India Cultural Garden at Cleveland 20 years later

Indian Diaspora in Cleveland will now soon have their own cultural garden in the city, reports Lalit K Jha.

Some 20 years after the City of Cleveland in Ohio earmarked a piece of land for the India Cultural Garden; work on it has now begun.

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The small, but significant, Indian Diaspora in Cleveland has finally got their acts together to garner enough resources in terms of money and manpower to "realize the dream" of an India Cultural garden within the popular and historic Cleveland Cultural Garden premise, representing the city's diverse ethnicity.

"This is an ambitious project for all of us, which when completed latest by 2007 summer, would become a landmark place for we Indians in the United States," Raj Pillai chairman of the India Cultural Garden Committee told The HindustanTimes.com.

Constituted before the groundbreaking ceremony on May 22, the Committee is now busy drawing out plans to raise the $200,000 (about Rs. 90 lakh) through fund raisers and also by individual and corporate donations.

"Every ethnic community in Cleveland was represented in this Cultural Gardens. Only our country was missing. Now this would be no more the case," Pillai said.

The first phase of the park is likely to be completed later this year and the second phase latest by 2007 if not 2006 summer, he said.

Located on about half acre within the Rockefeller Park, the India Culture Garden would represent the diversity and unity of the country and its people.

When completed it would have the real-looking gates of the Shanti Stoopa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, besides a statue of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.

Incidentally, representing the relationship between Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the Garden is located on the Martin Luther King Road. King's admiration for the Mahatma is well known.

Taking benefit of a small water stream called Doan Brook running through one side of it, the Committee has decided to construct steps leading towards it, giving the glimpse of a traditional Indian "ghat" at a river side or any water body in India.

Part of the steps leading towards the Doan Brook stream would be build by the City of Cleveland, who would be doing the realignment, before the steps are constructed by the Committee, he said.

Pillai said the garden would have a circular pathway with pillars around, which would have information about India engraved on it.

"This has been long journey for the India Culture Garden at Cleveland," he observed. The city earmarked the land for this purpose 20 years ago.

It was almost forgotten till five years ago in 2000, when Federation of India Community Association decided to take up the project. "Quite a few formalities had to be completed, before the ground breaking ceremony. Now there is no looking back," Pillai said.

First set up in 1916, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens is considered to be a very historic place. With India being the 23rd`ethnic garden here, the Cleveland Garden Foundation is now planning to approach the federal authorities to declare it a national peace monument.

After British, Hebrew was the second garden to be set up here. Now there are as many as 22 gardens including Chinese, German, Finnish, African-American, Hungarian, Slovak, Slovenian and Ukrainian.

"This is the beginning of a glorious era for the people of India in Cleveland," he said.