Category Archives: Indian Art

imperial idea?

21 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by in Indian Art, Indian History

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

A trip to Delhi is incomplete without viewing the Government Precinct at Raisina Hill. Past the Martyrs Wall, you look across to Parliament, the Lok Sarbha. There stands, the Viceroy’s House, designed by Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944), a landmark of “Imperial resolve” that has been “redeemed” as the Rashtrapati Bhavan, or President’s House.

“In 20,000 years” boasted Edward Baker, “there will be an imperial Lutyens tradition in Indian architecture as there now clings a memory of Alexander.”

Lutyen’s set out to create the greatest city the world had ever known.; a symbol of the precise running of empire against the chaos of India. But like the sinking Titanic, lost the same year Lutyens began his two decades of construction, the Empire would be lost. The Titanic’s claim of unsinkability matched the realities of history. Societies boast in pomp as they begin to decline. The USA economy had already surpassed Britain’s.

Lutyens resolve mirrored a scientific idea that drove a civilisation. So grand was the original scheme, that Lutyens was forced by Lord Harding to reduce the building from 370,000m3 to 240,000 m3.

Yet it remains “the grandest of all the residences that the British built in India, for a brand new capital had 340 rooms, covered four and a half acres and included twelve separate internal courtyards, making it probably the last of the great royal palaces of history” [1].

Perspective View of the South Elevation of the Viceroy's House ( ByWilliam Walcot, 1914

Perspective View of the South Elevation of the Viceroy’s House ( ByWilliam Walcot, 1914

Located for the “road system based on two great roads”, claimed colleague Herbert Baker [2](1862-1946), Satish Sharma[3]  more cynically describes it “an act of imperial cartography”.

“Whether accidentally or by design, Lutyens created the new capital in the exact shape of the traditional Vastu Purusha [the god of construction, whose supine form determines the best metaphysical plan of a building site], whose head is on Raisina Hill and whose feet rest at the Purana Quila [the oldest fort in Delhi][4]“

Imperial order sits above the chaotic mass of the Old City.

Meanwhile, delicate India designs hide an Imperial skeleton.

Built of “the same red sandstone that the Moghuls had used at Fatehpur Sikr [the ancient fortified city close to Agra] interspersed with cream stone from Dholpur, Bharatpur and Agra, in brilliant horizontal bands of colour accentuating the horizontal emphasis of the whole edifice” wrote Davies[5]. But the sandstone was reinforced by the fruits of British iron, steel and concrete which Scriver[6] describes as “the utlimate ossification of the provisional ‘scaffolding’ with which the colonial polity had been assembled.”

He adds: “What remained of the aborted project of colonial social engineering was only the hollow facade of imperial authority and system, propped up by the skeletal cage of its own technical superstructure.”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

From Alexander onwards, India has always mollified her conquerors.

The capitals look like Corinthian, but closer they are carved with acanthus leaves and small hanging Indian bells, like temple bells.

Lutyens who never liked Oriental Classicism never admitted that the Byzantine raised copper-clad central dome, with its octagonal turrets encircling a pierced stone drum , had an Indian motif. But look again and see the 3rd century BCE Buddhist stupa of Sanchi that Britain restored from1912 to 1919.

As Thomas Metcalf suggests ,this symbolically “provided a way of evading the communal tangle of Hindu and Muslim[7]“

It’s endless arched corridors “seemed to run through the house like sumptuous warrens” wrote Jan Morris . I remember the Mughal designed chuja inlayed in red, that shades a colonnade from sun and monsoon, loggias and jail shade the north east wing.

But the basement floor plan, projected onto a screen as I listened to Francesca Hughes during a visit to Brisbane, that inspired this article. The floor plan revealed precise planning for all culinary contingencies. Ms Hughes was promoting her book, The Architecture of Error[8], to illustrate how the pursuit of precision drove Western science.

Viceroys Floorplan

“Architecture’s already precocious tools “ Hughes said, were used “for managing its unique fear of physical error would redefine precisions relations to the truthfulness.” “These tools, and the fears they barely conceal, intersect in the seminal technological and cultural crises that mark architecture’s twentieth-century and the exponential rise in redundant precision that it witnessed. “

I was immediately reminded that Britain’s imperialism was driven by the Enlightenment. The technology of the sailing ship released men from oars to guns when Muslim ad Chinese ships still rowed.

The question of precision and error has colonised our pursuit of knowledge as a science helped colonise a world periphery to Europe. Joseph Banks, the botanist on Cooks voyage that charted the transit of Venus across the sun, had returned to Britain with unique plant specimens. He would go on to lead the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, and Britain’s pursuit of new resources like rubber, and Indigo. He suggested New Holland be colonised and the Aboriginal natives would welcome Britain’s ways to improve their life. He also took Indigo from the Americas because it would be cheaper to produce in India.

As we discuss in the next article, Empire was an idea, not a geography.

[1] Morris, Jan, with Simon Winchester. Stones of Empire: The buildings of the Raj. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
[2] Baker, Herbert. “The New Delhi.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. Vol. 74, No. 3841 (2 July 1926): 773-793
[3] Sharma, Satish. “Imperial Delhi: Imagined, Imaged, Iconized.” Indian International Centre Quarterly. Vol. 33, No. 2 (Autumn 2006): 27-32.
[4] Buch, M. N. “Lutyen’s New Delhi: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” Indian International centre Quarterly. Vol. 30, No. 2 (Monsoon 2003).29-40
[5] Davies, Philip. Splendours of the Raj: British Architecture in India 1660-1947. London: Penguin, 1987.
[6] Scriver, Peter. “Empire-Building and Thinking in the Public Works Department of British India.” In Colonial Modernities: Building , Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon. Eds. Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2007. 69-92.

[7] Metcalf, Thomas R. An Imperial Vision: India’s Architecture and Britain’s Raj. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

[8] Francesca Hughes, The Architecture of Error: Matter, Measure, and the Misadventures of Precision, MIT Press, 2014.

Rann of Kutch: right out of a fairytale

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Indian Art, Indian Clothing, Indian Festivals

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

monsoon-lake

The beauty of the white desert shimmers in the moonlight.  By day, a “desolate area of unrelieved, sun-baked saline clay desert, shimmering with the images of a perpetual mirage.”[1] Equally, there is also a darker side, of salt cured labourers lugging sacks of salt for merchants and vibrant embroidered colour.

During monsoon, the region is covered in water, and over winter, the water evaporates leaving a salty crust that must be seen to be believed.
The salt crunched beneath our feet as we walked on it, and some of the earth gave way beneath us where the water had still not entirely dissipated after monsoon.  Before us we could see nothing but pure white land that melted into the horizon.  There were no people or buildings in sight, it was like we had reached the end of the earth.
In what is one of the most inhospitable places on earth, you can even stay in a tent overnight and wake up to this beautiful sight.

