Foreword

by K. G. Subramanyan

It was more then fifty years ago that I came upon Ananda Coomaraswamy’s ‘Mediaeval Sinhalese Art’. Then I was hardly twenty and had not yet made art my main vocation. But it made a lasting impact on my thinking. Although some of its polemics, exaggerations and over statements may not have the same appeal to me now as it had then, its main thesis is still compelling. The art culture of a traditional society has many strands that reinforce each other. Each provides an avenue of creativity and refines human sensibilities and responses. Living within a network of these an individual attains a special stature and refinement which he never would alone; and not a rare individual or two but large number of them in different walks of life. The disappearance of this network with the breakdown of traditional culture is bound to lead to cultural impoverishment and disorientation.

During the last fifty years as artist and student of the Indian art scene I have realized more and more the profundity of this. It has given a certain shape to my concept of tradition and structure of the art language. Though I have never come to believe that traditions can be kept forcibly alive. We cannot stem social change, behind it there are various pressures that cannot be resisted by individual or group effort. This can only happen if the whole society gears itself up for it, thinking as one person. But this is too much to expect. Besides, no society exists today in isolation; it is linked to the rest of the world in various ways. So any such resistance will also need a global consensus. Although there may be some small groups that discuss the necessity of this one on the global scene their impact is little. Ecologists have come to recognize the interdependence of various aspects of nature and the need of their balanced nurture for human survival; but the basic factors that have to be nourished for a persistence of culture in the modern world are still rarely thought about.

But these should come readily into focus in a country like ours that has a large cultural panorama; which includes a great variety of art practice both professional and non-professional. Very few countries have such a broad or inter-related presence of these; though, through the years, this presence is dwindling even in ours. Especially that of household and non-professional arts that are closely tied to a way of life or value system. When these ways and values change they cease to exist or lose in power. Professional arts too decline when the patron-practitioner balance is radically interfered with or when gross commercialism eliminates the pleasure of practice and drives the practitioners into other professional fields.

One can cite numerous instance of these; if I am informed right, there is no clay-worker in Bengal now who knows the techniques of its lauded terra-cotta reliefs that embellished its village shrines only a few generations ago; the Kanbis of Gujarat have become too prosperous and urbanised to let their women embroider those fabulous ‘Ganeshsthapans’ as they did once; the Saoras of Orissa do not any more paint the same kind of wall murals as Verrier Elwin admired once; the present specimens are little more than loose graffiti. Insensitive commercialisation has done visible harm to Warli and Madhubani painting even if it may have increased its practice. The number of professional artisans, too, are dwindling as they do not receive the appreciation or remuneration they deserve. So they drift, in desperation, into humdrum professions; weavers take to rolling beedis, potters to making bricks, patuas to peddling paints and perfumes in village fairs, ganjifa painters to working as peons or clerks; and no wonder, the kind of education we impart makes people despise manual arts and skills. The situation can only worsen in the context of the country’s new economic objectives which will make these changes quicker and more drastic. And in the process the present art panorama is sure to be devastated.

What do we do in the face of this? Let the whole thing disappear before our eyes? And lose a large part of our cultural heritage? In many of the so-called developed countries this has happened without their knowing, forcing them now to come to countries like ours as cultural tourists to get a feel of what it was. In that sense our heritage is also a world heritage. At one time one fondly hoped that, in a mixed economy like ours, the artisan traditions and house-hold arts will have a chance to survive, however precariously. And this could educate the new generation of artists and artisans. Even lead, perhaps, the powers that be to think in terms of a more human and value-based plan of development. But this seems unlikely; the government and the trading community are taking a great leap forward to hook up with the world economic forces. What concerns them most are export earnings not human refinement; this makes one recall, with a tinge of sadness, William Blake’s well-known lines, ‘When nations grow old the Arts grow cold/And commerce sits on every tree’

In these circumstances the least we can do is to visually record the whole heritage, collect object specimens of the best kind, document methods of fabrication and use and house these objects and data in museums and archives region to region, speciality to speciality. These can recreate for the interested a picture of various art forms and educate them to value them. And provide, if an art form disappears, the wherewithal with which to recall it. This may motivate some to cultivate them in the new circumstances and use them for new purposes. Even sow the seeds of tradition in a non-traditional world. And teach the future planners to be more sensitive and circumspect.

Is this being done? And on an adequate scale? Do we have museums and archives of this kind in the various regions where the specialist and the non-specialist can get a dependable picture of our heritage? I am afraid not. So the work of Jyoti Bhatt and some others like him is exemplary. It pleases me to think that a number of them were my students and share my concerns. Painter and print-maker in his own right Jyoti spends a lot of his time recording village arts with great understanding and aesthetic sensibility. For him it is a labour of love and he uses his own resources. But the work is large and, seen against the rising tide of the new economic forces, the time is short. This calls for greater effort and larger resources. I hope that this exhibition of photographs will serve as an eye-opener to others and motivate public and private agencies to raise the necessary resources without delay.

Reprinted from Walls and Floors – The Living Traditions of Village India, 1994