Bengaluru | Whose parks and gardens are these anyway? Premium

For decades, Bengaluru has revelled in its status as the Garden City, but of late, its parks and gardens have become objects of contention as different groups want to claim ownership. While the ownership technically lies with the State government, a lack of concrete regulations give rise to the question of ‘whose park is it anyway?’ from time to time, as Jahnavi T.R. finds out

For decades, Bengaluru has revelled in its status as the Garden City. But of late, the city’s parks and gardens have become objects of contention as different groups want to claim ownership of these public spaces in their own ways. While the ownership of these spaces technically lies with the State government, the lack of concrete regulations give rise to the question of ‘whose park is it anyway?’ from time to time. 

What started this conversation this time around was what happened with Cubbon Reads on December 21. Cubbon Reads is a community of readers who gather at Cubbon Park, one of the largest lung spaces in the city, and read from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday. There are people who come by themselves, those who come in duos or groups and lay down their mats and carry on with their reading. This practice has been going on for almost a year now and has inspired such events in other places in Bengaluru as well as other cities.  

The organisers claim that hundreds of people gather every weekend to read in Cubbon Park. However, chaos broke out on December 21 after the reading session was interrupted by officials of the Horticulture Department. On that day, readers had brought gift-wrapped books to exchange among each other to celebrate the pop culture event known as ‘Secret Santa’. These books were confiscated by the officials and the curators of the event were called into their offices. 

G. Kusuma, Deputy Director, Horticulture Department, said that the event was stopped as there was a lot of “screaming and shouting” and a gathering of up to 1,000 people, which is not allowed as per department rules. She said that any event in which over 20 people gather should get prior permission from the department, which was not the case with Cubbon Reads.  

The organisers, on the other hand, alleged that they had never been informed about these rules by the department, and on that particular day, they were mistreated and harassed by the authorities. 

“They first took two of our curators to the Department of Horticulture office. The department officials were hostile and thought that Cubbon Reads was selling books to the public and using a public space to make money. They forcefully extricated their ID cards. The security guards there were talking about imposing fines from anywhere between ₹25,000 and ₹60,000. Also, our founding curators, who are not in town, were called. They were threatened with a First Information Report and a fine and asked to show up in their office right away, or else the current curators would be held in custody,” the community said in a press release.