Located in India’s first UNESCO World Heritage City, Ahmedabad, the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project (henceforth, SRFDP) is composed of two, 12-kilometer ribbons of pedestrian pathways, parks and other public amenities. It is a source of civic pride for the city, the state of Gujarat and, as indicated by Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s many pilgrimages to the banks of the Sabarmati, with various heads of state in tow, a source of pride for the country as well. Nevertheless, by tracing the revelatory correspondences--or what Walter Benjamin termed “profane illuminations”--between nineteenth-century Paris and late twentieth and early twenty-first century Ahmedabad, this paper casts a different light on the structure. Specifically, it will be argued that, beyond its important civic and recreational purposes, the SRFDP is, like the Parisian arcades that partly inspired and framed Benjamin’s critique of modernity, a dream house of commodity fetishism—a key symbol for the campaign to attract capital and to provide markets for the industries of a “Vibrant Gujarat.” The neo-liberal economic development strategy associated with latter, which encompasses projects like the SRFDP, also provides cover for the incremental hollowing out of democratic institutions and values that has occurred during the reign of the BJP (both in the state of Gujarat and in New Delhi), similar to the way that Haussmann’s makeover of Paris, as noted by Benjamin, distracted Parisians from Louis-Napoléon’s dismantling of an admittedly weak set of democratic institutions in France.

Authors:
Scott Roulier, Lyon College, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Scott Roulier is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at Lyon College , United States

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