceengagers/space-engagers-bringing-patrick-geddes-ideas-on-civic-engagement-into-the-21st-century-bca520e39c89 > accessed 24 May 2021
[46] Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Art and Swadeshi (Ganesh & Co. 1912) 4 < https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.201377 >
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[49] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 66
[50] K. Gopinathan Pillai, ‘Gandhi And The Concept Of Alternative Technology’ (1988) 49(3) Ind. J. of Pol. Sci. < https://www.jstor.org/stable/41855882?seq=1 > accessed 24 May 2021
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[54] The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes < https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/mahatma-gandhi-collected-works-volume-78.pdf > 391
[55] The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes < https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/mahatma-gandhi-collected-works-volume-85.pdf > 128
[56] Ross Bassett, ‘MIT‐Trained Swadeshis: MIT and Indian Nationalism, 1880–1947’ (2009) 24(1) Osiris < www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/605976 > accessed 24 May 2021
[57] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) page 178
[58] Prabhat Patnaik, ‘Gandhi, Technology and Employment’ (2018) 46(11-12) Soc. Sci. < www.jstor.org/stable/26599996 > accessed 24 May 2021
[59] Shiv Visvanathan, ‘On Ancestors and Epigones’ (Seminar 500, April 2001) < https://www.india-seminar.com/2001/500/500%20shiv%20visvanathan.htm > accessed 24 May 2021
[60] Prabhat Patnaik, ‘Gandhi, Technology and Employment’ (2018) 46(11-12) Soc. Sci. < www.jstor.org/stable/26599996 > accessed 24 May 2021
[61] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 17-18
[62] Shiv Visvanathan, ‘On Ancestors and Epigones’ (Seminar 500, April 2001) < https://www.india-seminar.com/2001/500/500%20shiv%20visvanathan.htm > accessed 24 May 2021
[63] Volker M. Welter, Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life (MIT Press 2002) 31-32
[64] Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, The Making of Future: Our Social Inheritance (Williams & Norgate 1919) xvii – xxvii
[65] Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the study of Civics (Williams & Norgate 1915) vii
[66] Shiv Visvanathan, ‘On Ancestors and Epigones’ (Seminar 500, April 2001) < https://www.india-seminar.com/2001/500/500%20shiv%20visvanathan.htm > accessed 24 May 2021
[67] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 16
[68] Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the study of Civics (Williams & Norgate 1915) 60
[69] Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the study of Civics (Williams & Norgate 1915) 84- 108
[70] Shiv Visvanathan, ‘On Ancestors and Epigones’ (Seminar 500, April 2001) < https://www.india-seminar.com/2001/500/500%20shiv%20visvanathan.htm > accessed 24 May 2021
[71] Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the study of Civics (Williams & Norgate 1915) 60 – 83
[72] Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the study of Civics (Williams & Norgate 1915) 60 – 83
[73] Patrick Geddes, The World Without and The World Within: Sunday Talks with my Children (The Saint George Press, 1905) < https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnvdkh&view=1up&seq=14&q1=garden > accessed 24 May 2021
[74] Indra Munshi, ‘On the Margins of Sociology: An Appreciation of Patrick Geddes’s Work in India’ (2013) 62(2) Soc. Bulletin < https://www.jstor.org/stable/23621062?seq=1 > accessed 24 May 2021
[75] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 15
[76] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 65
[77] Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes: Social Evolutionist and City Planner (Routledge 1990) 24
[78] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) page 50
[79] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 16
[80]Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 14 – 18
[81] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 18
[82] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 64
[83] Ramachandra Guha, ‘Making Indian Cities Habitable: the Legacy of Patrick Geddes’ (The India Forum, 19 June 2020) < https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/making-indian-cities-habitable > accessed 24 May 2021
[84] Ramachandra Guha, ‘Making Indian Cities Habitable: the Legacy of Patrick Geddes’ (The India Forum, 19 June 2020) < https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/making-indian-cities-habitable > accessed 24 May 2021
[85] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 64
[86] Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press 2010) 73
[87] Patrick Geddes, Town Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore Part II (Holkar State Printing Press 1918) 67
