Speaking with Pictures: Folk Art and the Narrative Tradition in India 9780415430807, 9780415446044, 9780415445566, 9780415481663, 9780415445528, 9780415480635, 9780415523011, 9781138961609

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Speaking with Pictures

‘This insightful, well-structured and beautifully presented account is a vital addition to the literature of cultural production in India… The book is deeply researched, is a major resource and provides vivid and theoretically compelling access to a world, not quite in flux… It will be of considerable interest to all anthropologists of art.’ —Christopher Pinney, Contributions to Indian Sociology Speaking with Pictures offers a path-breaking exploration of visual narratives in folk art. It foregrounds folk art’s engagement with modernity by relooking at its figurative modes and the ways in which they are embedded in mythic thought. The book discusses folk art as a contemporary phenomenon which is a part of a complex visual culture where the ‘essence’ of tradition is best captured in a ‘new’ form or medium. Each chapter picks up a theme that moves between the local and the global, thereby attempting to problematise the stereotypical view of folk artists as carriers of ‘timeless tradition’. The volume provides an ethnographic account of innovations through a detailed analysis of the scroll painting tradition of the patuas of West Bengal and the Pardhan-Gond style of Madhya Pradesh, highlighting some recent attempts at inter-medium exchange in storytelling. The book will interest those in visual and popular culture in anthropology, sociology, literary criticism and folklore. It will also be of immense value to art historians, museologists, curators and NGOs working in media and communication, as well as those with a general interest in folk art. Roma Chatterji is Professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.

Critical Asian Studies Series Editor: Veena Das Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in Anthropology Johns Hopkins University Critical Asian Studies is devoted to in-depth studies of emergent social and cultural phenomena in the countries of the region. While recognising the important ways in which the specific and often violent histories of the nation-state have influenced the social formations in this region, the books in this series also examine the processes of translation, exchange, boundary crossings in the linked identities and histories of the region. The authors in this series engage with social theory through ethnographically grounded research and archival work. Also in this Series Living with Violence: The Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life Roma Chatterji and Deepak Mehta 978-0-415-43080-7 The Intimate State: Love-Marriage and the Law in Delhi Perveez Mody 978-0-415-44604-4 Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns: An Ethnography of State Formation in Western India Farhana Ibrahim 978-0-415-44556-6 Shared Histories of Modernity: China, India and the Ottoman Empire Editors: Huricihan Islamoglu and Peter Perdue 978-0-415-48166-3 Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization Editor: Saurabh Dube 978-0-415-44552-8 Beyond Crisis: Re-evaluating Pakistan Editor: Naveeda Khan 978-0-415-48063-5

Speaking with Pictures Folk Art and the Narrative Tradition in India

ROMA CHATTERJI

LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI

First published in paperback 2016 First published 2012 by Routledge 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001, India by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012, 2016 Roma Chatterji The right of Roma Chatterji to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-415-52301-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-96160-9 (pbk) Typeset in Goudy Old Style by Star Compugraphics Private Limited

Contents List of Plates Glossary Foreword Acknowledgements 1. Folk Art: What Kind of Object is it? 2. Global Events and Local Narratives: 9/11 and the Chitrakars

vii xv xix xxv 1 62

3. Words and Images: Storytelling in Gond Art

107

4. Patua Art and the Graphic Novel: An Experiment in Inter-Textual Communication

174

5. Conclusion: Pictures and Myths

248

Appendix I: Adim Juger Manush Appendix II: The Chameleon’s Dreams Appendix III A: The Story of Ramayana Appendix III B: The Abduction of Sita Appendix IV: Sita Harana Bibliography About the Author Index

269 271 273 276 278 281 292 293

List of Plates 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16

Jangarh Singh Shyam, Baradeo. c. 1980s. Acrylic on Board. Collection of Durga Bai Vyam. Belgur, Tiger. c. 1980s. Acrylic on Paper. ©Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad, Bhopal. Rajendra Shyam, Crab before Beheading. 2010. Acrylic on Paper. Author’s Collection. Jado Patia Scroll, frame 1: Sepoy Mutiny. Artist and Date Unknown. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Jado Patia Scroll, frame 2: Manasa, the Snake Goddess. Artist and Date Unknown. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Fishes’ Wedding. Artist Unknown. c. 1990s. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Ajit Kumar Jha, Greeting Card with Fish Motif in Mithila Style. 2006. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. Tagar Chitrakar, Tsunami, frame 1. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Kala Bai Shyam, Source of the River. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Binod Chitrakar, Jado Patia Scroll on Santal Origin Myth. c. 1960s. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. Amit Chitrakar, Copy of Santal Origin Myth in Medinipur Pata Style. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Moina Chitrakar, Cat with Fish. Experiment with Gond Style. 2009. Pigment Paint on Paper. Author’s Collection. Kalam Patua, An Artist being Interviewed at an Experimental Art Workshop in Delhi. c. 2006. Water Colour on Paper. Collection of Kalam Patua. Moushumi Chitrakar, Copy of Kalighat Cat. 2010. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Jomuna Chitrakar, Kalighat Cat Revisioned. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Venkataraman Singh Shyam, Experiments with Cubism. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

2 20 22 24 26 27 31 32 33 35 36 39 46 48 49 51

viii c Speaking with Pictures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20

Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 2. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 3. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 4. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 5. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 6. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 2. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Rohim Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown. Yakub Chitrakar, Laden pata, frames 1 and 2. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Collection of Veena Naregal. Manu Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Manu Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 4. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Swarna Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Chandan Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 2. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown. Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 3. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Malek Chitrakar, Mini Laden pata, frames 1 and 2. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown. Malek Chitrakar, Mini Laden pata, frame 3. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown. Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 4. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 5. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 6. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

65 66 66 67 67 68 68 69 69 70 71 72 73 74 76 78 80 81 82 83

List of Plates d ix

2.21 Baneshwar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 3. c. 2002–2003. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown. 2.22 Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 7. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 2.23 Jomuna Chitrakar, Satya Pir pata, frame 1. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 2.24 Chandan Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 2.25 Chandan Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 5. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 2.26 Chandan Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 6. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 2.27 Joideb Chitrakar, Laden pata, penultimate frame. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown. 2.28 Tagar Chitrakar, Tsunami pata, last frame. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Kala Bai Shyam, Forest Scene. c. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown. 3.2 Anand Singh Shyam, Deer. 2010. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.3 Mangru Uikey, Swati Bird. c. 2008. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection Unknown. 3.4 Anand Singh Shyam, Deer with Birds. 2006. Poster paint on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.5 Anand Singh Shyam, Cat with Multiple Heads. 2010. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.6 Anand Singh Shyam, Cat with Multiple Heads. 2011. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.7 Kala Bai Shyam, Bada Deo. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.8 Saroj Shyam, Maharalin Mata. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown. 3.9 Pema Fatia, Pithora. c. 2000. Pigment on Paper. Collection of Ruma Ghosh. 3.10 Narmada Prasad Tekam, Basin Kanya. c. 2002. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection Unknown. 3.11 Ravi Tekam, Basin Kanya. c. 2005. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection of Narmada Prasad Tekam. 3.12 Narmada Prasad Tekam, Vish Kanya. c. 2000. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection Unknown.

84 85 86 87 88 89 91 98

3.1

109 110 112 113 114 115 116 117 119 124 125 126

x c Speaking with Pictures

3.13 Durga Bai Vyam, Basin Kanya. c. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.14 Durga Bai Vyam, Basin Kanya. c. 2006. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection Unknown. 3.15 Mangru Uikey, Basin Kanya, frame 1. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.16 Mangru Uikey, Basin Kanya, frame 6. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.17 Mangru Uikey, Basin Kanya at Point of Transformation. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.18 Mangru Uikey, Synoptic Version of Basin Kanya Story. 2011. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.19 Shambhu Shyam, Ganesha. c. 2007. Ink on Paper. Collection Unknown. 3.20 Mayank Shyam, Fish and Bird. c. 2006. Ink on Paper. Artists’ Collection. 3.21 Mayank Shyam, Birds. c. 2006. Acrylic on Paper. Artists’ Collection. 3.22 Sambhav Shyam, Sanpankhri. c. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.23 Story Board for Animation Film, frame 1. Collection of Venkataraman Singh Shyam. 3.24 Story Board for Animation Film, frame 2. Collection of Venkataraman Singh Shyam. 3.25 Mangry Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.26 Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.27 Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.28 Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 4. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.29 Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 5. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.30 Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 6. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.31 Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 7. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.32 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

128 129 131 132 133 134 138 140 141 142 145 146 150 151 152 154 155 156 157 159

List of Plates d xi

3.33 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.34 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.35 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 4. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.36 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 5. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.37 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 6. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.38 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 7. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.39 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 8. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.40 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 9. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. 3.41 Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 10. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection. Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 1. c. 2000. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 4.2 Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 2. Author’s Collection. 4.3 Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 3. Author’s Collection. 4.4 Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 4. Author’s Collection. 4.5 Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 5. Author’s Collection. 4.6 Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 6. Author’s Collection. 4.7 Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 7. Author’s Collection. 4.8 Dukhushyam Chirakar, Sita Harana, last frame. c. 2000. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. 4.9 Moina Chitrakar, Sita Harana. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.10 Moina Chitrakar, Sita Harana. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.11 Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 1. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.12 Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 2. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168

4.1

176 177 178 179 180 182 183 186 190 191 194 195

xii c Speaking with Pictures

4.13 Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 3. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.14 Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 4. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.15 Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 5. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.16 Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 1. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.17 Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 2. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.18 Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 3. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.19 Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 4. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.20 Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 5. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.21 Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 6. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.22 Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 7. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.23 Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 1. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.24 Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 2. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.25 Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 3. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.26 Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 4. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.27 Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 5. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.28 Amit Chitrakar, Nativity Scene from Bible. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

196 197 198 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 208 209 210 211 212 218

List of Plates d xiii

4.29 Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.30 Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.31 Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.32 Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 4. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.33 Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 5. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.34 Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 6. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.35 Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 7. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.36 Moina’s Reworked Story, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.37 Moina’s Reworked Story, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.38 Moina’s Reworked Story, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.39 Manu’s Reworked Story, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.40 Manu’s Reworked Story, last frame. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.41 Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

220 222 223 224 225 226 227 229 230 231 233 234 236

xiv c Speaking with Pictures

4.42 Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.43 Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.44 Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 4. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 4.45 Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 5. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society. 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9

Banku Chitrakar, Manasa Mangal, frame 1. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Banku Chitrakar, Manasa Mangal, last frame. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Swarna Chitrakar, Manasa Mangal, frame 1. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Swarna Chitrakar, Manasa Mangal, last frame. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Swarna Chitrakar, Christ. 2010. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Swarna Chitrakar, Christ. 2010. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Anwar Chitrakar, Christ. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Anwar Chitrakar, Ganesha. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection. Anwar Chitrakar, Earth Mother. 2010. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

237 238 239 240 250 251 252 253 259 260 261 262 263

Glossary abhinaya adivasi ajob ananda ashram ashva ashvamedha astra atma avatar

mode of conveyance, i.e., expression and gesture original inhabitant, indigene, ‘tribal’ Arabic ajai’b, wonderous joy hermitage horse horse sacrifice weapon soul incarnation

bana bhakti bhava bhonita bidroho bimba–pratibma bindi

stringed instrument used by Pardhan bards devotion disposition colophone revolt image and its reflection dot; also refers to vermillion dot on the forehead of married women

chamatkar charpai design chhaya purusha/chhaya chokkhu daan

wonderment checker board design literally, ‘shadow person’, reflection gift of the eyes

damru dana dekho deva dharma dhoti dhwani dug-dugi

drum offering look (in Bangla) gods law, the righteous order lower garment worn by men resonance (in music) drum (in Bangla)

garh gazi

territorial division among the Gonds warrior saint

xvi c Speaking with Pictures

gotra gyani

exogamous unit wise man

jado pata jalsa jatra

scroll with ritual significance meeting form of folk theatre popular in Bengal

kaavad

painted movable shrine used by bards to tell sacred stories in Gujarat and Rajasthan school power of imagination deeds worker artist literally, ‘utterable truth’, sacred story field

kalam kalpana shakti karma karamchari kalakar katha khet lakshmana rekha lakshana mangala kavya

magical boundary created by Lakshmana around Sita’s hut in Panchavati forest attribute, signs through which the invisible is depicted

maya mela murti

auspicious poem; epic narratives about specific gods periodic visits by Pardhan bards to the homes of their Gond patrons illusion fair icon

nirakar

without form

pala pasha pata patua pehechan peuri pir pralaya pronam

a section for performance dice game scroll the displayer of the scroll signature a shade of yellow Muslim holy man cosmic dissolution gesture of respect to a person by touching his/her feet worship

mangteri

puja

Glossary d xvii

rakshasa rasa rupa rupa–pratirupa

demon flavour, inner spiritual reality external form form and reflection

saaransh sadar

log line literally, common or public area; used by the Chitrakar to refer to the first frame of a scroll holy man similitude, visual equivalence way of the common people marriage circles among the Chitrakars, now defunct flying snake aesthetic sensibility mythical beast sacred Hindu texts art vermillion mark in hair parting of Hindu married women

sadhu sadrishya bodh sahaja marga samaj bandhani sanpankhari saundarya bodh sharabha shastras shilpa sindoor tilak

ritual mark on forehead

vahana vidya vyanjana

vehicle knowledge connotative meaning

zamindar

landlord

Foreword In this stunning anthropological account of ‘folk art’ in art history and

anthropology of art, Roma Chatterji offers us a picture of a domain of life as it is constituted through networks of encounter and exchange. Instead of thinking of folk art as a boundary to be maintained, she approaches it as a nexus of relations and transactions. There are, of course, legions of work on the transformation of folk and popular art in India, but an implicit division of labour maintains their separation. Art historians ask questions about style, line, colour, composition, while sociologists and anthropologists ask questions about institutional changes such as state patronage, emergent art markets or commoditisation of folk art that has turned ritual objects into marketable commodities. With few exceptions, scholars hesitate to cross these disciplinary boundaries. What makes Chatterji’s work compelling is that she shows with great persistence and insight that what is considered ‘painterly’ in ‘folk’ paintings cannot be separated from the institutional transformations that are taking place in the very definition of what is ‘folk’ or ‘adivasi’ or ‘art’ in their own world. I use the category of ‘folk art’ (as does Chatterji) because a term with such a dense history, and one that is full of political plenitude, cannot be simply discarded at will. I am aware, like the author, that laudable attempts have been made in the art world to render such painters as neither trained in fine art academies nor produce some form of tribal art named after a known group (e.g. Gond, Warli) in unchanging fashion, as inhabiting a third field of artistic production. However, rather than discarding the term ‘folk art’ altogether, Chatterji holds it up for examination even as she puts it under pressure. This allows her to make a double move — while effectively destroying the idea that folk art is nothing more than collective craft traditions (though in some cases it could be that), she is also able to show how ‘adivasi’ with all its ramifications connects with ideas about primitivism in art. There are related developments in contemporary attempts to open up spaces (museums, exhibitions) to a new definition of what is to count as a visual language. Within the contemporary scene of multiple media installations, experimentation by major painters with citational practices where traces of folk traditions are left on painterly and other surfaces as an art practice but might also be read as expressions

xx c Speaking with Pictures

of gratitude for the gifts received from craft traditions as well as from individual adivasi painters. Thus, though boundaries between the folk and the cosmopolitan are dissolved, the maintenance of the trace by retaining the category of ‘folk’ allows Chatterji to give us a carefully charted history of innovations, experimentation and new surges of creativity in the various traditions of this art form. The reproductions of scroll paintings (pata) made by Chitrakars of Bengal that Chatterji has lovingly collected over a period of time along with those from the Pardhan-Gond community from Madhya Pradesh, make this book a visual feast. In addition to the paintings, Chatterji has also collected songs composed by the Chitrakars that are not performed any longer but are essential to the Chitrakar mode of transforming a theme into a poem or song, before rendering it as a scroll painting. These compositions also inform her analysis of the narrative universe within which the Chitrakars work. This is further animated by the hundreds of interviews she has conducted with artists, sometimes following the same artists over many years and over many different kinds of spaces ranging from their village homes to the markets and museums in Kolkata, Bhopal and Delhi. This multi-sited fieldwork — in exhibition spaces and markets displays such as Dilli Haat, as well as at workshops where experimentation with new forms were being put into practice — helps us to see the processes through which innovations are taking place in the lives and works of these artists. In effect, Chatterji has given us a template for thinking about new ways of doing an ethnography of art. Three remarkable aspects of this work make it unique in its exercise. First, there is the instance of experimentation through which new motifs, themes, and play with line, colour and movement takes place. Second, the aspect of creativity which Chatterji captures in moments small and large raises important questions about the relation between individual artists and the collective traditions that they are helping to create. And finally, the book ethnographically demonstrates how processes of translation and mediation work in redefining the traditional relation between performance and image in the case of the Chitrakars and in a conscious turning toward their narrative universe in the case of the Gond-Pardhans who traditionally did not use paintings for storytelling and who are in search of new themes and motifs — all of which is related to the emergence of new viewing publics. Chatterji stitches these themes together through a mode of storytelling that she has learnt from her respondents and which helps her to show the conjunctions and disjunctions between the variety of media that the painters deploy.

Foreword d xxi

Let me begin with visiting the sites of experimentation. As the worlds in which they live explodes with new kinds of media, the artists in both traditions find themselves in different kinds of communicative environments. However, the tendency to speak of media in the singular as if it were a unified natural category is often misleading, as is the tendency to think that we are all converging toward a global synergy with ‘new media’ in which differences between different kinds of media have been finally erased. Chatterji offers us an exquisite example of how the story of the attacks on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, was absorbed in the storytelling and scroll-painting traditions of the Chitrakars. Patiently reconstructing the way in which a new theme was born via the bin Laden scroll, and how it was stabilised, gives us a fascinating glimpse of how the Chitrakars take it as part of their role to comment on historical events that they absorb, and how a ‘global’ story is told from their own perspective. The use of mythic motifs such as the depiction of the Americans as dandies by the use of the Kartik imagery — a god figure considered to be a dandy in the narrative universe of rural Bengal and in the performance traditions on the Chitrakars — or positioning the first frame as a commentary on the following frames in the tradition of the indigenous medieval mangala kavyas show how a story is simultaneously made local as it is also cosmological in the framework of the Chitrakar mythic universe. Interestingly, Chatterji shows how the Chitrakars put together fragments of floating knowledge that comes to them through various forms of mediation — newspapers, radio, television as well as rumour and gossip. Chatterji’s demonstration of how mediation works raises profound issues on whether we should render the history of media from this perspective as a history of technological devices, as changes in our ideas of communication, or about modes and habits of perception. As the Chitrakars teach us, it might be best to learn to see the event from a variety of perspectives within the same pictorial space rather than assimilating all these perspectives in a single overarching view of the world. Some experimentations are extremely successful, as the history of J. Swaminathan’s engagement with Jangarh Shyam at Bharat Bhawan in Bhopal and the subsequent emergence of a distinctive style, best called the Jangarh style of painting, shows. Jangarh — along with those from the Pardhan-Gond community he trained — retained the Gond style of working with single motifs rather than stories, and continued using patterns of dots to give an overall texture to the painterly surface, but there is no question that these were new expressions. As Chatterji shows, other, more recent experiments such as the attempt to involve Gond painters in animation

xxii c Speaking with Pictures

films have been less successful. Chatterji feels that the fantastical modes in which movement is rendered in Pardhan-Gond paintings is abrogated in favour of naturalistic movements in the animation film, which destroys the special magic of rendering movement in other ways — for example, as fluid shadows in which the figure is encapsulated or as rising waves. The fact that not all experiments are aesthetically compelling is very important to Chatterji’s story for it gives it a greater feel of life than a form that would render all experimentation as success stories. Creativity in artistic experience is a remarkably difficult topic to research but innovation and novelty are by common agreement important aspects of creativity. Here there is no single factor that can be isolated. In some cases a new technique releases what was only a potential in a given genre; at other times a single gesture such as Swarna Chitrakar putting bin Laden’s face on the airplanes that attacked the World Trade Center comes to be adapted by others and becomes the signature of the event; and in still other cases it is the discovery of motifs in other regional traditions that Gond painters might adapt without losing their own sensory experiences of the forest as a place without a horizon in which depth and distance have to be sensed rather than seen. Just as animals and birds take sinuous forms, so humans might be imagined as contracted into patches of colour or expanded by growing new limbs — creativity is then expressed in how the painter imagines the painterly surface of the canvas. Chatterji gives brilliant examples of how bodies might be dismembered but each part might acquire its own affective force when Chitrakar painters express old motifs on new surfaces such as the page of a book. Thus in the experiments with the graphic novel, the Chitrakars in a workshop that Chatterji attended, experimented with placing image in relation to text such that it might gesture toward the text but not become an illustration of the text. Creativity seems here to be both an expression of the individuality of an artist as well as the possibilities opened up as a new medium inserts itself in the communicative space made up by the artists, the more cosmopolitan producers of graphic novels or cartoons and the imagined consumers of these books. Finally, Chatterji is awake to the fact that there is a profound difference in experiencing a work of art in the viewing space of a museum or an exhibition and in viewing a painting in the context of face-to-face relations of a village community. Earlier the Chitrakars, for example, used to travel with their scrolls to entertain villagers by performing the myths they painted in song and using the scroll-painting as a prop. The relation between performance and image has now become reversed as new kinds of

