Crafty art

The ugly cat-and-mouse game that is being played over the control of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts IGNCA highlights yet aga...

The ugly cat-and-mouse game that is being played over the control of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts IGNCA highlights yet again the urgent need to ensure a modicum of autonomy to the country8217;s public institutions. Indeed, in an age of reform, when governments are being increasingly directed to rollback their presence; when debureaucratisation is the order of the day, to have politicians and their bureaucratic underlings continue to decide who or what constitutes culture is not just regressive, it is downright oppressive. The administration of the country8217;s 8220;culture8221; is thus delivered to appointed commissars whose only acquaintance with the national arts and crafts scene is that they have mastered the art of crafty politicking.

Of course, there is nothing new in all this. The early idealism that characterised the cultural scene of the 1950s, presided over by giants like Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, soon gave way to the culture-as-politics philosophy of the Indira Gandhi era. It was the primeminister8217;s handpicked appointees who lorded it over the various cultural institutions and trusts, and who decided how Indian arts were to be showcased for the world.

The decision to amend the IGNCA constitution to ensure that its president, Sonia Gandhi, would hold that office for life, owed allegiance to that same legacy of political arrogance. On the face of it, then, the zeal displayed by the Union minister of culture, Ananth Kumar, to deem the 1995 amendment illegal and set up a freshly constituted board ruled by the original constitution, is unexceptional.

However, there is always more to political appointments than meets the eye. While it may be true that there are more 8220;scientists, educationists, artistes8221; on the new board than was the case earlier, as the minister took care to point out, several favourites of the minister and his party seem to have also been accommodated. Therefore, for the government to claim that it made this move in the greater interest of Indian art and culture does not bearscrutiny.

In fact, the response from the artistic community to the move has been less than enthusiastic with many stating that the new appointees lack the vision essential for the promotion and development of the arts.

There is nothing that undermines an institution quite as much as the lack of courage and conviction of the people who run them.

Interestingly, one of the eminences who had acquiesced to the unhappy amendment of 1995 is today more than happy to go along with the commitments of the present political dispensation. The same is the case with the numerous nameless, faceless bureaucrats who rush to bow to the politician8217;s command without even bothering to ask questions. All this surely does not make for credible institution-building.

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Several committees, including those headed by G.D. Khosla and P.N. Haksar, which looked into the administration of filmmaking and culture respectively, had made numerous recommendations on weakening, if not destroying, this unhappy nexus between the governmentof the day and institutions constituted to further the arts.

Perhaps the time has come to dust these ancient volumes down and put some of their more efficacious recommendations in place.