Rakhee Ghelani

walkingsaltplains

One of the world’s largest seasonal marsh lands, once shallows of the Arabian Sea, turn into desert during the dry season. Crossing Gujuruat and Sindh Pakistan, 30,000 square km of encrusted salt between the Gulf of Kutch and the Indus River, it is the only large flooded grasslands zone in the Indo-Malayan region.

Flamingo-City

Perhaps the bleakest, dustiest, and hottest region in India, sitting along the Tropic of Cancer at the end of the at the end of the Luni River, draining the the Aravalli Hills, the Great Rann of Kutch is refuge for the last population of the endangered Asiatic wild ass (Equus hermionus) and supports the one of the world’s largest breeding colonies of the greater and lesser flamingos.

A lake since the Mesozoic, when geological uplift created a vast lake still navigable when Alexander the Great invaded it has since silted into a a vast, saline mudflat.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Yet, during the full moon in winter, the festival of Rann utsav draws tourists to dazzling white salt encrusted desert plains.  At Dhorodo in the Banni grasslands, a tent village rises from the sand for the festival. Fringing the Great Rann of Kutch, camel carts take tourists to the salt flats. Food is served in the desert wilderness accompanied by Sindhi Bhajans and Sufi songs.

Many seek the deserts of Rajasthan, but comparatively few cross  the Thar desert to witness the magical sunset over salt white sands. Gujrurat’s promotion of Rannustav seeks to change that. Close to the Pakistan order, you will pass several security checks on your visit.

ranofkutchsunset

Stay for sunset – it’s magical.

The silence of salt white sand is almost a spiritual experience. You almost need to pick up a handful of sand o remind yourself its salt. The blinding white desert looks like snow but the weather is hot.

As the sun starts to set, the mountain slowly changes from red to grey to black and you will witness the salt reflecting these changing colours of the sun.  In some parts, the monsoon water can still be seen, creating a little island in the middle of the salt desert. The sun reflected on the edge of the water, in a ring of bright blue.

I have never seen a landscape like this before. Where the Bolivian salt desert looks like a lunar landscape, Kutch looked like it came straight out of a fairytale, the salt flats glistened steely blue, they felt like you could ice skate on them ever so gracefully. As eagles soared above, the view was both spectacular and peaceful. As the sun came down in a brilliant blaze of orange, I reflected on just how large the world was, and perhaps how I had finally seen a part of the world that felt like it was right on the edge, where past the horizon you could almost fall right off.

– Rakhee Ghelani

Kutch_2

oulookIndia.com

 

Near Dhorodo the Dattatray Temple sits in the Kala Dungar, or Black Hills, only 462 metres it is one of the Kutch districts  highest points, but easily climbed. Desolate and bouldered, below is the panorama of salt, you can trek scrub among bulbuls and larks or watch the dramatic feeding of golden jackals at the temple.  As the priests call out “Lo-Aang, Lo-Aang”, packs of jackal come to feast from the temple offerings of rice and jaggary.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The pastoral villages of the Banni grasslands also produce some of India’s finest hand embroidery.

Loneyplanet.in

Loneyplanet.in

“Suf embroidery is counted on the warp and weft of the cloth in a surface satin stitch worked from the back. Motifs are never drawn. Each artisan imagines her design, then counts it out in reverse, thus requiring much detailing. The craftswomen fill symmetrical patterns with tiny triangles, and accent stitches. Khaarek is a geometric style also counted and precise. Paako is a tight square chain and double buttonhole stitch embroidery, often with black slanted satin stitch outlining. The motifs of paako, sketched in mud with needles, are primarily floral and generally arranged in Riding these decorated camels on the white sands of the Kutch is an unequalled experience With a steady hand, a plain piece of wood quickly turns into a vibrant art before your eyes .

aditirindani.wordpress.com

aditirindani.wordpress.com

The mesmerising  rainbow of colour adorns women exquisitely dressed in embroidery made in their  homes of picturesque mud-plastered round houses called bhungas lovingly decorated with hand-paintings and mirror inlays.

Each village has its own style of embroidery, the colours of culture glisten heavily embroidered attire. Kutch is one of the most colourful regions of India and offers a glimpse of Gujarat at her exotic best.  A rich repertoire of woodcarving, leather crafts and pottery also thrive in the Banni villages.

Bhuj, Indiamike.com

From the walled city of Bhuj, Medieval forts to the the modern city of Gandhidham, majestic palaces, historic ports, temples, monasteries and pretty beach of Mandvi are close by.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


Or visit the sacred lake of Narayan Sarovar, the shore temple of Koteshwar, the Ashapura Mata-no-Madh temple, a number of Jain Derasars, the Gurdvara at Lakhpat and Sufi shrines.

Lakhpat once a port on the Arabian sea at the junction of Kori creek and Rann of Kutch. It was abandoned after the 1819 AD strong earthquake which changed the flow of Sindhu (Indus) River

Lakhpat once a port on the Arabian sea at the junction of Kori creek and Rann of Kutch. It was abandoned after the 1819 AD strong earthquake which changed the flow of Sindhu (Indus) River

[1] Cubitt and Mountfort 1991

Did I find the worlds smallest mosque?

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Indian Art, Indian History, Madhya Pradesh

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


Passing the Shaukat Mahal, I am seeking the tomb of Bhopals founder, Dost Mohommad Khan.
The Shaukat Mahal across from the Iqbhal Playground, where budding cricketers in white qurta and knitted skullcaps practice. Post Renaissance and Gothic, it’s design blends occident and orient in a style conceived and designed by a decadent Frenchman who claims decent from the French Bourbon Dynasty.
Next door, the entrance of the Sheesh Mahal seems more parking lot for cars Sadar Manzil Gate.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The delicate beauty of the past now houses the Bhopal Municipal Corporation.A fountain past the entrance catches my attention as I ask a a guard for directions. They invite me in for a look. I am saddened that nearby Taj Mahal is a closed deteriorating shell while this beautiful building is a business hub that few tourists can be entered within to experience.

However, my goal is slightly farther, within the campus of Gandhi Medical College, besides the tomb of Dost Mohammad Khan and his wife Fateh Bibi . I am even more interested finding on the campus the worlds smallest mosque.

tomb Dost Mohommmad Khan

Panoramia.com I was not permitted to photograph inside the mosque tomb

the tomb of Dost Mohammad Khan and his wife Fateh Bibi

I quickly found the asjid Dost Mohammmad Khan as I wound past  a temple and mosque inside the entrance. Within to the side are the tombs.