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patrons have emerged — ranging from middle-class buyers in metropolitan cities who find the folk paintings affordable as art décor to museums and galleries that are willing to pay high prices for paintings that are regarded as works of art. Artists have come to recognise their own worth in terms of the value that their paintings fetch and new kinds of entrepreneurs have emerged who can act as brokers between the painters and the diffused viewing publics. It is this heterogeneity of the viewing publics as well as the consumers who actually buy these paintings that make it productive to retain the two dimensions of folk art — its becoming an expression of contemporary Indian art that is neither metropolitan nor yet rural on the one hand, and its production of images that resemble craft production on the other. The proliferation of new media through which such images are disseminated range from commissioned posters by government agencies, advertisements by commercial firms, comic books, and tele-visuals to animation films. In capturing this diversity in her book, yet privileging the beauty and creativity of the truly remarkable painterly works that she collected and whose stories she followed with meticulous detail, Chatterji has given us a book that is, above all, a testimony of one anthropologist’s love affair with contemporary Indian art. The series on Critical Asian Studies celebrates ethnographic and historical accounts that can shift our angle of vision on a classical topic and this book is one of the best examples of this ambition. December 2011

Veena Das Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology Professor of Humanities Johns Hopkins University

Acknowledgements R

esearch is always collaborative and if one was to mention the names of all the people who helped to bring this work to fruition it would probably take up half the length of this volume. In the brief space that I have here I will acknowledge only those without whose support I would never have undertaken such a project. Fieldwork for this project has been funded by the India Foundation for the Arts and the University of Delhi. The University has also provided a generous publication grant without which this book would never have taken the form that it has. Veena Das has been my mentor from the time I began my career in sociology. Kavita Singh, Deepak Mehta, Janaki Abraham and Mani Shekhar Singh encouraged me to take up the study of folk art and have been generous with the time they took out from their busy schedules to discuss new ideas and read drafts of the manuscript. Urmila Bhidrekar gave me valuable tips on what to look for in patua songs and Kalam Patua shared his knowledge about Kalighat painting with me. Jyotindra Jain, Arpana Caur, and Mushtak Khan in Delhi; Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Abhijit Bannerjee, Amiya Dev, Ruby Palchowdhury, Suhrid Bhowmik, Malini Bhattacharya, Protiti and Rani Sarkar in Kolkata; Abhijit Guha and Tapas Maitey in Medinipur; and V. Geetha, Gita Wolf and Shirish Rao in Chennai have helped me to understand the field as an ethnographic object. M. D. Muthukumaraswamy of the National Folklore Support Centre and Jawaharlal Handoo, editor of the Indian Journal of Folkloristics have always supported my research on folk culture. Institutions are as important as individuals for research and I would especially like to thank the staff of Ananda Niketan Kritishala, Bagnan, Howrah district, the curator of the museum, Banya Bandyopadhya, the curator and staff of the Gurusaday Museum, the Crafts Council of West Bengal and the Centre for International Modern Art in Kolkata; the staff of Bharat Bhawan, the Museum of Man and the Adivasi Lok Sanskriti Kendra in Bhopal; Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society in Chennai; the Crafts Museum, the Arpana Caur Gallery, the Museum of Folk Art and Meena Verma of Arts of the Earth Gallery in Delhi; and Amit Jain of the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon. Friends in Naya and Nirbhaypur, West Medinipur and in Bhopal were generous with their hospitality. I owe special thanks to Montu and Jaba

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Chitrakar, Rani and Shyam Sundar Chitrakar, Dukhushyam and Koruna Chitrakar, Jomuna, Bahadur, Moina and Malek Chitrakar, Khandu, Rani and Probir Chitrakar, and finally to Swarna, Manu, Anwar and Sanuwar Chitrakar, all residents of Naya village; and also to Joideb and Moina of Nirbhaipur village. In Bhopal I am grateful to Anand and Kala Bai Shyam, Venkat and Saroj Shyam, Narmada Prasad Tekam and his family, Mangru Uikey, Durga Bai Vyam, Mayank and Nankusia Shyam and Bhajju Shyam. An earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared in the Indian Folklore Research Journal. I have presented parts of this work at the Sociological Research Colloquium, and the International Congress for Bengal Studies, the University of Delhi, the Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Kolkata, Centre for Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, the Mershon Centre, the University of Ohio and the International Institute of Ethnic Studies, Colombo. The staff of Rameshwari Photocopy Service at the Delhi School of Economics, especially Dharam Pal, has taken a keen interest in the progress of my manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank the Institute for Social and Economic Research in Development and Democracy for administrative support and particularly, Ranen Das and Rajan.

ONE

Folk Art: What Kind of Object is it? At first Narmada Prasad and I both did bindi (dot) work like Jangarh, but when we saw that his work was selling and ours was not we decided to change our style. We started using different kinds of lines instead, to decorate our work. It is people like you, people from the city, who come to our exhibitions, who have made us self-conscious about style. Now every Gond painter chooses his own distinctive pattern as a mark of his signature (pehechan).

T

his is what Anand Singh Shyam said to me at the exhibition of Gond art, ‘Jangarh Kalam’, in September 2006 at the Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi when I asked him about the variety of decorative patterns that adorned the paintings. I was curious about the title — ‘the school of Jangarh’— and about the way in which the exhibition had been organised.1 Unlike other folk art exhibitions that I had visited till then in which exhibits are classified on the basis of function and region, here paintings were grouped according to artists’ names. The accompanying catalogue carried detailed biographies of all the artists as well as special features on Jangarh Singh Shyam, one of the pioneers of Gond art, and on the Roopankar art gallery at Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal, where this form had first crystallised (Plate 1.1). I was amazed to discover that this was a 30-year-old folk art tradition and one that had taken shape in the precinct of a modern institutional space. According to informed respondents who had been associated with Bharat Bhawan at its inception, the art form emerged from the creative interactions between the artist J. Swaminathan and his team in Bharat

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Plate 1.1: Jangarh Singh Shyam, Baradeo. c. 1980s. Acrylic on Board. Collection of Durga Bai Vyam.

Bhawan and a group of young adivasi artists who had the vision and the confidence to grasp the opportunity to expand the scope of their aesthetic capabilities.

Folk Art: The Vernacular in the Contemporary2 An international travelling exhibition, ‘Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India’, came to Delhi in November 2006. The curator of the exhibition, Chaitanya Sambrani, acknowledged J. Swaminathan’s path-breaking experiments in Bharat Bhawan in the early 1980s, where he attempted to combine folk with modern art in the same exhibition space.3 The exhibition

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brought together works from diverse locations to celebrate the ‘vernacular modernism’ of Indian art. The curator was able to bypass existent divisions between ‘folk’ and ‘high’ art by framing the exhibition in terms of India’s recent political history.4 Thus, works by folk artists like Swarna and Manu Chitrakar, Raj Kumar and Subhash Singh Vyam were juxtaposed with postmodern installations by Shilpa Gupta, Vivan Sundaram and Nalini Malani. Sambrani’s introductory note in the catalogue focused on the location of the exhibition — in the interregnum, at a historical juncture when India is poised to become a global player but is also facing political challenges to its democratic and secular fabric. Reviews of this exhibition that had appeared in the international press emphasised the distinctive features of modern Indian art as ‘outside and independent of the West’ (Cotter 2005). Critics talked about the emergence of an international aesthetic sensibility that was also informed by a continuity of inspiration from previous generations of artists such that it was important to consider the culture and history in which this art was embedded. They also stressed the engagement with politics, one crucial area of difference between Indian artists and their counterparts in the West (Fischer 2006). Clearly this was a landmark event on the Indian art scene not only in the way that it positioned ‘Indian Art’ within the global art world but also in the lineage that it sought to establish for itself. Thus, viewers were made conscious of the fact that the exhibition was part of a tradition which included other significant exhibitions in India, Paris and New York, that had helped to redraw the lines between traditional and modern art. Thus ‘Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art’, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1984, broke fresh ground in that it based the selection of its exhibits purely on the basis of their plastic qualities thereby allowing African art works to occupy a common space with the works of modern artists (Rubin 2006). The 1989 exhibition in Paris attempted a worldwide survey of contemporary art. It showed the work of 50 artists from western countries and that of 50 artists from non-western countries, including paintings by Baua Devi and Kalam Patua, folk artists from Mithila in Bihar and from Birbhum in West Bengal respectively (Hart 1995). Some anthropologists who reviewed these two exhibitions criticised the lack of contextualisation of the traditional objects placed there and said that it revealed a bias since all the works that were selected for exhibition were judged on the basis of a western, and therefore totalising, aesthetic standard (Marcus and Myers 1995). There was an interesting ambivalence that marked both exhibitions — a polyphony, characteristic of the contemporary art world, co-existing with the lack of a diegetical context,

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a feature of high modernism. Jyotindra Jain’s exhibition, ‘Other Masters: Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India’, first held in 1998 in New Delhi, and then again in Paris in 2010, went a step further. There was a greater emphasis on the institutions that shaped the ‘careers’ of these folk artists so that the spectators who came to view their art works were able to participate in the process of re-contextualisation, that is, they were encouraged to view the objects being exhibited as simultaneously occupying two status positions — as embodiments of age old tradition and as unique art works (Jain 1998a). What is the significance of art exhibitions in constituting folk art practices? Are exhibition spaces really contact zones where different cultures can meet, or merely a way of legitimising a pre-existent cannon? Okwui Enwezor (2003) while discussing the ‘postcolonial constellation’, through which the ethics of artistic practice is articulated, says that the history of modern art is tied to the history of its exhibitions. Exhibitions have mediated successive shifts in aesthetic practice and the formation of a critical public that can engage with modern art (ibid.: 58–59). From this perspective it is perhaps curators, rather than government-sponsored institutions or individual artists, who have the most important roles to play in reconstituting systems of art classification. Curators and art critics have a major impact on the way new sensibilities are shaped, especially as textual exegesis comes to occupy an increasingly important role in explaining and legitimising the positioning of art works within specific aesthetic frames. A spate of recent exhibitions on the theme of the vernacular modern as well as recent works in art history have shown how folk and tribal arts are increasingly becoming part and parcel of our aesthetic engagement with contemporary India (Banerji 2010; Mitter 2007).5 The engagement of these art forms with recent political events, with new artistic media like paper and acrylic paint, and with easy access to urban consumers facilitated by state-sponsored venues such as handicraft fairs and the Crafts Museum in New Delhi have led to the emergence of a market for the ethnic arts. However, there is very little ethnographic work on the actual process of change, on the way the market inflects art works — in terms of aesthetic style, thematic, and scale of composition. In spite of the fact that since independence successive governments at the centre as well as at the regional levels have actively intervened to constitute ‘folk art’ as a marketable commodity and as a site for the self-conscious production of culture, dominant representations still present folk art works as if they were timeless and unalienable from the communities that produce them (Thomas 1991).6

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How they do this — the paths that these objects are made to traverse in their transformation into art works are various. Regional governments of the different states in India have distinct policies towards folk arts which require separate studies in themselves. In this work I restrict myself to the study of two such art forms — that of the pata (scroll) painters and performers of Bengal called ‘Patua’ or more recently ‘Chitrakar’, and the ‘Gond-Pardhan’ style of Madhya Pradesh,7 both of which are considered ‘canonical and classical forms of “folk and tribal” art’ but have had radically different trajectories in their development as art forms (Garimella 2010). A comparative account of two such different traditions enables a systematic study of traditional art as an emergent phenomenon8 and allows one to examine the significance of the art worlds within which the paintings circulate as art objects. Following the philosopher Arthur C. Danto (1964), sociologists have used the concept of ‘art world’ to characterise the institutional, discursive and historical perspectives through which we come to distinguish some objects as works of art (Becker 1982; Bundgaard 1999). The term ‘institution’ itself, as Tapati Guha-Thakurta (2004) reminds us, is the way in which disciplinary fields are carved up by subjects such as art history, folkloristics and anthropology. Art worlds are established by the circulation of a certain kind of discourse that comes to support the apparatuses of the state and the market. However, apart from a few monographs such as the one by Helle Bundgaard (1999) on Orissa pata chitra, in which she examines the art world in which contemporary patas are produced and sold, most recent works on folk art forms in India still tend to focus on ‘tradition’ per se and view change as a result of the onslaught of the market and of modern media like films and television that threaten community consciousness and the art forms dependent on it (Chatterjee 1990).9 The recent boom in the Indian art market has led to an international interest in contemporary Indian folk art so that works by artists like Jangarh and his son, Mayank, are included in art auctions and art fairs such as Sotheby’s and the Indian Art Summit. Art galleries no longer think of these art forms as catering to a niche audience and are trying to bring them into the mainstream (Dua 2010). Even those who lack this kind of exposure and have to confine themselves to government-sponsored craft melas (fairs) are nevertheless able to increase the prices of their paintings every year. Is this happening because folk and adivasi artists are now able to communicate in the language of the contemporary art world? The state has had an important, though often unacknowledged, role in enabling the interface between folk artists and the institutions of the art world, including the market. It was as far back as 1966, during a severe

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drought in Bihar, that Pupul Jayakar, the director of the Handicraft Board, sent the artist Bhaskar Kulkarni to Madhubani to encourage local women artists who drew ritual designs on their walls to transfer their paintings onto paper so that they could sell them and thus augment their family incomes (Szanton and Bakshi 2007, Singh n.d.). Institutions like the Craft Museum in New Delhi were envisioned as being repositories of the best specimens of the various regional craft traditions. They also tried to preserve and revive craft practices that were in danger of dying out. Month-long demonstrations by craft persons from different parts of the country in the Crafts Museum and interactive workshops between scholars and craft persons were some of the ways in which the state tried to preserve a certain standard of excellence. Craft persons were encouraged to visit the galleries and view the best samples of their particular craft. The live demonstrations were also meant to give visibility to the crafts in urban areas and allow for unmediated interaction between practitioners and the general public (Greenough 1996). It is through such interactions that urban art collectors first came into contact with folk traditions (Garimella 2010). Even though this exposure has been uneven, several collectors have developed long-term relations with individual artists whom they first met in state-sponsored melas and craft museums. This work, however, is not primarily concerned with the art market. The market in folk art is very new and somewhat disorganised, and hard data is difficult to come by. Pata paintings have not been as successful in their integration into the art world as Gond or Mithila paintings. But as prices in contemporary folk art go up there are parallel developments in the so-called ‘antique’ or ‘authentic’ scrolls market.10 Chitrakar artists no longer confine themselves to painting and performing with their scrolls. Those who have the contacts and resources to visit urban centres also bring scrolls that they have bought from their less fortunate compatriots to sell for higher prices. As dealers, they not only have a nuanced understanding of the market potential of the different kinds of commercial venues in cities like New Delhi, but they also have an understanding of the market value given to different kinds of ‘antique’ scrolls. Thus, Chitrakar artists who come to Dilli Haat know that they can charge up to three times more for their scrolls in New Delhi than they can in Kolkata or Shantiniketan, both cities with a long tradition of craft melas. Not only do they have a sense of what will appeal to potential buyers at such venues, they also bring certain items that cater exclusively to the tastes of institutional collectors such as the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) or the Asia Heritage Foundation. One of the women artists from Naya, the village in

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Medinipur, Bengal, where I did most of my fieldwork, was able to sell an antique scroll to IGNCA for ` 50,000 in 2008.11 At that time the price of a new scroll by an accomplished artist would not have been more than ` 5,000.12 However, prices have been rising steadily from year to year — since the time I began fieldwork in 2006, prices of scrolls in venues such as Dilli Haat have risen from ` 2,000 then to `12,000 in 2010. Gond art has a more stable market. Works on A4 size sheets of paper generally cost between `500 and ` 1000. However, there is another category of Gond painting, larger works on canvas, which is meant for a more sophisticated audience that visits art galleries. Recent exhibitions in Delhi that I have visited price these works in the range of `1.5–2 lakh. Pricing is only one of the aspects involved in the activities of the market as an institution, and it is not the focus of this study as I have already said. However, pricing does tell us something about the value of an object and its perception by the subject — whether this be the artist or the buyer — about the criteria used to evaluate the object and the way in which it is classified (Appadurai 1986). Self-perception, i.e., the perception of the artist, is not always in sync with that of the potential buyer and the state of flux in the folk art market is sometimes attributed to this gap. Some gallery owners have suggested that folk art works are imperfectly commoditised such that factors other than those directly embodied in the works themselves come to play in their evaluation (see also Morphy 1995; Myers 2002). Others suggest that it is because folk art works fall under the rubric of ‘craft traditions’ which are considered to be collective and anonymous (Venkatesan 2009). In such a situation, pricing can become a political statement telling us something about the way in which the art work is viewed (Appadurai 1986). Thus, Navayana, a radical publishing house based in New Delhi, helped to organise a solo exhibition of the work of a talented Pardhan-Gond sculptor, Sukhnandi Vyam, in 2010. The pieces on display were priced between ` 80,000 and ` 2.5 lakh. Not a single piece was sold, but as S. Anand, the organiser of the exhibition said, ‘a major statement had been made about the dignity of the artist’ (Anand 2011: 101).13 It is important to consider the impact that value has on questions such as stylistic innovation and it is with this that I am centrally engaged. Galleries that encourage new kinds of curatorial experiments have been at the forefront of the process of creative innovation. The rubric of ‘vernacular modernity’ was used initially to open up the space of high art to popular bazaar culture, but also allows folk art to become part of this mélange (Chandrashekhar and Seel 2003). Many folk art specialists fear that there

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is a danger that folk art will be tainted by the vulgar commercialism of popular culture — a point that I will take up for discussion in the next section; but what seems more interesting is that under this new rubric, the ‘folk’ is emerging as a site of novelty with the market in particular as the engine-driving innovation. The quotation that introduces this chapter shows that folk artists are aware of the significance of the market, not just as a means of livelihood, but as an institution that has a role in the constitution of their art form. ‘Vernacularity’, as Kajri Jain (2007) says, speaks to diverse postmodern idioms in the field of art and culture. It does not carry the connotations of primordiality and territorial boundedness associated with terms such as ‘folk’, ‘primitive’ or ‘traditional’. Folk culture tends to be thought of as a trace of a time gone by, existing in a state of temporal disjunction with the present (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998). By categorising certain art forms as ‘vernacular’, curators are able to mark out their difference from contemporary high art while at the same time incorporating them into the art world, albeit at a lower level. I hope to show that folk artists are able to position themselves reflexively in the gap between the ‘contemporary and the contemporaneous’, to use Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s felicitous phrase, and are able to use their traditional vocabularies to address modern artistic concerns (ibid.: 282).

