I used to think it was just me.
Nostalgia playing games again. Romanticizing a past that probably wasn’t even that magical. Maybe I’m just getting old—like the old uncle at the paan tapri who says things like, “Aajkal ke bacche toh…” But then I said it aloud, hesitantly, like a schoolboy admitting he still believes in ghosts: “Gandhinagar’s not the same.”
And to my surprise, no one laughed.
In fact, my friends nodded. “Exactly! Something’s off.” We didn’t need to define it. We just knew.
Because the Gandhinagar we grew up in wasn’t just a planned city with grid sectors and broad roads. It was poetry in bricks. A Chandigarh-inspired dream drawn in Gujarati. A green refuge in a state always a little too fond of concrete. Red-brick government quarters, nestled in mini-jungles that were meticulously planned to breathe life into the concrete. Those low-rise buildings, their earthy charm, were my childhood forts, my escape hatches.
Today? The grid remains, a skeletal reminder of what was. But that’s about it. Like the current government’s approach to everything – change what you can to plaster your name on history, and suck the soul out of what you can’t.
Take GH-4 circle, the city’s beating heart. It used to be a garden, a summer night haven. Kids chasing fireflies, elders sipping golas and lassis from the thelas that popped up like magic, vanishing by midnight like a Manekchowk illusion. Then, Modi’s “development” crew arrived. They turned it into a lifeless “Central Vista” clone. Tunnels that drown in the slightest rain, a park that only gets cleaned when foreign dignitaries are due for “Vibrant Gujarat,” and pet owners letting their dogs relieve themselves on “No Pets Allowed” signs while park employees scroll through Instagram, chasing dopamine hits.
Ask any Gandhinagar kid where they first learned to drive. The answer: the Helipad ground. That’s where our feet found clutch control. Where sibling fights became crash courses in diplomacy. Where cricket matches were more thrilling than an IPL match.
That helipad dome wasn’t just steel and concrete. It was our personal SpaceX. The closest we came to freedom before turning 18.
Now?
It’s barricaded. Locked up in the name of “trade shows.” The public space got gentrified. And the Town Hall? Redesigned. Another thing being “developed” beyond recognition. I don’t know what it’ll be when it reopens, but I know this: it won’t be ours.
Those low-rise government buildings—the soul of Gandhinagar’s aesthetic—are vanishing faster than common sense in WhatsApp forwards. Their place is being taken by generic apartment blocks you’d confuse for some random society in Gota or Bopal, a testament to how a statesman like Sardar Patel’s name is being swapped for the unpolished signatures of leaders we’d rather not name.
So, where’s the Gandhinagar charm now?
It’s “developed” now. Bulldozed by builders. Rubber-stamped by babus. And, of course, politically packaged as “New Gandhinagar.” What they don’t say is that this “new” version feels more like a symphony of ticky-tacky buildings just like any suburb of Gurgaon cosplaying as a city with culture.
Let’s be real. The hand behind this reboot isn’t invisible. It wears a half-sleeve kurta and grins like it just invented gravity. Peel back the layers, and it’s the architect of this shift, with his trademark knack for sidelining history, erecting monuments to himself. While 40-50% of the costs, as hushed murmurs from independent journalists suggest, slip into the party fund—despite the exuberant efforts of mainstream media to keep it quiet, those democratic watchdogs man the fort where the press should stand tall. But why stop at Gandhinagar? Everything his hand touches turns into a lifeless shell of its living, breathing history—Motera Stadium, Central Vista, Gandhi Ashram, the same pattern on different canvases.
The supreme leader’s fingerprints are all over Gandhinagar’s “revamp.” And like everything he touches, it isn’t just about roads and parks—it’s about rewriting history with a fountain pen that only spells his name, leaving history’s script in smudges.
Take the Motera Stadium. Once proudly named after Sardar Patel—the man who stitched 562 princely states into one India post-independence—a cricketing colosseum echoing with Gavaskar’s 10,000 Test runs in ‘87 and Tendulkar’s 18,000 ODI runs in 2011. And then, almost overnight it got razed, rebuilt, and renamed after… himself.
Subtlety died that day.
Now it’s the world’s largest stadium. Impressive? Perhaps. But also deeply ironic. The party that has always milked Patel’s legacy literally erased his name with a dedication not even the most devoted fan club would muster.
