On America’s 250th.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

America clocked its 250th anniversary this weekend. In Delhi, those wishing to mark the occasion may stop outside the American Center and look up at a large portrait of President Donald Trump hanging on the building’s facade, overlooking the traffic on Kasturba Gandhi Marg. The banner has been there for some weeks, in anticipation of the Independence Day celebrations.

A short distance away stands another reminder of America. Inside the India International Centre on Max Mueller Marg, a memorial honours two figures. One is counted among the greatest Indians, the other among the greatest Americans; both were bound by a shared vocabulary of ahimsa and moral struggle. When this American arrived in his only visit to Delhi in 1959, he had said, “To other countries I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a pilgrim.”

These two are Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, this Saturday the Hindustan Times reproduced an old article the iconic American civil rights leader had written on Gandhi exclusively for the newspaper all those years ago.

To this day, the IIC’s Gandhi King Plaza remains Delhi’s enduring tribute to that pilgrimage. This week that connection naturally carries renewed significance. Let us begin with this humid, overcast Saturday afternoon of July 4th. A long pool of water defines the space. Ten fountains, arranged in a straight row, are sending up delicate, steady jets that fall back into the green water with a soft, rhythmic murmur, almost lulling the hearer to sleep—see photo. The plaza is otherwise dominated by two massive banyan trees; their canopies swelling this moment with bird sounds. While the joint memorial to King and Gandhi, which gives the plaza its name, stands in a corner, almost like an afterthought, almost rendered invisible by the aforementioned trees. The memorial is a tiered edifice of granite and stone panels. One face carries Martin Luther King Jr.’s words in engraved capital letters: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension but it is the presence of justice and brotherhood.”

The words are profound and give us much to think about in these times, when so much of the world is scarred by wars and conflicts. Yet their insistence on the true meaning of peace acquires a poignantly ironic resonance on considering the intertwined histories of those commemorated here. The Gandhi of the Gandhi King Plaza was killed by an assassin’s bullet. The King of the Gandhi King Plaza was also killed by an assassin’s bullet. And Indira Gandhi, who, as prime minister, inaugurated the Gandhi King Plaza in 1970, too was killed by assassins’ bullets. Indeed, on the occasion of America’s 250th anniversary, this might be the most appropriate place in Delhi to reflect on the work-in-progress phase of values claimed by both America and India, namely justice and peace.