Scholarly Reflections Unfortunately, scholarly reflections on folk aesthetics are still trapped within representations that view aesthetic concerns as part of a consensual collective tradition. This is especially true in the case of the Chitrakars. Beginning with pioneers such as Gurusaday Dutt (1939, 1990) who foregrounded the unique contribution that the pata painters could make to India’s secular ethos, bestriding as they do the two great religious traditions of Bengal — Islam and Hinduism — scholars in Bengal have viewed the Chitrakars through the lens of folk syncretism and have assumed that this in itself is an adequate basis for interpreting their art (Pal 2001; Das and Roy 1986; Rohman 2003).14 As a result they have paid little attention to the aesthetic features of the art — which always comes to stand for something other than itself. In contrast to these scholars, other art historians have reflected on the stylistic aspects of the paintings, though it is interesting that they look at the stylistic features as marking aspects of the traditional social arrangements in which the Chitrakars lived rather than the contemporary institutions of the state and market in which they also participate. Thus Kavita Singh (1995a) took the paintings from the Gurusaday Museum in Kolkata and was able to show that there were

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three regional styles of painting among the Chitrakars, each of which she relates to transmissions within marriage circles created through alliance.15 In a fascinating account of a Durga Mahishasuramardini motif in a single painting, Pika Ghosh (2000) shows that it was the museum display which created a singular object out of a painting, whereas traditionally it would have been part of a larger Chandi mangala scroll that was used in traditional performance. A common feature of most of the works discussed is a lack of engagement with the impact that institutions of the art world have had on the work of the Chitrakars. Pika Ghosh does not engage with the agentive potential of museums in reconstituting traditional art practices, nor do any of the Bengali folklorists consider the fact that folk artists might be using the idea of syncreticism as a self conscious trope to appeal to contemporary urban tastes. Gurusaday Dutt is an icon among Chitrakar artists and I have seen scrolls that narrate the story of his voyage of discovery of folk Bengal. I have also seen artists display published books on Chitrakar art along with their paintings in craft melas in Delhi in an attempt to establish their credentials before an audience of strangers in a language that the latter will understand. Like in many other fields of inquiry, the scholarly depictions of folk art become a part of the world of the artists, thus making it imperative to recognise the traffic in motifs and interests between artists and scholars who seek to represent their works. The literature on the Chitrakars is vast but unfortunately few have addressed questions of aesthetics. The two most important sociological writings are by Binoy Bhattacharjee (1980) and Beatrix Hauser (2002), and they both focus on social mobility and its relationship with some of the traditional practices of the community. Hauser (ibid.) describes the ‘recent’ elevation of this community as its members were encouraged through state intervention to move from performance to painting. The adoption of ‘Chitrakar’ as a title went hand-in-hand with the recognition of patuas as ‘folk artists’, rather than ‘folk performers’ for whom displaying scrolls and singing was a form of begging. Most writers privilege painting and picture display as the two primary occupations of the Chitrakars. Bhattacharjee (1980), one of the few scholars to have undertaken a community study, considers this to be misleading as there are various sub-castes among the Chitrakars, only a few of which specialise in painting and displaying scrolls. The status hierarchy between the sub-castes is fluid, sometimes varying from village to village. However, more than caste status, it is the ambivalence regarding religious identity that Bhattacharjee is interested in. He shows how the Chitrakars have been in a ‘transitional’ state, ‘oscillating’

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between Hinduism and Islam since the time of Independence. As a social anthropologist with a focus on the present, Bhattacharjee is able to show how the event of Partition may have been an important catalyst forcing them to choose between Hinduism and Islam.

Primitivism, Folk Art and the Modern The issue of state patronage of folk arts brings to mind critical questions regarding value and authority. How are art works constituted? What are the classificatory schemes within which they come to be recognised as having aesthetic value? Some ethnographic work on state-sponsored institutions is available. Paul Greenough’s (1996) study of the Crafts Museum in New Delhi and Soumhya Venkatesan’s (2009) on the mat weavers of Tamil Nadu and the new institutional spaces that their mats traverse in independent India both deal with the problematical division between art and craft and link it to nationalist ideology. They discuss how these state sponsored institutions set up with the express purpose of preserving India’s craft heritage inadvertently encourage experimentation as craftspeople from different regions interact and learn from each other. The collection and preservation of objects of folk art are an important part of heritage constitution. In the process of performing these activities, museums and art galleries also invent new categories of ‘art’.16 Such categories do not remain confined to the rarefied realms of art history but actually intervene in the creative process of art production, helping to constitute structures of reflexivity that impact the stylistic features of the art forms (Errington 1998). Apart from the work of museums in art production, exhibitions have also played a seminal role in charting out the trajectories taken by artists, art works and their public. Exhibitions, as institutional spaces in contemporary art worlds, function as contact zones where different art traditions meet and where new canons crystallise. The development of postmodernism has led to the valorisation of hybrid genres in which diverse styles and media are juxtaposed. The stress on meaning rather than pure form has given curators and art critics an important role in reconstituting systems of art classification. However, the lens through which the folk arts are viewed is still shaped by the discourse of ‘primitivism’ with its negative connotations of naiveté and lack of technical sophistication (Morphy and Perkins 2006). I will have more to say on this later but to understand the significance of this new institutional space in reconfiguring the folk arts, a brief discussion on primitivism and modern Indian art is in order.

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Primitivism in avant-garde art in the West was used to suggest the idea of ‘primitive’ imagery rather than to refer to specific regional styles of painting. Primitive art was defined by its opposition to the classical and to the creation of an illusion of a naturalistic, three-dimensional space. Instead, it was thought to use pattern and ornamentation to create abstract figures on flat two-dimensional surfaces. These kinds of aesthetic values were said to embody a spirituality that was close to nature, which could be communicated through simple symbols because they addressed a world of universals. Thus, for example, all trees were reduced to a conceptual image of a tree, a tree shorn of individual specificity.17 Recent scholarship, more sensitive to alternative aesthetic systems, is increasingly critical of the way in which the valorisation of the primitive leads to the de-contextualisation of objects shorn of their primary meaning and function and their relocation within modern art worlds (Errington 1998). In India, primitivism became associated with the revival of its craft traditions. Under the influence of nationalists like Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1990 [1909]) and E. B. Havell (1986, [1937]) who were writing in the first decades of the 20th century, folk art was seen as part of a continuous craft tradition that spanned thousands of years. It was thought to be anchored in an organic society based on a caste hierarchy that eschewed novelty and on the spiritual discipline of the craftspeople. However, modernity and the influence of western materialism that led to a new classificatory division between the fine arts and craft was thought to threaten this tradition. Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and others of the Bengal School are similarly accused of an Orientalist perspective by which they are supposed to have produced an essentialised notion of folk aesthetics in the interests of a nationalist art. The current reappraisal of Bengal School18 artists however has drawn attention to their use of multiple styles from diverse locations in and outside India to strategically critique colonial modernism and its valorisation of classical realism in art, while at the same time drawing folk artists into an interactive space (Mitter 2007). It is from this vantage point that art historians such as R. Siva Kumar (2008) and Debashish Banerji (2010) describe Abanindranath’s use of pastiche to achieve intertextuality at the level of style. The use of an eclectic mix of historical and regional styles in his work functioned as counterpoints to create a dialogic space so that each painting told a story not just in terms of the subject depicted but through the interweaving of different stylistic forms with style itself becoming a narrative device. Partha Mitter (2007) draws our attention to the specific use of the vocabulary of primitivism in the constitution of an inherently hybrid

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national art. His work includes a valuable discussion on the painter, Sunayani Devi, one of the first to adopt the style of patua art and whose influence on Jamini Roy’s subsequent search for an authentic folk style is an important though little known fact of Indian art history. Mitter is also one of the few scholars to discuss the significance of art exhibitions in the development of painting styles. Thus, he mentions the Bauhaus exhibition in Kolkata in 1922, where several avant-garde paintings were on display, as an event that may have given the Bengal School artists an exposure to the formal vocabulary of primitivism. The modernist vision of Jamini Roy might well have been shaped by exhibitions such as this one as was his subsequent exposure to patua art at the first exhibition of pata paintings in the early 1930s. The early nationalists tried to stem the decay of craft traditions by collecting folk art from all over Bengal. Regular exhibitions were also held at the Indian Society of Oriental Art, and art students at Kala Bhawan, Shantiniketan were encouraged to study the folk arts among other Indian art forms for their formal aesthetic properties (see also Datta 2010; Sen Gupta 1973). The Bengal School’s somewhat eclectic approach to the folk arts is not the subject of discussion here, but I would like to draw attention to two important figures — the colonial administrator, Gurusaday Dutt and the artist, Jamini Roy — both of whom have had a seminal influence on patua art, especially on the way it is represented in the art world and on the painting style itself.

Patua Art and Bengali Society Gurusaday Dutt’s contribution to the folk arts of Bengal and his ideas about their role in re-invigorating Bengali society is well-known and I will touch upon them only briefly (Dutt 1990, 2008). Dutt became interested in folk culture in the course of his work as a colonial administrator. As the district magistrate of Birbhum district in 1931, he revived the Agricultural and Industrial Fair at Suri and made it a platform for the display of folk arts. He also started to collect patas and their accompanying songs from the Chitrakars of Birbhum in this period (Basu 2008). He organised the first exhibition of patua art in 1932 in Kolkata, which had an impact on art students in Bengal, amongst whom was Jamini Roy. His extensive collection of pata paintings is housed in the Gurusaday Museum in Kolkata. It was Gurusaday Dutt’s writings on the patua art traditions that helped give shape to later representations of Chitrakar identity. He participated in a nationalist discourse that sought to reconstitute Indian tradition through her folklore. His concerns were with an emergent present — that

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of shaping modern Indian culture — and he saw in Bengal’s folklore a source of authentic tradition that continues to exist since pre-historic times (Dutt 1990).19 However his views on patua art were modernistic and shaped by contemporary ideas of primitivism. He thought that Bengal’s folk art was inherently surrealistic by which he meant that it privileged the formal aesthetic values of simplification and abstraction. These values were used to express a profound spiritual reality and joy (ananda) that was a reflection of the sahaja marg — the way of the common people that transcended the boundaries of caste and religion (see Note 21). They were used to conceptualise the inner form of the object rather than its outward physical shape. He distinguished between rasa and rupa — inner, spiritual reality and external physical form. He claimed that folk artists had mastery of both aspects even though they privileged the former. They reserved the more ‘surrealistic’ style for their own people in the villages and used the more ‘realistic’ style when they had to cater to the sophisticated urban elite (Basu 2008). He felt that Bengali intellectuals in search of independence should seek inspiration from folk artists such as the Chitrakars who were immersed in the spiritual life of their communities — communities that had been untainted by the effects of colonialism and embodied a freedom of mind that was native to the Bengali people. Their paintings, he felt, were informed by the philosophy embodied in folk religion — in myth and legend. Their compositions were inflected by the rasa of the simple way, that is, by the spirit of a down-to-earth, pragmatic secularism which led them to portray the great gods as Bengali villagers (Dutt 1939). The fact that they were able to persist in their belief in a syncretic system in the face of brahmanical persecution that had relegated them to the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy was, he felt, a testimony to their fierce sense of independence and the vibrancy of their culture. I now turn to the artist Jamini Roy for whom patua art as the embodiment of folk spirituality became a marker of a distinctive style that he sought to cultivate. Of course Roy’s own shift to patua art must be understood in the context of the modernist aesthetic of primitivism in which the ‘folk community’ came to represent the pure indigenous values of the Bengali people. Jamini Roy was trained at the Government School of Art in Kolkata and learned to paint in the European mode. He came into contact with the artists of the Bengal School but like Dutt was troubled by their eclecticism. His search for a purely indigenous style led him to the Chitrakars of his native district, Bankura, and he not only adopted elements of their style in his own painting but also tried to model his practice on their ways of art

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production. Thus, he tried to replicate a model of collective production in his studio. He restricted himself to a limited number of themes that he repeated again and again. He would often put his signature to works produced by his son or by some of the folk artists whom he employed as assistants. He also produced multiple ‘copies’ of his own paintings which inevitably led to their devaluation in the art market. Like the primitivists in the West when confronted with ancient rock art in Europe, Roy was struck by the confidence with which unselfconscious village craftsmen could arrive at simplicity of form and purity of colour. However, he thought that unlike the artists who were responsible for prehistoric cave paintings, the Bengali Chitrakars made a conscious choice in the matter of style. This was because they worked in an environment where they were constantly confronted by the presence of a more ‘technically mature and classical school of art’ (Dey and Irwin 1944: 28). Also their work was embedded in a mythic universe which gave shape to their artistic consciousness. He believed that it was only in cultures that had vibrant mythic traditions that art forms could produce abstractions that achieved symbolic significance. Without myths, abstractions were nothing but geometrical forms and were not part of the lived experience of creative art. Without myth, art could no longer be considered as part of the lived experience of a community, but became instead a matter of individual subjectivity as had happened in Europe after the Reformation when Christianity lost its mythic moorings (Dey and Irwin 1944: 30). Roy was an artist and he employed words as he did colour and form, for their symbolic resonance, and not as an academic trained in art history. He tried to immerse himself in the mythic imaginary of the patua world by introducing new symbols in his own compositions. The series of paintings on the Christ myth can be thought of as an experiment to see if the vocabulary of folk art could be extended to incorporate new myths. But however much Roy may have evoked the idea of folk consciousness his modernist bent is evident in his compositions — such as the fact that he eschewed the narrative mode. Folk artists usually tell stories through their paintings. Jamini Roy’s paintings never do. His was a quest for formal purity which he sought through the idiom of primitivism. Both Roy and Dutt were united in their belief in the regenerative power of Bengal’s folk culture and the role that folk art had in the constitution of an Indian aesthetic tradition. They were both struck by the formal properties of Chitrakar art, the quality of abstraction that could distil the essence of form from objects in the phenomenal world, and tried to instil these values in the cultural practices that they institutionalised. But Jamini

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Roy as a painter was far more interested in the symbolic imaginary of the Chitrakar community. He believed that it had an authenticity that more urbanised forms of folk art, such as Kalighat painting, had lost. He may not have sought to replicate their storytelling techniques in his own paintings but the idea of a ‘collective myth’ informed his artistic imagination and he painted his figures as if they were icons, and thus, part of a sacred tradition. ‘Authentic’ primitive art is supposed to stand outside the time line devised by art history. Their creators are supposed to live in the timeless mythic realm that transcends history (Errington 1998). Scholars have shown how this kind of thinking has been used to re-contextualise artefacts in terms of Western categories (Clifford 1988). Even though Indian artists sometimes may seem to mimic this discourse, it must not be forgotten that they too are outsiders to the art historical time line as articulated in the West. Their re-contextualisation of objects of folk art produced not so much a new artistic taxonomy but allowed for a re-contextualisation of modernist primitivism as well. Thus, when Swaminathan celebrated the timelessness of tribal art he was not arrogating artistic authority and claiming that the voice of the traditional artist is redundant in the appreciation of the art work. Rather, he was trying to open up all communities to the potential of artistic creation, whether they had traditions of art production or not. For him, affirming the timelessness of art was a way of seeking commonality between adivasi artists and contemporary ones. However, unlike Jamini Roy, he did not associate timelessness with the anonymity of the traditional folk artist. Chitrakar art was thought of as a collective tradition dating back to pre-historic times. Gond art, by contrast, is part of a modernist project and it is constituted through the process of searching for and promoting individual talent.

Swaminathan and Adivasi Art The Gond style of painting is a new tradition that goes back approximately 30 years as I have already said. Its history is tied to Bharat Bhawan, a state-sponsored institution of art and culture established in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh in the early 1980s. J. Swaminathan was asked to set up a museum of fine arts. A fortuitous combination of circumstances led to the establishment of an experimental institution, the Roopankar Gallery that housed the work of established modern artists as well as folk artists and untaught painters under the same roof. Swaminathan was fortunate in being able to work with Ashok Vajpayi, the director of Bharat Bhawan, an administrator who was also a scholar and a poet, and Arjun Singh, the

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energetic chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, who took a personal interest in the experiments that were being carried out in Bharat Bhawan. Swaminathan was able to gather around him a group of motivated students from various art colleges in Madhya Pradesh and send them to survey the tribal areas in this region. As Mushtak Khan, one of the members of the team, told me, they were asked not merely to identify and collect samples of the different craft traditions available in these remote areas but also to carry drawing paper, colour and other implements necessary for making art works.20 They were instructed to ask the villagers if they wanted to experiment with any of the painting material and to try out new ideas. It was in this way that Vivek Tembe encountered Jangarh Singh Shyam, a Pardhan-Gond, who became the founder of the Gond style of painting. The Pardhan-Gonds are the bards of this group and have a tradition of epic singing and storytelling. Even though they do decorate their homes with wall paintings the Gond style of painting is new and does not resemble the rudimentary figures painted on the walls of their houses.21 Jangarh Singh decided to stay on in Bhopal and was given a job in the graphics department of Bharat Bhawan. Encouraged by Swaminathan, he experimented with different media and soon developed a rich visual vocabulary that was strongly influenced by the religious and narrative traditions of the Pardhan-Gonds. His paintings were in great demand and soon members from his kin group in Mandla started coming to Bhopal to work with him. Over the years, the ‘Gond’ style has become an autonomous art form and has achieved global recognition. Many of Jangarh’s former apprentices are important artists in their own right and the work of his son Mayank has been put up for auction at Sotheby’s in the recent past. A perusal of Swaminathan’s writings of that time reveals the influence that primitivism had on his thought. Arguing against the approach of conventional art history that frames ‘developments’ in art in terms of linear progression, he speaks of a ‘direct appreciation and apprehension’ of adivasi art as a ‘sensuous reality’ and an ‘experience in itself’ (Swaminathan 1987: 16). He argues in favour of a reversal of historical time to restore the numinous function of art. Art, he says, involves a notion of timelessness — a continuous presence that runs counter to historical time. History introduces the notion of asymmetry in human culture; it destroys the felt reality that is art by introducing logical reason, he says. Thus, ‘a work of art if treated as a means of communication, either of ideas or experiences, other than those generated by itself, ceases to be and in fact should cease to be a work of art’(Swaminathan 1987: 17). Instead we have to turn to the world of myth to recover the visionary and universalistic aspects of art. It is not

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surprising therefore that the modernists turned to adivasi art, strongly rooted in a mythic imagination as it is, for inspiration. Swaminathan’s advocacy for the primitive did not lead him to suppress the individual voices of the adivasi artists ‘discovered’ by his team. Apart from Jangarh Singh Shyam there were other karamchari kalakaar (worker artists)22 who were encouraged to find their own modes of expression without interference from the artists and art students working in Bharat Bhawan. Even though he was sympathetic to the idea of an anonymous and collective aesthetic tradition he did not subscribe to it. Nor did he valorise the past. For him, it was precisely the ahistorical quality of adivasi art that made it contemporary. It was part of the continuous present. Levi-Strauss’s writings on structuralism, especially the idea of synchrony, appealed to Swaminathan as it drew modern movements in art closer to the formalism that was seen in much of primitive art (Swaminathan 1987). He felt that modernism shared with ‘primitive art’ its attention to ‘percepts’ or mental images distilled from perception. These images are signs, but unlike linguistic signs whose primary function is to communicate, signs in art works may be opaque (Levi-Strauss 1972: 20). They provoke us to search for meaning that is not given in advance (Luhman 2000). Instead, they work through affect — impersonal emotions that traverse the art work itself (Deleuze1994: 163). My interviews with some of Swaminathan’s former students, who formed part of the survey team that identified the adivasi artists, reveal the importance of affect in their evaluation of the aesthetic quality of the artefacts they collected and its visionary potential. Thus Vivek Tembe, who currently works at Madhyam, the publication division of the Madhya Pradesh government, described his first experience of Jangarh’s art. It was late in the evening. Swamiji had told us to make a special trip to Patangarh village because it was mentioned in Verrier Elwin’s book on tribal art. But we found nothing. Even the carpentry workshop that Elwin had started was in ruins. I was very depressed. Suddenly, while I was leaning against the door of the jeep I saw a Hanuman image on the wall of a hut. It was painted with lemon yellow, a very unusual colour — we usually see Hanuman images in vermillion or peuri.23 It shimmered in the rays of the setting sun (see Elwin 1951).

It was this image of Hanuman that led him to Jangarh Singh Shyam who went on to become a famous artist and the founder of the Gond style. He also described Jangarh’s reaction when he handled poster colour for the first time.

18 c Speaking with Pictures He opened the bottle, dipped his fingers into the paint, and rubbed them. He loved the smooth texture. He looked at his paint daubed fingers and smeared them on the piece of white paper in front of him. His face lit up with a radiant smile.

He narrated his disappointment when Jangarh started to copy the style of another folk painter at the workshop in Dindori, which was the bloc headquarters for the area that included Patangarh village. All the artists whom we had identified in the Mandla division were brought to Dindori. Imagine how I felt when one day I saw Jangarh mixing colours. They were so muddy and dull. The painter he was interacting with was a traditional folk artist — I forget where he was from. He painted in a somewhat naturalistic style like what we call calendar art now. He thought that he was helping Jangarh by teaching him how to paint properly. Jangarh was very impressionable — open to new ideas. He loved experimenting. I told him never to follow another painter. He had to develop his own style.