I had first to negotiate a barrage of personal questions. “Foreigner? Which country””Mai Bhopal main rahta hai), and offering profuse assurances I would not photograph inside the mosque or tomb, I was checked several times to ensure I did not take photos within.

Built by son Yaar Mohammad Khan in the year 1742 the tomb sits on a raised square platform, the tomb is surrounded by a 3 metre  high wall with corner minars and three entrances.

Eight arched pillars support a dome, which typical of the early Bhopal rulers, is not proportionate. Beautifully, amalgam horse shoe and lotus shaped brackets  in between the pillars are proportionately balanced multifoil arches. Lattice marble screen surround the tomb.

Dost Mohammad Khan was a complex man. Brutal in conflict, he enlisted under Mir Fazlullah, Emperor Aurangzeb’s Keeper of Arm and led forces during in the final brutal years of collapsing Mughal rule.  A risk taker, who broke military conventions, often at great risk to his own life.

However, he had earlier learned to appreciate culture when he fled Afghanistan after he killed a man in self defence. In Delhi, There he met his old  Mullah Jamali of Kashgar. For a year, Khan studied Quran and witnessed the culture and  tolerant ideals of Shah’s Akhbar and Jehan.

A mercenary during the wars of Mughal Succession, he married Kunwar Sardar Bai, who later converted to Islam and adopted the name Fatah Bibi and established a small mustajiri (rented estate) near Mangalgarh, called Berasia.

Khan was invited by Bhopali Ghond Queen Rani Kamlapati to revenge her husbands death. Bhopals upper lake was then inhabited by around 1000 Gond and Bhil tribals.,and Khan usurped her kingdom then invited her to join his harem. She refused, choosing suicide.

He decided to fortify the town with a wall with six gates and built Bhopal’s first, and the worlds smallest, mosque so fort guards could perform namaaz.

The fortified city of called Sher-e-khas enclosed 1.5 sq kilometre by a wall 10m high 2 to 3 m thick included  hammams, with windowless chambers for public bathing,  hathi khannas to house elephants and their mahaots , serias to house  travelling merchants, and mosques. Buildings, three or four floors high, enclosed narrow streets, a few 4 metres wide at the most,  matched each other as children played on pattias or raised platforms to sit out the front of a house.

Ironically, after chai with my new – still inquisitive – friends, they did not know where the worlds smallest mosque was! Overhearing, another man pointed me a few hunnded metres around the bend.

 Dhai Seedhi Ki Masjid, the Mosque of two and a half steps

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

russinansmallestmosque

Russia’s World Smallest Mosque

“Er …. where is it?” was my first reaction, reading the sign, sadly aware that unable to find the watchman I would not see inside. The padlocked gate also prevented me from climbing the steps.

Dhai Seedi Ki Masjid sits atop a watchtower, at one of the cities highest points it offers a commanding view of a city built in turbulent times. Initially a makeshift mosque for the prayer of the guards,  the mosque of 2 and a half steps was built during the construction of Fatehgarh fort begun by  Dost Mohammad Khan.

But  the words smallest mosque? Daniel McCrohan paced  the floors interior dimensions to 16 metres square, smaller than another “world’s smallest mosque” of 25 metres square in built in 2002 at Naberezhnye Chelny, in honour of those who fought Ivan the Terrible.

Harar Ethiopia Tree Mosque [Travelod.com]

In Harar it is claimed the smallest mosque is in a tree!!

For me, the Dhai Seedhi ki Masjid, built for the defenders of Fatehgarh Fort, is a reminded that we have a spiritual yearning that needs to be answered even when defending our kingdom.

As I wandered the grounds hoping for a better a photographic angle, I found this more worldly reminder of the modern world.

Mosquetwohalfsteps no ragging res(8)

Yes, we must live in this modern world. First we must transform ourselves if we are to transform the planet. After visiting the Mosque, I found that Lonely Planet had made the same trek with better success finding the watchman.
Hence, complements of lonely Planet I present the inside of the Dhai Seedhi Ki Masjid.

4x4: The main prayer hall of Dhai Seedi Ki Masjid. Image by Daniel McCrohan / Lonely Planet.

4×4: The main prayer hall of Dhai Seedi Ki Masjid. Image by Daniel McCrohan / Lonely Planet.

The mosque was perched on top of an overgrown stone turret, which formed a corner of an old ruined fortress wall. The hospital, it turns out, was built inside the grounds of the 18th century Fatehgarh Fort, so that soldiers deployed as guards could perform their daily prayers. And, according to an old city tourism sign standing outside the locked gates, this was the first mosque built in Bhopal, a city that now boasts more than 400.
– Loney Planet

Bhopal and the world: What is landscape in the modern world?

16 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Indian Art, Religion & Spiritualty

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

dbcity-2

Capitalism does not want you to stay content. That new fangled item you were sure you needed is useless and needing to be replaced.

Unfortunately the beautiful malls we thought we needed will last a lot longer. Sometimes as deteriorating concrete frames.

So why does Bhopal, with all of its small population need the biggest Mall in India? Besides DB Mall, and Ashima there is the collection of faded concrete arcades scattered everywhere.

What happened to the meditative reflection of the Ashram? There is the headlong rush of food courts, with the hype and hustle of 24-7 sales pitch. Turn on pay TV and the same add will be repeated four times in a row just to be sure you didn’t get the McPoint that you need to McPurchase McRubbish you didn’t McWant.

Chasing fame, wealth, and power can prevent us from the truth of our personal and world challenges. Addicted to more goods and a hectic life only bandages our gaping spiritual wounds and compels us to greater loneliness and unhappiness.

Of course, there is a need for development. Bhopal has developed beyond the BEMAC label. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shiraj Singh Chauhan has an enviable 3 term record for getting thing done. (In a recent visit to Brisbane Australia I met a BJP official who praised him from afar).

But why rip up good farmland on Bhopal outskirts for town houses in a state that is spending money on giving infrastructure for agriculture?

Hinduism and Islam ritual respect natures rhythms. So if nature is construed as at least a little closer to the divine then surely our push for consumerism and commerce has become the architecture of evasion and deception. The unquestioned desire to consume an ever proliferating arrays of unneeded, commercial products seems a soul-defying measure of happiness that is damaging the planet.

India’s national politics has become slogan driven ideological wasteland, where cunning is praised and compassion a weakness. Politics is a cultural construction of media mirages, communal division and an ecological mess.

Osho Anhad Ashram, Bhopal

Osho Anhad Ashram, Bhopal

What is landscape?

Britain bought the Enlightenments idea landscape controlled and commanded.

