Don’t Call Me Babe

1992. Arpita Singh’s image of Durga for the Puja cover of Desh magazine raises the roof. The “virgin” goddess wears widow’s white, calmly fires a revolver at a violent mob of men and stands astride not a monster but a modern man.

1994. “A flame, a flower, a footprint in the sand/ You have the right to name me as you will.” Lines from an installation on Meena Kumari by Sheba Chhachhi.

1999. Gogi Saroj Pal paints her Shringara series of a naked woman oiling her hair with Keo Karpin, holding a Jaguar Shower, putting on pink Lee Socks and Woodland Shoes. “Maybe a 100 years ago, a woman performed the rituals of shringara to beautify herself, and this is how she was portrayed in painting. Now she she does it (consciously) to advertise the beauty product, and in doing so becomes a product herself. And so this is how she needs to be shown.”

With these established patterns of the feminist discourse and the number of opinions already printed on Woman in Art, it is exceedingly brave of art historian Geeti Sen to attempt another take on the subject. Five elegant, anecdotal essays document the evolution in the imaging of Indian women over the 20th century, supported extravagantly by visuals, as required in the coffee table format.

Sen begins with Bharat Mata and how Abanindranath Tagore changed the Devi’s image from the religious to the secular to iconise nationalism. From how “powerful” men used women’s bodies as metaphor, the discourse travels next to the subversive vision of Indian women artists themselves in viewing their body and its sexuality (Amrita Sher-Gil, Arpita Singh — whose watercolours inspired this book — and the women painters who continue this debate).

The third essay crosses the inner and outer courtyards of the woman’s world, the lakshman rekhas leapt by 20th century women. Poignantly, it explores the violation of a woman’s inner space, her very self-view, by the all-penetrative Male Gaze.

The movies are the canvas for documenting this change, mainly through an indicative comparison of Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam with Charulata, skimming down the decades to the controversy over Fire.

Essay Four takes the discourse further inwards, from the exploration of the larger terrain of the “inner” and the “outer” spaces through which a woman moves, to the woman’s personal terrain, the masks she wears for public consumption vis-a-vis her private self. Sen discusses this chiefly through photographs (by men) of three stunning public personae: Anandamayi Ma, Indira Gandhi and Meena Kumari.

The last essay goes to the heart of the matter, women’s inner shakti. It sweeps down the centuries from mythology to modern art, scooping up empowering images of women by both sexes, to leave off at a point of hope in their narrative in the new time cycle.

No unhappy endings, as the conventions of Sanskrit drama prescribe. In fact, these five essays seem to lead, like the pancha kosha or “five sheaths” of metaphysics, from the “gross matter” of the outermost layer to the “subtle matter” of the innermost. Perhaps this structure was instinctively adopted, given that Sen’s long absorption in the cultural field must have steeped her in Indian thought like the cherry at the bottom of the brandy bottle. Either way, it is very pleasant to find an Indian mind sharing its own ways of seeing — despite the expected namaste to John Berger.