When we start giving Kala same respect as Vidya

In the late Sixties, artist Bhaskar Kulkarni, an employee of the Handicrafts Board was encouraged by Mrs Jayakar to investigate such practices in drought-ridden Bihar. Deeply disturbed by the unimaginable poverty he saw in Mithila, one of the most backward regions of Bihar, he initiated women to make paintings to earn a livelihood. Knowing they painted images in traditional bridal chambers called Kohbar he persuaded them to make similar things on the paper he provided. These were sold through the handicraft sector and a phenomenon called Madhubani painting was born. Hundreds of women found expression of their inherent creativity in addition to a means of livelihood.

Artists like Sita Devi, Mahasundari Devi, Ganga Devi, Baua Devi and many others emerged as outstanding practitioners of this reinvented tradition.

Ganga Devi’s instance is exemplary. Cast away by her husband and living in abject poverty she strove to empower herself through art. Narrating her own life story she introduced new dimensions into the ‘traditional’’ repertory of Madhubani painting. She was later conferred the Padmashri and a road was named after her in her native Mithila.

Artist Haku Shah encouraged a housewife in Ahmedabad named Saroj to make appliques and she produced an array of lively designs reminiscent of the paper-cuts of Matisse. He also initiated a folk singer from Rajasthan, Ganesh, into making drawings resulting in unusual renderings of the singer’s life-experiences. In suburban Anand, Santokba watching her art student son paint got the urge to paint in her late age. And painted literally thousands of feet of Mahabharata stories commissioned by Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts. In a rare achievement of empowering the itinerant community of performing and visual artists, Rajeev Sethi initiated the establishment of a collective township at Shadipur on the outskirts of Delhi.

Interestingly, a majority of these practitioners are women, often unlettered, but visually highly literate in contrast to their urban counterparts. In a society ridden with an age-old caste system, art practices too are viewed in hierarchical terms. Defined as ‘craft’ and generally marketed through handicrafts sector these are valued far below products of urban origin. The example of Australia is important in this context, where, the art of its aboriginal population has provided the nation the means to earn a unique identity, prestige and market in the international art circuit. Aboriginal artists like Rover Thomas or Clifford Possum are regarded as national icons of Australian art. It is difficult to equate a Ganga Devi with a M F Husain in our situation.

In the urban sector, a vast number of unorganized labour is involved in making cultural objects: a toy or a kite sold in the bazaar, the massive effigies of Ravana for Dussehra or Tazias for Muharram. The Durga puja and Ganesh chaturthi pandals present an incredible inventiveness of design and execution. Last year, in a Dussehra procession outside Delhi I saw an amazing image of a massive Hanuman floating in air with hands moving and body levitating. It made the entire area turn into a magical site. The anonymous makers of such objects however rarely figure in the category of artists despite their professional expertise or inventiveness; regarded ‘kitsch,’ their designs do not figure in the handicrafts sector either.

The numerically small, ‘minority’ culture of urban modern art is like an extended family with a sizeable number of women practitioners, functioning around the circuit of art galleries and museums through a system of exhibitions held most of the time in metropolitan cities. This culture, grown out of half a dozen art schools (the rest being hidebound and conservative) was limited to a few cognoscenti and remained almost invisible until the eighties when a phenomenon called the ‘art market’ happened. It became visible when rising prices of art in auctions and mushrooming of galleries began to attract media attention.

The fact that an artist, if successful can now make a decent living has however, not resulted in an upgrading of art schools or recognition of the importance of art in school or university education. The handful art schools with a liberal system of education continue to face the same financial crunch as before and the culture of public collections of contemporary art has not yet taken root. The unique experiment in this direction that was initiated in early eighties has suffered a severe setback.

Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal was established with state funds as a multi-arts centre serving the needs of a region (Madhya Pradesh) with a national/international outlook, its philosophy broadly in tune with our federal polity. It included two museums: one housing the art of the rural-tribal region of Madhya Pradesh and the other of contemporary modern art of India (with a section on the urban art of the state), a poetry library of Indian languages, indoor and outdoor auditoria for performing arts, a documentation programme and workshop facilities for visiting artists. It initiated awards for excellence in various disciplines of art at national level and published multiple journals on arts, cinema and literature in Hindi. Conceived and realized by poet-bureaucrat Ashok Vajpeyi and artist J. Swaminathan, it was (and still remains) a blue print for the rest of the Indian states to emulate. It attracted the artist community from all disciplines and set standards of excellence in every sphere of its operation, including awards. In the absence of passion and commitment once the two pioneers retired, Bharat Bhavan has become victim of national neglect facing a bleak future by lack of funds, leadership and political interference.