“The English word landscape comes from landscaef , an Anglo-German word that meant “a clearing in the forest with animals, huts, fields, fences. It was essentially a peasant landscape carved out of the original forest or weald, out of the wilderness[1]” . The English ‘land‘ means earth from the older Gothic for ‘a ploughed field’. Scape implies the shape of similar objects or shaeth , a buncle or sheath of similar plants.

Do we command ecology through the science and technologies of architecture? Landscape is certainly sublimated or modified by mans interference. But now, the ideological imperative to remake the land is losing ground to environmental fears.

2014-10-07 11.27.27res

Landscape is memory

In W J T Mitchell suggested landscapes are part of a ‘process by which … identities are formed[2]’

Sometimes landscapes remind you of childhood, meeting the love of your life, a concert at the Bharat Bhavan, or – heaven forbid – loss, pain and sometimes the fracture society experiences in a riot or the Bhopal’s Dow chemical disaster.

Princes, Priests and Politicians have shaped India’s landscape. But now it seems the rush to consumerism is rubbishing the scenery. In India where landscape is so often associated with linked to the gods must this also be true. The vibrant, textured colour of India has assimilated many marks of invasion.

In the village the Banyan tree is never trimmed or removed from the middle of a road. Even palaces and temples have sprawled organically without the geometric perfection of Grecian ideals that were borrowed by Islamic designers. Islam also espouses garden designs inspired by paradise.

Now, India is a secular democracy, and the issue of land use and economic progress for the poor transcends state lines. But, I hope India will not fall to the Western trap of market driven morality. Business interests tend to place profit over human life and biodiversity.

By amir taj (Flickr.com, Khattak Dance) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By amir taj (Flickr.com, Khattak Dance) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The Dervish dance of modernity

The modern world, is constantly moving described well by the word raqs.

Raqs is “the state dervishes enter when they whirl. It also means dance” wrote Elena Bernadini in Raqs Media Collective: nomadism in art practice. “In Urdu and Hindi it indicates a temporary home for travelers, a place where travellers meet, a caravansary, an inn.”

She links ‘hypermobility,’ ‘nomadology,’ ‘space-time compression,’ and ‘hybridity’ as key words for modern space. Modernity is, in Donna Haraway’s terminology[3], “about vulnerability.”

The excitement of modernity is the very cause of our vulnerability because personal and social identity is a process. Landscape is also a process, though moving much slower, offering us a psychic anchor. But even the landscape is increasingly fluid in our increasingly urban world.

It contrasts with culture as embodied genealogies of “blood, property and frontiers”. Culture “rooted societies and their members: organizations which developed, lived and died in particular places.”

While people yearn for a modernity that allows them their memories.

“The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. The landscape also changes, but far more slowly; it is a living link between what we were and what we have become.

This is one of the reasons why we feel such a profound and apparently disproportionate anguish when a loved landscape is altered out of recognition; we lose not only a place, but ourselves, a continuity between the shifting phases of our life.[4]”

India needs both modernity and nature, just as she equally needs both men and women.

At times the balance is lost and along with it, India’s uniqueness. The sprawling village gave us that. But cities require structure to function. Cities work when their infrastructure allows for movement and social expression.

We are torn between the masculine fixation on structure and feminine fluidity of mind and nature that resists the politics of closure, but is insatiably curious about the webs of connection.

The Laxmi Narayan Mandir or Birla Temple, Bhopal

The Laxmi Narayan Mandir or Birla Temple, Bhopal

Before the Commonwealth Games, ‘What will foreigners think?” seemed to drive a need to make Delhi a modern megacity that moved the chai wallahs to the outskirts and ignored the ‘nomadic sensibility’ still apart of Indian psyche.

If we are not careful the interconnectedness promised by technology can build a social apartheid of inclusion and exclusion. We observe national borders increasingly “thinned” and “doubled,” “multiplied” and “reduced” creating border zones, regions of residence suggests Etienne Balibar[5]. The dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘others,’ insiders and outsiders is not something which is drawn necessarily at national borders, but also within the very space of the city itself.

Cities can be both a breeding ground of natural beauty or of confrontation. A relaxed user friendly city can help keep the peace.

Bhopal is beautifully green built around a 38 hectare lake, with other smaller water bodies. But the landscape and psyche were scarred by a promised economic growth from a defunct fertilizer factory.

What have we learned? Will Bhopal will be turned from a lake garden to a beehive of prefab poorly maintained concrete? What do Bhopalis want as their cities cultural landscape?

As Ken Taylor expressed it: “The character of the landscape thus reflects the values of the people who have shaped it, and who continue to live in it. Culture itself is the shaping force. Landscape is a cultural expression that does not happen by chance but is created by design as a result of human ideologies.”

So what type of landscape of memory do we want? Heritage site give us pride, but walk outside and look. Where is the rubbish? Even if it is put properly aside more often than not rubbish collected may find its way in an empty field.

Is this the message of authenticity and integrity we want to leave for our children?

[1] Ken Taylor, Landscape and Memory: cultural landscapes, intangible values and some thoughts on Asia
[2] Mitchell WJT, (1994) ‘Landscape and Power’, Chicago University Press, Chicago.
[3] Donna Haraway as quoted in Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma. Geography’s Visual Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 25.
[4] Margaret Drabble in A Writer’s Britain: Landscape in Literature referring to Virginia Woolf’s sense of loss of a loved place. Drabble M, (1979), A Writer’s Britain: Landscape in Literature, p.270; Methuen, London
[5] Etienne Balibar, “The Borders of Europe,” in Cosmopolitics. Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Peng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 220

Building in the spirit of the Vedic home

09 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Indian Art

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

Hand-colored Engravings by Balthazar Solvyns, c. 1799

Hand-colored Engravings by Balthazar Solvyns, c. 1799

House building is an expression of civilization. They are more than shelters since  culture and civilization are intrinsically linked. The word implies sanctuary.

Unfortunately, when reflecting of India, many think of a wandering ascetic, naked save for a loin cloth.

While, it is true that saints in many countries and traditions have chosen a simple life without a home, In ancient India, as now, home is where the heart is, with deep spiritual significance.  Our home environment reflects our interior world.

 Each decoration tells a story

The Veda’s reveal  that the ancient Indian home was far more than the product  of primitive shepherds.

 “We lay the strong foundation of a house which is well ventilated, beautiful, with parts symmetrically corresponding  to each other and measured or enclosed all round.” Atharveda IX-3.1.7

“It’s main four parts are store houses, kitchen, harem and drawing room.”

Commonly the Indian Hindu home has a home altar with fore and incense to keep the sacred energy alive.

Westerners include more practical altars: a well stocked kitchen a television to worship with hours of trance like devotion, or a workbench in a man cave as a shrine to masculinity, or dressing room as a shrine of adoration to feminine transformation.

