Proposed Electoral Reforms

Not only was the birth of Buddha preceded by his mother dreaming of an elephant entering her womb...even Buddhist Jatakas talk about the enlightened being born as the elephant king. 

Dream of Maya Devi, Sculpture Medallion on the railings of the Bharut Stupa, now the Indian Museum Kolkata

/We are standing at a historical juncture ( not of the entire mankind but of modern and post-modern cultures) where it is slowly sinking in that voting does not reflect the act of choosing. Moreover, we have lost faith in the Social Contract Theory, and we no longer know what to expect from the government.  People living under dictatorships are fighting for democracy and yet people living withing democratic setups are yearning for dictators. But right now we are not in a position for a system overhaul, we are yet to imagine a post-democracy. Nonetheless, democracy is not just any another 'crazy'. People are passionate about it, give their lives for it....billions of dollars/euros/rupees are sent on it. It seems that the time has come to strip down democracy to its essentials...and then try to make it better. 

Illustration From ohn Lockwood Kipling entitled "Choosing the next King" for a story in Flora Annie Steel's Tales of the Punjab (Macmillan 1894)

It seems that democracy essentially has two ingredients. 

1. To ensure that feudal or totalitarian social+economic structures do not continue. Rulers need to be rotated, and the theories of divine right to rule or hereditary right to rule have become unfashionable and we want to be ruled by prime ministers and presidents...not kings, not Furhers. 
2. Democracy was invented for the enlightened man (and then subsequently women)to vent his/her agency in politics. This participation also gives a ritual validity to the people and positions who govern us.  

Keeping these two needs in mind I propose (till we brainstorm/ + revolutionize a way out of electoral democracy), we go back to the old ritual of letting elephants choose the king. Ok, first of all, there will be no king. Just our regular councillors, MLAs, MPs and that sort.  Just that election day will have a different name and on that day in every ward/constituency an elephant will be released and the person whom the elephant chooses will win. Then all the winners can get together elect a ministry and rule us.  Our return to Ayurveda and naturopathy proves that we (re)acknowledge that nature is wiser (more enlightened?) than us. Democracy is all about enlightened choice, isn't it?

Only the people who want to be chosen need be out on the streets along with the election commission observers. (and the media!!), there will be no need for campaigning, rioting, opinion polling and so many other ings. (including voting)

This is an extremely urgent change, the only way we can make democracy free, and functional in a world where enlightenment is a disbelief. The change will also enable us to watch TV or party or surf on social net working sites while democracy is taken care of.

Moreover, we won't need the ministry of the environment, we can be sure that elephants will not choose someone who will be harmful to animals and forests  

Death of Politics and Other Memories

I carry vivid memories of 2002Gujarat, how some students of Faculty of Fine Arts also indulged in burning cars and other such acts of vandalism. Remember being startled to realize that the neighborhood uncle was stocking up kerosene for the rioters and everyone was giving whatever weapons they possessed to the army of rioters. Remember mid night meetings in Muslim ghettos where elders would tell the youth that the situation was hopeless request them not to retaliate, just if they can flee with their lives.  

            Remember the newspaper updates we would get, the feeling that Modi will not get away with it. That voiced inside my head that always asked how the vegetable vendor knew six hours in advance that there will be large scale rotting. Godra had just happened, the news was settling in, I was buying vegetables and being told to stock up because there are going to be riots and curfews.  The sinking feeling when Modi came back to power with a tremendous majority. That realization that how we were all wrong; this is exactly what the public wanted…

          This time i see on Facebook how people are threatening to un-friend Modi supporters, the angry censoring of right wing voices by the secularities. I wonder in case Modi becomes the Prime Minister; will my friends un-friend the nation?  Essentially politics is different from history because contestations over realities and contestations over power are two different things.  In fact in many cases historical reality and political reality will stand in conflict. It takes good politics to be able to understand this difference and make political choices.  It also takes acertain clarity to realize that politics is not about ethics (maybe parts ofpolitical science is), but it is about power.  

            I would like to do some stock taking as we run up to the 2014 elections. Since the 2002 riots we have fought two battles with Narendra Modi...the two state elections that have happened since.  We lost both of them badly. In fact during the last state elections we were so half hearted that it cannot even be called a battle. In this period of twelve years Mr Narendra Modi has honed his skills in self projection and mystification. He has also understood that politics is on promises of a future and not on memories of the past.  

