Sabarmati River Archives

SABARMATI RIVER ARCHIVES (2020-2021)

Raj Maurya

https://photosouthasia.org/portfolio_page/sabarmati-river-project/

ABSTRACT This project unravels the history of the Sabarmati River through photography-archives collected from various sources. In doing so, it seeks to inform and infuse introspection amongst the city’s residents, policy makers, and a wider audience on its importance in the state of Gujarat. The river has remained integral to the lives of people of the region since the 11th century, when one of the earliest recorded settlements was formed beside it. As the primary provider of water for the communities, and a source for the aquifers in the region, this river has also facilitated several activities, occupations, trades, livelihoods, and has offered seasonal rhythms to the inhabitants of the city. The project includes a visual archive of the river in the last 90 years through NID Archives, photographers, photo studios in Ahmedabad, architects, artists and visitors to the city. This visual archive may not only reflect on the city’s past, but also question the challenges posed by the unbridled urbanisation and concretisation in the name of the development.

Approximately 3000 images were collected as part of the project out of which approx 500 images were selected to work with. Initially, images were brought down to 2000 images from 3000 images and then to 1000 images. After another round of selection process, the images were brought down to 480 (approx), which later, after receiving a few more images and reconsideration of images, increased to 500 images (approx).

Google Earth view of Sabarmati Riverfront over a period of 20 years.

Collage created by the Author, Raj Maurya.

METHODOLOGY: The Project begun in November 2019. It was aimed to be finished by June 2020, but it got delayed due to the Pandemic.

The project involved meeting various photographers, institutions, museums, authors, architects and other organizations and sources relevant for the project.

The project begun with the research about the River Sabarmati, Ahmedabad city and the role of Sabarmati River in shaping the city of Ahmedabad. Various books, journals, published articles, research papers, news articles, thesis, projects and other relevant materials were referred.

Based on the research; notes of visual materials were made which were already available in the public domain. Research was also conducted for Photography History in Ahmedabad, and the photographers who had photographed Ahmedabad and Sabarmati.

The initial sources for these researches were the online information available on websites and blogs. But since these contents on websites and blogs are not properly cited nor do they mention the sources of their information, it couldn’t be fully authenticated. Hence, the search began for contents on published journals, books, academic thesis and articles with proper citations and references.

The research continued along with the project. Initially, the research were conducted at NID’s library (KMC, Knowledge Management centre) and plans were to further carry forward the research at other public Libraries, Museums and Institutions in Ahmedabad. But due to the Covid-19 lockdown situation since March 2020, access to these institutes and libraries was not possible. Therefore, the research part was switched to digital space and there were plethora of information available in public domain of Digital Public libraries maintained by various Institutes, Museums and Libraries.

Few of the various online resources which were a great help in these researches were: • JSTOR • Academia • Researchgate • Google Scholar • Worldcat • ProQuest • World Digital Library maintained by Library of Congress • National Digital Library maintainded by IIT Kharagpur • KMC’s E-resources maintained by NID In order to better understand the river Sabarmati and Ahmedabad city, detailed map study of Ahmedabad was done with multiple field visits along the riverbank. The research also included the landmark architectures along eastern and western bank of the Sabarmati and the bridges connecting both the banks. Some of the tools which aided this research were: • Google Earth • Google Maps • ArcGIS Earth Along with all these, a prinetd map of Ahmedabad was also put on the wall to continuosly refer and sensitize with Sabarmati, it’s riverbank and Ahmedabad city.

In order to pursue the project, the foremost requirement was to identify potential sources to collect the archives from.

A few of the initial points of contacts and references were provided by my project guide Rishi, project lead Rajesh and project advisor Sara. Meeting with these initial points of contacts gave further leads for more possible sources to collect archives from. Based on these meetings and conversations, a list of potential contributors was made. Further, research was also conducted to identify more sources. The search included searching the relevant images (Sabarmati, Ahmedabad, riverfront) online and getting information about the associated photographers and individuals. Multiple books, journals and articles based on Sabarmati and Ahmedabad were also referred and a list of the associated authors and photographers was made. Based on all these researches, meetings and leads, separate lists of photographers, authors, architects, designers, institutions, museums and other individuals were prepared.

After the lists of sources and contributors were prepared, the next task was to establish a preliminary contact with them.