In the ancient Hindu texts, the home is most sacred.

“The house may be two-sided, four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided or even ten-sided. The house is peace giver to mind. I take shelter in as fire in its womb.”

“From humble to mansion the home is compared to a beautiful bride, and  a place where you find happiness.” Atharveda IX.3.24

The most sacred inner shrine of a Hindu temple is also called a womb.

The book of rituals, Paraskara, calls the house the centre of the world, Bhivanasya nabhih. It is the centre of his life and universe the pivot of his ideas.

Rather than built with  rudimentary workmanship, three classes of masons are mentioned.

But to know the feeling of the ancient Vedic home we can consult the Rig Veda book 7 hymns 1-3:

“O  great house builder! Impart this satisfaction to us that thou art a giver of an abode free from diseases to us. Kindly do as I request you. Let thee bring happiness to our bipeds, and quadrapeds.”

“O delight giving builder, add to our wealth by being helpful to our cows and horses. Through thy kindness, let us live in hygenic conditions to a good old age. Be kind to us as a father to his son.”
” O builder, make us such a house that we may live in all sorts of comforts and enrich ourselves. Let happiness come to us. Let us ever be blessed with auspicious things.”

houses4 (1)

The structure of Vedic home

The structure of a home is less poetic and more practical.

In 1939 French scholar Louis Renou (1896-1966), began the process of culling the Vedic literature about the “process of building” and “techniques of construction” of shelters for home and ritual (“La maison védique” in the Journal Asiatique).

Profane homes were called shala  distinct from cultic shelter. He found imprecise ritual use of the terms veshman, “habitation”; sharana, “refuge”; avasana, “place where one removes the harness after a journey” but also meaning “site of the house.” The word frequent word is vastu, designating both the house and its site. vimita (“construction”) to refer to a ritual “hut” described in the Shrautasûtras ).

From “the rites that accompany house construction” he discovered the materials of bamboo, thatch, straw mats, rope, as ell as their arrangement and orientation.

Rituals for the home (vidhi or karman) are called vastushamana (literally “appeasement of the soil”). The Vaikhanasiyas, it links to birthing practice; other times it stands alone.

A broom, or udûha, clears the ground. The surrounding wall (parilikhya) is laid carefully. According to the shvalayana Shrautasûtra, a thousand furrows are dug. Possibly a preliminary tilled into the soil (uddhatya). From all directions water flows toward the center, creating an ambulatory path (pradaksina) around the bedroom (shayaniya), claims the shvalayana orders. The water then drains noiselessly eastward.

The soil was raised at the sides, forming a drain slanted slightly eastward, claims Narayana’s commentary, with a north channel (syandanika) to drain off water, near the kitchen (bhaktasharan.a), north of the bedroom. The bed should be northeast claims the Baudayana Shrautasûtra.

However a variant tradition uses the variant samavasrava, to explain a house site should allow for draining the same everywhere. Devapala explains”no side should be lower or higher than any other.”

Renou’s goes into the specific rooms including a chariot house. A salon (sabha), where the master of the house receives his guests, says Narayana, is in the part of the house “that inclines toward the south” according to (i.e. in the northern part according to Narayana.  Its best location is at the water’s confluence, says the shvalayana.

solvyns3

Construction began by digging a number of holes (garta) of equal depth to the distance from the ankle to knee, so that water drains well from them (dharayisnûdakatara). They are called four corner holes in Jayarama’s commentary on the Paraskara Gr.hyasûtra. The Kaushikasûtra mentions a middle post-hole (madhyama garta).

Posts (sthûna), called “that which rests in the cavity (darashaya)” by Nirukta, were then installed of udumbara wood. If wood of an inferior quality is used, the Shankhayana Shrautasûtra recommends a ritual of atonement (prayashcitta).

If a house is “white” (dhavalagrha, which may mean they were made of stone), stones replace the sthûna. , A stone is placed at the bottom of each hole to support it, but no Vedic text describes stone buildings. We do not know the number of posts or holes, but the Paraskara Grhyasûtra speaks of four but this may be only referring to the corner posts. Nine are mentioned in the Shankhayana Shrautasûtra.

These homes were not rude.

“Above the east entrance, in the space between the two middle pillars, is an ornamental fronton called the “forehead” (rarati). The  rarati is a strap-work of finely knotted reeds (aisiki), inclined toward the east and attached to the front cross-beam by a thread. The Manava Shrautasûtra says this rarati is a pad to prevent drafts (varasa) made of grasses that one places at the center of a strap-work of reeds; it seems that the grasses are gathered together by encircling them several times with thread, the two ends joined together, and the strap-work suspended from the front cross-beam” explains Renuo

For the home is itself sacred.

In the Rkasamhita the term for beam (vamsha) is used to describe the priests raising  Agni [the fire-god] like a beam (vamsha). Indra [the lord of heaven] is likened to the raised sky that does not need beams (avamshe). The Rig Veda also refers to pillars (sthûna) in comparisons such as “you carry men, O Agni, like a support pillar.

In the Atharvaveda we see the respect offered to cows.

“May the calf, may the child, may the dairy cows come to you (oh,shala), when they return in the evening”; also “hommage to bulls, to horses, all of which are born in the house”; and “you cover (chadayasi) in your breast, Agni, servants as well as cattle (oh shala).” One prose source refers to a cowshed called a gostha and in another a goshala is alluded too.

I prefer a home as poetry.

Or as H. Bodewitz, wrote

The Sadas hut is Prajapati’s belly. The Udumbara wood is strength (life-sap). When theUdumbara pillar is erected in the middle of the Sadas hut, one thereby places food, life-sap, in the middle.

and

The central pillar of a house or of a sacrificial Sadas is identical with the axis mundi which is placed in the navel of the earth.

For a home is a palace of chants.

In a funerary hymn the poet supplicates the Earth to allow a thousand pillars to be raised in the cavity where the dead repose, so that her weight will not crush those who take refuge in her breast.

Or Architect Anthony Lawlor once said,

“You enter the temple of home by discovering a new way of seeing, one that reconnects the needs of your soul with the buildings and landscapes that shelter you.”

It was also true of the ancient Indian home.

The Birla Museum is a must for lovers of archaeology

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Indian Art, Indian History, Madhya Pradesh

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

birla-museum
Together with the Lakshmi-Narayan temple next door, the Birla Museum sits serene in a beautiful setting on the on the Arera Hills. The red and white sandstone building entered by steep steps, it houses an extensive 4,000 volume library of art and culture, terracotta sculptures and manuscripts.