It is time we faced that the urban Indian Hindu is largely communal. She/he believes that Muslims are originally intruders and Islam was speared largely through the might of sword. (It is completely another story that this myth was created by right wing fanatics but (even) by very secular historians like Romila Thapar). This myth that masquerades as commonsense is what lends popular legitimacy to the promise of a Hindu Rashtra. I have heard my own aunt tell me that what happened in Gujarat 2002 was bad...but maybe the Muslims deserved it...she is not even on Facebook...what do i do to un-fiend her...and what will it achieve.  

 India seems impatient for change, and Modi seems impatient for power. For all the development talk and recent ranting that favor building toilets over building temples...Modi has put Amit Shah in charge of Uttar Pradesh.  Sine then the communal landscape of the state has been changing, western U.P is now more riot prone it has ever been since partition.  Just like in 2002 Gujarat was the key for Modi, in 2014 Uttar Pradesh has become the key.

            Maybe the impatient India deserves this impatient Narendra Modi. Sometimes i feel that it might be good if Narendra Modi wins.  If we could survive Aurangazebs, Shivajis and Indira Gandhis, I do not see how Narendra Modi will suddenly change the political-cultural fabric of central south Asia. My eight years in Gujarat has convinced me that Modi is a medium grade administrator, incapable of building institutions and absolutely incapable of dealing with non Hinduavta world views. No amount of shouting from roof tops can convince the new Narendra Modi fan that Modi can be no messiah. Maybe only a five year prime ministerial term can do that. Let Modi deal with deeply entrenched IAS, IPS lobbies with an independent judiciary. There is a chance that after five years Narendra Modi will be finished as a politician. Because once he looses Delhi after winning it...it can’t go back and be the chieftain of Gujarat. 

            The thing is that at this moment we are not equipped to fight Modi. His swelling support base does not like logic and reasoning.  Allegedly they are patriotic Indians , allegedly they are very disturbed by the falling Indian rupee...but not one of them will stop buying gold, or cancel a foreign holiday at the time of a national crisis.  Like it or not, this is how it is; and the fundamental lesson in politics is not to deal with how it should be but with how it is.  

           In the mean time, we have miles to go before we sleep. Before the 2018 elections we need to develop a of language favoring cultural and religious heterogeneity without parroting the notions of western secularism. The liberal intelligentsia has to be much more proactive in the world of vernacular cultural expressions. We need to de-neoliberalise ourselves and present a model for the future directions of India. Moreover, we need to ensure that rhetoric of attacking the religious right does not end up sounding like supporting the discredited Congress Party.  

         

Till then we will pretty much do what Modi does....suppress voices that dissent to our world view and layout no models or concrete action plans for the future. 

Curator's Note: Friendly Strangers

Empty Spaces have the most energy fields than anything else in the universe; and all the object, matter, particles we know, constitute just ten percent of the universe....or even less. The fascination for the dark matter and empty spaces…and more importantly the floating energy fields within is what binds Ajay Narayan and Shridhar Iyer together. This engagement allows me to curatorially put together two artists who are stylistically poles apart. Yet, inspite of the stylistic difference, Shridhar and Ajay have worked together in collaboration in terms of sharing of ideas and space.

In a strict sense this is not a ‘two man show’. Friendly Strangers is a essentially Ajay Narayan solo with Shridhar Iyer giving it support. Shridhar has been celebrating a quiet journey of discovering a new medium, and is seeding a very strong series. Ajay on the other hand is maturing within his early style. One is more focused on matter one more on energy. Yet together they are engaged in re-presenting the unknown. The unknown that is falling out of fashion as the world becomes more material obsessed and Man lands on Mars.   

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From the series Journey through Images and Objects (Yog Maya) Shridhar Iyer,  Wood Straw and Fishing Net 32"  x  36" . 

From within the gharana of contemporary abstraction from Bharat Bhavan, Shridhar Iyer has been exploring the unknown energy and force of the Universe primarily through the medium of painting and drawing. Yet, even within the gharana Iyer is a break…a self-taught burst of energy. Highly experimental in life and work, Iyer has often made forays into installation based art practices, but it is in the last one and a half month, working in NIV center's basement studio, the artist has for the first time produced a body of work that shows a sustained engagement with alternative mediums and new sculpture. 

