Protecting Objet d'art - Preserving Indian History

I was reading a series of articles on preserving Objet d’art in India – mainly on how to bring the stolen art objects back to India – a commendable effort of some art historians, authors and scholarly in this country.

Most of us, internet users of this country are aware of the rich cultural history of India. Land which we define by the geographical boundary of India today, was in good terms with its neighbouring states since ages. Not only people from this geography used to trade in precious stones and metals, scholars in eastern part of the globe also used to travel a lot through the entire region. Scholars do tend to take their books along – even if not printed sets. Buddhist monks were no different. That was how some Buddhist manuscripts moved to the land we call Tibet or Nepal today. Haraprasad Sastri, while doing research on ancient India staying in Nepal, found some of them (Charyapada texts) in the then royal library of Nepal and brought them to the then British India in early 20^th century. Movement of books, tapestries, coins and painting were not political issues. From unknown past till the time British reigned, India was not much aware of those items as artistic treasure and their ownership it seems.

Probably starting from Islamic invaders, foreign rulers started carrying precious items as looted goods to their homeland. Therefore since few hundred years, numerous art-objects from this geography left their place of origin and crossed the western border. Nadir Shah got a permanent place in our school books for looting some of Mogul properties, if not for anything else. None of Portuguese or British forgot to collect their shares as well. Colonial rulers were good at displacing objet d’art. They did not always carry Indian items to England; they brought works of art from other countries to India too. This way a complete pagoda from Burma (current Myanmar) was brought to Calcutta by the then British rulers (1853-54). In fact Indian Museum in Calcutta became a storehouse for artefacts from different regions in South East Asia which were being ruled by British colonialists. Broken heads of sculptures from Indian temples or pieces from temple walls became eligible as precious items during this regime.

Contemporary Indian intellectuals are not only campaigning to bring the items taken away mainly by Mohammedan and colonialist rulers, they are also fighting to stop movement of Indian art – objects to other countries. Reason is clear - if a large number of relics move outside country then those will carry also the history of the country along. To preserve those, some are suggesting that each and every object d’art in this country should be listed.

But not only the task of listing is cumbersome; this kind of activity needs public awareness to a large extent. How do I know which one is a precious artefact and which one it not? If I don’t then how do I do a voluntary disclosure? How come government will know what art-objects I possess are?

Today I was going through another article on this awareness building. The author suggests Indian parents should at least teach their children to appreciate art. Awareness built this way would in turn help in preserving Indian history. True, parents who belong to the group of educated Indian middle class could introduce Indian art and culture to their children better. May be ‘art appreciation’ as a part of school curriculum could also help. Question is, how many of Indian parents belong to this well-aware educated class? When parents themselves do not know how to appreciate art, how do we expect them to teach children?

I remembered couple of my experiences which I gathered during my days in rural Bengal – a privilege government servant’s children enjoy – mostly unknowingly.  Our interest in old temples dragged us to some remote villages in Burdwan and Hooghly districts – home of several 15th-18^th century temples. In most of the cases we found broken old temples – uncared and unattended, at times covered by creepers and banyan tree roots with most of their tiles from walls removed. In many cases, those do not belong to anyone’s personal property. Hence, common villagers do not even have an option to know a lot about those. Few of remaining tiles and size and shape of bricks show the antiquity of those temples to the history student, but that is all. For a visitor, there is no option to find out information like how the Kali idol inside a half broken temple in a remote Burdwan village wears something like shoes. Greek-influence? We can only imagine – none knows the truth.

My visit to famous Bishnupur temple in early 1990s was no different. Many of the terracotta plates from the temple walls were already disappeared – and nobody around were aware of the historical importance of the temples. Currently Bishnupur is under strict vigil of ASI but not the other remote villages. Unless locals are aware of historical importance of those old structures, some of them would obviously not mind earning some extra money by removing some temple tiles and giving those to their friends (first level collectors in the antique market) who pay good amount for those useless old tiles! Even if a villager does not remove by himself, why would he stop others to remove some from a broken temple wall?

Only awareness creation among educated middle class would not help much till awareness is created among people (mostly not eligible to be middle class) staying in those rural areas where our old temples are located. The educated middle class, even if grows an interest in history or learn appreciating art, may be able to differentiate between a Ram and Krishna depicted on a 15^th century terracotta tile, which will help in their research program in some prestigious foreign university, but won’t be able to prevent antique theft from remote areas.

Listing all objet d’art in the country seems to be a concept of golden stone-boat in that case.



Few of the articles I was going through:

http://www.mondaq.com/india/x/407126/music+arts/Law+Relating+To+Antiquities+In+India+Be+Aware+Of+Your+Obligations

https://sanyalsanjeev.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/india-must-start-working-to-reverse-plunder-of-our-national-artistic-heritage/

http://organiser.org//Encyc/2016/10/24/Guest-Column-Gods-back-home---Learn-to-respect-symbols.aspx

http://organiser.org//Encyc/2016/10/24/Interview-%E2%80%98Gods-back-home---Battle-incomplete-until--Gods-reach-Home-.aspx

Appreciating Shocker as Artwork or Accepting Disgust

I was determined to complete translating one chapter of the 19^th century novel I was struggling with since last two months. Not because it was a great work of literature but it gives view of the ideology followed by people – educated Bengali upper crust in the colonial period. But no, there are a lot of elements in the world to distract me – I am not Lord Shiva!