Each of them was contacted via multiple modes of communication such as email, phone calls, social media and text messages. Wherever required, initial visits were made to discuss the project in detail. Letters of Introduction were issued by my Project Guide and Discipline lead Rishi Singhal, introducing me as a student of NID; explaining the project and its outcomes. Multiple visits were made requesting to contribute to the archives and also asking them for further leads and contacts relevant to the project. That way, the list of sources continued to grow and the Archives kept getting richer.

PROJECT SCOPE: Important representative of Ahmedabad’s heritage: As Ahmedabad was declared as a World Heritage City by UNESCO in 2017, there are good chances of the project to be pitched to various government and heritage bodies in Ahmedabad to take up this project for exhibition or publication. As per recent news, Sanskar Kendra is planned to be developed as a Heritage Museum which will showcase the rich heritage of Ahmedabad, and since Sabarmati is an indispensable part of Ahmedabad’s heritage, this project can be pitched to them as well.

Apart from this, Sabarmati Memorial and Preservation Trust could also be approached for some future collaborations.

Social and Political Commentry through the Archives: Sabarmati has been witness to many political and social events shaping the present and future of the city. If we look back at the history of Ahmedabad with the lens of Sabarmati(Archives), there will be enough materials to comment about the past, present and future of the city.

Factual Representation of past events: One of the core functions of any archive is to provide evidential value to any event, activity or incidence. The information provided by these collected archives of sabarmati will serve as a factual representation of many past events, activities and incidents.

Resource for Future Researchers/Architects/Photographers/Designers: The collected archives have a varied amount of information from various fields of study. This will function as a huge informative resource for any future researcher, photographer, architects and designers among many others.

Old images provide sense and passage of time over a period: Anyone who wants to revisit the past of Ahmedabad and Sabarmati will find enough material in this archive collection. As the old images provide sense and passage of time, future explorers of this archive can experience the passage of time through these visual archives.

Scope of Continuous Growth of the Archive: Any archiving project is incomplete if it is just meant to end in a physical box or stored in a server which the general public cannot access. Since the project is also meant to be launched digitally as open access to the public inviting contributions from users, there is scope of continuous growth of the Archives.

Future possibility of developing an app for wider reach: Although the website is in development phase, but an app can also be developed in the future to make the archives accessible to a wider audience. That way there will also be an increased possibility of growing the archive by receiving more images from a wider audience.

Possibility of a Travelling Exhibition: The current proposed exhibition can also be pitched to various organizations with a future possibility of a travelling exhibition.

Possibility of Publication of the Photobook: Various publishers and organizations interested in archiving can be approached for publication of the photobook.

Possibility of future collaborations with Online Museums and Repositories: There are various organisations and websites which collaborate and curate exhibitions for their website. A good example here could be ‘Google Arts and Culture’, and this project has the potential to provide various curated contents for such collaborations.

PROJECT OUTCOMES: •

Digital Exhibition for Living Waters Museum

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Physical Exhibition

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Publication in form of Photobook

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Digital Experience: Digital Exhibition and Interactive Experience

CONCLUSION: A river which has been the lifeline for the people of Ahmedabad was left to die. It was heavily abused by the growing number of textile, chemical and dyeing industries. Ahmedabad, no doubt, became the Manchester of India, but the river was neglected and was continuing to get polluted. Adding to it was the pressure by the growing population of the city and settlements along the bank of the river. The government and the people didn’t take care of all these rising problems initially, and when the things went out of hand, the river was looked down and declared as a polluted river.

About 600 years ago, when Ahmed Shah decided to establish his new capital on the bank of Sabarmati, he may or may not have necessarily made his decision by looking at a hare chasing dogs, but he must have definitely understood the strategic location and benefits of being guarded from enemies by the river. Also, the proximity to the river and easy access to the river would have been one of the reasons. He didn’t have the option to look back into the past browsing through visual archives or documents and making the administrative decision based on them. Neither did he have an option to watch the videos of the past to understand the city’s past and heritage. Whatever little information was available was from the past account of travellers. There were definitely accounts and details written by the travelers who used to visit different places, but the question is how publicly accessible those accounts were and who had the right on those accounts. In later times, when the government and organizations started documenting and archiving their account, accessibility to those archives was limited for administrative purposes and were not open to the public. Whatever limited archives were released for the public were also chosen carefully so that they don’t put that organization in bad light.

This project on Sabarmati archives aims to address some of those issues with archives by providing open access to these archives for future researchers, policy makers and the public and at the same time inviting the public to contribute to the archives, thus helping it to grow richer in the coming time.

Snippet of Final respistory of 500 images being organized in Adobe Bridge.