Formerly known as Birla House or Birla Bhavan, Gandhi Smriti Monument, is situated on Tees January Road in New Delhi, India. Gandhi Smriti Monument is a museum dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi. The location where Mahatma Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated on January 30, 1948, was originally the house of the Indian business tycoons, the Birla. It now houses the Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum established in 2005.
History About the Birla House
In 1971, the Government of India acquired the Gandhi Smriti Monument. The government renamed it Gandhi Smriti (or Gandhi Remembrance) before opening it to the public on August 15, 1973. The museum in the building houses several articles associated with Gandhi’s life and death. Visitors can tour the building and grounds, exploring the preserved room where Gandhi lived. Witnessing the spot on the grounds where someone shot him while he was holding his nightly public walk.
The Martyr’s Column now marks the place where an assassin killed Gandhi, the “Father of the Nation.”
The Gandhi Smriti Monument or Birla House is located at 5 Tees January Marg. A couple of kilometers from Connaught Place, one of the CBDs of New Delhi.
Outside the house stands a pillar that contains a swastika symbol. The pillar serves as an example of how context can change the ethical nature of information and illustrates the interchangeability of symbols across societies. According to Lester and Koehler, Jr (2007), “for Hindus and Buddhists, the swastika symbol is a representation of good.” The same pillar also contains the Sanskrit symbol for the meditation sound, Om. Wallace C. Koehler, Jr. presents a photograph of the pillar on page 347 of the highly regarded information science text, Fundamentals of Information Studies, Second Edition, with June Lester.