Exhibition of rare letters by Gandhi to Mountbatten
AN EXHIBITION of rare envelopes with handwritten notes by Indian freedom icon Mahatma Gandhi, scribbled just a day before the announcement of the Partition of India, opened for public view last Thursday (2) at the University of Southampton.
Tangled Hierarchy, curated by Mumbai-based artist Jitish Kallat, is made up of five used envelopes conserved within the university’s Mountbatten Archive of documents connected to the last Viceroy of India. Each envelope is addressed to Gandhi and is the only surviving record of an exchange he had with Lord Louis Mountbatten ahead of one of the most important chapters in Indian history. “They were written one day before the announcement of Partition, against the grain of the inevitability of history,” Kallat said, ahead of the opening at the university’s John Hansard Gallery on June 2 – which marks 75 years to the date of that exchange.
On Monday June 2, 1947, Lord Mountbatten met Gandhi to discuss the imminent Partition of India, which Gandhi strongly opposed.
As a consequence of Gandhi undertaking a vow of silence on Mondays, the meeting took an unusual turn and instead of conversing, Gandhi communicated with Mountbatten via handwritten notes on the backs of used envelopes. It was on June 3, 1947, that the Partition plan was officially tabled by the outgoing British Raj government. “Gandhi wrote: ‘I am sorry I can’t speak. When I took the decision about the Monday silence I did reserve two exceptions, i.e. about speaking to high functionaries on urgent matters or attending upon sick people. But I know you don’t want me to break my silence…” We do not know what Mountbatten said, but in his silence Gandhi leaves us an archival residue of their meeting,” Kallat said.
“His disapproval of Partition was widely known so the silence is a loaded one. These envelopes become the starting point for a layered enquiry into ideas of silence and speech, bodies and borders, partitioned land, causal loops and phantom pain,” he noted.
Kallat was invited to curate an exhibition which considers the Mountbatten Archive and the “Gandhi envelopes” as a reference point for a series of artistic conversations and correspondences. The gallery is also hosting the first UK showing of Kallat’s immersive installation dating back to 2012 entitled Covering Letter.
Taking the form of words projected onto a traversable curtain of cascading fog, the piece presents a historical letter by Gandhi to Adolf Hitler, written just weeks before the start of the second World War.
“Occasionally adjusting the focal length and distance at which we view the world, in time or in space, alters the manner in which we interpret the now and immediate... An utterance from the past could offer insights into the present,” said Kallat.