Peaceful warrior ... a statue of Gandhi in Mumbai.Credit: Lonely Planet
'Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."
So said Albert Einstein of his friend Mohandas K. Gandhi and it would be hard to disagree after visiting the Mani Bhavan Gandhi Museum in Mumbai.
India has 11 museums dedicated to the Mahatma ("the great soul"), which is not surprising given that Gandhi was "the father of India" and even in death he remains one of the most widely recognised personalities in the world. The Mani Bhavan museum is unique, however, for two reasons.
First, it's in Mumbai, Gandhi's de facto home town. He was born just north of the city in 1869. He practised law in Mumbai's illustrious High Court and it was to Mumbai that he returned, during 1917, after 21 years in South Africa, stepping ashore at the historic Gateway of India (now off-limits to the public after last November's terrorist attacks).
The other reason Mani Bhavan is special is that Gandhi used to live here, from 1917 to 1934, which made this humble two-storey house "mission control" for India's independence movement.
He launched satyagraha (his trademark civil disobedience movement) from here in 1919 to protest against an act that curbed freedom of the press, published an unregistered weekly newspaper here, began his historic four-day fast here in 1921 to restore peace to the city after the public boycotted a visit by the Prince of Wales and was arrested here in the early hours of January 4, 1932 (while he was sleeping on the terrace). He may have died in Delhi but he lived in Mani Bhavan.
The house has been a museum since 1955 but it feels more like a library when you walk in from the street. One of the first rooms you come to has wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with more than 50,000 books and tables where visitors can study Gandhi's life and philosophies or read some of his titles which range from the plays of George Bernard Shaw to the Koran.
Around the walls are quotes to bring you back to where you are: "All men are born equal and free", "Life is greater than all art", "Ahimsa [non-violence] is the highest ideal", and handwritten letters Gandhi wrote and received from contemporaries such as Einstein, Tolstoy, even Hitler and Roosevelt (the last two are addressed "Dear Friend" and ask the world leaders to end World War II).
Climbing the stairs, placing your hand on the balustrade as he must have, you come to a room packed with people from all over the world, such is Gandhi's reach even today, 61 years after he was assassinated.
This is the main photo gallery, showing Gandhi's life in black and white: meeting dignitaries from other countries in his trademark loincloth, with his faithful wife, Kasturba Makhanji (they were only 13 and 14 when they married), carrying a black umbrella. An auditorium, also on the first floor of the museum, screens films about Gandhi and plays recordings of his speeches.
On the second floor is a simple room, Gandhiji's Room, where he read, spun and weaved he renounced European clothes made in British-owned mills to protest against the mechanisation of the Indian workforce and some of his few belongings.
There's also a diorama room, where key events in Gandhi's life are depicted by doll-sized figurines in glass cases, and the terrace where Gandhi slept and listened, as you can, to the sound of Mumbai's trademark Fiat taxis speeding by outside.
For such a historic place, Mani Bhavan is also a peaceful one and something of an oasis in chaotic Mumbai, as Gandhi himself must have been in British India.
TRIP NOTE
Mani Bhavan Gandhi Museum, 19 Laburnum Road, Gamdevi, Mumbai. Open 9.30am-6pm daily. Entry free, donations welcome, or buy a book such as Mahatma: A Golden Treasury of Wisdom, Gandhi stamps, photos. statues or his autobiography. For details, see gandhi-manibhavan.org.
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