Mushtak Khan, who recently retired as deputy director of the Crafts’ Museum in Delhi, and Chandan Singh Bhatty of Bharat Bhawan both talked about Jangarh’s kalpana shakti — his power of imagination. ‘Many gifted artists came for workshops to Bharat Bhawan,’ Mushtak Khan told me, ‘but then they went back to their villages. Jangarh stayed on in Bhopal. He was given a job as assistant in the graphics workshop of Bharat Bhawan. He could experiment with new techniques and meet famous artists and playwrights. Swaminathan guided him and helped him evolve as an artist.’ Describing the brief that they were given by Swaminathan before they went out on their surveys, Mushtak Khan said, We were told not only to ask about the kind of art practices people were engaged in now but also those in the past that they may have discontinued. But we were also told to ask if people wanted to try something new, something that they had never done before but had thought of and might want to try to give shape to. Because otherwise how do we judge a people’s aesthetic sensibility (saundarya bodh). Jangarh didn’t come from a community of traditional painters, which is why he was porous — open to new ideas and new techniques that he learned in the graphics workshop at Bharat Bhawan. Others like Pema Fatia, a ritual artist, who belongs to a community with a great painting tradition, could not break away from his tradition. He keeps coming back to the Pithora painting that he has always done. Bhuri Bai, perhaps because she is a woman and not a ritual artist, has learned to break up her tradition. She takes fragments from it and experiments.24 There were

Folk Art d 19 many good artists like Belgur and Kharia Baiga from Bastar, whose work was appreciated even more than Jangarh’s when they first exhibited in Bhopal, but Jangarh had a sense of pictorial space, which they lacked, and a vivid imagination. He came from a community of story tellers. The Gonds have a very rich mythology and he could bring that mythology and his experience of the forest and the village to painting. He borrowed motifs from Belgur, he saw the pointillism that Bhendre was doing and that probably inspired him to pattern his figures with dots (bindi). His paintings were flat at first, but then he saw Belgur’s flecked figures getting a lot of appreciation, that probably inspired him. But his dot work was different, the dots helped his figures to move and expand on the canvas (see Plate 1.2).25

Swaminathan’s experiments led to the development of a new art movement in India and to the constitution of a new category of adivasi art which emerged in the context of a museum. The celebration of ‘primitivism’, however sensitive it may be to the aesthetic sensibilities of marginal communities, also produced some undesirable effects. Jyotindra Jain (1998a) recounts a meeting with Jangarh where the latter asked him if he should wear a tribal loin cloth and pose for a picture since that is what he had been asked to do at a gallery where his work was being exhibited. A more subtle form of estrangement is part of the discourse of primitivism itself. Thus Picasso, whose work spearheaded contemporary reappraisals of African art, said that the latter ‘bore witness to his enterprise rather than serving as a starting point to his imagery’ (Rubin 2006: 137). In common with other forms of modernist aesthetics that emerged in the West, primitivism works with the idea of unmediated visual experience. It is in its opaqueness and lack of referential object that the appeal of the image must lie. In art forms that are anchored in narrative traditions, unmediated visual experience can become problematic. Consider this quotation from an article on Jangarh’s work by Gulammohammad Sheik: Images of deities other than those of his tribal ‘pantheon’ are handled more awkwardly… In a linear rendition another Ganesha is a quaint yet somewhat menacing persona with pincers like a scorpion’s and snaky fangs springing out of the body along with the trunk (Sheik 1998: 22).

Sheik is one of the foremost commentators on the traditional arts in India. His own work — his painting — springs from a sensibility that is in tune with her mythic traditions and he has inspired folk artists to compose pictures on themes like the Gujarat riots of 2002.26 However, his location within an art world that is shaped by the modernist perspective that seeks to de-contextualise art probably prevents him from turning to Gond history and myth as sources of interpretation. To characterise Ganesha as

Plate 1.2: Belgur, Tiger. c. 1980s. Acrylic on Paper. ©Adivasi Lok Kala Parishad, Bhopal.

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an alien deity, especially in connection with the Gond people who have had a long and intimate association with Hindu traditions, is jarring to say the least. Ganesha is an important figure in Gond cosmology and the particular image that Sheikh refers to is not Ganesha at all but the ancestor of the crabs who sacrificed his head so that the infant Ganesha might live. According to the Gond version of the myth, Ganesha was crowned with the head of a crab, not that of an elephant, the evidence of which is seen even today in the headless crabs that scuttle on river banks (Plate 1.3). According to the modernist canon, artistic signs are not supposed to be part of a determinate syntax. They are supposed to blur the relationship to context so that easy intelligibility becomes difficult (Elkins 1999). Gond art, therefore, cannot be subsumed within the modernist cannon because it has strong roots in a bardic tradition. But paradoxically, it looks to the contemporary art scene for sustenance. Jangarh was able to highlight the enigmatic quality of his paintings by pointing to a narrative tradition that was unfamiliar to urban connoisseurs. He uses the technique of ‘side shadowing’, well-known in the Indian narrative tradition, to point to alternative narrative possibilities not directly recounted by the story being told (Hiltebeitel 2001). His strategy paid rich dividends and the images that he selected for painting from Gond mythology are now part of a classical repertoire that is repeated by successive generations of Gond artists. Given the role of Bharat Bhawan in the evolution of this art form, the art market played an important role in shaping the trajectory of the Gond style. As I have mentioned previously, Swaminathan was careful not to allow his presence, or that of other artists, to interfere with the development of these adivasi art styles.27 However, the pressure to produce works of quality and the demands of the art market did cause some amount of tension between the various artists, especially between Jangarh and his relatives who had settled in Bhopal. Some of his associates have told me that there were fights about the appropriation of other people’s styles. A senior artist and relative of Jangarh’s who came to Bharat Bhawan shortly after the first group of adivasi artists claimed that he had started to use dots to decorate his figures before Jangarh did. Jangarh appropriated the dot pattern for himself, he said, and refused to let the other Gond artists use it. According to Narmada Prasad Tekam and Anand Singh Shyam, this insistence on claiming a personal signature is what led them to develop their own patterns of decoration, so that all Gond artists today use an individual pattern with which they cover their compositions. This pattern serves as a signature and distinguishes the work of each artist who paints in the Gond style (see Plates 1.1 and 1.3). The teaching and transmission

Plate 1.3: Rajendra Shyam, Crab before Beheading. 2010. Acrylic on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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of the art, however, is organised in the traditional mode whereby young artists are apprenticed to a master and learn by copying his or her individual style. At some point in their training they acquire sufficient confidence to branch out on their own and express their individuality as artists by claiming a unique signature for themselves. In the examples given above we see how a particular art form is entangled with other systems. Thus the ‘singularising’ values of modernist art clash with the ideal of collective creativity embodied in the craft mode of production (Kopytoff 1986).28 Artists negotiate with the different criteria of authenticity used to evaluate their works. In the case of the Chitrakar tradition, value is given to the scroll that has been used in performance and is thus part of a collective artistic tradition (see Plate 1.4). New scrolls, painted strictly for sale, are contaminated by their being part of a ‘monetised commodity sphere’ and fetch lower prices than older ones that bear the marks of constant use (ibid.: 79). Of course individual creativity is a part of the craft mode of production as well, but is not evaluated in the same way as in the modern art world. Interestingly, even Jamini Roy tried to problematise the question of authenticity that is associated with individual authorship in modernist notions of art by signing the works of folk artists that he employed as apprentices in his studio. In this way he was trying to work with the idea of a collective tradition embodied in the ideal of folk creativity but with limited success (Jyoti 2010).

Museums, Exhibitions and the New Spaces for Folk Art The publicity that the first exhibition of pata paintings, organised by Dutt, received inspired Calcutta University to start a museum of Indian art and to collect Bengali folk art including scroll paintings. Dutt’s extensive pata collection is housed in the Gurusaday Museum. It covers a 10 year period — from 1922 to 1933 — though many of the objects are older. The collection includes patas from all over Bengal, though with a concentration on Murshidabad and Birbhum. Other collections of note are by J. C. French divided between the Victoria and Albert, and British Museums in London and the Ananda Niketan Kritishala at Bagnan, Howrah district in West Bengal. The scrolls in London are largely from Murshidabad and were acquired between 1925 and 1928 (cf. Singh 1995a). The Bagnan collection is especially interesting for my work because it has a large collection of scrolls from Naya, the village where my fieldwork with the Chitrakars is primarily based, painted by earlier generations of artists. Tarapada Shantra, an eminent folklorist of Bengal and the first

Plate 1.4: Jado Patia Scroll, frame 1: Sepoy Mutiny. Artist and Date Unknown. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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curator of the Kritishala, acquired most of the scrolls in the mid-1960s. Many collectors of the folk arts work with the presupposition that these are anonymous traditions and are careless about tracing the provenance of the works that they buy. This makes it difficult to give historical depth to the study of folk art. The museum at Tamluk, the district headquarters of East Medinipur, also has a collection of patas from some of the important Chitrakar villages of Medinipur such as Thekuachak and Habichak. This collection was made in the mid 1970s. After Gurusaday Dutt’s initial efforts towards publicising pata painting, there was a lull for about two decades. David McCutchion, a teacher in the Comparative Literature Department of Jadavpur University in Kolkata, and his student Suhrid Bhowmik became interested in this field in the 1960s but by that time the tradition was in decline. Painters had shifted to other occupations and even the ones who persisted with their tradition of performance were producing very shoddy work (see McCutchion and Bhowmik 1999).29 Their initial attempt was to revive this art form and adapt it so that it would appeal to modern Western tastes. Their focus, however, was not on the performance so much as on the scroll which they thought could be turned into a wall painting. They collected old patas and encouraged those Chitrakars who still painted to ‘improve’ their style by copying the old paintings. In the course of commodifying the scrolls other issues came up. The scroll was not traditionally thought to be an autonomous object. The painted images were polyphonic in character, often used to convey multiple moods or even to tell more than one story (cf. Singh 1995b; see also Plates 1.4 and 1.5).30 Since the patas were now to be sold as narrative paintings complete in themselves, the painters had to learn to depict not merely the main protagonists of the story but also the contexts in which the events took place (Plate 1.6). Gestures had to be made recognisable for an audience unfamiliar with the traditional aesthetic cannon. Thus, according to Bhowmik, McCutchion, in a lecture to students in a rural college, had said that war scenes in the Ramayana patas never depicted characters aiming their bows and arrows at their opponents. Instead they aimed towards the sky. He described this as being unrealistic and a sign of the present state of apathy of most pata painters where they had become careless about detail. A jatra (folk theatre) artist intervened and said that they followed the same practice in their enactment of war scenes on stage. In the frame of a painting, characters who are supposed to be far apart are often depicted as contiguous because of lack of space. By pointing the arrow at the sky the artists were able to convey a sense of distance so that the arrow had to travel across space to be able to reach its target.31

Plate 1.5: Jado Patia Scroll, frame 2: Manasa, the Snake Goddess. Artist and Date Unknown. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 1.6: Fishes’ Wedding. Artist Unknown. c. 1990s. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

The Pata in its Commodity Phase32 It is only since the late 1970s that the government of West Bengal along with several other social service organisations began to use ‘folk artists’ to convey social welfare messages through traditional media. Themes such as literacy, malaria eradication, the pulse polio and anti-dowry campaigns are from this period.33 More recently, an international NGO has been using the Naya artists to propagate its AIDS campaign. Such projects demand the composition of new songs and paintings and more and more Chitrakars are turning away from performing traditional themes to these new ones. This form of patronage that encouraged novelty, the ability to engage with social issues and produce new compositions prepared the ground for new market opportunities that really only emerged about a decade ago.34 The Handicrafts Board of West Bengal organised training workshops in Naya village in 1986 and 1991. Again in 2006, the Eastern Zone Cultural Centre sponsored the NGO, Banglanatak.Com, to conduct a similar training programme in Naya. These programmes were supposed to train new artists in the traditional art form. Senior Chitrakars were employed

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as teachers and all participants were paid a stipend. In the 2006 training programme, the participants could not register as individuals but first had to form teams which were then registered as self help groups. Participants were encouraged to paint on cloth (garments) as well as paper so that their art could be diversified.35 With an eye on the burgeoning folk art market, there was also a month-long spoken English course for the participants to help them interact with non-Bengali customers. Hauser (2002), while discussing the earlier programmes, says that most of the men did not have time to attend the initial training sessions so they sent the women of their families instead. As a result a number of women Chitrakars began to paint and perform. Of course very few women performed in villages. They confined their performances to government-sponsored programmes and craft melas. Another milestone in the development of patua art was the sponsorship of the ‘French Revolution’ theme by the Alliance Francaise and the Crafts Council of West Bengal in 1989 to celebrate the bicentenary of that event in Kolkata. Ruby Palchowdhury, who heads the Crafts Council, conducted an extensive survey of all active Chitrakar communities in West Bengal, told them the story without showing them any visuals and asked them to interpret it in their own way. The results were fascinating. Many of the well-known Chitrakars of the day participated in the workshops that she conducted (cf. Alliance Francaise and Crafts Council of West Bengal n.d.). Palchowdhury spoke to me about the emotional appeal of ‘bidroho’ (revolt) in Bengal. Many of the artists had composed paintings on the Santal Bidroho and the civil disobedience movement, she said. The French rebels were recast as Indian villagers, and Louis XVI and his queen as Indian rulers in the scrolls that they produced. Rousseau gyani (wise man) led the revolution. Malini Bhattacharya conducted a survey of the government sponsored self help groups of Chitrakars in 2003. The project was sponsored by the British Council and conducted by the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, and focused on the women artists in particular. They also held workshops in Medinipur to try and encourage women to diversify their craft to build new market opportunities. To this end a contemporary artist participated in the workshops to teach the women folk artists how to adapt their style to new media. They also tried to help the women artists to organise themselves into professional groups. Both these efforts met with limited success. Women did develop self confidence but, according to Bhattacharya, intra-community strife and a focus on short-term gains tends to hamper collaboration among the members of the community.

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Thus, even though self help groups exist on paper, these are largely defunct (Bhattacharya 2004). More recently, the Centre of International Modern Art (CIMA) has been trying to work with some Chitrakar artists ‘to bring them into the artistic (i.e., gallery) space that till recently was occupied exclusively by modern art’.36 Swarna Chitrakar was persuaded to paint within a single pictorial frame, on canvas, and the painting was auctioned at Sotheby’s. She also collaborated with a contemporary modern artist, Taposh Konar, on a canvas in a workshop conducted by CIMA called ‘Art and Life’. Both she and Mayank Singh Shyam participated in an artists’ workshop organised by CIMA in December 2009 where they, along with several other mixedmedia artists, were asked to re-contextualise and comment on the work of another artist. Mayank chose Subodh Gupta as his interlocutor and Swarna selected Arpita Singh. Since Singh’s canvas was on the theme of suffering womanhood, Swarna selected some figures from the women’s empowerment themes that she is familiar with through her work with state government institutions. However her manner of rendering the theme was entirely new. She chose to paint on a wooden frame that became a border for Singh’s canvas. She fragmented the feminine figures so that their anatomical parts were disaggregated — legs, arms, mouths, eyes and ears were arranged in separate squares, interspersed with familiar scenes from the better known women’s empowerment patas. She had begun experimenting with separated body parts after attending a workshop on book illustration in Chennai and chose this occasion to carry that idea forward.37 Mayank produced two canvases in black and white which replicated Gupta’s famous utensil motifs. However, Mayank’s paintings unlike Gupta’s were not a comment on consumerism and mass production. Instead his vessels had a magical quality. They were animated with limbs and some even had wings. They were creatures from another world. To strengthen the impression of flight he painted two rows of birds in the space between the three canvases, as if his vessels were flying towards Gupta’s painting to rescue the utensils from a potential future of imprisonment in a gallery or servitude in a kitchen.38 Both Mayank and Swarna are highly creative artists and represent the best of their respective traditions. Can we expect this level of creativity from the artists who participate in the more mundane locales of governmentsponsored craft melas? In my periodic visits to Dilli Haat and the Crafts Museum in New Delhi, I have observed that folk artists who participate in live demonstrations tend to conceptualise their work as being part of an art tradition and to differentiate their styles from that of other regional styles.

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For instance, Kala Bai, the Pardhan-Gond artist, said that ‘Madhubani artists identify their work in terms of the Madhubani region, whereas we adivasi artists try to make our style individually distinctive so that the work of each Gond artist will be recognisable by the way he or she decorates the pictures. So I use the charpai (checker-board) design and half circles and my husband uses lines and small v-shapes’.39 I have also noticed that there is some intermingling of themes and motifs from the different regions. Thus, a Mithila artist Ajit Kumar Jha, whom I met at the Crafts Museum in December 2006, had paintings of fish clustered around a circle, very similar to a motif present in the popular Fishes’ Wedding scroll painting ( pata) from Medinipur, West Bengal (Plates 1.6 and 1.7). Even though the fish motif is a sign of auspiciousness in both Bihar and Bengal, the way that the fish are rendered in both these pictures are so similar that it is unlikely that they were visualised independently of each other. Similarly, a recent painting by Kala Bai of an anthropomorphic depiction of a river source is very similar to the first register of the Medinipur tsunami pata — both depict a woman from whose open mouth, a river gushes forth (Plates 1.8 and 1.9). At the time when folk artists from different parts of India are increasingly competing in the same markets, a heightened self-consciousness about stylistic distinctiveness and the need to innovate seems to occur side-by-side with some amount of mutual borrowing of themes and motifs, albeit at the subconscious level. Galleries, museums and craft melas are translocal spaces where hybridity is the cultural norm. They serve as contact zones where different cultures intersect. They also become spaces in which second order observation is institutionalised (Luhman 1998).40 Art worlds constitute discursive spaces where the very practice of viewing art is observed, discussed and written about. Self-reflexivity is the premise on which modern art is founded. It comes into being only by constituting its other. The other may be rejected, as has happened with regard to avant-garde movements in the West that repudiated academy art, or it may be embraced as we saw in the case of nationalist Indian art’s endeavour to constitute a history by embracing folk art, thought to be a living repository of past practices. This representation of folk art has a remarkable stability over time, informing the social imagination that conceptualised radical experiments such as the Roopankar Gallery in Bharat Bhawan and even postmodern exhibitions such as ‘Edge of Desire’ that self consciously blur the boundaries between the folk and contemporary as discussed in the opening section.

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Plate 1.7: Ajit Kumar Jha, Greeting Card with Fish Motif in Mithila Style. 2006. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Folk art is used as an index of a particular kind of cultural eclecticism but one that is incapable of self-reflexivity. This is so even when it embraces novel themes or ideas that we identify with a modern sensibility such as secularism. Thus, folk artists are supposed to be unaware of the radical potential of their experimentation because they see themselves in a relation of continuity with their tradition unlike modern artists who posit such relationships in terms of disjunction (see Siva Kumar 2006). What do we make of the Gond art movement then? Is it just a new folk tradition that is organised much like any other folk practice? I have tried to argue for the opposite. New spaces of interaction produce opportunities for experimentation that are the product, not merely of self-reflexivity, but also of second order observation as we saw in the development of the personal signature in the Gond style. The importance of second order observation is not restricted to new traditions such as Gond art but has become pervasive in all Indian folk traditions, leading to the emergence of new regional styles and genres. In the following section I discuss the emergence of one such genre in patua art — the ‘Santal’ pata painted in the chokkhu daan style.