The seven Zonal Cultural Centres established during the Rajiv Gandhi regime and provided with enormous corpus funds running into crores by the state governments seem to have performed little to justify their existence for all these years. The central Lalit Kala Akademi has been a hotbed of internal intrigues and manipulations with hardly a hope of redemption. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations is meant to be our window to the world. Except for receiving a few, and for the most, non-descript exhibitions or sending similar ones abroad (along with dignitaries and official functionaries) it remains in slumber most of the time. The National Gallery of Modern Art too seems to be content in performing little beyond the tasks that officialdom deems necessary and permissible.

The work of contemporary modern artists has however reached the most competitive venues in the world art of today despite the absence of institutional support. The lack of understanding in supporting the vibrant art scene reflected in official attitudes, has led to the generation of support systems through private sponsorship and collective ventures. As a result, contemporary Indian art has become far more visible in the international circuit than it has ever been.

On the outskirts of Delhi, the corporate house of Apeejay has established a well equipped new media centre for visual arts. Khoj, an exemplary artists’ collective has managed to organize a series of international art workshops in Delhi, Mysore and Mumbai. Individual exhibitions sponsored by private galleries have become far more professional in display and publications. Significant exhibitions abroad like The Century City (London/Tate Modern), the Edge of Desire(Perth/The Art Gallery of Western Australia, New York/Asia Society, Mexico City/Tamayo Museum) with a sizeable representation of contemporary Indian art curated by Indian art critics have been noticed in the international fora. The work of young artists are handpicked by high profile galleries abroad and by curators of international biennales.

In 2002, a retrospective of Bhupen Khakhar, the first ever of an Indian artist abroad, was held in one of the most prestigious institutions of the western world: the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. Art critic Geeta Kapur was invited to be on the international jury of the Venice Biennale. All these events however do not make news and remain outside the concerns of Indian cultural officialdom. For the media, culture has come to mean film, fashion or food, (all that money can buy?): it does not however miss an opportunity to report the price index of the latest mega purchase at auctions.

The reasons for this state of affairs are not far to seek. These rest in the social mind-set and attitude towards art, inculcated and reinforced by an imbalanced system of education. Viewed as a soft discipline, art till recently was either equated with hobby or entertainment, rarely with vocation or profession. Little wonder that schools in, for instance, my hometown Baroda offer no education in liberal arts, let alone in fine or performing arts. The spiraling art market and possibilities of art as investment might now convince parents of the wisdom of art as a prospective career for their children but the respect that scientific disciplines, IT or management evoke is rarely offered to the arts.

I recall an observation of a high functionary of the university where I taught. He was appalled that the status and salary of a mere musician was equitable with that of a scientist within the university. Vidya maybe sought and respected, but not Kala or creativity. This attitude has deprived generations of young adults of an adequate understanding of art practices, let alone the opportunities of developing informed connoisseurship. Located in verbal disciplines, our institutional education leaves little room for aural or visual literacy. Even Vidya is often limited to information, rather than knowledge which seem to counter the old adage of Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye or knowledge that liberates. Ideally speaking, Vidya proposes analysis, processing and understanding of information leading to Gnana, to the realm of ideas. Another ancient saying rubs the point in while defining the art-less individual as a brute sans horns and a tail! We are yet to learn the potential strength of our plural cultural practices.

Nowhere in the world there exist and flourish the variety of cultural manifestations initiated by the people, individually or collectively as in India today. Extending the experiment of Bharat Bhavan further, we may think of museums and art centres on holistic lines including all aspects of urban and rural cultures rather than dividing them into caste-like categories. Despite having witnessed an appropriation and distortion of cultural beliefs and practices by fundamentalist forces cutting at the very fibre of a basically liberal and multicultural society in recent times, we continue to treat culture with tokenism.

Sadly however it worries few, least of all our rulers and policy makers, that our apathy in the matters of culture have left many a national institution without professional leadership. The National Museum, the IGNCA, the ASI, the Crafts Museum (so vibrant when a scholar like Dr Jyotindra Jain headed it), in the capital the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, the Museum and Picture Gallery in Baroda and umpteen others elsewhere have remained headless for several years and are administered by bureaucrats. Would this happen to scientific, technological or even management institutes, this sidelining of professionals and professionalism? Do bureaucrats have the master key to deal with any discipline?. And since there is no professional accountability, it matters little if names of Ananda Coomaraswamy or Binode Behari Mukherjee are not heard of in the corridors of the department of culture.

India of my dreams is without want on every front, a fair and just society without discrimination on grounds of caste, religion, gender or race, but I place its soul in the creativity of its arts. I visualize a change of the heart of our educational system with Vidya and Kala deeply embedded in it. For if Vidya liberates, Kala humbles and humanizes. I see no better antidote to the brutalization and violence we are plagued with these days than a combined dose of Vidya with Kala.