Using mediums like coconut tree, fishing nets, cloth and wood straw,  dye, Iyer continues his engagement with the vast unknown...this time focusing on the energy fields that occupy the spaces between us and our known objects. He combines this representational quest with the love for the organic and the perishable. The artist has pledged himself to a spiritual connection with the universe, for him all the energy fields surrounding us are eternal, omnipresent, powerful, ethereal and friendly.In this series Journey through Images and Object (Yog Maya)  we will get a first look at a new and very important body of work in the context of sculptural abstraction.  

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Ajay Narayan,
Reflection of space on the surface of sea,

Acrylic on canvas

Ajay Narayan has been painting to invoke concealed, obscure descriptions of the visible world. His recent works are an engagement with the vastness of space, the incomprehensible eternal dark matter within which planets, stars and galaxies float.  This series echo this inquiries into the universe through gazing at the night sky and encountering its sublime.

His painted canvasses and fiberglass sculptures capture this beauty...dwelling on the floating objects through the gaze of friendship, and his love for colour and impasto.

There is a love for the edgy zone between the decorative and the aesthetic/ synthetic and the eternally natural.  Living inside an urban environment it becomes more important to look at the great eternity.    

Memories of growing up with Chinmoy

My library work was over, and we often caught up for tea and cigarettes. Then one evening Chinmoy was busy: after weeks of waiting the department had just received some stone. With itching hands he began drawing on the stone... a skull appeared… rendered in bold lines with piece of brick.

It was a rough piece of marble... people who have grown up in art colleges will know that many survive on free loads of quarry rejects. It had grains and cracks all over... the sun was setting as Chinmoy started carving into that piece of stone.... and I no memory of how long it really took Chinmoy to finish carving the sculpture. Every evening after classes… or just on some lazy afternoons we would be sitting, sharing cigarettes, talking, as Chinmoy carved way... he even let me try my hand at carving it… careful to let me chip off a block only where the stone was to be broken and discarded… and not a part of the main sculpture... yet with very watchful eyes, because the stone had deep grain lines running through large portions... one false chip and it was liable to break.

By then I had already fallen in love with how he understood the medium of sculpture, how, based in academic understanding of material and form, he was able to conjure up an extremely contemporary visuality. So I was eager... waiting to see Chinmoy finish the work.





Later, months later, I found myself in Ellora. Coming from an academic institution that that almost hyper-specialized in medieval sculpture and architecture, we spent days in Elllora… waking up every morning... discussing every ground plan, every motif... every sculpture... and it was there that I learnt that I can only understand the sculptor’s understanding of the human form, and know the quality of carving by touching the sculpture.

By the time I came back Chinmoy had received a BFA in sculpture. His final piece was a beautiful, daring rendition of the skull. Standing in front of the piece, I could not resist my urge to touch it. At the very first touch I fell in love completely. As the hand traveled to the back of the skull--feeling the subtle invisible modulations--I could feel the sheer joy the artist had taken to sculpt the form. If you closed your hand and simply touched the back of the piece, you’dyou would know that it was a skull.

Eventually, as it always happens, time passed. As we grew up, authorship, form , even carving became unfashionable words. Much later, after college, when we were all floating and trying to find some ground beneath our feet, I learnt that the work had been acquired by the prestigious collection of Anupam Poddar (Devi Art Foundation was yet to be conceived though the collection was already viewed as a benchmark for emerging ‘new art)’. It gave us all an impetus, chiseled us into a swing of high spirits. We quickly forgot the far off cities and the occupation called survival.

Then again, as it always happens... time passed again. By now I was in Delhi, writing and editing, and Chinmoy was gaining recognition as one of the best talents emerging out in contemporary Indian art. The artist was visiting Delhi, to see his work on display.. On that visit I traveled with Chinmoy to see the collection, where I met old friends such as the skull that I myself had a hand in.