Chitrakar Art and Primitivism In response to the new found interest in ‘tribal’ themes the Chitrakars of Medinipur have become dealers — buying patas in the so-called ‘jado

Plate 1.8: Tagar Chitrakar, Tsunami, frame 1. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 1.9: Kala Bai Shyam, Source of the River. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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patia’ style. This style is popular in the tribal belt that stretches from the Bengal border to Jharkhand and Chitrakars from Medinipur, sensitive to the demand for all things ‘tribal’, now buy scrolls from jado patia artists and sell them for profit in Delhi and other urban areas. Jado patas unlike the patas from other parts of Bengal still have ritual significance. They depict the origin myth of the Santals and are supposed to be imbued with magical properties. It is said that jado patias,41 as the Chitrakars who work in this region are called, would visit Santal families that had recently been bereaved, display their scrolls and ask for money to paint in the pupils of the eyes in the pictures of the ancestors depicted in the scroll. They would threaten the Santals by claiming that the dead person’s spirit would not go to the realm of the ancestors unless they were paid to put in the eyes. The jado patas are painted in a distinctive style — all figures are depicted in profile with a single eye in contrast to ‘Bengali’ patas in which figures are usually depicted with a three quarter face. The patuas from Medinipur have ‘copied’ this story and have developed a new style, called the ‘chokkhu daan’ (gift of the eyes) style in acknowledgement of the source. The ‘adivasi’ patas depict figures with faces in profile showing a full eye.42 They also depict the patua with a pata depicting the same story in the last register of the scroll. When I pointed to this feature and said that it did not figure in the ‘original’ adivasi patas, I was told that a ‘copy’ is never the same as the ‘original’ (Plates 1.10 and 1.11). Nelson Goodman (1975) considers style to be a property associated with an individual or group signature: ‘we may speak by extension of work by one another as being or not being in the style of another, or of a passage being or not being in the style of other passages in the same work; but in general stylistic properties help answer the question: Who? When? Where?’ (ibid.: 807). An awareness of the stylistic and painterly properties of the adivasi patas allows for new modes of embodiment. The conception of style as a kind of signature should not lead us to think that it conveys a sense of authorship or group identity. As Goodman reminds us, we are free to adopt another’s style. By proclaiming itself or pointing to a certain identity, style also unfetters the work from its author and allows the work to circulate by allowing it to be imitated, recognised and identified. The Chitrakars of Medinipur ‘copy’ the ‘adivasi’ style not with the intention of creating forgeries and thereby fooling potential clients — the inclusion of the image of the patua with his scroll into the painting points to the jado pata, the original source of these new paintings (needless to say, the Medinipur ‘copies’ are not imbued with magical properties).43 Instead the Medinipur Chitrakars have incorporated selective aspects of the adivasi form into their own repertoire of themes, colours and motifs. For

Plate 1.10: Binod Chitrakar, Jado Patia Scroll on Santal Origin Myth. c. 1960s. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 1.11: Amit Chitrakar, Copy of Santal Origin Myth in Medinipur Pata Style. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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instance, sepia tones that index the adivasi style are juxtaposed with the bright greens and reds of the Medinipur style. Consciousness of stylistic variation also translates into consciousness of temporal difference and location. Foregrounding style as an identity marker has introduced a self-reflexive stance whereby Medinipur Chitrakars now locate themselves as particular kinds of artists vis-à-vis others. Thus, a popular new theme in pata painting, ‘Origin of the Santals’, ends with a depiction of a patua telling the story just displayed to an adivasi audience. A variation on this theme called ‘People of Ancient Times’ (adim juger manush) takes this theme even further by presenting a mythical history that traces humanity’s origins to the Santal adivasis. What prevents this depiction from becoming a painterly version of early anthropological accounts of the same subject in Bangla is the use of parody — of the government’s civilising mission towards its marginal populations.44 The song that accompanies this pata describes people (Santals) who move from wearing bark cloth to ‘pant-shirt’ as they are introduced to modern culture by government-sponsored literacy and health programmes (see Appendix 1). Patas produced in the chokkhu daan style are not imitations of the jado patas as mentioned earlier. Medinipur Chitrakars also unabashedly produce imitations of jado patas in response to the market demand for ‘primitive’ art works produced by a community that is thought to be on the brink of extinction. The emergence of the chokkhu daan style can only be understood in the context of an art market that is buttressed by an art historical discourse that valorises primitivism as the product of the artistic imagination of particular kind of society (apart from Plates 1.10 and 1.11, see also Plate 1.12 for a Chitrakar version of the Gond style). While embracing modern art values Chitrakars also incorporate some of the representations of ‘primitive community’ produced by this discourse into their own social imaginary. To show how this happens I must first discuss community formation and the changes that take place in response to the renewed attention that folk art is receiving at present.

‘Folk Communities’ and their Representations The category of ‘folk’ is often used to signpost ‘archaic survivals’ — i.e., cultural traits that are out of sync with the times (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998).45 Folk culture is thought of as a kind of palimpsest, made up of heterogeneous temporal fragments. The Pardhan-Gonds and the Chitrakars, the two communities that are the subjects of this work, have come to occupy a certain position as representatives of a subaltern voice in the contemporary art discourse (Sambrani 2005). Interestingly, both

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Plate 1.12: Moina Chitrakar, Cat with Fish. Experiment with Gond Style. 2009. Pigment Paint on Paper. Author’s Collection.

communities are part of heterogeneous social formations which I shall now proceed to describe.

The Pardhan-Gonds There were once seven brothers who were farmers. The youngest brother, the ancestor of the Pardhans, did not farm. Instead he played the bana46 and sang to Bara Deo, the Great God of the Gond people, considered by many to be an aspect of the god Shiva. The hard working Gond brothers planted their seeds when it was time. The yield was plentiful but when the time for harvest came a savage horseman trampled the standing crop and laid their fields to waste. They chased after him but he disappeared into the trunk of a saja tree. The youngest brother had defecated in fear at the sight of the fierce horseman and could not give chase. But he was the only one among the brothers who had the foresight to recognise the horseman’s true identity — Bara Deo. The youngest brother was officially appointed the priest whose duty it was to propitiate the gods especially Bara Deo with song and the music of the bana. The saja tree became the god’s emblem and still serves as a site for the location of his shrine (Pare 2008).

This story has several dimensions that I will touch upon. It captures the heterogeneity that is constitutive of Gond identity and it is to this

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feature that I now turn. The Gonds are internally differentiated as the myth suggests and have a complex system of hierarchy.47 Groups like the Raj Gonds who claim kshatriya status and were once rulers of large parts of central India co-exist with simple peasants.48 While some Raj Gonds were able to intermarry with Rajputs, others have established affinal links with other adivasi communities in the region such as the Baiga and Ahir (Fuchs 1960). The Gonds are even supposed to have adopted the deities of the other adivasi groups and incorporated them into their own pantheon; but they still appoint special Baiga priests for their worship. They also share many features of their social structure with these other groups. Thus, they have vestigial forms of totemism that helps organise their clans into exogamous gotras. Territorial divisions into garhs (place of origin where the clan gods are located) cut across the gotra divisions (ibid.). Clans are further grouped on the basis of the number of gods they are supposed to worship. These range from eighteen to one, but these numbers are notional and most people are not able to enumerate the gods that are available to their clans for worship. However, in recent years the Gond pantheon has been used as a resource for painting. Origin myths, stories about specific lineages and iconic representations of the different deities provide the chief subject matter for the painters. Particular clans of bards are paired in patron–client relationships with specific clans among the Gonds. The bards used to travel to the homes of their patrons (mangteri) once or twice a year to regale them with stories based on their genealogies and epics about their kings. Relations between specific sets of patrons and clients are signposted by the sharing of clan names and totems. Thus, Pardhan bards of the Marawi clan would count as their patrons only those Gonds who bore the same clan name (Pare 2008). The Pardhan-Gonds like other Gond communities practice cross-cousin marriage. Thus, the daughter of the mother’s brother or the father’s sister is the preferred category from which a man may choose a potential spouse. This feature helps to shed light on what is sometimes thought to be a puzzling aspect of the community of painters. Almost all the painters in the Gond style are Pardhans and all are related in some way to Jangarh. Jangarh lived in Patangarh village in Mandla district, made famous by its association with the anthropologist Verrier Elwin who had also lived there. Elwin and his associate Shamrao Hivale had started a carpentry and wood carving studio in the village which had collapsed by the time Swaminathan’s team of art students arrived there. Elwin had been married to Jangarh’s cousin and Jangarh’s father had been his cook. Jangarh was employed in a Food

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for Work Programme sponsored by the state government at the time of his ‘discovery’ (Bowles 2009a). He was one of the first of the adivasi artists to settle permanently in Bhopal and encouraged his relatives to follow his example. Many of the next generation of artists began their careers as Jangarh’s assistants. The bards of the Gond people, the Pardhan-Gonds, according to some scholars have a privileged entry into the mythic universe and through their songs transform the stories into poetic images with an aura that has iconic potential (Tiwari 2008). ‘Shilpa’ or art, is a form of knowledge (vidya) that requires skill — the discipline of being able to realise a form materially that is also faithful to the idea. The gods (deva) are thought to be luminous but incorporeal in essence. Their presence is like a reflection or shadow (chhaya). Artistic discipline is necessary to give these images corporeality (Misra 2009). The mythic universe may have been common to all the adivasi people in central India but only the Pardhans had the skill and artistry to tap the symbolic imaginary and give it physical form, according to Kapil Tiwari, ex-director of the Bhopal-based Adivasi Lok Kala Kendra (Tribal Cultural Centre), and several other artists and intellectuals associated with Bharat Bhawan. Pardhan-Gond poetry created verbal images of great depth and imagination, but it lacked a systematised iconography. The adivasi pantheon was far more elaborate than was possible to represent in its oral tradition. It was the exposure to new media — brush, paint and paper — that gave the Pardhan-Gonds a new vision. It gave faces to their gods and allowed an iconography to emerge, an iconography that was flexible and unhampered by rigid codification.

The Chitrakars They make images for worship Sacred picture in accordance With the rules of the Shilpa Shastras That puts even the pundits to shame They read the namaz like the Muslims But bear Hindu names The men mould images of gods and goddesses The women wear sindoor The Muslims and Hindus both Refuse food offered by their hands (excerpt from a Bangla poem on the Chitrakars by Gurusaday Dutt (2008).49

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The poem presents, in a nutshell, all the different strands that are included in representations of Chitrakar identity — their centuries-old tradition of painting and performance, their poverty, the fact that the performance form was considered to be a mode of begging, and their liminal status which made them unacceptable to Hindus and Muslims alike. Following Dutt (1939), most writers begin with origin myths which purport to explain their transitional status in terms of an originary transgression. An ancestor of the Chitrakars was drawing a portrait of Mahadev (Shiva) without the latter’s consent. He saw the deity coming towards him and in a fit of panic hid the paint brush in his mouth. Mahadev was angrier at this polluting act than he was about the original transgression and cursed the painter to become a Muslim. However he relented and softened his curse when he saw the plight of the Chitrakars suddenly bereft of their traditional occupation (as Muslims they could no longer earn their living by painting.) He said that they would be neither Hindu nor Muslim. They would follow Muslim customs but earn their livelihood by painting and displaying pictures of Hindu deities.50 Dutt’s source was Chabilal Chitrakar of Panuria village, Birbhum whom he met in 1930. Shubho Chitrakar of Nankarchak village, East Medinipur gave me a more elaborate version in 2008 in Delhi. Highlighting the significance of this transgression, he told me that the ancestors of the Chitrakars painted the caves in Ajanta with erotic images of Shiva and Parvati. It was the embarrassment caused by the erotic scenes that they chose to depict that led to the transgression. Shubho seems to be aware of the scholarly writing that traces their tradition of displaying patas back to Buddhist times — to Banbhatta who mentions the ‘Chitrakar’ with his Yama pata in the play Harsha Charita in the 7th century and to Abhijnan Shakuntalam by Kalidas (Dutt 1939). The Brahmavaivarta Purana, written most probably in the 13th century, mentions that the Chitrakars originally belonged to the Nava Shaka group of nine castes and were demoted because of their refusal to follow the traditional norms for depicting the gods (Bhattacharjee 1980; Dutt 1939). Popular representations tend to characterise the Chitrakars, or Patuas as they are commonly known, as alms-seekers soliciting dana (gifts) by displaying patas and singing songs (Hauser 2002). In fact, based on the reports of the 1891 census in Bengal, Risley and Hunter classified the Patuas and the Chitrakars as separate castes. Their recent ‘upliftment’ is in part due to state intervention that has allowed them to recast their identity as craftsmen rather than itinerant folk performers (Hauser 2002).

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The Chitrakars are not the only caste of painters in Bengal. Other artisan castes such as the Kumhars (potters) and the Shutradhars (carpenters) also paint pictures but it is only the Chitrakars who display patas and sing. Sudhansu Kumar Ray (1953) says that Chitrakar families used to be organised into marriage circles (samaj bandhanis), which led to the formation of sub-regional schools of pata painting each with their own style (see also Singh 1995b). The two surviving schools are the Tamluk–Kalighat–Tribeni Samajik school and the Birbhum–Kandi–Katwa Samajik school. A third school at Behrampur–Murshidabad died out at the turn of the last century but some of its stylistic features have been absorbed by the Birbhum–Kandi–Katwa school.51 The Medinipur scroll painters belong to the first school though there has been some assimilation of other styles. Neither Ray nor Singh mention the Jado Patias, a subcaste of the Chitrakars who live among the adivasi populations of the border regions of Bengal and Jharkhand. In the 1930s, when Dutt was researching the craft traditions of Bengal, many Chitrakars had given up their traditional occupation in an attempt to achieve a higher status. In the early part of the 20th century, some Hindu nationalist organisations tried to bring low-caste groups into the Hindu mainstream. The Society for the Advancement of the Chitrakars of Bengal (Bangiya Chitrakar Unnayan Samiti) was established in this context. But ‘re-conversion’ did not have much of an impact on their social status and many of the Chitrakars returned to their former religion (Bhattacharjee 1980). However the adoption of the title ‘Chitrakar’ by many members of the caste group is probably a result of this early mobilisation (see note 50). Most writers privilege painting and picture display as the two primary occupations of the caste group. Binoy Bhattacharjee (1980), one of the few scholars to have undertaken a community study, considers this to be misleading. There are various sub-castes among the patua, some of whom specialise in performing with snakes, bears, monkeys and goats; others who perform magic tricks; some who perform cataract operations and whose women act as midwives and so on. Sub-caste hierarchies seem to vary, sometimes from village to village even in the same district. Bhattacharjee arrives at a hierarchical ranking of four sub-castes in Birbhum district, where his study is based — Chitrakar Patuas, who are murti-makers, painters and singers, occupy the highest position. The Mal Patuas come next. Apart from painting and singing they also act as snake-charmers and cow-leechers (go baidya). They are followed by the Bede Patuas who are wandering performers with tame animals and whose women treat menstrual disorders. Maskata Patuas are the lowest in the hierarchy, performing cataract operations and abortions (Bhattacharjee 1980).

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The Chitrakars whom I have been working with in Naya village, West Medinipur all seem to belong to the first category, though many of them have taken up painting fairly recently. Naya has become famous as ‘the village of patuas’ in the last 15 years or so but migration histories of the local inhabitants reveal that the patua settlement here is less than 50 years old. As peripatetic performers, the first Chitrakars came here from East Medinipur. They were settled in Naya by a community of market gardeners, the Bishal, who had themselves migrated to Medinipur from the neighbouring state of Orissa in the distant past. Many of my respondents — those in the age group 30–40 years — have had a period of apprenticeship in painting and singing but then gave it up because it was not economically viable. They have pursued a range of occupations such as carpentry, murti making, tailoring, agricultural labour, repairing work (sharanor kaaj) and so on. Dukhushyam Chitrakar, one of the best known painters of his generation even had his own jatra troupe52 in which many of the current generation of artists performed. Many of the Chitrakar women of Naya also learned painting and singing. Some even travelled with their fathers as young children, but most women artists have never earned a living by going from village to village to display scrolls. Women painters have come into prominence only with the establishment of state sponsored melas and performances since the late 1970s and 1980s. The entrance of women in the field marks a shift not only in the status of the community but also a shift in focus — from the patua performance in which the painted scroll was a prop, an aid to storytelling, to the pata as an autonomous art work that can circulate on its own. Even though many women patuas are accomplished singers and composers of songs their performance tends to be restricted to government-sponsored events. They rarely travel to distant villages or perform for traditional rural audiences. The shift in value — from the performance to the art object — has led to enhanced status. But what about the next step — can they shift from being craftspeople to artists? Can pata painting claim the status of high art? Craft objects even as they enter the market and become commodities still tend to be treated as if they were unalienable from their communities of production. They are thought to be representations of collective traditions where continuity rather than innovation is valorised. Typically conceived as embodied practice rather than a product of a self-conscious engagement with a system of knowledge that is historically situated such as academic art, craft objects are not supposed to form autonomous systems. But as I have shown, heightened exposure to alternative art forms

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has led to a new awareness of the contingent relationship between style and culture. Folk artists now move not just between village and urban craft centres but also between different kinds of art worlds. Some have tried to cut their links with the craft tradition in a bid to find a permanent space within the art world but with limited success. Different folk traditions in India have had different kinds of experience with the art world and have met with varying degrees of acceptance. The Pardhan-Gond painters began as artists. They were not constrained by their performance tradition. They were also more open to the idea of art as an autonomous sphere. In the case of the Chitrakar artists — Kalam Patua, who with a solo exhibition in an art gallery in Delhi to his credit, is probably the most successful ‘artist’ of this community. His works were sold for prices far beyond those normally expected for craft objects. But he has not been able to sustain this level of achievement. Kalam has not been able to organise another solo exhibition though some of his paintings have been displayed in some influential shows. He has visited a few craft melas but is aware that the drastic fall in price will devalue the art work that was sold at the gallery (see Plate 1.13). Swarna Chitrakar, one of the most talented artists of Naya village, has also had some dealings with the art world. She has participated in interactive workshops with modern artists at CIMA in Kolkata and has even had a work auctioned at Sotheby’s. But she has been more successful than Kalam at code switching and can adapt her style to suite the occasion.

Storytelling through Pictures The association with storytelling in the case of both the Pardhan-Gonds and the Chitrakars slots them as folk artists embedded in an oral tradition. Folk tales are supposed to be unalienable from the narrative universe in which they are embedded. Thus, a folk story can never be invented but only recounted. Yet, as Karin Barber (2007) reminds us, the very process of entextualisation that is built into the performative event involves alienation — the process of detaching a stretch of discourse from its context. Entextualisation is commonly associated with writing; oral discourse is detached from the face-to-face context in which it occurs through writing. But as Barber says, there are other devices as well. One such that is often found in oral cultures is the proverb — a formulaic utterance with a fixed pattern that is easily quoted and can be used in multiple contexts. To the extent that the stories in the traditions under consideration become detached from their performative contexts they are entextualised as painting.

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Plate 1.13: Kalam Patua, An Artist being Interviewed at an Experimental Art Workshop in Delhi. c. 2006. Water Colour on Paper. Collection of Kalam Patua.

Both Pardhan-Gond and Chitrakar artists work with a repertoire of standard images that are repetitive and easily recognisable. Repetitive motifs are easily recognised because they pre-exist the context in which they are currently being used. They help set the ‘text’ (painting) in motion. But just as the process of detachment increases circulation it also brings about stylistic changes in the art form. We saw how ‘style’ is used as a device by the Medinipur artists to detach the jado pata from its ritual context. Through the use of quotation, in this case by deliberately adopting

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another’s style and thematic for a new purpose, they have also helped to disseminate the work of the jado patias outside their known environment. But just as deliberate quotation heightens self-reflexivity it also brings about changes in the motifs that circulate across different contexts. One such example is the famous Kalighat cat with a lobster in its mouth. In some of the earlier versions of this theme the cat was adorned with a Vaishnava tilak. This mark gave us a clue on how to read the painting. It was a satirical comment on the state of religion in urban Bengal where hypocritical holy men secretly ate fish while maintaining a façade of being vegetarian (Jain 1999). As this figure circulated over time the Vaishnava mark disappeared. Instead, the figure became a metonym, referring to the Kalighat style instead. Medinipur artists now not only reproduce the cat motif but have also modified it so that it comes to represent a renewed Kalighat style (Plates 1.14 and 1.15). Scholars have generally assumed that sources of innovation are located outside folk traditions (Bundgaard 1999; Hauser 2002). By highlighting devices associated with self conscious textualisation I have tried to show how reflexivity and innovation is a part of folk tradition. As living traditions, folk forms are inevitably hybrid, inherently capable of communicating across genres to address new publics. The primary focus of this book is on paintings. As objects they are intertwined not only with the persons who make them but also with their intended consumers. Objects and performances in folk culture are usually intended for audiences that are knowledgeable about the grammar of the form. As paintings move from local, interactive contexts of folk performance to become commodities in urban markets they address new and uncertain publics whose tastes are not known in advance. I explore the creative processes that emerge when painters are confronted with novel situations and an anonymous public. In each of the chapters that follow my focus is on local relationships and representations that are, in my view, never completely subsumed by the forces of globalisation set off by the market or the art world. Distinctively local forms of art production and sociality have important roles to play in this emergent field and help to open up new spaces where folk artists will find a voice. Genre is a term not typically associated with the study of visual culture but both the art forms discussed here are hybrid products moving between oral literature and painting. In both cases, access to the symbolic imaginary is through the universe of narratives such that innovations in visual art always hark back to the latter. New themes as we shall see are always articulated in terms of this universe. The concept of ‘genre’ allows

Plate 1.14: Moushumi Chitrakar, Copy of Kalighat Cat. 2010. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 1.15: Jomuna Chitrakar, Kalighat Cat Revisioned. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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us to move between purely local contexts of performance and production and the larger visual and narrative environment. Emergent elements in ‘here-and-now contextualisations enter into the discursive process’ (Bauman 2004: 7), by which genres are sustained over time, allowing artists to innovate within broad structural frameworks laid down by tradition53 (Barber 2007). But genres also speak to other genres as we saw in the case of Chitrakar experiments with adivasi stories. They use literary devices such as parody when cross-referencing an alien style. Thus, the song that accompanies the adivasi pata is deeply parodic, speaking in the voice of the government to address a new subject — ‘the adivasi’ (see Appendix I). Similarly, Pardhan-Gond artists stretch the limits of their form by deliberately referencing Jangarh’s paintings in their own work and also by quoting from modern art (Plate 1.16).54 ‘Genre’, Barber says, helps us to understand the relationship between an individual work and a larger tradition. It offers an orientation that is indicative of a whole range of choices so that every instantiation of a genre is in some senses new (Barber 2007: 42). Conventions associated with a specific genre are constantly being modified in small incremental ways. In each of the chapters that follow I deliberately focus on non-traditional contexts of performance and production precisely for this reason. The process of entextualisation not only fixes the text as object of attention but also distributes meaning. Rather, there is a ‘network of textuality which has the properties of “out-thereness”’ (Barber 2007: 100). The point that I wish to make is that the paintings that I talk about are not just objects with their own materiality but co-exist with other paintings and other kinds of texts within a larger network. The theme that underpins a painting and gives it meaning is often distributed across the textual network, manifested in different genres and across different media. The two types of media that I engage with in this work are words and images. The visual images that I discuss are in an indexical relationship with oral narratives. But the same narrative themes are also taken up by other kinds of genres that circulate in the performative milieu of the two communities that I discuss. A discussion of the traditional milieu in which different performative modes co-exist is outside the scope of this study. However each of the chapters that follow describe a specific context of production and performance and look at the process by which textuality is achieved by exploring the relationships between different narrative forms and types of media. To this end I start with discussing the process by which a new theme, viz. 9/11 and the Afghan war, first enters the repertoire of the

