The new public garden at Miramar, Panjim, has some 65 lamp posts, all of which blaze their light till way past midnight, while the busy St. Inez street nearby has been chronically short of street lights for at least 2-3 years now. And the less said about the roads in nearby Taleigao the better, where pedestrians walk in the dark, in danger of being run over all the time. But the unfinished Miramar garden blazes merrily like an over-the-top Diwali celebration from 6 pm to 1 am, long after its few illegal users – for it is not yet officially open to the public – have left.
But why complain? Surely it’s great to have a grand new public garden – even a wasteful one – instead of more concrete jungle? It would be, if it was really a public space. Public parks are the lifeblood of cities the world over, green spaces which invite everyone in to relax, rest in the shade, socialise, get in touch with nature, and smell fresh air. But increasingly in India, and now Goa too, they have become a perverse way of privatisation of public space, of creating elitist and showy recreation spots where only the middle-class – the Indian euphemism for upper caste — have access.
Just enter any new public garden in Panjim nowadays. The first thing you see are walls, the sort that can’t be climbed over or sat upon, with gates that are locked at night and a good part of the day as well, except for short periods in the morning and evening. Which is actually fine because, in this hot part of the world where it’s normal to crave a bit of shade, you may well get no trees at all. Instead you get lawns. Massive swaths of lawns, which need hundreds of litres of artificially-supplied water for eight months of the year. They do look soft and inviting of course, tempting one to sit on them when the sun is down, or play on them if one is a kid, except that they often come with boards that say ‘Keep Off The Grass’. The limited space left will contain a small and overcrowded children’s play area, a narrow ‘joggers’ track’ for those who can afford running shoes, and a few benches hogged by well-dressed old ladies. There may also be some special party areas available on hire.
You also get busy roads and expanding parking lots just outside, often all around the garden, making it difficult if not dangerous for pedestrians to approach, but very convenient for car-owners. And you finally get ‘security’, i.e. guards who ensure that only the ‘right’ sort of people enter, i.e. no beggars or hawkers please, which often means all people who do not look ‘middle-class’. The only thing that remains really is to follow the trend in places like Bombay, and start charging for entry.
All this is especially appalling because Panjim has a different tradition of public gardens, especially the older ones like the Jardim Garcia da Orta which was built in 1878, and the Jardim Francisco Luís Gomes at Campal of a little later, or even some of the later ones like the Campal Children’s Park, and the Ambedkar Park near the bus stand. They do have gates and walls, but the former are open through the day while the latter (especially in the old gardens) are mostly low enough to be hopped over or sat upon; they also have big shady trees, wide paths, a great many seats, and grounds that are walked on, played on, and slept on as well. But here too one finds higher walls nowadays, along with gates that close, and guards too.
The simple truth is that public space as a concept is foreign to us. Public gardens first appeared in South Asia with the Europeans. Before that, they were almost unknown. You did have Mughal kings and other elites creating gardens, or sacred groves, or deer parks, and even declaring them open to all, but the concept of ‘all’ never really meant all. As the Buddhist monk Nagasena is supposed to have said to the Indo-Greek king Menander (2nd c. BCE), as related in the Buddhist text Milindapanha, when the king calls ‘all’ to meet him, what he gets is not all. He doesn’t meet the women, nor the artisans, nor the labourers, nor the servants and slaves. What he expected and got were just the males of the dominant castes.
The attitude is not dead two thousand years later. Although European culture changed some things in the cities, the struggle to make public spaces and facilities, like roads, wells, cremation grounds, shrines, etc, truly public is far from over in India. Dalits and Adivasis are routinely prevented from sharing ‘public’ water taps, wells and ponds, from entering shrines, shops and restaurants, even from using certain roads in villages across the country (http://www.ncdhr.org.in/dalits-untouchability/). Just wearing shoes while walking on a public road past near the houses of dominant castes is an ‘insult’ which can lead to threats of violence or worse, according to recent reports from Rajasthan and Karnataka.
How do such caste atrocities relate to gardens in Panjim? The connection is exactly this perverse concept of ‘public’ – which does not mean everybody, but just ‘our’ sort of people, who belong to our caste and class, i.e. the elites and middle-classes. It is not surprising then that most public gardens are to be found in the posher residential areas. On top of that, if they charge for usage, keep some spaces for private rental, lock their gates in the night or most of the day, do not permit a quiet nap on an empty bench or a wall, and keep guards to monitor entry, they are openly saying ‘keep out’ to everyone else. All this makes a nonsense of the ‘public’ in public spaces, and has no business being supported by public resources.
(Amita Kanekar is an architectural
historian and novelist.)