The Birla Museum is a must for lovers of archaeology, but there is little effort to keep for the average “Philistine” tourist interested.

A lover of history, I was enthralled. I immediately began photographing the gardens, aided by one of the staff, only to be told that photography was not allowed. I would have loved to show you more of the very special artefacts inside!

Durga Trimurti, 12th century, from Sagar. [art-and-archaeology.com]

Durga Trimurti, 12th century, from Sagar.
[art-and-archaeology.com]

Not to be missed is the 12th century Durga Trimurti. In her Trimurti form, Durga where the goddess is depicted with the attributes of the Hindu Trimurti of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. The central image shows her on her lion, flanked by her depicted standing.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The colourful Kondapali toys make for a refreshing display. These toys traditional to Andhra Pradesh are made of soft wood and tamarind powder and enamelled gums. They are painted with bright water colours to depict mythological figures and village scenes.

Varaha, Paramara dynasty, 13th century from Samasgarh

Varaha, Paramara dynasty, 13th century from Samasgarh

A ninth century image of Varahi, the feminine form of Vishnu’s boar avatar in the Devi gallery. A head of a Salabhanjika, or stylized woman grasping a branch, depicts a tree spirit.

Paramara dynasty, 10th century, from Ashapuri .

Paramara dynasty, 10th century,
from Ashapuri .

A 12th century Vishnu holds a conch and discus, surrounded by attendants and deities, including Brahma and Shiva.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Unfortunately, in our over hyped super sensory world. Tourists can be a necessary but despised breed. Wanted for cash, but despised for their Philistine disregard for subtlety of tradition.
Tourists need to be engaged or they lose interest.

This is perhaps why the Birla Museum is not rated highly on TripAdvisor.com. People complain it is boring, and not been allowed to take photograph means you walk in look around and leave. Perhaps, a guide, or an audio headset that explains each display will engage people more.
For lovers of archaeology, there a booklets for 20 rupee detailing the artefacts with black and white images. Six colour post cards are available for 20 rupees for the set. I hope the collection will be digitized, perhaps as a CD so people can enjoy the beautiful art when they return to their home country.
Apparently, the museum workshop makes limited display replicas for purchase. Without a vehicle, I will return later to purchase one.

The terms ecotourism or cultural tourism seem oxymorons. Tourists are seen as culturally ignorant and tourism is accused of changing the very thing come to see.
Thinking of the neaby Union Carbide site, I recognise frustrated sceptics feel justified in describing Social Justice tourism as “self righteous arrogance”, “hypocritical” and “ironic”.
However, museums importantly allow locals to appreciate their heritage, and tourists a chance to treasure a world I hope is never forgotten.

2014-10-02 16.39.14res

10 Rupees adults 5R children
50 rupees foreigners.
Open 9:30 AM – 8PM
Monday closed

Sustainable Architecture: Bhopal before the gas

27 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Indian Art, Madhya Pradesh

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

When people hear the name Bhopal they think of “the night of gas”. They do not realise a rich history of environmentally sensitive and sustainable architecture precedes the disaster for nearly a millennium.

Since the disaster, a former employee assures me, India has had to import fertilizer. But Bhopal’s agricultural heritage predates the malfunction and sabotage of a fertilizer factory.

Sprawled across 20 to 25 kilometres of the Vindhya and Singarcholi mountains, the City of Lakes, has a beautiful green cityscape built around the Bara Talab (Big Lake) commonly called the Upper Lake. A millennium on 11th century Raja Bhoja’s Dam still holds back 35 sq km of water but many other ruins dot the city uncared for.

Rock art caves Shamla Hills Bhopal

Rock art caves Shamla Hills Bhopal

Prehistoric man wandered Lalghatti and Dhrampuri and rock paintings are preserved in the Shamla Hills. However, it was during the reign of Raja Bhoj (1010-1053) the fortified grid iron city of Bhojapala guarded the east of Bara Talab. A sister city of Bhojpur, with its magnificent unfinished Bhojeshwar temple, was built east of an enormous lake 650 sq. Km of Bhima Kund and Sagar Taul. By utilizing natural terrain only three dams were required. At Sagar Taul two small gaps were required to be filled.   A 90 metre long, 14 metre high wal, 90 metres wide earthen dam with huge sandstone blocks with a flat top stood until 1334 CE.

The undammed river besides Bhojpur

The undammed Betwa besides Bhojpur

The local Gond tribes claim it took three months for the men of Hoshang Shah to cut through the dam and three years for it to empty. For thirty years the swampy lake bed was uninhabitable and villages downstream of the Betwa destroyed.

Now the once prosperous Bhojpur is remembered only by the incomplete temple and the huge scattered dam masonry.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Nearby, Bhopal’s 11th century settlement is also layered with history. Ravaged in the 13th century, a decayed village by the 17th century. In 1722 Dost Mohammad Khan, a mercenary, was invited to assist the local Gond queen Kalmapati, annexed the Bhopal Taul.   Rani K amlapati suicided rather than be forced into Khan’s harem.

Fatahgarh frot ramparts

Fatahgarh frot ramparts

Khan built city ramparts near the older settlement, establishing the citadel of Fatehgarh on the highest plateau of the lake. It remained the administrative centre to the early to mid 19th century. Part is now used by Kasturba Gandhi Medical College that includes the world’s smallest mosque.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


The fortified city of Bhopal was called Sher-e-Khas and enclosed 1.5 sq. Km in a 10 metre wall, 2-3 metres thick and 1.2 kilometres in length. Taxes probably paid for elaborate infrastructure that included

  • hammams, or public bathing with windowless chambers
  • serais, or housing for travelling merchants
  • hathi khannas, housing for elephants and their mahaots,
  • and mosques.

The narrow streets, the widest being four metres, were sided with buildings to three or four floors. The outside platforms, or pattias, had matching designs where people met and gossiped. An akhara, or gymnasium included mud pits and fitness training equipment.

The city was extended by Pul Pukhtra in 1794 when a 274 metre long and 21 metre wide masonry dam spanned the Ban Ganga and Patra valleys that formed the Chhota Talab, or small lake. A vassal state to the Nizam and then the Mahattas, little building followed until Mamola Bai, one of Bhopal’s history of ruling women, insightfully gave General Goddard of Britain shelter in Raisen fort as he battled his way across India and ensured a protective treaty with the British East India Company.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Another female ruler, Qudsia Begum, built the Jami Masjid with its golden minarets between 1833 to 1856. Then in 1847 the Moti Mahal (Pearl Palace) was begun by Sikandar Jehan Begum as an administrative centre and residence, creating a new urban centre on large plateau north of the Gohar Mahal. Although the Khirniwala Maidan complex took 50 years it’s has a unified design elements including parapets, uniform wall height and plinths with French influence. In 1848 Sikandar Begum then commissioned engineer David Cook to develop the lake front that included a waterworks.

motimahal 1948A red sandstone boali or step wall of Bara Bagh is 3 stories deep, two above the water level, lead into a step-well was built by Nawab Wazir Mohammed Khan and later conserved by Nawab Qudsia Begum.