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Plate 1.16: Venkataraman Singh Shyam, Experiments with Cubism. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Chitrakars and then achieves narrative stability over time. I show how the painted story comes to diverge quite significantly from the narrative song, acquiring a symbolic imagery and a narrative sub-text that must be read in the context of the mythic universe. Scholars working on the Chitrakar tradition have generally assumed that the source of innovation comes from

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the outside, i.e., from the state, NGOs, or even artists who suggest new themes and even stylistic innovations (Bundgaard 1999; Hauser 2002; Singh 2011). The story that I discuss was not suggested by an outside agency. It had a local source of inspiration. It follows a different trajectory as far as the narrative is concerned from the patas that are commissioned. By showing how a particular narrative gets crystallised over time I indicate the complexity of the environment in which the folk arts are embedded so that there may be multiple sources of support as well as influence on any one tradition. I then move on to discuss some of the newer forms of media through which the two art forms that I take up are being expressed. During the period of my fieldwork I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in some workshops where folk artists from my fields were asked to experiment with new media such as animation and the graphic novel form. Shifts in medium involve changes not just at the level of painting but in modes of storytelling a well. The ways in which words and images are realigned to fit new plot structures is discussed in the last two chapters of the book. In a sense my work goes against the grain of the dominant modes of art criticism where images acquire value in their ability to evoke the possibility of meaningfulness without lending themselves to the exercise of decoding. Words, especially spoken words, point to the spatio-temporal world (Barthes 1985). Thus when I speak of the relationship between images and words I foreground location. The images that I discuss here are mobile but they are also rooted in local worlds constituted through the circulation of narratives — ways of meaning-making that are bound to local moral worlds (Kleinman 1988). Methodologically speaking my work is a departure from the approach generally followed by scholars who write on folk art in that it does not claim to offer a holistic or authoritative picture of folk communities and their art forms. Totalising narratives tend to over-simplify and thereby reduce the phenomena that they are supposed to describe. By representing folk artists as members of a community that is heir to a tradition, we tend to diminish the contribution that creative artists must have made to keep the tradition alive. Instead, the ethnographic approach that has been used here concentrates on fragments, on select episodes that help to understand how artists respond to new situations as individuals with their own agency. However, I do not completely eschew the idea of generalisation and in the last chapter I take up a few concepts from Indian aesthetics for discussion. These occupy the place of generalisation in my work, as formulations that anchor the experiments that are taking place in the field of folk art.

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Each chapter has its own thematic and can be read separately. The thread that connects them to each other is the concern with storytelling. The stories recounted here circulate across different types of media and break out of their traditional performative contexts to address new publics, sometimes with mixed success. Chapter 2 describes the way a traditional genre is ‘quickened’ by the incorporation of a new theme — the strike on the World Trade Centre in New York, an event in real time that is mythicised through repeated telling. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the reverse process, i.e., they describe the transformations that take place when traditional stories are rendered into new modes of storytelling through media such as animation and the graphic novel form. In India these are still considered to be nascent forms but seem to be alive to the possibilities offered by folk art and their potential for storytelling. While popular mythologicals are still inspired by the Disneyesque style of animation there are some exciting new experiments with folk art forms that I discuss. New technologies carry their own epistemologies. Is it possible to retain the significant features of the folk forms in the new medium or do they change beyond recognition? It is difficult to address these questions without essentialising folk culture. The art forms presented here are part of living traditions. The field of folk art production — not just the communities that produce them but the audience that receives them — is undergoing rapid change. It is through the activity of storytelling that I am able to establish the relationship between the art forms themselves and the new genres and media into which they are translated.

Notes 1. Organised by the state government of Madhya Pradesh, ‘Jangarh Kalam: An Exhibition of Gond Painting’, was held at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi from 16 to 22 September 2006. It was curated by Jaya Vivek, a Bhopalbased artist and a former member of Swaminathan’s team at Bharat Bhavan (Vivek 2006). 2. I have taken this phrase from the title of an important folk art exhibition held in Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon in December 2010. Parts of this section have appeared in my article, ‘Folk Art, State Patronage and the Constitution of the Local’ (Chatterji 2010). 3. I do not mean to imply that Swaminathan’s was the sole voice expressing such concerns. Jyotindra Jain’s landmark exhibition, ‘Other Masters’, showcasing the work of individual folk and tribal artists in the 1990s, his sponsorship of the work of Ganga Devi, the Maithili artist, and his more recent exhibition on

54 c Speaking with Pictures the work of Kalam Patua, who paints contemporary subjects in the Kalighat style have all been significant in breaking the conventional frames within which so-called traditional community-based art forms were perceived in India (Jain 1998b, 2004a). At the time when he was director of the Crafts Museum in New Delhi, there were also innovative exhibitions such as ‘Kalam to Computer’ in 2001 where modernist artists like Eva Rothschild and traditional folk artists like Kalam Patua interacted through painting. See http://www.saatchi-gallery. co.uk/artists/eva_rothschild_biography.htm (accessed 16 November 2006). 4. To quote Chaitanya Sambrani: ‘The selection explores the role of place and desire in the creation of visual art in contemporary India, at a time defined by economic globalisation and political fundamentalism. The exhibition investigates the impact of these germinal forces on the work of a diverse group of artists who represent different generations, regions and social contexts. Their work spans several professional, material, and disciplinary boundaries, extending across urban, gallery-based practice and adivasi (the tribal peoples of India), folk and popular visual cultures. There are clearly discernible links, dialogues, and arguments across the spectrum. The exhibition contributes to a contemporary understanding of the diversity of visual culture in contemporary India’. See http://sites.asiasociety.org/arts/edgedesire/about. html (accessed 15 September 2011). The exhibition was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, from 14 November to 8 December 2006. 5. The exhibition, ‘Vernacular in the Contemporary’ (parts 1 and 2), November 2010 to June 2011, Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, curated by Annapurna Garimella and Jackfruit Research and Design, shows us how the theme of the vernacular modern has allowed folk art to find a space for itself in the art world and the commercial art market (Garimella 2010). 6. In anthropology, a distinction is usually made between the categories ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’. The former includes objects that are expressive of prior relationships between givers and receivers and are entangled in mutual rights and obligations, while the latter involves transactions between strangers. Thus, commodities, unlike gifts, are thought to be alienable from the context of their production. 7. Even though this style is called the Gond style, all the painters that I have met belong to the community of Gonds called the Pardhans. In fact most painters belong to Jangarh Singh Shyam’s extended family. I will henceforth refer to this art form as the Gond style. The Pardhans are thought to be an off-shoot of the Gonds. As professional bards and genealogists of the Gonds, they are thought to be an independent community by some scholars and to be part of the larger Gond tribe by others. I therefore use the hyphenated term Pardhan-Gond to designate the community.

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8.

9.

10.

11.

‘Patua’, derived from ‘pata’, the Sanskrit word for cloth, is still used as a title by the members of the scroll painting caste in Birbhum. ‘Patidar’ is the preferred title in Purulia and Bankura (Ghosh 2001). Michael Fischer (1999, 2005) has characterised certain social phenomena as emergents in the sense that they are oriented to the future and allow us to think of tradition as a moving form of life. Soumhya Venkatesan’s monograph (2009) on mat weaving in Pattamadai, Tamil Nadu is a welcome addition to this field. She shows how craft objects acquire value by circulating through overlapping spheres of production, consumption and exchange, articulated by nationalist ideologies and structures of patronage that view craft practices as a symbol of vernacular secularism and national integration. Paul Greenough’s study (1996) of the Crafts Museum in New Delhi shows how this institution was guided by nationalist ideology incorporating India’s regional diversity within an overarching craft tradition. By contrast, popular art receives a very different treatment. Thus, Jyotindra Jain’s exhibition (2004b) ‘Indian Popular Culture: The Conquest of the World as Picture’ in New Delhi and Christopher Pinney’s book ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India (2004) reveal a self-consciousness on the part of producers of the art works as well as their audience regarding political inflection and the mediatisation of the larger environment. The rise in the prices of folk art works may be related to the economic recession of 2008–2009. The artist Arpana Caur told me that many buyers turned to folk art during this period because they were more affordable, as opposed to established artists who cannot lower their prices. Folk art works by known artists are beginning to be seen as a good investment after the recent gallery exposure. Her nephew Bahadur Chitrakar was able to realise the potential value of old scrolls as collectable items long before anyone else in Naya village. He had served as a local resource person for a small time museum collector from Germany and understood that old scrolls had a market value far in excess of the works that were being produced even by the best of painters. He has given up painting and now travels to the different patua districts in West Bengal on his motorcycle buying old scrolls from the impoverished family members of deceased Chitrakar artists. Bahadur’s home is like a small museum and he has works not only by artists from Medinipur but also from Birbhum and Purulia. All the Naya artists are now familiar with the name of Banku Chitrakar for instance who lived in Birbhum district and acquired some degree of fame in the Kolkata art circuit. Bahadur not only sells his paintings in Dilli Haat and the Crafts Museum but is in contact with some private galleries in Delhi to whom he supplies antique scrolls.

56 c Speaking with Pictures 12. However, a gallery in New Delhi was selling antique ‘Santal’ scrolls for prices that ranged between ` 80,000 to `2 lakh in Delhi in 2010. These scrolls are actually painted by an off shoot of the Chitrakar community that has settled in the so-called tribal belt of Bengal and Jharkhand, whose clientele largely belong to the Santal community (Das-Saha 2001). 13. A contrary view was expressed by a gallery owner in Delhi who specialises in folk art. She said that the works by artists like Jangarh and Mayank can sell at high prices only when they are displayed along with the higher priced works of non-adivasi artists. Group shows by folk and adivasi artists do not attract buyers of high-priced paintings. The gallery owner told me that folk and adivasi art works are not seen as investments. Rather, they are bought by people who want to own original and attractive paintings but cannot afford to pay the high prices that art works command today. Since then, however, a gallery that caters exclusively to selling Gond art has opened in New Delhi (in June 2011). Most of its sales are conducted online. 14. ‘Patua’ is the older and more common term of address. ‘Chitrakar’ is the preferred term by the Medinipur branch of this community. 15. These are the Medinipur, Birbhum and Murshidabad styles. The last style is no longer represented by living artists. It is curious that neither of the two scholars discuss in detail the Jado Patia ( jadu potua) scrolls painted in the areas dominated by adivasis. This style has recently acquired popularity among urban clients and is even being ‘copied’ by patua painters from Medinipur who have also become dealers, buying such patas from artists in Purulia and Jharkhand and selling them in Delhi and Mumbai. 16. Rituparna Basu (2008) shows how such collections also served nationalist ends by demonstrating the significance of folk traditions in the development of sculpture and painting in Bengal. The regional tradition called the Gaudiya style was supposed to embody the folk traditions of Bengal. The nationalist ethos survives in India today, not merely in the state-sponsored museums of folk art and craft, but also in regional constructions of performative traditions, especially in dance. Mahua Mukherjee has attempted to reconstitute a Bengali classical dance form, called Gaudiya nritya, based on the various folk dance forms found in Bengal (Chatterji 2009a). 17. See note on ‘Primitivism’ by Francis Connelly in Oxford Art Online, See http:// www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/opr/1234/e0422 (accessed 16 July 2009). See also Subramanyan 2006. 18. The Bengal School of Art developed in the early decades of the 20th century at the time of the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal. E. B. Havell and Abanindranath Tagore, principal and vice-principal of the Calcutta Art School, and a group of their students, among who are Nandalal Bose, Asit Haldar and Surendranath Ganguly, pioneered the movement. It arose as an avant-garde and nationalist movement against the current styles of academic art being taught and practiced in British India. The proponents of this movement tried to articulate a

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19.

20.

21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

modern Indian art by going to diverse Indian and Asian art traditions to learn techniques and styles from. Miniature painting, mural painting and Chinese and Japanese wash and brush work were some of the influences on this style (Guha-Thakurta 1992). Gurusaday Dutt (1990) distinguishes between the ‘patroned marga’ or the courtly way and the ‘sahaja marga’ or popular and spontaneous way. The latter refers to the work of rural people unselfconsciously creating artistic works within the ritual sphere and through other activities of everyday life. Mushtak Khan has been extraordinarily generous in sharing his experiences with me. As with most other institutions in post-independence India, record keeping is not given a high priority in Bharat Bhawan, and I have had to rely on oral testimonies of the members who participated in what came to be a radical art movement in Madhya Pradesh. Vivek Tembe, Chandan Singh Bhatty and Yusuf have all given me time and I am grateful to them for their accounts of the field surveys. There are artists from other tribal communities like the Bhils and the Marias whose work also figures in the Bharat Bhawan collection. For the Bhils, painting is a ritual art and there are specialists in charge of painting (Nirgune and Gehlot 2011). This is a term frequently used in Bharat Bhawan. It refers not only to adivasi artists like Bhuri Bai and Lado Bai who used to be construction workers in Bharat Bhawan, but also to several non-adivasi workers who were encouraged to pursue their interest in art by Swaminathan. Thus Bahadur, a night watchman in Bharat Bhawan, exhibited his paintings in the first Biennale organised in Bharat Bhawan alongside many contemporary and adivasi artists. Mayank, Jangarh’s son, told me that his first source of inspiration was Bahadur. Hanuman was born of the union of the wind god with a monkey. He is immortalised in the Ramayana as one of Rama’s chief devotees. Pema Fatia and Bhuri Bai are both Bhil artists and tend to use many of the motifs found in traditional Pithora painting. Belgur, a member of the Maria tribe from Bastar, now in Chhattisgarh, did not come from a tradition of painting. But he was a wood carver and made decorative combs. According to Mushtak Khan, he applied a similar body technique to his painting. He would hold his brush like a chisel and flick paint on the surface of the paper so that his figures were thickly covered with multi coloured flecks of paint. This technique makes his figures shimmer as if just emerging from some shadowy depth. (Conversation with Mushtak Khan in October 2007, New Delhi, see also Plate 1.2.) Narayan Shridhar Bendre is a famous modern artist who visited Bharat Bhawan while Jangarh was there and whose paintings are exhibited in the Roopankar museum.

58 c Speaking with Pictures 26. Monu Chitrakar, who met Sheik in Ahmadabad, told me that Sheik had asked him to compose a pata specifically on the 2002 riots. 27. See also Vivek Tembe’s quotation in this section about Jangarh’s attempt to copy other folk artists in this regard. 28. Igor Kopytoff (1986) distinguishes between spheres of exchange that are unrestricted, such as those within which commodities circulate, and those that involve limited or no exchange. The latter is the sphere of singular values. Objects, however, move between these spheres as we have seen. Patua scrolls used in narrative performance are now found in museum collections. However, the circulatory range of such objects is still somewhat limited in India. Folk art works, as I have said, are not perceived as investments by the art world, and unlike fine art works do not change hands with great frequency. The idea of art as an investment is catching on with some Naya artists however. Pulin Chitrakar, who was one of the first from the village to gain recognition in government circles, left behind a collection of scrolls which are now seen as possible investments by their owners in the village. Some of the artists are holding on to them in the hope that their prices will rise as they are the work of a posthumous artist who has achieved fame. Pulin himself died a destitute, abandoned by his sons in old age according to some artists whom I have interviewed, and would often exchange one of his scrolls for a meal. In spite of an initial exposure to the craft market in Bengal he probably still thought of his scrolls as props in the patua performance. 29. David J. McCutchion came to Kolkata from England as a teacher of comparative literature in Jadavpur University and Suhrid Bhowmik was his student. McCutchion became very interested in folk culture. He surveyed all the old terracotta temples of Bengal and had begun to work with Chitrakar communities when he died. Bhowmik belonged to a village in the Nandigram district of Medinipur which is known for its vibrant pata work. (Conversation with Suhrid Bhowmik, Kolkata, May 2008). 30. Plates 1.4 and 1.5 belong to the same pata that is used to tell three different stories. Plate 1.4 shows us two frames — Satya Pir and Santal Bidroho (Rebellion) — and Plate 1.5 depicts Manasa, the snake goddess. Each scene is treated as an icon and encapsulates a whole story. I will have more to say on this aspect of the pictorial story in Chapter Four. 31. Conversation with Suhrid Bhowmik, Kolkata, May 2008. 32. The ‘commodity phase’ of the pata refers to that phase in its biography where it begins to be thought of as an object that can be alienated from the context of performance and can enter into transactions purely as a commodity that can circulate on its own terms (Appadurai 1986). 33. Shyam Sundar Chitrakar, Naya village, October 2006 (see also Hauser 2002). 34. Beatrix Hauser (2002) says that there was a demand for scrolls among the urban elite in Kolkata in the early 1980s but the global market began to open up after 2000 when some of the Naya artists were invited to the folk art market

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35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

in Sante Fe. Lina Fruzetti and Akos Ostor have also been trying to sell scrolls in the United States (US). She also mentions a workshop organised by the Crafts Council of West Bengal in 1992 where five artists from Medinipur were invited to copy old scrolls from the Ashutosh Museum in Calcutta University to improve their style. The reason for this focus on Medinipur is unclear. However, one possible explanation could be the ‘folksy’ style of the Medinipur pata painting as compared to Murshidabad and Birbhum (Singh 1995a). The NGO, Banglanatak.Com started an annual festival of patas in Naya in 2010. Attempts to sell saris and t-shirts with traditional motifs have not been completely successful. Interview with Protiti Sarkar, Administrative Director, CIMA, Kolkata, June 2008. I will have more to say on the workshop in Chapter 4. I should mention here that it was conducted by Tara Publishers and its aim was to try and produce graphic novels using the patua style of painted storytelling. Tara has already successfully produced a book on the tsunami in the form of a patua scroll with the song text printed on the side. Swarna had earlier worked with Archana Handique, a Mumbai-based artist. Handique’s film on the patua mode of painting and singing and Swarna’s and Manu’s scrolls were exhibited at the ‘Edge of Desire’ in 2006. ‘Tramjatra’, a public arts project (1996–2001) involved a series of ‘performance events’ in Kolkata and Melbourne around the tramways in both cities. Mick Douglas, the coordinator of the project, had met the Chitrakars involved in the project at the Kolkata book fair and was impressed by their linear narrative style. However, a lack of common narrative and visual vocabulary did pose problems regarding communication and the pata paintings and songs produced for the event are not anchored in the rich imagery that one usually sees in such paintings and songs (Douglas 2005). Interview with Kala Bai Shyam on 14 December 2006, at the month-long demonstration by folk artists in the Crafts Museum, New Delhi. Second order observations are observations of observation. According to Niklas Luhman, ‘the contemporary concept of culture implies both selfreflexivity in the sense of self analysis and the knowledge that other cultures exist, i.e., there is a contingency involved in the affiliation of certain items with certain cultures’ (1998: 44). I prefer this mode of designation to the older form ‘jadu potua’ where the emphasis is on magic and trickery (see Archer 1977 for such a representation and Das-Saha 2001 for a more contemporary account). ‘Bengali’ and ‘adivasi’ were the terms used by Khandu Chitrakar who first brought the new style to my attention in 2005. I have found Nelson Goodman’s discussion on art and authenticity useful in formulating my ideas on the ‘copy’ (Goodman 1976). Medinipur painters have also started copying paintings from old catalogues on Kalighat pata paintings

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44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

and use techniques like applying cow dung wash to age the paintings. However, I hesitate to call these pictures forgeries because they are not done with the intention to deliberately deceive. Thus, they do not charge the prices that the originals fetch in art auctions. Since the prices are usually listed in the catalogues, it is not lack of information that prevents them from asking for such prices. Signature does not convey authenticity and individual authorship in this tradition. In this connection Goodman (ibid.: 113) makes a distinction between autographic and allographic arts. In the former, as in the tradition of Western art, the distinction between the original and its forgery is applicable. In the allographic arts like music, this does not apply. The government of West Bengal has enrolled many Chitrakars from Naya village into their dissemination programmes in the villages. However this is also the argument made for the way which epics are supposed to be related to texts that are anterior to them (see Hiltebeitel 2001). I am grateful to Veena Das for drawing my attention to this point. The bana is a stringed instrument used to accompany the epic songs sung by Pardhan-Gond minstrels (Knight 2001). There are many myths that refer to the co-existence of diverse groups in this area, both adivasi and caste Hindu. One that is the subject of many paintings describes the Gond farmer as the eldest brother; the second as the Agaria blacksmith; the third, the Bardhai carpenter; the fourth, the Kumhar potter; the fifth, the Tamar, brass and metalworker; the sixth, the Baiga woodcutter; and finally the Pardhan, the youngest who had no work assigned to him. So he took on the work of propitiating Bara Deo. The Pardhan did not know how to play the bana so he looked up and saw the birds swooping over the tree tops while they sang. He imitated the sweep of the birds in flight with his bow on the strings of the bana and melodious sound emerged (Bowles 2009a; see Hivale and Elwin 1935 for a collection of Gond and Pardhan songs). Rajput dynasties ruled this area between 6th to the 12th century. There is a gap in the documented history and Gond kingdoms appear in the 14th century (Fuchs 1960; Mishra 2007). The translation from Bangla is mine. According to Rafiuddin Ahmed (1981), many low status Muslim groups in rural Bengal followed local practices that had a Hindu colouration. These practices became the target of Muslim reformers in the 19th and 20th centuries. The explicit assertion of Muslim identity among the Chitrakars is fairly recent and tied to their newfound prosperity as ‘artists’ (shilpi). Some Chitrakars converted to Hinduism to retain their traditional occupation of murti making. The fact of conversion has not however hindered intermarriage between Hindus and Muslims within the community. Many of the young men read the namaz five times a day whenever possible and visit the mosque for the Friday prayers. The Chitrakars of Naya village have also started an annual jalsa (meeting) when maulvis from different mosques in Medinipur are invited to discourse on

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51.