But why stop at a stadium when you can gentrify democracy itself? From Gandhinagar’s red-brick quarters—where I pedaled as a kid, escaping into their shady embrace—turning into a sprawl of ticky-tacky blocks, to Motera Stadium’s ₹800 crore rebirth from Sardar Patel’s legacy to Narendra Modi’s 1.32 lakh-seat monument, the pattern stretches to Delhi now.
Central Vista emerges as a ₹25,000 crore whisper of change, reimagining Lutyens’ Rajpath—a silent witness to history that Nehru deemed too significant to destroy. After the British left, he called on architects like Habib Rahman and Raj Rewal to repurpose the past, keeping its soul alive, a choice I felt as a teenager watching those old lamps along Rajpath, their glow easing the day’s heat. Take Rashtrapati Bhavan, where our forefathers left British insignia on the door handles, a quiet reminder carved in time for our children to touch and understand. The supreme leader, though, seems too captivated by his own reflection to honor that legacy.
A key piece of his plan swaps out 7, Lok Kalyan Marg—once Race Course Road, the prime minister’s home under Rajiv Gandhi—for a new structure next to Rashtrapati Bhavan. The crown jewel of this “new Central Vista” is a Parliament building, an indelible mark of his rule on Indian democracy. The Print catalogs the toll: 12 landmarks demolished—the National Museum, Indira Gandhi Centre for Arts, Krishi Bhawan, Shastri Bhawan, Vigyan Bhawan, the vice-president’s residence, Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan, Nirman Bhawan, Udyog Bhawan, Raksha Bhawan, the National Archives annexe, and 7, Lok Kalyan Marg. It’s a roll call of history erased, echoing Gandhinagar’s lost charm and Patel’s sidelining at Motera. The redesign strips the soul, ignoring the care such sacred ground deserves, as they cut 400 trees to raise a 64.5-meter triangular structure with a lotus chamber that feels more like a photo op for leaders like Xi Jinping than a purpose for the nation. “Modi’s inauguration with Vedic chants and prostration before the Sengol reflects his personal stamp,” a reputed magazine noted, a staged moment that overshadows the past. Nehru let history breathe, building with respect, while Modi swings a bulldozer and flashes a shameless grin, carving his name without grasping that depth.
Another of Modi’s grand ‘development’ projects, Central Vista, Delhi’s 25,000 crore whisper. Lutyens’ Rajpath, a silent witness to history, deemed too significant to be destroyed by Nehru, now reimagined by Modi.
Even the design jars the senses of prominent architects, who wince at its cold edges. “Patel’s designs reflect a hostile architecture that prioritizes Modi’s vision over public need,” a critic offered in a soft jab at Bimal Patel’s sleek misstep, as Caravan reported. Patel’s plans have torn down heritage and displaced the poor, a rush that mirrors Gandhinagar’s greedy sprawl and Motera’s hurried rebuild. The process lacks transparency, sidelining the public’s voice. Alpana Kishore, an artist and urban activist writing in Newslaundry, called it “inaccessible and ecologically unsustainable,” adding, “power-centric rather than people-centric.” She hinted at Patel’s selection: “Respected professional with [American] degrees? Ultra-loyalist with trusted delivery record? Part of an Ahmedabad cohort with secure cultural fit? Check, check, and check.” It reads like a loyalty test, not a merit badge.
The opacity of it all? It makes Putin’s government seem like an open diary—though I’ll sidestep words that might invite unwanted attention. The tender process was a sprint, with the Central Public Works Department setting a technical bid deadline for September 30, 2019—a fifteen-minute affair involving 20 design panels, a three-minute walkthrough, a work plan, and timelines, followed by a financial bid days later. “The CPWD appears to be moving full steam ahead in what seems to be an unseemly haste,” the Indian Institute of Architects (IIA) warned, noting, “This will lead to disastrous consequences as any redevelopment in such a sensitive zone needs to be planned holistically.” The IIA highlighted “vague and open-ended” details and tight schedules—a pre-bid meeting on September 11, applications due by September 23, and a site visit on September 26, just four days before the pitch. It felt rushed, not reasoned. Architects like Arun Rewal pushed for a design competition, a convention used for landmarks like IGNCA or the National War Memorial, but HCP, Patel’s firm, stood apart, unsigned on the September 18 petition to Housing Minister Hardeep Singh Puri. “Architecture is neither about size nor financial measurables,” it read, “an open competition is required, as for the Beijing National Stadium or New York World Trade Centre.” The haste carries a whiff of something off, a pattern stretching from Gandhinagar’s greed to Motera’s ego and now Delhi’s redesign.