Inside are ornamental structures that surrounded the well, colonnade with cusp arches and slender pillars. Niches decorate the wall along the entrances of the boali built around 1819. Bhopal’s inter-connected lakes began with the building of a new suburb by Nawab Shah Jahan Begum called Shahjehanabad in 1874. An Idgah was constructed on the highest point, and three new terraced lakes constructed, now separated by a road. Water from one cascaded into the next forming the suburbs central area. Complete with bazaars, galla mandies, or grain markets, store houses, serais, and a residential quarter Shahjehanabad was enclosed by a city wall.

Bhopal-unplugged3 (1)The highest, Motia Talab spread 230 by 230 metres, to the 230 by 170 metre Noor Mahal Talab and finally the lowest Munshi Hussaini Talab was 115 by 230 metres.

An aqueduct still visible at Chhota Talab, pulled water up 15 metres by leather bags, or chawars, into channels that flowed down an arched slope. The chawars raised the well water with animal strength and the water flowed 1.75 kilometres to a pond at Noor Bagh where Afghan troops were stationed.

However, the three lakes were dependent on seasonal rains.

To balance water levels a reservoir was built north of Shahjehanabad with elaborate brick-lined vaulted drains that collected and bought water to the lakes. Transformed into splashing fountains and gurgling cascades, and silent chadars (sheets of water), these channels passed through important buildings along the way. Legend claims rose water or kewda was added to cool and freshen the air.

To this day ground water is recharged year round in the Bhopal’s old city. The boali reduce water loss in a locality known for high evaporation.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Bhopal’s royal residences, the Taj Mahal and Noor Mahal, were linked to the rail . The Taj Mahal blends Muslim and Hindu design that includes cusped arches, massive gateways, mudlings and plaster work and squat domes with overhanging balconies called jharokahs. The inner courtyards detailing suggests British colonial design.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Over a century, Asia’s largest mosque, the Taj-ul-Masjid, was built and nearby, across from the Motia Talab, the H-shaped Benazir Palace in 1875. Made of steel columns with louvered wooden partitions, extensively carved hammam, the Benazir Palace cleverly control the temperature. A summer palace, it is enclosed with terraced gardens and fountains its steps and plinths descend into the lake like a ghat. Its ornamental gate, the most ornate in the city, was added later. This has multi-foliate arched openings and stair cases leading to chhatris, or domed kiosks, with pitched eaves.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Colonial influence of high ceilings and raised plinths was more marked after 1901. The newer public buildings include Revenue courts, Minto Hall, Court of Justice, Civil Club, and the Hamidia Katubh Khana, or library.

Sadly more recent design has increasingly distanced itself from the environment and culture. Modern designs often show scant respect sustainable design once practiced by Bhopal’s Tribal, Hindu and Muslim forebears. The inappropriate materials and techniques are rushing construction.

Many of the gates are deteriorating. Locals speak of their city still beautiful in the 1970’s. The wall that enclosed the old city was partly removed to allow for a oad and access to the Hamadia hospital. The land Minto Hall has been leased out by the MP government  and will be demolished. The Munshi Hussaini Talab sadly looks like a rubbish dump.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

There are exceptions. Bhopal’s Tribal Museum has a green roof, the Correea designed Bharat Bhavan shows a Hindu sensitivity for nature, and Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly, or Vidhan Sabha is influenced by nearby Buddhist stupa’s of Sanchi. However, the step-wells of Bhopal and majority of the lakes constructed by the cities noble rulers have since decayed. The Baoli has been forgotten and lakes have been encroached.

But now, after walking the Union Carbide site, and enjoynig the connected series of lakes by the Taj us Masjid, I am sitting the smallest, Munshi Hussaini Talab. A local family kindly offers me chai. By the mosque an old man clasped my hand warmly. Hindu”s had paraded floats and hoses for Navratri. I still find old city charm and hospitality.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

For a  useful resource is checkout

Dass, Meera. “City with a past – an account of the built heritage of Bhopal.” In Bhopal 2011: Landscapes of Memory, edited by Amritha Ballal and Jan af Geijerstam, 80-84. New Delhi, India: SpaceMatters with Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 2011.

Enjoying Balance, poise and Deepa Vedpathak

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Indian Art

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Wonderfull painting by Deepa Vedpathak

 

Sometimes I find beautiful things I simply want to share. Today, I hope you will enjoy the beautiful acrylics of Deepa Vedpathak.

Right from her childhood Deepa Vedpathak liked to draw and paint. Born in Karamala, Maharashtra, her sole aim was to be a painter. After obtaining a teachers diploma in 1996, in 2001 she completed a G.D. Art (Drawing and Painting), at the Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalaya in Pune. Step by step her success grew and her hope increased. Deepa loves music so she paints on music. When the colors take shapes on her canvas, it has not any limit, she struggles with it, in fact she prefers color schemes and color application. It makes her work effective, as she thinks that weight and balance should come together in the painting.

Her abstract faces seem serenely balanced.

beloved

Beloved by Deepa Vedpathak

 

Endless Love

Endless Love

Who am I with the tribe?

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Indian Art, Tribal India

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Jivya Soma Mashe detail

Jivya Soma Mashe, acrylic and cowdung on canvas, detail [jivya-soma-mashe.blogspot.in]

I have always wanted to know who I truly am.With individuality so prised in the West, it may seem this is a self evident but hard to define reality.

But moving to India forced me to see myself a new n a different situation. Then moving to Bhopal I soon began to experience the tribal life of Madhya Pradesh. I also began to reflect on the Aboriginal people of Australia.  My assumptions of identity – and how that played out in todays world – simply did not match.

Consider the Warli artist. In every tribal village, the artist is known as savashini, the woman whose husband is alive.

Her painting is a fertility act. Trained by observing others from childhood she knows the riti or conventions of the art and the cosmic laws they symbolise.

warli painting

warli-art-india.blogspot.in

They have hatachi kesab, innate skill with the hands, and perform wedding ceremonies accompanying the groom on the circumambulation of the rice -hole in the ground where rice is pounded.

The actual ceremony is performed by a wedding priestesses or dhavleries who animate the paintings through song. The dhavleries are chosen because dreams have given them songs.

So few are chosen.