52. 53. 54.

Islamic practices. The maulvis made no mention of the Chitrakar occupation of figurative painting and singing from Hindu myths at the jalsa which I attended in 2009. Binoy Bhattacharjee (1980), who has studied the Chitrakars of Birbhum, dismisses Ray’s assertion about the samaj bandhanis. However, as Kavita Singh’s (1995b) analysis of museum collections shows, it is possible to distinguish three broad styles in Chitrakar art which conform to the regional divisions that have been delineated by Ray. The jatra is a form of folk theatre that is popular in Bengal. Alastair Fowler (1982) and Richard Bauman (2004) as quoted by Karin Barber (2007: 44). Venkatraman Singh Shyam, one of Jangarh’s nephews, makes explicit references to modern art movements such as cubism in his paintings (see Plate 1.16).

TWO

Global Events and Local Narratives: 9/11 and the Chitrakars Locality is a value ‘variably realised’, Arjun Appadurai (1997) tells us in his essay on the same theme. Rather than referring to the embededness of cultural forms within communities and in the day-to-day lives of people, it foregrounds the relativity of contexts produced through diverse mechanisms for interaction. In relation to globalisation, to which Appadurai has given sustained attention, it is the local within which global events are contextualised.

I

n this chapter I will describe one such event — a narrative scroll painting depicting the 9/11 strike on the World Trade Centre in New York — produced by the Chitrakars of Naya village in the Medinipur district of West Bengal. These scrolls are particularly suitable as examples of the ‘vernacular modern’ and are a staple at craft exhibitions and galleries alike. The story requires no prior knowledge of local mythology and speaks directly to the urban viewer. However, a careful consideration of the painted story and the song that accompanies it reveals a complex intermeshing of different kinds of narrative elements culled from disparate genres of storytelling. The pata is displayed by the Chitrakar performer or patua to the accompaniment of a song that serves as a commentary on the images painted on the scroll. The narrative is constructed from fragments of ‘information’ that circulate in the village, sourced from newspaper and television reports but also from other popular media like jatra.1 It reveals a structure that resembles in part a mythic narrative form called the mangala kavya2 that embeds the event in a context that is locally intelligible.

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Patua Performance and the Narrative Tradition The patua art of storytelling is part of an old picture storytelling tradition that has many regional variants in India. Bengal itself has several different multi-media storytelling forms which include combinations of pictures, dolls or puppets and the human voice. But unlike these other forms that are rapidly becoming extinct due to the changing tastes of their traditional audiences, the patua tradition has survived largely because the painted scroll has acquired a status that is independent of the performative context and can circulate on its own as discussed in Chapter 1. The patas that one sees in Medinipur today range from six to 30 feet in length and are usually two and a half feet in width.3 Most storytellers who still perform in the rural areas tend to carry five or six scrolls to give their audience a choice of stories. They usually begin with auspicious themes based on the mangala kavyas or stories of pirs and then go on to display patas about local, often sensational events (Singh 1995a, 2011). Even though a pata performance today is not considered to be a sacred event, this may not always have been the case. Archival survey reveals that the display of patas may have had a sacred character in the past as many old scrolls on sacred themes had inscriptions written at the back with names of donors who had given dana (offerings) to have the pata displayed again and again. Such performances were often considered to be rites of atonement for transgression and the repeated display of the sacred story to the accompaniment of the pata song acted as a blessing spreading to all the members of the audience (ibid. 1995a). Unlike the ritual narrations performed by bards elsewhere in India, Chitrakars do not have an established network of patrons, nor are their performances commissioned. They see themselves as entertainers, experimenting with new themes and transforming old ones (ibid. 1995b, 2011).

The Pata Painting Scroll painters follow a synoptic mode of representation, using figural types and standard motifs, which ask viewers to use their imagination to fill in the story in their own way. Images are shorn of detail but are pregnant with possibility. The technique of picture storytelling itself assumes a dissonance between verbal images depicted in the pata songs and pictorial images on the scroll. The displayer of the pata — the singer of the story that accompanies the scroll — may not be the same as its painter so the images must allow for variation in interpretation. The scroll is unrolled one frame at a time so that the pictorial space is revealed slowly, over time. As the story progresses previous frames are rolled up so the viewer sees only one frame at a time. Connections with previous images are made only though

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the song and through memory. The images in each frame especially the human figures are shown making hand gestures that connect them with images in adjacent frames that are no longer visible. Such hand gestures function as relays as does the finger of the performer, which moves over the images connecting the different segments of the story. The modern comic book comes closest to this mode of pictorial organisation in the sense that the pictures are organised as a series in which the text has the function of relay (Carrier 2000).4 I now turn to the Laden pata, as the scroll painting on the theme of the 9/11 strike is known in Medinipur. It does not belong to the category of sacred patas even though it shares some features of the mangala (auspicious) stories that are sung by the Chitrakars. Its popularity owes more to the new clientele for pata painting in cities like Delhi and Philadelphia, where such themes have a certain exotic appeal, rather than to the rural audiences of Bengal. However as Frank Korom (2006) and Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay (2008) have shown, the immediate inspiration for the Laden pata was a jatra performance in Naya village by a troupe from Kolkata titled ‘Amrika Jolchhe’ (America is Burning). The play dealt with the events leading up to the Gulf War, and the crash and collapse of the Twin Towers formed the climax of the performance. It was depicted as a cyclorama on a separate stage (ibid.). The leader of ‘Digbijoy Opera’, the troupe that performed this jatra in Naya, said in an interview to Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay that the play wove in several themes including a sub-plot about a middle-class Bengali boy who goes to the US to study, succumbs to the corrupting influence of a decadent Western lifestyle and dies in the 9/11 crash. The 19th century themes of modern decadence and the corrupting influence of Westernisation are still popular in Bengali films and television serials, and were probably added for audience appeal. However, the pata renderings of the event are radically different. I have examined 10 versions of the Laden pata and apart from variation in detail such as the manner in which the Twin Towers and the crash are depicted, they reveal a common episodic structure. The pictorial narrative begins with the crash; it then depicts scenes of long distance communication between George Bush and Osama bin Laden and meetings that lead up to the war in Afghanistan, the war, and finally bin Laden’s escape to the caves in the Tora Bora mountains (Plates 2.1 to 2.6).5 I have heard three versions of the song that accompanies the pata. The songs do not replicate all the activities portrayed in the pata. Instead they serve as a general commentary and it is the storyteller’s finger that connects successive images with the song as he slowly unrolls the scroll, frame by frame.

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The patas are divided into six frames or more, each frame depicting a different scene in the story.6 All the Laden patas begin with the scene of the crash. It is the airplane that is foregrounded in the first register — a swollen fish-shaped form with a bearded face that represents Osama bin Laden — and in some patas, the explosion — with tongues of flame opening out like the petals of a flower in bloom (Plates 2.7 and 2.8). Unlike the exploding airplane, the Twin Towers are rendered differently in each of the patas (Plates 2.1, 2.8, 2.9 and 2.10). Probir Chitrakar has modeled the Twin Towers on some of the modern high-rise buildings he has seen in Delhi (Plates 2.7 and 2.8).7 Even though he follows convention in depicting Osama’s face on the ‘killer plane’, the focus is on the crash rather than on the airplane. Dark red aureoles highlight the points of impact. Paired missiles that accompany the airplanes could either refer to past scenes of bombing from the first ‘Gulf War’ that was televised in India or foreshadow the war that is yet to come. Other patas such as that by Yakub Chitrakar do not depict images of the tower at all. Instead we see a wall with row upon row of windows with the killer plane suspended above (Plate 2.10). It is as if two viewing positions co-exist in a single

Plate 2.1: Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.2: Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 2. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.3: Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 3. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.4: Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 4. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.5: Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 5. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.6: Tagar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 6. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.7: Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.8: Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 2. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.9: Rohim Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown.

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Plate 2.10: Yakub Chitrakar, Laden pata, frames 1 and 2. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Collection of Veena Naregal.

picture frame — the perspective available to the people inside the ill-fated plane that crashed into the tower as well as that of the cameraperson who filmed the scene of the crash. The first patas on the 9/11 theme followed the order of events as they appeared on television. Thus, as Manu Chitrakar, the first composer of the Laden pata told me, ‘We did not know what was happening, who was behind it. Only later when scenes of celebration were being broadcast from bin Laden’s camp did the world come to suspect that it might be him’.8 The first frame of Manu’s pata had an ordinary plane crashing into the twin towers followed by scenes of destruction and then revelry in bin Laden’s camp (Plates 2.11 and 2.12). It was Swarna Chitrakar, Manu’s sister, who first put bin Laden’s face on the killer plane (Plate 2.13). But this motif struck a chord and has been absorbed into the painterly vocabulary.

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Plate 2.11: Manu Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Manu’s pata had also followed the plot of the jatra that I mentioned earlier, though with some modification. A young Bengali boy died in the crash on the eve of his return to India. Scenes of pathos, which showed the parents receiving the news of their son’s death by telephone, were included. This theme has not been retained over time; though the telephone motif still occurs but is transformed to signify the Bush–bin Laden relationship as we saw in Tagar Chitrakar’s pata (Plate 2.2). Manu had tried to bring the event closer to his audience by including an Indian protagonist. More recent compositions have taken a different track. Chandan Chitrakar tries to bring the scenes of pathos closer to his imagined audience by depicting the victims of the tragedy as Bengali villagers (Plate 2.14).

Plate 2.12: Manu Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 4. 2005. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.13: Swarna Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.14: Chandan Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 2. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown.

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In patas with sacred themes, such as the Satya Pir patas9 or those on the snake goddess Manasa, the first scene is usually disjunct from the story. It depicts the god or the main protagonist enthroned with a retinue of worshippers and is accompanied by the invocation sung before the actual story is musically rendered. Since the Laden pata deals with a historical theme, and that too with human tragedy, it cannot begin with an invocation. However, images of the airplane with bin Laden’s face and the crash tell us about the subject of the pata, as do the invocatory stanzas and the enthroned gods in the traditional pata performances. Unlike many of the traditional patas, some of the Laden patas also encapsulate different phases of an action sequence. This is particularly evident in Probir’s painting where the first two frames depict the moment before the crash, the crash itself, and the devastation within the buildings (Plates 2.7, 2.8 and 2.15). All the different moments of the crash are depicted on the same pictorial plane and are not separated by boundary markers as is often done in traditional narrative art such as mural painting and so on (Sheik 1983). This gives the scene a somewhat surreal effect such as in Plate 2.15, where decapitated heads with serene expressions are suspended upside down above the line of the Twin Towers — the dark red border being

Plate 2.15: Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 3. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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the only mark indicating the separation of the interior from the surface of the building. It is as if the building is unfolding to display its interior in front of our eyes.10 Tagar Chitrakar’s pata also works with multiple time perspectives but the emphasis here is on the Bush–Osama relationship. Only one of the towers is depicted on the right hand side of the frame. Flames erupt from the top of the tower, and dead bodies lie horizontally with eyes closed at the bottom of the register in line with the frame (Plate 2.1). It is important to note at this juncture that all the faces are beardless and therefore in marked contrast with the bearded face on the airplane (perhaps viewers who are unfamiliar with the codes of pictorial representation in this genre are likely to see these dead figures as women. Markers of gender are not always highlighted in this tradition. Viewers are expected to fill in such details on their own when relevant. However, with respect to this particular frame it is worth noting that these images could represent young men modeled on the image of the god Kartikeya, who is represented as a dandy in popular Bengali culture). Another point worth noting is the position of the plane vis-à-vis the tower. The plane seems to be flying away from the tower coming towards the left of the frame with the face pointing towards the viewer and seems undamaged, unlike the tower. However the tower form is repeated in several other frames as we shall see and serves as a motif symbolising the Bush–bin Laden relationship in the narrative (Plate 2.2). In the second frame of Tagar’s pata, the tower form becomes a column separating the figures of Bush and bin Laden, seen here talking to each other by telephone. The figures are symmetrically positioned, each one flanked by guards carrying guns. The point of distinction is the presence or absence of the beard, for Bush and his men look young and beardless and bin Laden and his men look old with full beards (Plates 2.2 and 2.3).11 Bin Laden, a replication of the face on the airplane, is now shown near the right hand side of the frame. The position of the bearded figure keeps alternating from left to right and again to left in the successive frames. It is only in the last frame that it occupies a position at the centre of the frame (Plates 2.1 to 2.6). Perhaps these alternating positions of the bearded and beardless faces tell us something about the way the bin Laden–Bush relationship has been conceptualised in this pictorial imagination. A small pata on the 9/11 theme, reduced to three frames, drawn by Malek Chitrakar makes the connection between the tower motif and the Bush–bin Laden relationship even more explicit (Plates 2.16 and 2.17). The first two scenes depicted separately in Tagar’s pata are collapsed into one register (Plates 2.1, 2.2 and 2.16). Two bin Laden-faced airplanes collide with the tower

Plate 2.16: Malek Chitrakar, Mini Laden pata, frames 1and 2. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown.

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Plate 2.17: Malek Chitrakar, Mini Laden pata, frame 3. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown.

from opposite directions. They form a canopy, supported by the burning tower, over the heads of Bush and bin Laden who are shown standing talking long-distance via telephone. The instruments are attached to the wall very much like the telephones one finds in public call booths (Plate 2.16). The song emphasises the relationship between the two leaders. Bush phones bin Laden to ask him what had happened to spoil their relationship. ‘What led to this terrible catastrophe?’ — the storyteller sings in Bush’s voice. Bin Laden replies fatalistically, ‘What had to happen has come to pass’. Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay (2008) gives a different version. Madhusudan Chitrakar, Mukhopadhyay’s main respondent told him that Bush had once made a derogatory remark about bin Laden that might have sparked the enmity between the two. Bin Laden makes clandestine preparations for the 9/11 strike in Afghanistan and forces his followers to drink the blood of a dog so that they will have to redeem themselves through self-sacrifice. He makes them swear to avenge his honour. This

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is an unusual variant and I have never heard it before. Madhusudan is a thoughtful artist however and he explicitly draws connections with other motifs from the mythic universe that I discuss later. Other versions of the Laden pata depict scenes of round table meetings of the two leaders separately with their followers — apart from the presence or absence of bearded figures there is nothing to distinguish between the two scenes (Plates 2.18 and 2.19). Even when Bush and bin Laden are not depicted side-by-side in the same frame there is a remarkable symmetry in the way that they are positioned vis-à-vis their followers. Bush and bin Laden are portrayed as the archetypal rivals and their followers depicted as replicas of the one or other leader. In fact in the scene where the US soldiers are chasing bin Laden, his followers are only shown in outline behind his full figure (Plate 2.5). The tower form becomes a canon spouting flames in the third register of Tagar’s pata, depicting the battle scene, but it acts as a barrier separating the two armies; its mouth points upwards rather than facing the soldiers (Plate 2.3). In only one of the 10 Laden patas that I have examined do the guns and canons of the two armies face each other (Plate 2.20). In one of the patas only one of the armies is shown in the battle scene and it is unclear which side the soldiers represent (Plate 2.21).

Plate 2.18: Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 4. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.19: Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 5. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 2.20: Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 6. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

The battle scene in Malek Chitrakar’s pata depicts dhoti-clad soldiers who wield cutlasses in addition to guns, juxtaposing figures from the battle scenes in the Ramayana patas with scenes of ‘modern’ warfare (Plate 2.16). American soldiers are depicted in the same way as young ‘dandies’ in popular theatrical representations and Kalighat prints,12 sometimes with earrings, moustaches and well-groomed hair parted in the middle. The battle scene in Tagar’s pata shows only corpses, some of which are bearded (Plate 2.4). There are no barriers that separate the soldiers of the two armies, though the bearded figures tend to be concentrated in the upper half of the frame. A bearded Christ like figure, lying horizontally across the upper half of the frame with his arms outstretched is reminiscent of the crucifixion scene from the Jishu (Jesus) mangala pata. The last two frames of the Laden pata show bin Laden and his followers on horseback, being chased by Bush’s men, finally disappearing into the caves in the Tora Bora mountains (Plates 2.5 and 2.6). The last frame of Probir’s pata is especially interesting. It shows bin Laden on his white horse as an inset, set distinctly apart from the mountains in the background. The mouth of the cave is reduced to a border that frames the bin Laden figure and separates it from the action scenes above (Plate 2.22). The first and sometimes the last frames of traditional patas are disjunct from the other frames that depict the episodes in the story in that they serve to place the story in the mythic universe so that it resonates with other stories about

Plate 2.21: Baneshwar Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 3. c. 2002–2003. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown.

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gods and goddesses. Typically these stories begin with an invocation to the god who is the subject of the pata, describing their attributes, and then go on to express the god’s desire to receive worship. One person is usually targeted as a potential devotee who will help to spread the god’s worship on earth. The patas first depict the god/goddess as an iconic image and then go on to show us the adventures undertaken by the potential devotees. Some traditional patas end with another iconic image of the god/goddess, others do not. Compare the last frame of Probir’s pata that depicts bin Laden, triumphant, on a white horse with the first frame of the Satya Pir pata painted by Jomuna Chitrakar, which shows the pir sitting on his lion (Plate 2.23). It is their positioning, the first at the end of the narrative and the second at the beginning that makes for a significant difference. The Laden story moves between history and myth. In another time and place it may well have become a story about a pir but the global impact of the 9/11 crash will not allow this to happen.13

Plate 2.22: Probir Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 7. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 2.23: Jomuna Chitrakar, Satya Pir pata, frame1. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

The Narrative Universe The Bengali landscape is dotted with the graves of pirs that have become shrines and pilgrimage centres. Many of these pirs were local rulers and one sees the ruins of their palaces and other monuments spread around the sites of pilgrimage. Some of the legends associated with these pirs have assimilated themes from stories about local tiger gods such as Dakshin Rai (McCutchion and Bhowmik 1999). Others like Satya Pir also have a more trans-regional dimension. On the one hand, as his pata song tells us, he is lord of the tigers and often sends his tiger horde to punish recalcitrant devotees, but as his alter ego Satya Narayan, he is also an incarnation of the great god Vishnu of the Hindu pantheon. Pir worship in Bengal, as in other parts of India, enables folk Hinduism in India to co-exist with folk

Plate 2.24: Chandan Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 1. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.25: Chandan Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 5. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 2.26: Chandan Chitrakar, Laden pata, frame 6. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Islam especially through the theory of ‘avatarhood’ (incarnation) (Stewart 2002). Therefore, the difference between the bin Laden legend and the legends associated with these pirs lies not so much in the fact that the former has a global dimension but rather in the fact that the event is too recent to have been euhemerised. The Laden story has no resolution. Instead the pictorial narrative, by showing bin Laden in an inset, points us to another story and to an alternative trajectory that this story might have followed. In a similar vein, the collapse of the Twin Towers that occurs at the end of the Amrika Jolche jatra serves as the beginning of the Laden story.14 Drawing attention to the meta-textual relationship between the Laden story and the myths about pirs I want to emphasise that myths are related synchronically within a given narrative universe, as Claude Levi-Strauss (1975) has stated. In the context of a living storytelling tradition we can see how contemporary events are narrativised following older structural patterns. These patterns are not copied blindly so that even if there are several stories with the same theme they never sound exactly the same. The audience, familiar with the narrative universe, is able to make connections between different stories by concentrating on the details — motifs that carry meaning and reveal the underlying pattern of the story. In the pata tradition it is the continuous method of painting that is favoured. The thematic material is revealed by the adding-on of motifs one after the other and by repeating a limited number of forms that can take on different meanings as the story unfolds (Hauser 1951). Thus, in Tagar’s pata the tower motif is repeated in several successive frames, anticipating the violence that is to come. The tower acts as a barrier separating Bush and bin Laden in the second frame, but even then they are depicted with their faces towards each other while they converse over the phone (Plates 2.1 and 2.2). The tower becomes a canon in the third frame but its mouth faces upwards and not at the enemy, as if pointing to the bin Laden–Bush relationship that is depicted in the second frame (Plate 2.3). The eye travels downwards from one frame to the next as the scroll is unfolded, guided by the pointing finger of the patua15 and his song. Within the pata itself, the characters gesture to each other as if in conversation and point to episodes depicted in other registers. Thus in the last frame of Tagar’s pata (Plate 2.6), bin Laden and his men are seen pointing upwards as if to draw our attention to the events depicted previously. The last frame of Malek’s pata depicts Bush and bin Laden together in the inset against a backdrop of palm trees and hillocks — a scene set in a desert oasis perhaps (Plate 2.17). The depiction of Bush and bin

Plate 2.27: Joideb Chitrakar, Laden pata, penultimate frame. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown.

