Thawing Official India

It8217;s a global audience special. It8217;s called Official India OI. It8217;s full of bright, young software whiz-kids on one hand bu...

It8217;s a global audience special. It8217;s called Official India OI. It8217;s full of bright, young software whiz-kids on one hand but is strangely classical on the other. So you have the software giant that stands smothered in classical dances, modernist painting and Hindustani or Carnatic music. Official India dresses up to become a photographer8217;s delight: The cliched image of a rural bumpkin using a high-tech gadget.

Images are created in many ways, for many reasons. But let8217;s focus here on contemporary art making, where India is experiencing the emergence of competing versions of What Makes Art.

If you live in a big city and are the kind of person who checks the events column, you may have seen a few presentations from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations ICCR8212;Indians from the traditional mould who have been sponsored to travel, or more often, folk and classical dancers from beyond the borders. This is exactly the kind of thing you will rarely ever see if you actually travel abroad. Nor would many of the locals8212;because it8217;s the logo countries ride on, their 8216;going-out-dress8217;.

This would have made sense in the 1950s, when ICCR was in its promising infancy and the world itself was trying to define newly created identities. The United Nations thrust the responsibility of each formally sovereign state to carve out its distinctive identity, almost justifying its independent existence.

Promoting folk and classical art practice was usually a celebration of being de-colonised. These practices are phenomenally empowering now as earlier, except that they have peers.

As an exporter of culture, ICCR tends to push the 8217;50s celebration in 21st century ambience, because it typically excludes new kinds of art making. The exceptions were the Festivals of India, because they followed a different vision and were held selectively. I would have said that this is partly to do with the uncritical education all of us, including policy makers, receive in school, about the arts. But then I remembered that there was Khoj, right in the heart of Delhi.

Few people would have ever heard of Khoj, an artist-led initiative that has emerged as an important exchange between artists globally. Its emphasis on exchange has ensured that contemporary artists can work in collaboration with each other internationally. At its workshops in India, foreign and Indian artists lived and worked together, creating art from locally available materials and skills. Despite the presence of art practitioners from the West, there is a bent towards linking up with developing countries. So in a few weeks, ideas from one part of the globe permeate into the other. Later, these transform into new cross-cultural linkages. The process is as much a part of the expectations as is the outcome.

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I believe that Khoj8217;s most productive role is that it is able to challenge OI with the Artists8217; View of Art. As more contemporary artists examine issues ranging from the feminine discourse to the place of kitsch, art making in India demands a wider perspective. And as audiences abroad see this vibrancy, they become part of challenging the OI too.

There is no reason why the ICCR can8217;t shed its skin. Look at the Japan Foundation, which brings out Alternatives, with information on many art practices it may be unable to fund.

What we really need is the humility to see that in a land of a billion and more people, art making is dynamic too. Quick, let8217;s get ourselves out of the deep freeze.