As I stood in front of the skull after so many years, I could not resist the urge... I reached out and touched the skull. I was glad to know that all that memory was not just fantasy... that the cold marble touching my hands still had the same effect. Cold, but polite stares from the staff made me realize that my touch was no more welcome. I mumbled an apology, smiled and went outside to smoke a cigarette...

originally published in  http://www.thefuschiatree.com

untitled-letter

now that the letter is written
i will have to wait
anticipation makes one fonder
of memories and dystopia
home is when the heart is

now that the letter is written
i still cannot conclude
hope lingers where the heart is
and how can the letter be written
home is where the heart is

learning to fly and other stories
perhaps stories of utopia
perhaps of restlessness and doing nothing
i will have to  wait
sometimes heart is where the home is,

I am fine dear Daffodil

Push me harder dear Daffodil;

Push me on your way to the mill

Push me when you come to me

Push me hardest dear Daffodil;

Hold me softly dear Daffodil;

Hold me in the cave on top of the hill

Hold me when you come to me

Hold me hardest dear Daffodil;

Some men sing on the way to their graves

Some women weave shawls instead

Children play when the spring blooms

Fly with the wind, dear Daffodil

but could not resist

i tried my best
but could not resist
all the evils that came to me
the world will insist
that i should desist
from being what i can be

just  some small dreams
and a heart full of feelings
is all i can ever give
the world will insist
they are never enough
to be happy or to receive

and then i loose
more than i can ever win
and the evening turns into night
just waiting for a call
as the whisky gets drunk
life come back to bite

Modernity and Indian Art history

High Culture, as we understand it is largely founded on the work of the old elites. (I use this term to denote the pre Industrialization European aristocracy in the post Industrialisation set up.) The old elites engaged in the process of cultural entrepreneurship by founding art museums and symphony societies, which were used to entrench their cultural values and thereby defend their social positions. They in conjunction with the upper middle class developed qualitative distinctions to dramatize and defend their exalted status. Conditions were created for autonomy of high cultural values, and initiatives were taken to propagate it. Such conditions survive due to a particular way in which freedom of speech and thought are understood. Prima facie, Enlightenment celebrates the unhindered right of an individual to engage in exercise of reason and the pursuit of knowledge. Nonetheless the rise of experts and specialists has effectively neutralized the ‘freedoms’. We live in a situation where it is important to spell out that even though modernity can boast of ‘secularising’ knowledge and freeing it from various pre modern taboos that restricted its circulation, a new set of values have been imposed by a new set of authorities effectively giving us ‘secularised’ restrictions to knowledge[1]. Academics has been an important guise, which constantly embeds high culture within the purview of ‘knowledge’.

During the early colonial period, we know that privileged Indian classes took to westernization as a tool towards retention and consolidation of their social positions. 19th century was characterized by the Indian elite privileging ‘modern’ over ‘traditional’. Hinduism itself was ‘reformed’ and redefined in accordance with enlightenment norms and its version of Hinduism during the ‘golden era’. Someone like Ravi Verma would choose European Naturalism and oil paints, to paint Indian mythologies. In this case, one may read a certain hybridity. However, upon closer examination, we see that the mythologies he painted were valorized by European scholars, used by them to construct an Indian culture. As it turns out Ravi Verma was then an active reinforcer of orientalist constructs. We see that by the end of the 19th century European high culture, or culture with a capital ‘C’ became perpetuated amongst the Indian middle class and the elite. One phenomenon aptly illustrates the growing roots of European Enlightenment in India. The early part of the 19th century ‘Enlightenment societies’ like the ‘Society for Acquisition of General Knowledge’ were essentially nurtured and encouraged by ‘ friendly Europeans’. Few ‘enlightened’ Indians were members of such institutions. The latter half of 19th century saw new ‘Enlightenment societies’ exclusively for Indian members and devoted to impart knowledge about modern sciences and arts among Indians in their languages. Spaces, which were essentially created to nationalize modernism[2].

Like in the west, 19th century India witnessed a proliferation of academic institutions, which under the guise of ‘impartiality’ and ‘imprecision’ sprayed ‘inculturated’ enlightenment upon the Indian masses. Here I quote Tejaswini Niranjana, P. Sudhir and Vivek Dhareswar from their introduction to the volume ‘ Interrogating Modernity’.


