Gandhi Museum

Gandhi Museum is housed in an old Palace of Rani Mangammal. The building was known as Tamukkam Bunglow which in Tamil means, Summerhouse. The building has very high roofs supported by pillars without walls. The drawing room is constructed on the top of a square mound of earth 5 m in height. There is a masonry dome of about 7 m in diameter and the building is known to be built by the Nayak queen, Rani Mangammal.

The Gandhi memorial trust allocated millions of rupees for setting memorial museums in select seven places in India. Madurai is one of these places associated with the life of Gandhiji.

The Gandhi Museum in Madurai has been organized by the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi. Gandhiji adopted his line cloth in 1921 here. He came to be known as a half-naked fakir because of his this dress code. It was also the Meenakshi temple, whose doors were opened to the harijans thus winning the historic battle of untouchability. Gandhiji came here and entered the temple in the year 1946 along with harijans as a triumph for the cause of Harijans temple entry.

Gandhi Memorial Museum is supposed to be a living institution and not just a building showing exhibits. It tries the younger generation to value and understand the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. The picture art gallery presents a visual biography on Gandhiji. There are many photos, sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, quotations and original articles written by the Mahatma. Gandhi museum has different sections and things here are conveniently arranged.

There is a section on India fights for Freedom and has about 165 illustrations. All these depicting the history of the freedom movement. There is an exhibition of the choice specimens of handicrafts donated by the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Karnataka and Mysore. There is a pictorial gallery depicting a visual biography of Gandhiji by means of photos. There are numerous quotations of the Mahatma and paintings, etc. there is also a select Photostat copies of the original letter of Gandhiji.

A hall of Relics exhibits some of the personal belongings of Gandhiji. There is a section of the village industry on the ground floor. This is related o the khadi section and there are some exhibits of the village industries revived by Gandhiji. There is a sales counter that offers you a select varieties of Khadi and village industries products. There are beautiful handicrafts and Sarvodaya literature. You can see for yourself how spinning and weaving of khadi are demonstrated.

There is a big open theater with a capacity to accommodate about 8000 people. This is used for the cultural programmes, weekly film shows, and special public meetings. There is a Gandhi Kutir, which is an exact replica of Gandhi's hut in Sevagram. The northern wing of this building has a library of books on the cultural background of India. There are also many books on and by Mahatma Gandhi. There are about 18,000 volumes in the library and all of them are reference books. There are about 27,000 letters written by Gandhiji and 62 reels of microfilms that are very important. Book review meetings and readers forums are located and held on the first floor of the library.