As I opened my laptop last evening to start typing, I found a pop-up message – I was happy that a new magazine tracked me from somewhere of the world which my antivirus didn’t find to be a threat – these bring the world to me. I opened and its language was unknown - some East European language which uses a script I cannot read. So there was no way to read. Then I looked at the pictures and the first thing came to mind was: do I look like a man in my social media profile pictures? Numerous pictures of male photo models told me it was a gay magazine. Irrespective of gender, most of the model’s bodies, being creations of gym trainers and cosmetic surgeons, seemed very unnatural to me; neither have I found dressed-chicken like human-bodies to be sensual. And this lead me to another thought: Why don’t I find a photograph interesting or pleasing which probably many others in the world do? Some of these photographs of different postures created by human bodies are artworks for sure!

What is art? Does every language of the world have a word equivalent to English “Art” or German “Kunst” or French “L’art” or Sanskrit “Shilpa”? I am too ignorant. But every geography of the world, every community of the world, be in the Singapore skyscraper or in stone-age Andaman-localities, acknowledges the idea of art and produces some or other artistic creation. Difference is – “civilized” humans know that “art” is an idea interwoven with “aesthetics” whereas “uncivilized” – I don’t know whether they are all aware of the term. At least the potters and village painters I had a chance to interact with, don’t.  Did the prehistoric people of 35000 years back, who left some sample of ancient artworks for us, had an idea of art and aesthetics as definition? Probably yes, probably no, we will never know the answer. But do the photographs of the ancient Shamanic works or some ancient sculptures, those I find pretty attractive, arouse the same feeling to everyone in the world? No and never – I am sure. Whereas I am amazed at some simple lines drawn by an artist using plain pencil and paper, my friends are not. That makes an artwork different from manufactured goods of utility. Both the goods of utility \ craftwork and artworks involve some amount of imagination. But a manufactured product is created with certainty, that it would attract the attention of all users and potential users of the world whereas in case of an artwork, the artist never knows who it would reach and when. Creating artwork is driven by artist’s urge of self expression, not necessarily with a purpose of remaking the world as seen, but may be re-creating the world through their imagination. And when it comes to artist’s imagination, linking the artist’s imagination to the audiences becomes important. And here lies the difficulty in reaching consensus. 

Creating artwork is retelling personal experience through personal imagination. But the moment the artist looks for a validation of his\her experience and imagination from the viewer\ audience to give a meaning to the creation of artwork, he exposes himself to the risk of being rejected. We gather personal experience from the surroundings we are brought up in – and this environment differs a lot depending on geography, community, race, religion, economy, period and everything those define our cultural ethos! Even if we consider a person’s ‘imagination’, this develops as the person grows – again in particular geographic, social, political and economic environment. Isn’t it really difficult to impress a middle aged Indian lady brought up in middle class East Indian family environment with the picture of a post-modern European body art? Is it so easy to convey the culture and learning of post-modern civilized world to those whose sense of aesthetics tell that the most beautiful people of the world are to be found on the walls of numerous temples scattered in India?

Critics say, it is limitation of our knowledge that prevents us from praising things we didn’t experience before. Hence one needs to learn to view artwork – preferably from a modern western viewpoint and develop an open mind to appreciate radicalism in art – to find beauty in the disgusting. Question is – is it really needed to appreciate the disgusting? Indian commoners do not fail to appreciate Altamira’s bison or Michelangelo’s David or even Degas’ dancers. Now is it a must to find a sensual beauty in a dressed chicken on the table? Or modern aesthetics is about creating some shocking or disgusting experience – and the viewer have to accept a new definition - whatever upsets is an artwork?

Bengali Literary Studies – Future is Built on Past

As it usually happens, articles of contemporary authors give me a scope to ‘think’ – my favourite pastime! This time it was an article on enhancing interest in regional languages in India, written by a contemporary non-resident Bengali author.

Photo credit - commons.wikimedia.org

The author addresses the issues in general applicable to all regional languages in India, but being a Bengali speaking reader, I find the story is worse in case of Bengali – as a language practiced in West Bengal.

True – technology boom in last ten years made localization turn into a lucrative business even in West Bengal, thanks to mobile service providers, FMCG and electronic goods makers; but on the other hand, there is a visible decay in literary language practice. How many of regular readers read Bengali these days?  I remember my parents reading Bengali newspapers 30 years back. These days, not even my mother, once a proud student of Bengali literature, wants to read Bengali newspaper. Her simple explanation is that the quality of news and language shows that we are not target readers. Who are the target readers then? One can realize only by comparing vernacular newspapers of 1970s and post 2000. Those are published for readers of less literate class, containing very little information from the world outside West Bengal. National or international news is given importance only when an incident has considerable impact on West Bengal. One can hardly expect detailed report on global politics, science and technology, economic or industrial issues in these.

