Gandhi Museum
The building that houses the Gandhi Memorial Museum, Madurai is the significant Tamukkam Palace Rani Mangammal of Nayak Dynasty built about 1670 A.D. Later, Rain Mangammal this was under the occupation of the Nawab of Carnatic, The East India Company and a few others. Finally the Palace had remained for many years as the official residence of the British District, Collector of Madurai, It was in 1955 the palace with about 13 acres of land was gifted by the Tamil Nadu State Government to the All India Gandhi Smarak Nidhi for the reason of housing Gandhi Memorial Museum. Further the major renovation to the original building a complete new wing on the northern side was constructed for the Library Opean Air Theatre as also several other buildings and a Gandhi.
The Gandhi Memorial Museum at Madurai has been built and organised by Gandhi Smarak Nidhi. There are ample places in South India which are significant in relation to Gandhiji. Since, he has visited Tamil Nadu 14 times, among all of them Madurai city got its distinct place of its own. It was in Madurai in the year 1921, Gandhiji adopted for the first time the line cloth as his mode of dress, which made him known throughout the world as “The Half Naked Fakir”. It was in Madurai again that the doors of great Meenakshi Amman Temple were thrown open to Harijans, thus charming a historic battle against “Untouchability”. Gandhiji visited the Temple in the year 1946 along with Harijans as a triumph for the cause of Harijan Temple entry.
Gandhi Memorial Museum organizes exhibitions, study circle meetings, seminars, fine arts training courses, summer camps, group discussions, classes on Yogasana and Naturopathy. It also conducts educational programs for college and high school students of Madurai, which includes class room study with film projection, slide show and museum gallery tour. Cultural programs, public meetings and weekly film shows are organized in the open-air theatre with a capacity of 8,000 people.
Lectures are also given to youth on Gandhi’s teachings. Gandhi Museum contains a variety of sections, such as exhibition, pictorial gallery, Khadi and Village industry Section and a library. The exhibition named “India Fights for Freedom” includes 265 depicts and illustrate the history of freedom struggle. Then, there is the picture gallery, showcasing the biography of Mahatma Gandhi through photos, sculptures, paintings, quotations, manuscripts and other articles.
In front of the main building, a little towards south, there is “Gandhi Kutir”- a replica of Gandhiji’s hut in Sevagram. The northern wing of this building, houses the Library, which contains books giving the cultural background of India, books on and by Gandhiji and allied literature. There are about 20,00 volumes in the library. Photostat copies of about 2,70,000 letters of Gandhiji and 62 reels of Micro-films are the very significant and precious part of the collections in the Library.
Five study alcoves have been provided in the first floor of the Library for Research Scholars. Readers’ forum and Book Review Meetings are held periodically in the Library. A research section is also functioning, books are also published.
Address:
Gandhi Memorial Museum,
Tamukkam, Madurai 625 020, Tamil Nadu, India
Telephone: +91-452-5544 930 / 2531 060
E-mail: info@gandhimmm.org