[88] Tom Kane, ‘ Tagore’s School and Methodology: Classrooms Without Walls’ (2016) 1(1) Gitanjali & Beyond < https://gitanjaliandbeyond.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GB-COMPLETE-ISSUE-1-GNB-pc1_compressed.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
[89] Murdo Macdonald, ‘Education, Visual Art and Cultural Revival: Tagore, Geddes, Nivedita, and Coomaraswamy’ (2016) 1(1) Gitanjali & Beyond 39, 46 < https://gitanjaliandbeyond.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GB-COMPLETE-ISSUE-1-GNB-pc1_compressed.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
[90] Sandipan Mitra, ‘Making Space For ‘Science’ In A Colonial City: A Study Of Basu Vigyan Mandir’ (2017) 78 Proc. of the Ind. Hist. Cong. < www.jstor.org/stable/26906141 > accessed 24 May 2021
[91] MK Gandhi, The Story of my experiments with truth (Navjivan Publishing House 1968) 428 < https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/pdf-books/my-experiment-with-truth.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
[92] MK Gandhi, The Story of my experiments with truth (Navjivan Publishing House 1968) 428 < https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/pdf-books/my-experiment-with-truth.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
[93] MK Gandhi, The Story of my experiments with truth (Navjivan Publishing House 1968) 429 < https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/pdf-books/my-experiment-with-truth.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
[94] Wendy Lesser, ‘Patrick Geddes: The Practical Visionary’ (1974) 45(3) TWPR < https://www.jstor.org/stable/40103012?seq=1 > accessed 21 May 2021
[95] Prashant Khattri, and PC Joshi, ‘Bio-Medicalisation and Gandhi’s Vision of Health: Observations from Sevagram’ (2015) 50(10) EPW < www.jstor.org/stable/24481456 > accessed 24 May 2021
[96] Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press 2010)
[97] Prashant Khattri, and PC Joshi, ‘Bio-Medicalisation and Gandhi’s Vision of Health: Observations from Sevagram’ (2015) 50(10) EPW < www.jstor.org/stable/24481456 > accessed 24 May 2021
[98] Joseph S. Atler , Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism ( University of Pennsylvania Press 2000) 6-7
[99] Joseph S. Atler , Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism ( University of Pennsylvania Press 2000) 12
[100] Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press 2010) 63
[101] Prashant Khattri, and PC Joshi, ‘Bio-Medicalisation and Gandhi’s Vision of Health: Observations from Sevagram’ (2015) 50(10) EPW < www.jstor.org/stable/24481456 > accessed 24 May 2021
[102] Joseph S. Atler , Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism ( University of Pennsylvania Press 2000) 13
[103] Joseph S. Atler , Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism ( University of Pennsylvania Press 2000) 15
[104] Prashant Khattri, and PC Joshi, ‘Bio-Medicalisation and Gandhi’s Vision of Health: Observations from Sevagram’ (2015) 50(10) EPW < www.jstor.org/stable/24481456 > accessed 24 May 2021
[105] Vineeta Pathak, ‘Modern Technology In Gandhian Perspective’ (2013) 74(1) Ind. J. of Pol. Sci. < www.jstor.org/stable/24701024 > accessed 24 May 2021
[106] Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press 2010) 36
[107] Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, The Making of Future: Our Social Inheritance (Williams & Norgate 1919) xvii – xxvii
[108] Prabhat Patnaik, ‘Gandhi, Technology and Employment’ (2018) 46(11-12) Soc. Sci. < www.jstor.org/stable/26599996 > accessed 24 May 2021
[109] Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the study of Civics (Williams & Norgate 1915) 86
[110] C. V. Seshadri and Shiv Visvanathan ‘The Laboratory and the World’: Conversations with C. V. Seshadri’ (2002) 37(22) EPW < www.jstor.org/stable/4412195 > accessed 24 May 2021
[111] Patrick Geddes, The World Without and The World Within: Sunday Talks with my Children (The Saint George Press, 1905) < https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnvdkh&view=1up&seq=14&q1=garden > accessed 24 May 2021
[112] Tom Kane, ‘ Tagore’s School and Methodology: Classrooms Without Walls’ (2016) 1(1) Gitanjali & Beyond < https://gitanjaliandbeyond.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GB-COMPLETE-ISSUE-1-GNB-pc1_compressed.pdf > accessed 24 May 2021
Bio:
Sahil Bansal is a Masters of Law (LL.M.) student at the University of Cambridge. He is enrolled as an Advocate on rolls of the Bar Council of Punjab and Haryana. He did his B.A.LL.B. at Jindal Global Law School and his J.D. (exchange) at the University of California, Davis. His academic interests include researching and writing about Law and Social Issues.
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