And Gandhi Ashram – a haven of stillness, a place where history settled like dust on old books. As a child I was fascinated by Bapu and even today, the ashram remains a place where we get to live and feel the spirit of our freedom fighters. Even today when we visit Gandhi Ashram and visit Gandhiji’s room (Bapu’s Kutir) we get overwhelmed by just thinking that this is the place that housed world’s greatest leader who toppled the world’s most powerful empire. But now, that peace faces a ₹1,200 crore “dream project,” a whisper of change stretching the 1917 Sabarmati Ashram from 5 acres to 55, nudging out Gandhi’s descendants for a “world-class memorial,” as Caravan notes. It feels less like preservation and more like a tourist trap in the making. “The project risks turning a sacred space into a tourist spectacle, undermining Gandhi’s ethos of frugality,” the article quotes, while 130 Gandhians call it a “second assassination of the Mahatma”—words that sting with a quiet truth.
The ashram sits on land Gandhi bought in 1916, where he spent 13 pivotal years shaping his vision. In 1926, he formed the Satyagraha Ashram Trust with his nephew Maganlal Gandhi, and four years later, after the Dandi March, he gifted it to the Harijan Sevak Sangh, his anti-untouchability group. Tushar Gandhi, his great-grandson, mentioned to a reputed magazine that the letter to HSS chairperson Ghanshyam Das Birla, an industrialist, “is his last will and testament with regard to the ashram”—a document that feels like a fragile thread to the past. Yet Modi’s drive for “development” hasn’t spared it. His favored architect, Bimal Patel—fresh from Central Vista’s overhaul—oversees a plan where the state subsumes privately owned land, cloaked as “restoration.” A video from the chief minister’s office paints it as a return to Gandhi’s half-square-kilometer haven, expanding tenfold with 48 heritage buildings “restored” and new amenities promising an “immersive experience” of his philosophy. It sounds more like a Gandhi Theme Park than a tribute.
In October 2021, Tushar Gandhi filed a public-interest litigation against it, fearing the project would corrupt the ashram’s “simplicity and frugality,” which he sees as Gandhi’s core. His worry deepened with the government’s heavy hand. Eight months earlier, a Gujarat resolution birthed a governing council and executive council, led by then-Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and his principal secretary K Kailashnathan, approving the Mahatma Gandhi Sabarmati Ashram Memorial Trust in September 2021—all staffed by government loyalists. Tushar’s PIL pushed for the existing trusts—the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust, Sabarmati Harijan Ashram Trust, Khadi Gramodyog Prayog Samiti, Sabarmati Ashram Gaushala Trust, Gujarat Harijan Sevak Sangh, and Gujarat Khadi Gramodyog Mandal—to lead instead. “The new bodies constituted by the government effectively prevail over the authority of the existing autonomous trusts,” he told press. “No prior government has intervened in the ashram’s workings, let alone taken such a drastic step to reconfigure it altogether.” It’s a shift that feels less about Gandhi and more about control.
Architectural interventions in historic sites are a slow dance, Prem Chandavarkar, a Bengaluru architect, explained. They usually start with a heritage audit, a step that seems vital here, given the “restoration” label. Bimal Patel, speaking at the 2021 Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, claimed, “The restoration project will make these buildings, falling apart and decaying, available to future generations.” He meant 48 of the 63 structures from Gandhi’s time, while roughly 200 others on the premises—deemed “incongruent”—face demolition. It’s a tidy excuse, but the haste and selective lens remind me of Gandhinagar’s lost red bricks, Central vista’s reappropriating history and Motera’s renamed stands—a pattern of erasing to rebuild in someone else’s image.
And when I think of that charkha’s creak, I wonder what Gandhi would make of this “development,” turning his quiet refuge into a spectacle. It’s a shadow falling over Sabarmati, a whisper that drowns the peace I once imagined.
As I drive past where those red bricks once stood, the hum of Gandhinagar’s old lanes fades, muted by a showroom’s shine. Motera’s echoes, Rajpath’s lamps, and the charkha’s creak slip into someone else’s script, a façade for investors and Instagram likes. I wonder if its soul can return, or if we’ll let it fade like a forgotten Gola’s taste. Perhaps it’s less about building a new India, but burying the old one —the roots we grew up under, the stillness that taught us greatness lives in a hut, not a stadium. And I suppose that’s the ache—not that my city has changed, but that someone chose to let it forget its own story. The choice lingers, a quiet weight on every turn.
Krunal Sagan
April 18, 2025