“The dream came – I had fever – Ganga Gauri, Mahadeva’s wife (Mahadeva is the universal father) – she told me – like that it came suddenly. Therefore I can sing the whole song.” ((Jivya Soma Mashe: A sense of self in other masters: Five contemporary folk and tribal artists of India’ edi by Jyotindra Jain.p35).

In the past urbanised India  art was of completed by a guild an the stages – a rough sketch, filled in in one colour, later another, each in stages. This may have included collective apprentices and a master in the process.Then around the city of Mathura individual artists (Gomitaka, Dasa, Shivarakshita, Dharma, Rama, Sanghadeva) were named  beginning in the Christian era.

It took until the 1970’s that the Tribal tradition was transformed by a need for individual artistiic expression.

The catalyst was brown paper and white paint. Soon artists like Jivya Soma Mashe began to paint lively field work, digging ploughing sowing .

Mashe was also the first male Wari painter which in Itself was an isolating experience. It asks of a culture what does it mean to be a Wari man.

“For a man to begin practicing what for centuries has been a woman’s art form is surprisingly unorthodox. No ordinary man could have attempted this, without fearing the loss of status among his fellow men. But then Jivya Soma Mashe is not an ordinary man. The history of his life is as unusual as his bold decision.  ”

Three years old when his mother died, his father remarried but because new wife did not want hs children.  So they were given to a farmer far from home to look after his cows. Too young to work he was poorly fed his older siblings ran away but he was to young to follow them.

Shocked he could not speak until after his 4th year. He retreated and drew signs in the and. Although he later married accepted in the community he remained an outsider.

So he began seeking something new and began to examine the field to see each stalk in the paddy field as distinct with an undulating rhythm interspersed with animals like ants drawn with great precision. A fishing net that swells and fills a fishing net while a minute human holds the other end.

His community awareness of the wholeness of unity is amtched with an awareness that difference makes the whole.Mashe’s art suggests he sees himself as different and yet part of larger unified reality.

slide0001

“A Walking and Running Circle”, Richard Long, work in progress [http://long-mashe.blogspot.in]

In the west a master is unique but primitive art somehow seems assumed to be anonymous.

We imagine a singular elitist versus a collective art form.  Perhaps we imagine a clown figure, playing bison horn or cobra hood headgear.

Jyotindra Jain reports how MP artist Jangarh Singh Shyam a Pradhan Gond  asked if he she should strip to his loin cloth for a photo – it was so expected by media that to be tribal you must be a stereotype.

Similar story is said of Aboriginal playwright who realised she was always photographed with stereotype images of poverty or struggle.

“In such a set-up the tribal artist is not an identifiable individual but a part of an amorphous passive collective. He is expected to permanently dwell in timeless tradition. When he does not even have an individual status as artist, independent of his community identity, how can he ever be a ‘master’.”

We imagine Tribals as a  timeless people  possessing an innate urge for magi. Do we imagine their women as bare breasted beauties  in mud homes and faces exuding  religiosity?

A Tribal artist may be expected to retain his ‘primitive’ tradition but is usually forced to move to an industrial environment to pursue his art.

Yet, if he develops his art in response to the world it is accused of artistic degeneration.

Tribals are not isolated and their contemporary art merges new technologies into their world view. Traditional art has never been static, but as always adapted with new technologies and materials.

But that is not what we expect.

Mashe’s art reminds me that history is complex always making the present, myths, stories give us a perspective altering the linearity and insularity.

The new idiom of the money lender blends with the charcoal maker neighbouring tribe.  To us they appear modern because they have a do not have a naturalistic feel. A bird is suggested by fleeting lines of motion, the sun as a series of revolving lines he called chakma chak  flashing light.

He symbolises somethings essence rather than its form.

Cowdung and mud on paper. Train station - Jivya Soma Mashe

Cowdung and mud on paper. Train station – Jivya Soma Mashe

A wall of smeared geru or  red clay over which paint reeds in white paste. A mountain gives way to forests from which a river flows under a bridge with a train that reveals a polyphony of  activities of the people within it and gun toting police on the platform.

Jugen Habermass suggests his art is forward moving like life becoming new, much as modernism glorifies in the present or ‘nostalgia of true presence’ ( ‘Modernity: An Unfinished Project’ The Post Modern Reader, edited by Charles Jencks (London, 1992) .

His art inspires me since I have never quiet felt I neither fit in either India”s collective family  (yet) or Australia’s individualism.

Mashe’s art heroically merges the individual and the collective.  Multiple events occur simultaneously both part of community but also alienated from it.

When brown paper released Warli art from its religious foundations “human beings were no longer miniscule against the large celestial deity” instead they “engaged in forms of activity they were predominate on the canvas.” (35, 36).

“There are human beings, birds, animals, insects, and so on. Everything moves, day and night. Life is movement” he said (Tribals Art magazine, September 2001).

Mashes art seems to me a dialogue between community and self. The very struggle I have continued in my life on two continents.

To quote Hervé Perdriolle “The Warli, adivasi, or the first people, speak to us of ancient times and evoke an ancestral culture. An in-depth study of this culture may give further insight into the cultural and religious foundations of modern India.”

I see sights as far more personal. As a natural isolationist – a lover of Australian spacious outback – India forces me to be confronted by its community of contradictions , traditions and meaning.

india forces me to discover the essence within the flux of the moment.

logo 2

Shantaram Tumbada, acryliques sur papier, 1997, 28x25cm [shantaram-tumbada-warli.blogspot.in]

The Myth of Dumadev

20 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Indian Art, Indian Festivals, Religion & Spiritualty, Tribal India

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

dumadev

Mural, by artists Shri Sahadev Rana and Shri Tulsi Rana showing the sad Adivasi girl sitting on the steps surrounded by plants and animals.

In the village of Pendravand it is said there was a love so pure between a young man and a girl that it permeated all men, women, plants and animals of the region of Bastar, Chhattisgarh.
But one day something happened between them that the girl sat weeping on the steps. He people tried to cheer her without success. Even the animals of the forest tried and failed.
Finally, she jumped into a pond and died.
Then, so distraught, the boy, the girls parents and even the animlas of the jungle gave their lives to the pond.
The spot is called the Shrine of Dumadev, or ‘Deity of the drowned’.
To this day the Adivasi girl is worshipped as Dokridev or Pendravandin Mai and the boy as Dorkradev.
A votov terracotta of Bendri, the pensive she monkey, holding her face in her hands, is offered at the shrine at the time of the Pola festival.

This mural, by artists Shri Sahadev Rana and Shri Tulsi Rana showing the sad Adivasi girl sitting on the steps surrounded by plants and animals. It is part of the Mythological Trail of Manav Sangrahalaya in Bhopals IGRMS, Museum.

dumadev2 IGRMS