A digital homage to the Mahatma
‘Peace Ahimsa Truth’ reads the tattoo that runs around this Gandhian’s arm. But Birad Rajaram Yajnik is not on a quest to turn anyone into a Gandhian. “I’m looking for the next Gandhi instead,” says the publisher-photographer-writer-artist and curator of a digital museum on the world’s most famous Indian.
World over, there has been a transition from the physical to the virtual with museums digitizing their collections. Recently, British Telecom created an online archive of nearly 500,000 photographs, documents and letters gathered since 1846. Birad Rajaram took this step way ahead of the rest, by curating his museum with not only the best of memorabilia but also with artistic presentation.
A professional user visual interface designer, Birad understands the significance of digitizing information and art. “The transfer of information is done faster through the digital media as compared to any other form of media,” he points out.
The key word here, however, is interactivity. While the museum is equipped with touch screens and other interactive media to showcase unique memorabilia, standing testimony to the fact that the interaction isn’t limited to the digital is the massive 73 x 10 feet wall in the centre. “The wall is a massive collection of 400 photographs of the Mahatma, picked out from the images I collected while working on my limited edition book on Gandhi (2010),” Birad explains.
Another attraction at the museum is a Black Harley Davidson called the ’Ahimsa Bike’. It was Birad’s gimmick to entice a group of 900 students he had to give a lecture to about Gandhi. “I told them about this group called Bikers Against Animal Cruelty (BAAC), which follows the Gandhian philosophy against animal cruelty. Then, I invited everyone to sign the bike. The bike syumbolises the universality of Gandhi.”
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