Once upon a time, middle class Bengali homes used to wait for Magazines published on the eve of Durgapuja – in which literary creation of all contemporary authors used to be published first – books used to be published after a couple of months. What are names of Bengali contemporary authors in 21st century? Did anyone author a significant Bengali fictional novel in last five years? I don’t know – none of my Bengali friends knows. I still remember Travelogue like Nirad Mazumdar’s ‘Punashcha Pari’ or art history like “Palyuger Chitrakala” by Sarasi Kumar Saraswati read in a weekly Bengali Magazine. Where is that literary magazine now? It is still being published – but worthless to collect – even though this sounds rude.

I tasted European literature first in Bengali. I somehow managed to preserve a couple of Pragati Prakashan translations of Russian literature too till date. Starting from Iliad – Odyssey’s children’s version to Grimm’s fables, everything used to be available in Bengali, which actually created interest about others cultures among children even though there was no conscious effort to fulfill a ‘target’ of creating ‘global citizens’. I discovered German war literature – also Hemingway and Maupassant and Chekhov when I was in fifth or sixth standard – in Bengali! Originals were not easily available in towns and villages thirty-five years back– but translations by Mohanlal Gangopadhyay or Nani Bhowmik were too good to introduce the world outside India to potential readers staying far from Calcutta. Had I not read those, perhaps I wouldn’t be interested to learn European languages later. I found translations of Marquez etc. even when I was in college. But stories started changing drastically by mid nineties.

Or was the change really so ‘drastic’? I studied in vernacular medium - credit goes to my liberal socialist (autocrat?) father. Except a handful of liberal socialists, none of Bengali middle class was ready to send their children to vernacular medium school even forty years back unless forced to - due to lack of ‘Elite’ schools in locality or monetary issues. As a result, scope to learn literary Bengali was already reducing for children from educated Bengali families. Though liberal socialists went on dominating Bengali cultural life till nineteen eighties, their number started reducing by nineteen seventies itself. Well, Globalisation brought a radical change in this dominance pattern.

How to change the scenario? The author suggests “inward translation” that is, translating more global literature into Bengali than translating Bengali to English would be able to bring a change. We cannot deny that improving the quality of vernacular newspapers or making contemporary world literature available in Bengali may convince senior citizens to read in Bengali. But what about younger generation from educated families who rarely read anything in Bengali since childhood? Or the neo-middle class which takes up reading as a way to earn certificates that in turn helps in earning a particular standard of living? Is there any way to attract future generations to read in Bengali?

Educated Bengali started moving out of Bengal one fifty year’s back, as British colonialists established themselves well in this country. Bengalis were among the first Indians to get along with European education system and hence, became trusted employees for British to work in different parts of the country with them. Anyway, there were still enough Bengalis staying in own region while eastern zone of the country provided enough jobs being an industrially developed part of the country. Independence brought partition of Bengal which forced a good number of Bengali speaking people move to other parts of the country – West Bengal alone could not provide space for approximately two millions of migrants. People who had to move out, could not avoid forced detachment from Bengali reading-writing practices.  But the aversion to Bengali reading and writing actually developed during post seventies socialist regime. Socialist governance lead to downfall in industry sectors in West Bengal in the one hand, and on the other, blanket ban on English as a subject in vernacular medium school in mid-eighties pushed children of job-oriented Bengali speaking middle–class out of these schools – who wants to educate own children in a way that that they would never be able to communicate with outer world – eventually loss the scope of being recruited for any professional service? Hence, Bengali came down to the status of second language in late eighties. Obviously, children of these days, do not need to read global literature in Bengali - they read it in English, their first language.

In post globalization scenario, moving out of the state even for a civil engineer’s job became unavoidable to every Bengali. Why to learn Bengali with importance then? Isn’t it enough to speak a little Bengali and attend Durgapuja celebrations to prove Bengali identity?

Neo-middle class is usually not interested in literary studies or cultural studies anywhere in the world, but also to traditionally-educated Bengali families, Bengali as a language lost its significance. Migration became a must for all – neither children of our Bengali authors nor the children of neo-middle class are able to stay in the state due to professional reason. When we do communicate in another language fourteen hours a day, one hour of forced reading in vernacular does not help much in growing literary skill.  On a personal note, even though I was taught in vernacular medium, after staying outside West Bengal for nine years, I, a middle aged of Bengali-literature enthusiast, am more comfortable communicating in English rather than Bengali.

The inclusion of contemporary literature in school curriculum is an excellent idea, but most of the Bengali reader class does not read in vernacular medium any longer. Vernacular medium schools in rural areas these days are meant for providing basic education to children of backward class who mostly come to school for a free meal, not to study literature.  

Bengali literary studies in West Bengal have limited future. And I do not see any scope of change in the scenario unless Government and academic bodies have a plan to radically change it. Well, the language and literature written in Bengali will always retain its glorious place in researcher’s dissertation and thesis papers, of course!