When sociologists, whether Indian or Euro-American study how the great tradition modernizes, or try to explain the nature of social change, there is an astonishing amount of consensus on how to characterize this transformation, the favorite catch-all terms being ‘Sanskritization’ and ‘Modernization’. This monolithic view of culture (as concept or as practice) precludes the possibility of seeing tradition constantly in the making, as strenuously contested and redefined by different communities. The investigators position themselves within disciplinary conventions in a way that exempts their own location as from scrutiny. Their attitudes towards ‘Indian culture’ are formed not only by the discipline but also by their class background. The distinction between ‘high and low’ cultures, for example, underpins a whole host of academic disciplines and institutional practices, so much so that when the object of study is constituted, the basic assumptions about culture and ‘Indians’ in general are unreflectively reiterated. What seems to happen is that as a result of the class/caste biases of their practitioners, the very configuration of the disciplines (whether humanities or social sciences) is shared by the assumption of the dominant culture.”[3]
Much has been made of the Anglicist – Orientalist divide. The anglicist’s have been the ‘villains’ however one can’t ignore that the ‘orientalists’ played a key role in masking the violence of colonialism. The Orientalists relied heavily on a textualised notion of Indian culture to propagate the vision of a glorious Indian civilization in the distant past. The Anglicists on the other hand constructed Indian history as that of an irrational, immature, depraved and lazy lot. Their contradictions disappear in their assumptions that the immediate pre-colonial state of India was pathetic, and western intervention was the only solution to the problem. It was discoursed that only through scientific rationality could India progress and the future be salvaged.
When India began to articulate its anti colonial Programme, the socio-political location of its leadership began to reflect heavily on the movement. It is well known that the leaders of the anti colonial programme were largely from the bourgeoisie and were exposed to western education. This very class had initiated the ‘nationalisation of modernism’. Nationalist modernism perpetuated a myth about the historical necessity of colonial rule, arguing that the British rule in India was a double-edged sword, destructive as well as regenerative[4]. Brutal economic and political suppression was juxtaposed against the modernist, scientific and socio cultural revolution that was being brought about in India. The nationalist movement aimed at getting rid of the brutal economic and political suppression so that the ‘now modern’ Indians could freely continue the Enlightenment revolution. The Indian bourgeoisie owed too much to newly emergent modernist institutions and to capitalism at large to seriously rethink or challenge the implications of modernism on the Indian social fabric. Thus Indian nationalism redeployed the Orientalist constructs of India’s past, asserting the antiquity, authenticity and continuity of ‘ Indian culture’. It propagated a historical need to modernize the nation and at the same time to preserve and valorize its golden past[5].[6]
When Havell and Coomarswamy exposed ‘Indian Art’, they were essentially adding another block to the construction of India’s great cultural heritage. The documentation of European Reactions to Indian art by Partha Mitter, doesn’t take into account the problems inherent in the glorification of ‘Indian Art’. He seems to take ‘Indian Art’ as given, and simply documents its taxonomical journeys. Early 20th century S.Asia might have been historically ill placed to reject Arnoldian cultural relativism, because the very essence of the anti-colonial discourse was embedded in it. However why does Mitter applaud this success? Is it because his class/caste position gains by this success?

Infact no scholar in the post-Havellian epoch has questioned the attribution of Art with a capital ‘A’ to a category of objects produced in Pre-modern India. Some scholars have voiced objection, arguing that attributing art hood to religious objects decontextulise them, negating the religious in favour of the Aesthetic. However, they largely go on to deduce that Indian Art is largely religio/spiritual in nature romanticizing it in the process….. further strengthening the ‘Other’ aspect of the orient. Dr. Parul Dave Mukherjee’s critique of (Spanish Indologist) Chantal Mallard’s location is extremely useful to understand this particular point of view, its problematics and is a powerful argument against the use of such binaries.

Having critiqued Partha Mitter’s ‘celebration’ of India’s attainment of art hood … having used quotes to implicate Indian academics of a class/caste bias, and continuous affiliation with orientalism, having made it clear that I subscribe to the theory of an overbearing imprint of ‘high culture’ on the construct of ‘India’ and its ‘India hood’. What am I trying to further? Am I at any juncture contesting Indian’s claim for an artistic heritage? No…. hoverer I am extremely uncomfortable with the construct of India and Indian Art which chiefly rests on the celebration of Art (with a capital ‘A’)

Griselda Pollock in her 1988 essay “Feminist Interventions in the histories of Art: An introduction:” argues that art history was a discursive practice, a form of making meaning that was imbedded within the attitudes of those- namely men- who as the dominate gender had inaugurated and supported it as an cultural institution. Her conclusion was that feminist scholarship no longer had a place within Art History, as it had been traditionally defined. She argues that the existing cannon is inappropriate and one needs a fresh cannon to find place for feminist art historiography within the mainstream.

