Delhiwale: Like a midsummer night’s dream

The Gandhi-King Plaza in Delhi, a tribute to the legacy of Gandhi and King, is a serene site reflecting their ideals amid the city's bustling life.

Let’s start with the setting. This is the night following the night of Monday’s lunar eclipse. A white moon is peering out from the starless sky, shining upon a pond. The water in the pond though is absorbing nothing of the moonshine, looking, in fact, much darker than the sky.

Tonight is a rare exception. The plaza’s solitariness has been somewhat compromised—by the intrusion of the brilliantly white moon. (HT)

This is a place dreamy enough to stage Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It lies in Delhi’s heart.

The place also has a more tangible identity, not dependent on the presence of our inconstant moon. In this city of tombs, samadhis, and memorials, the site memorialises two icons, and is called Gandhi-King Plaza.

The American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was an ardent devotee of Mahatma Gandhi. Once, in the mid-1950s, he described Gandhi as “the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change.” In 1958, King visited India for the first and only time. On arriving in Delhi, he said: “To other countries I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a pilgrim.”

The aforementioned site stands as a souvenir of King’s pilgrimage to Gandhi’s homeland. The Gandhi-King Plaza lies within the India International Center (IIC), close to the entry gate. To be sure, King never visited this spot. IIC didn’t then exist; it came up four years after his visit. Neither did King ever personally meet Gandhi. (As for Gandhi, he never visited the US.) Anyhow, this secretive space was created to commemorate the spiritual union of these two giants of the 20th century.

This moment, the plaza is steeped in 10pm darkness. A granite plinth, which is responsible behind the plaza’s unique name, is partially visible under the moonlight. The inscriptions on the plinth display the sayings of these two historic figures.

“For us today there can be no sacrifice higher than to forget distinctions of high and low and to realise the equality of all men”—Gandhi

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension but it is the presence of justice and brotherhood”—King

(Curiously, while the all-knowing Google confirms the quote attributed to King, it shows no credible search result for the quote attributed to Gandhi).

An even more majestic sight is of the two massive pilkhan trees whose combined foliage has colonised the entire plaza. In the daylight, the same leafy pair also colonises the pond, their reflection falling on the pond’s stagnant water. Also during the day, the roar of the traffic outside on Max Mueller Marg does intrude into Gandhi-King’s profound silence, but the plaza’s steely solitude remains impenetrable. Tonight is a rare exception. The plaza’s solitariness has been somewhat compromised—by the intrusion of the brilliantly white moon. See photo.