This kind of a project to make the mainstream more inclusive, by incorporating cannons of the dominated shams from Foucault’s emphasis on the repressed of the west. I agree with Gayatri Spivak’s critique of Foucault on the grounds that he ignores the great power relation of repression and domination that ultimately connects west to the non-west. Infact Foucault’s such ‘ignorance’ makes me assume that the very project to make the mainstream more inclusive is to gain greater foothold within the dominant culture. However being a part of the dominant culture, implies being a part pf the cohesive mechanism that seeks to ensure the continuity of domination. ….and domination does not exist without ‘dominated’ . I am more comfortable with projects, which intend to attack/weaken the dominant culture, at the same time work towards a heterogeneous existence of locations.

From Coomarswamy to R. N. Misra, questions of authorship in Buddhist and Bramhanical art of ‘Pre-modern India’ has been extensively written upon. Textual sources such as the Mayamattam reveal that the Sthapti, Sutragrahins, Vardhaki and Taksaka worked together. Does the question of authorship rest upon the Sthapati or the Taksaka? Both Coomarswamy and R. N. Mishra have dealt exclusively with the Sutradhar / Sthapati. Of course any study of the position of Art and Artists has to be based on empirical evidences. Our obsession with empirical evidences seem to make us forget that it is only a particular class/caste, that would / could leave behind empirical evidences for our academic consumption. Can I deduce that the class/caste positions of the scholars interrogating this aspect of Indian Art didn’t / do not call for the destruction of the existing methodological cannons, or the class/caste sensitivities of the scholars do not provide enough motivation in this direction.

It is refreshing when Prof. R. N. Misra in “Art and Religion: A Study of Relations in Early India” (1992) questions whether the artists were allowed to enter the temple after their job was done. The post-vedic labeling of Silpins as sudras, prompts him to ask the question. But clearly the Sthapatis were not sudras. They seem to have had free access to religions texts……… and seem to be the ones who executed the crowning of the temple. When Prof. Misra is concerned whether the Shilpins were allowed inside a temple, he promptly assumes that they in fact wanted to. However one must note that we know alarmingly little about the religious practices of the sudras. Is it possible that they cared little about entering high brahminical temples. Like many of us who care little about visiting the temples of modern nation states, i.e. museums.

The nature of ‘Shilpin’ in the various stages of Indian history far exceeds the boundaries of art. R. N. Misra in his seminal ‘Ancient Artists and Art – Activity’ shows that the Vedas the Brahmanas, the Sutras, Samhitas and Buddhist texts such as Vinaya Pitaka and Digha Nikaya, carry so much contradictions regarding views on silpa and silpins that it became very difficult to draw a hard and fast line on their positions in the social hierarchy. None the less he asks “How did the sculptors and architects fare in this general class of silpins, and when did they came to have a distinct class of their own…”[7]
Why does Prof.Misra especially seek out sculptors and architects in his volume titled ‘Artists and the Early Art Activity’. Subsequently in the same paragraph Prof. Misra makes it clear that he specifically talking about stone carvers and masons. Are we witnessing the European post enlightenment bias for stone sculpture and architecture underlining his quest to place the artist in ancient Indian art activity. Maybe it is the same bias that leads him to claim that sculptors and architects were a “distinct class in the general class of silpins”. Prof. Misra is definitely operating within the dynamics of ‘high culture’. Here I feel the need to step back and clarify that my critique of both Coomarswamy and R. N. Misra is not o their personal scholarship …… but on the kind of discourse each of them embodies and have embodies and have perpetuated through their seminal works.

In contemporary academic thought there has been a significant concern on how contemporary needs and experiences ‘colour’ our readings about our past present and future. Our contemporary nations of art keep us away from even discussing elements like hair dressing and flower decorations within the context of pre-modern Indian art. We are simply content with looking at the hair dresses as motifs in sculptures or paintings, most often to ascertain stylish genealogies and iconography. If at all such studies do take place……. they are ethnographic in nature and even struggle to be art historical. (Even without a capital ‘A’ and a capital ‘H’).
At no point am I trying to argue that the list of 64 kalas should be unreflectively reiterated. Nonetheless one has to be constantly conscious of what one chooses to underline and what one chooses to undermine. The act of calling a particular list bogus and another one (even relatively) accurate, tells a story about privileging certain discourses.

I am using a quote by Gayatri Spivak to elucidate my location. In her 1989 essay ‘Who Claims Alterity’ Spivak states-

“For the moment let us hold decolonization does quite seriously represent a rupture for the colonized. It is counter intuitive to point at its repetitive negotiations. But it is precisely these counter intuitive imagining that must be grasped when history is said to be remade, and a rupture is too easily declared because of the intuition of freedom that a merely political independence brings for a certain class. Such grasping will allow us to perceive that neo colonialism is a displaced repetition of the old lines laid down by colonialism………… Cultural communal and class heterogenity native to the subcontinent has been asserting itself inspite of the unifying hopes based on those assorted concept – metaphors: Nationalism, Secularism, Internationalism, Culturalism.
Any extended discussion of remaking history in decolonization must take into account the dangerous fragility and tenacity of these -concept metaphors. Briefly it seems possible to say that an alternative and perhaps equally fragile made of resistance to them can only come through a strategic acceptance of the centrifugal potential of the plurality and heterogeneous native to the subcontinent.”[8]

Lack of materials about pre-modern Indian art has always been a prime excuse our obsession with dynastic/cultic art with near refusal to look beyond painting, stone sculpture and architecture. Certain questions have to be answered. This excuse becomes difficult to defend if one points out, that the largest category of surviving artifacts of the pre-modern period- namely potteries, find no place in art historical writings. Clearly it is not the material availability, but the dominant framework which results in the homogenous ‘History of Indian Art’ that is taught and studied.
Prezoisi is a key critic of Art History’s traditional alliance with Museology and connoisseurship . Following his key arguments many of us feel the need to drastically review the cannons of the discipline. What makes me uncomfortable is this question. Working within academics (the holy cow of elitism) how far is it possible for us not to work for the system that gives us our grants, scholarships, libraries, and salaries.?


also in continuation http://theblackyellowarrow.blogspot.in/2013/05/caste-inand-history-of-indian-art.html
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[1] Partha Chatterjee, A Possible India, OUP New Delhi 1997.[2] Partha Chatterjee , A Possible India , OUP New Delhi 1997[3] (ed) Tejaswini Niranjana, P. Sudhir, Vivek Dhareshwar, Interrogating Modernity, Seagull Books , Kolkatta 1993.pp 4-5.[4] Partha Chatterjee, A Possible India, OUP New Delhi 1997[5] (Ed) Tejaswini Niranjana, P. Sudhir, Vivek Dhareshwar, Interrogating Modernity, Seagull Books, Kolkatta 1993.[6] This problem arising out of the interlinks between colonialism and nationalism is comprehensively looked into in Partha Chaterjee’s Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? OUP. Delhi 1986.[7] R N Misra, Ancient Artist and Art Activity, IIAS Simla 1975.pp[8] (Ed) Barbara Kruger, Phil Mariani, Remaking History, DIA Art Foundation, Discussions in Contemporary History, no.4, Seattle 1989,pp292.

A fresh encounter

From the series 'Empowering Love’, Acrylic on canvas, Ritu Gupta

Over the last two years, personally there has been a deep and ever growing interest in art of the present times which flows in a stream other than the mainstream of contemporary art. The kind of art that does not get representation in block buster internationally curated samplings of Indian or south Asian art, yet remains deeply popular and continues to grow and flourish.  It is in fact this art that still manages a dialogue with the sections we can call ‘popular’ or even the middle class.  When Ritu Gupta shared her works with me the first thing that stuck me was the fluidity of her lines, and how (inspite) of her traditional thematic matter, how the works always felt to art of our times.

Parallel to globalization and the opening up of culture, one of the most important cultural developments in india post nineties has been a return to traditional Hinduism, marked by an envedours to (re)visit its roots, myths and meanings.  The shadow of this parallelism has a strong presence on the culture of art production and consumption in our times. Ritu’s work is heavily inspired by this schism that marks art making of our times. Beginning as a self-taught artist, unexposed to the great streams of modernism and post modernism changing notions of art and taste, Ritu began her journey out of a sheer passion to paint and decorate.  I find it interesting that though her later works tend to explore themes which are religious in nature; at the initiation point of her journey she felt the need the need to do a series like ‘Shades of India’. It will be a bit off the mark to call Shades of India her practice series…yes one does see that through this series she hones her skills, but this was also Ritu’s first foray into artistically exploring the nature and concept of India or Indian, personalizing it and at the same time refusing to get stuck into one representational technique. It is not an India Ritu saw through picture books, but the country and its villages are a integral part of her childhood travels and its nostalgia. Stylistically the series in naïve, reminding one of a hobby painter; however, looking at the entire series I could not help noticing the artistic determination to learn her medium and the sheer volume of the series speaks of the seriousness with which Ritu had begun to approach her practice.

By the time Ritu paints her next two series ‘Shree Yantra’  and Ganesha , a sudden (remarkable) formal maturity can be seen. Though the Ganesha series is much more playful (probably hinting at the artist’s deeply personal relationship with the mythology and the icon), the Shree Yantra series, is composed and shows that the artist for the first time is settling down into a visual language.  However, what is interesting about the Ganesha series is that it marks the transition where the artist learns the design value of form.  The iconic form of Ganesha so often loses its Puranic/mythological character or even its Vastu symbolism and instead becomes a vehicle for expressing the artist moods, passions and nostalgia.

The ‘Shree Yantra’ series is more complex to approach thematically .  The Sri Yantra ("sacred instrument") or Sri Chakra ("sacred wheel") is a yantra formed by nine interlocking triangles that surround and radiate out from the central (bindu) point, the junction point between the physical universe and its unmanifest source. Together the nine triangles are interlaced in such a way as to form 43 smaller triangles in a web symbolic of the entire cosmos or a womb symbolic of creation. Together they express Advaita or non-duality. This is surrounded by a lotus of eight petals, a lotus of sixteen petals, and an earth square resembling a temple with four doors. The various deities are said to be residing in the nine layers of the Sri Yantra. It represents the goddess in her form of Shri Lalita or Tripura Sundari, "the beauty of the three worlds (Heaven, Earth, Hell)". The worship of the Sri Chakra is central to the Shri Vidya system of worship.  The Shree Yantra, has nearly always been depicted in geometric abstraction. Ritu Gupta chooses a figurative path, and instead of being bogged down by the sterile geometricity of the Shree Yantra’ traditional iconography, she enters into the  Shri Vidya interpretation of this concept-metaphor as coming together of Shiva and Shakti; and her paintings represent the represents the union of Masculine and Feminine Divine. We see a free play of myth and iconography , even moving beyond Shiva and Shakti, we see Vishnu, Lakshmi, Parvaty-Ganesh, Kali and various such iconographic interpolations.  The geometric mandala often becomes a (but) a backdrop…and like in the Ganesha series, the works begin to reflect the artists understanding of childhood, masculinity, feminity, union and desire.

As one moves from ‘Shree Yantra’ to her latest series ‘Empowering Love’, the journey is no longer sharp and steep. One can see the artist settling down into an understanding of human form heavily inspired by the supple slenderness seen in the medieval Indian styles ranging from Chola bronzes, to Kangra paintings. However a key feature to note is that the artist does not seem to be making a school or style centric adaptation. Instead one is reminded of the early 20^th century Bengal revivalists and their understanding of   an authentic (traditional) Indian form in terms of being soft, supple and feminine (as against the  hard(er) masculine  European understanding of human body. This series is devoted to the romantic (divine) love of Radha and Krishna, which in no way is explicitly referred to in iconographic terms. The reference is implicit and subtle. The artist does away with traditional iconography and instead chooses to focus on the mood of lovers. This series is has very close references to the late Guler and Kangra school not so much in treatment of foliage, moonlight and the romantic mood.  Yet again, she makes this traditional narrative her own, and by now begins to show a certain mastery over the understanding of the human body in compositional and design terms. Her urge to play and appropriate takes over again and she focusses of backgrounds, detailing and decorative motifs.

One can sense that the artist is at a brink, from here she will move forward in directions that might not yet be apparent in her works, by now she has made her line her own….walked the tricky grounds of working with tradition yet not becoming sterile. 

questions and dreams

why is something so much like nothing
it is dizzy to fly and to fall
and on top of that the earth is round
hearts and minds are increasingly square
why do you have to close your eyes to see something
with open eyes you could only dream
people don't fight for freedom to have an easy life
the fight is so hard that is almost impossible
yet everyday we try
the idea of freedom in this square square world
love is surprisingly a round word
but a contemporary heart is edgy and sharp
thankfully home is still a round word
they are turning our homes into houses
houses are so square
it is hard to touch freedom inside houses
maybe that is why the journey has to begin from there
when nothing becomes something
the squares will begin to melt
like how time melts between two silent lovers gazing into the stars