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Laden together is important and requires some discussion. In this pictorial tradition there are iconic models for the depiction of contrary principles within the same image. For instance, in the icon of Mahishasura Mardini that depicts the great goddess Durga slaying the demon king Mahisha, the emphasis for the worshippers is not so much on the act of killing but in the fact that the demon and the goddess receive worship together.16 Bush and bin Laden are depicted as types, archetypal figures, replicated in each scene. The symmetry between them is reflected in Tagar’s pata through the way the two sides keep alternating between right and left sides of the frame in each successive register, and in Probir’s pata through the identical way in which the figures of the two leaders are positioned vis-àvis their followers (Plates 2.18 and 2.19). Doubling is a technique that is used in the pata tradition to express intimacy and antagonism not only within certain kinds of stories but also as a meta-textual device to express a particular stance towards society. The relationship between Hindus and Muslims is also depicted in this way. For instance, the pata song about Satya Pir ends with the following couplet: Hindus call him Satya Narayan, Muslims call him Pir Let us both join hands in worship.17

As storytellers Chitrakars use their interstitial position within the local social hierarchy to comment on issues of existential importance. Religious conflicts, contradictions between the ideologies of the two great religions — Islam and Hinduism — are one of the important subjects that come up repeatedly in their stories, not merely at the level of theme and plot but also as rhetorical devices that express relationships of kinship between members of the two religious groups. Paired names such as Habil–Kabil and the symmetry between their practices expressed in utterances such as ‘Habil reads Shastras (i.e., sacred Hindu texts) and Kabil the Koran’ are used to describe the tension between Hindus and Muslims that arises from their similarity, or as the patua song puts it as ‘two sons of the same mother’. However, as Tony K. Stewart (2002) says, they could also be ways of expressing equivalence between religious categories without reducing their contradictions and searching for a mode of address that is tolerant of the other. Is it this spirit of tolerance that motivated Malek to include Bush with bin Laden in the inset in the final register of his pata? Indeed some Laden songs end with a call to both the leaders to come together to establish world peace (Mukhopadhyay 2008).

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The Patua Song Chitrakars say that the composition of the song always precedes the pata painting. This may not apply to established themes that are well-known but is essential for new compositions such as the Laden pata. However, the event as it is told and as it is picturised are not simply replicas of each other. This was brought home to me when I heard four different performances of the Laden story. All four patuas had similar patas but the songs were different. Unlike an illustrated storybook where the picture illustrates an idea presented in the text, or an advertisement where the text anchors the image, in the case of the patua tradition there is a dissonance between the lyrics of the songs and the pictures painted on the scroll as the texts of the songs will show. Khandu Chitrakar’s song:18 O the event in Amerika Tis a wonderous event The plane crash in Amerika What a wonderous event That hundred-storied house broke O what a wonderous event Bush says Laden Was this your real intention O what a wonderous event Bush says O Laden Was it your intention to deceive O what a wonderous event Teams [of soldiers] went to war And look Bush’s people died And look at Laden laugh O the plane crash in Amerika What a wonderous event They went to war In teams they went [from Laden’s side] But they could not fight against Bush Bush’s soldiers went after Laden But look Laden hid in a cave Look they could not catch him

94 c Speaking with Pictures O the plane crash in Amerika O what a wonderous event

The song functions as a commentary, telling the audience what to look at as the scroll unfolds (note the repeated use of ‘look’, dekho in Bangla, directing the audience’s attention to particular figures in each frame; also note the use of the third person mode of address and reported speech). It is event-centric — the refrain emphasises its magnitude and the hyper-real quality of the plane crash (the Bangla word used to describe the event is ajob derived from the Arabic ajai’b and means marvellous or wonderous. [see Mukhopadhyay 2008]). Rani Chitrakar’s song: In Amerika, in Washington There was destruction Because of the plane crash there was decimation O God, O Merciful One What kind of recompense is this In 2001, 11 September In New York in Washington The house broke into four pieces In New York in Washington There was destruction Laden and George Bush were friends When did this enmity occur Why did hundreds and hundreds of people have to lose their lives I do not know In Amerika, in Washington There was decimation19

The song goes on to elaborate on the sophisticated surveillance cameras in the building that failed to detect the oncoming airplanes, the plight of parents, waiting anxiously for news about their children in New York and George Bush’s attempts to console his people while making a pledge of retribution against America’s enemies. Rani was singing to Probir’s Laden pata and she pointed to the fifth frame that depicts a group of bearded men around a table as if in conference, when she sang about the plight of parents in faraway lands (see Plate 2.19). Beards that usually signify bin Laden and his followers in the Laden patas are taken to be a sign of alterity

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by Rani telling us about the presence of a large immigrant population in New York. The song ended with a lament and a plea for peace but made no reference to the war or to bin Laden’s escape that are so prominently displayed in Probir’s pata. Rani composed this song especially for her trip to the US.20 The dominant mood of the song is pathos. There is no mention of war. The tunes to which these lyrics are sung are also different from each other. Both songs are set to old film tunes, but whereas Khandu’s song is a filmic adaptation of a very old folk tune, Rani’s is a sentimental tune with great emotional appeal. I have noticed that the newer pata themes are set to filmic adaptations of popular Bengali folk tunes such as Baul and Bhatiali, both genres that have become popular by their being adapted to jatra and film music. Their popularity probably lies in their emotional appeal. Songs based on the mangala kavyas are usually folk tunes that are very old but stress on rhythm and scale rather than emotion.21 Both song compositions, however, conform to an older type with a repeatable refrain made up of a sequence of rhyming couplets. Rani’s song also has a bhonita or colophon, an innovation which is becoming increasingly popular among the Naya patuas. Thus: I am Rani Chitrakar From Naya village In Pingla thana, Medinipur, West Bengal Let such an event no one else enact

Probir, Khandu’s son and Rani’s nephew, gave me his version of the Laden song — a mixed composition of fragments taken from both, set to a tune very similar to the tune of Rani’s song. His song begins in a fashion similar to Rani’s, with the same refrain but ends with a stanza on the Afghan war and bin Laden’s disappearance. The refrain acts as a paratactic device, which allows for the juxtaposition of distinct elements without an overarching structural frame that imposes a single viewpoint on the composition.22 Parataxis is an important device in narrative compositions, especially oral compositions where there is a degree of spontaneity in performance (Lord 1976). Performers stitch together stanzas that carry motifs and other poetic devices. These devices become meaningful within the song performance because they are associated with particular kinds of thematic subjects and therefore point to the larger narrative universe. Thus, even though there is no mention of war in Rani’s pata, the audience

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is familiar with the narrative subject from other performances, and the battle scenes in the pata that she displays do not need to be explained. The audience assumes that she has chosen to focus on a different aspect of the story. It is the same technique of parataxis that allows Probir to graft some new stanzas on to Rani’s song. The pata painting is also organised according to the rule of parataxis (Zupnick 1962–63). Repeat motifs such as the tower form, the bearded faces and gestures of pointing are ‘phased repetitions’ that allow the spectators to recall the overall theme of the story and to return to points of reference that may be forgotten as the painting is visible only one frame at a time during a performance. The dissonance between the pata picture and the patua song serves as a reminder of the extraordinary quality of the event. The performance uses such techniques to distance the audience from the everyday world, from the historical aspects of the event and to transform it into an aesthetic experience. The fact that the Laden story is sung rather than spoken sets it apart from ordinary speech. It enhances the aesthetic aspect of the story and turns it into a performance that has to be savoured. According to the Natyashastra, an ancient Indian treatise on the dramatic arts, music brings out the resonance (dhwani) that is an essential quality of sound and of aurality. In this case it emphasises the fact that the pata performance is not just a ‘re-counting’ of events that have already occurred, as one would expect in a news bulletin on television but rather a ‘presentation of a way of living in the world’ — the ‘world’ as it is posed by the narrative universe presupposed by the pata performance. The presentation thus transcends the ordinary spatio-temporal world and foregrounds the generalised aspect of the event. In the patua tradition this usually involves framing historical narratives with mythological stories so that situations and characters appear as exemplary types. However it is not as if the mundane world is not acknowledged by this form of storytelling. Depictions of television screens showing pictures of current events in some of the patas on new themes such as the tsunami reveal awareness of parallel but distinct ways in which an event may be rendered (Plate 2.28).23 Such depictions also point to an awareness of the global dimension of these events since global events become available to us only in mediatised form (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2005; Hathaway 2005). Chitrakars have always been responsive to the aesthetic and performative potential of topical events. However, they are aware of the difference between events of regional significance such as the capsize of the steamer at Kakdwip and the Medinipur flood that circulated by word of mouth, and global events such as the tsunami and the 9/11 strike that were communicated by television.24 However, the significance of the imagination in the

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representation of such events in contrast to mere factual description is also stressed. Thus, as Gurupada Chitrakar said, ‘Laden’s face on the killer plane could mean many things. It could mean suspicion — suspicion that he masterminded the attacks. The war in Afghanistan was fought to find one man. To kill one man so many men had to die. My song ends with these words — whether it is Laden or someone else, the mass murderer will be found one day and it is not one country but rather the people of the world who will judge him. As a patua I must combine a moral message with information. The information must be correct and unbiased, but without the message the performance is worthless’.25 Indian performative traditions rarely view theatre in terms of the representation of real events or as an imitation of something in the real world (Heckel 1989). Theatre is not seen as a medium for representing something that is absent. In fact the Natyashastra opens with a description of the first dramatic performance in which the victory of the gods over the demons is enacted. The demons who are among the spectators of the performance are greatly agitated by what they assume to be a deliberate attempt to slight their community. Brahma, the divine creator, then steps in to expound on the nature of theatrical reality and its precise relationship to the world that we live in. It is to do with the presentation of different situations and characters with their varied dispositions (bhava) using abhinaya or modes of conveyance by which these dispositions are communicated to the audience (Ghosh 2002). Through abhinaya a relationship is established between the performance as event and the audience in a way that implies the cessation of the historical world with its mundane concerns and its replacement by a new dimension of reality (Gnoli 1985: xlvi). However, if the majority of clients of the Laden pata are strangers with no knowledge of the narrative universe of the Chitrakars, and therefore incapable of understanding its aesthetic context, is it still possible to read the patua performance against a classical text like the Natyashastra? Can a local performative tradition be interpreted in terms of a classical, panIndian theory? Scholars like Coomaraswamy (1990) remind us that it is impossible to separate the local from the classical in the Indian aesthetic tradition. In India, most classical forms of music and dance have their roots in local performative traditions. Even the Natyashastra, a pan-Indian treatise on the dramatic arts, is a re-constructed text, primarily available through living local traditions and through commentaries such as the Abhinavabharati by the famous Kashmiri philosopher, Abhinavagupta who lived in the 10th century (Gnoli 1985). The references to wonder (ajob) and pathos in the Laden songs acquire new depth when interpreted in the

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light of the Abhinavabharati in which the term chamatkar (wonderment) is used to characterise the sudden shift from the mundane to the theatrical register in which a new dimension of reality is revealed. Why does the Laden pata appeal to non-local audiences? The estrangement of the event — the aesthetic distance that is established by locating the event in an unfamiliar and ‘exotic’ context could be one reason for its popularity. A postmodern sensibility taught to value alternative aesthetic traditions would surely appreciate the bold lines and broad patches of vibrant colour that make up the pictorial field of the pata. But even if the pata has the potential to circulate, to appeal to tastes unfamiliar with the local aesthetic tradition, it is not as if the patua tradition as a whole has this potential. It is the patua song that accompanies the display of the pata that anchors the performance in a particular narrative tradition.

Plate 2.28: Tagar Chitrakar, Tsunami pata, last frame. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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It is precisely this aspect of the performance that tends to be left out or reduced when performers travel to places outside Bengal. But even if the music and the lyrics of the songs are not understood, traces of their influence can be seen in the pictorial narrative itself, in the symmetrical placing of the figures of Bush and bin Laden for instance. The form of continuous narration and the linear ordering of the pictorial space so that the episodic structure of the story is clearly understood are painterly conventions that make for intelligibility; as does the stylistic prominence of the initial frame that dictates the interpretation of the story and guides it to a level of generality. The open-ended patua narratives lend themselves to multiple interpretations. Stories can change course and adapt themselves to new situations. Thus, in keeping with the context of performance, Khandu’s song

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focuses on the emotion of wonder (chamatkar), and Rani’s, pathos. Rani composed a special song for her visit to the US which stresses on empathy with the victims of the 9/11 crash. But both performers try to universalise the event so that it can appeal to spectators in different historical situations. In the Laden pata, as we have seen, the juxtaposition of the mythic with the human dimension is an attempt to achieve a universal appeal. The plane with bin Laden’s face in the first frame of the painting and the bin Laden inset in the last frame contrast with the more human dynamics portrayed in the middle registers.

Interpreters of Tradition How are the Chitrakars, an interstitial group, claiming Muslim identity while they earn their livelihoods by making and displaying images of Hindu deities, authorised to re-present mythic narratives? Even canonical themes from sacred texts are re-contextualised in patua depictions so that great gods like Shiva and Durga appear in local settings.26 These are self-conscious attempts at localising grand narratives that have a pan-Indian sweep. In this sense, such attempts at interpreting tradition assume a different orientation to culture than that assumed by Ananda Coomaraswamy. For Coomaraswamy (1956) folk cultural forms carry mythic and metaphysical meanings that are only intelligible to the scholar learned in India’s textual tradition. The custodians of folk culture do not seek to make sense of these practices but are satisfied in following tradition rather than attempting to interpret it. This is not the case with the Chitrakars. Their origin myths reveal a certain pride in their caste occupation, which also gives them the confidence to transgress rules, even if the consequences of such acts result in loss of status. They trace their descent to Vishvakarma, the celestial architect from whom they have inherited the gift of craftsmanship. He came down to the mortal world as a Brahmin, married Ghritachi, a celestial nymph, who was also reborn in human form, and the ancestor of the Chitrakars was born of their union. But arrogance led to a fall in caste status when the great god Shiva cursed their ancestor for transgressing the taboo against pollution (see Chapter 1). These stories place the Chitrakars ‘outside’ the social system as is recognised by both Hindus as well as Muslims. Another story traced to the Brahma Vaivarta Purana, a 13th century sacred text, mentions the Chitrakars as a community whose members have been demoted to low-caste status because they violated the traditional rules associated with their caste occupation and did not paint sacred images in the conventional manner (Bhattacharjee 1980). Original

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high-caste status with a descent to low status because of some violation of caste tradition, a position of being outsiders to the social system as well as the reputation of being innovators are the important aspects of Chitrakar identity that we glean from the origin myths. A more recent story collected from Dukhushyam Chitrakar of Naya village portrays the first Chitrakar as a trickster figure who manages to save the lives of his fellow villagers from the depredations of a demon by holding a mirror in front of the demon. Unable to recognise his own image, the demon dies while trying to grapple with his reflection (Korom 2006; Singh 1995a). In the second part of the story we are told that the demon slayer could not convince the villagers that the demon was dead until he painted a picture of the event and used it to illustrate his story. The scroll painting that the patuas display is a mirror-substitute that enhances an aspect of the familiar world, re-presenting it so that it appears as new. The demon slayer is their ancestor and ever since then they have travelled from village to village, singing stories with pictures. How do we think of the ‘local’ from the vantage point of the Chitrakars whose status as outsiders and nomads is correlated with their capacity to play with tradition and to be commentators on social life? It is difficult to think of the Laden pata as the ‘domestication in local practice’ of a global event (Appadurai 1997:17). Unlike forms of mass media where the primary orientation is consumption, in the pata tradition the receptors actively participate in re-interpreting the event by relocating it in mythic time.27 As Alexander Piatigorsky (1993) reminds us, myths are objective phenomena that cannot be self-consciously produced. They can only be re-produced or re-enacted. When the 9/11 story is re-told as myth it loses some of the particularistic features that identify it as a historical event. Instead it acquires a more universalistic dimension as it focuses on human dilemmas and emotions — of pathos, wonder and the awareness that relations of intimacy can also be dangerous. Friends can suddenly become enemies with frightening consequences for the world at large. The continuing appeal of the Laden pata, even among audiences who are unfamiliar with the narrative tradition within which it is located, might well lie in its ability to relocate the global event in a local moral world.28 By deliberately choosing a new story as the focus of discussion — one whose target audience is not made up of village people — I am able to show how the pata circulates in the art market, detached from its performative context. An unintended consequence of the dislocation between the painted image and the song is that the pata develops a story independently that is not reflected in the songs, by using other paintings as the context

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of production instead of the performance situation. Not all painters are skilled composers of songs, nor are pata paintings direct translations of the songs associated with them even in the case of traditional stories, but the disjunction between the painting and song that is heightened in the case of new compositions leads to a remarkable reflexivity at the level of the painted image. The painted story charts an independent course through the mythic universe linking motifs from different narrative registers as we have seen. In the chapters that follow I will explore the connection between words and images in different narrative settings, taking both medium and genre as points of departure. In the narrative traditions that I discuss in this work, words and images are the two registers on which stories are told. Neither forms an autonomous medium of storytelling, nor does the one serve merely to illustrate the other. Even though each of these mediums has the capacity to form texts and to tell stories independently there are complex imbrications between the two. The medium of painting allows for the synchronous presence of meaning revealing dimensions which can only be inferred or anticipated through words as they form chains of signification that unfold over time. ‘Parataxis’ is one of the devices used to study the ways in which the reader is asked to anticipate meaning through the juxtaposition of words. When applied to the visual arts it is used to suggest that the painterly surface is a discontinuous space in which parts that belong to different spatial orientations are combined to form a composite image (Zupnick 1962–63: 96). Art historians like Irving L. Zupnick often assume that parataxis signifies a lack in artistic knowledge because it suggests that the artist does not have the ability to synthesise visual experience from the point of view of a single observer. Others have viewed this as folk art’s single most important contribution to the development of modern Indian art. Artists like Arpana Caur (Bowles 2009b) and Gulammohammad Sheik (1998, 2008) speak of the shifts in scale and perspective which are part of the technical vocabulary of Indian folk art. As they say, it is not so much a resolution that is sought but rather a creative tension between contrary or opposing dimensions. Veena Das (2010a), in a recent essay on the artist Akbar Padamsee, says that he uses concepts from traditional Indian poetics to articulate the quality of contrariness contained in the very idea of the image itself. Bimba–pratimba is the Sanskrit expression that the artist uses when he is talking about his paintings. As Das says, bimba means image or reflection and prati is its opposite. The juxtaposition of the two in the same expression destroys any simple or direct relationship between an image

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and its object. Similarly the pair rupa–pratirupa, more commonly used when speaking of plastic arts like painting, could refer to the incorporeal or unmanifest form of the object and to its reflection or chhaya (shadow). Such is the case when speaking of the relationship between an icon and the deity who is represented in that form (see Misra 2009). In the case of patua performances, the song does not tell us about the event — it only uses it to evoke a particular emotion.29 The painting does portray the event but in the form of a series of tableaus suggestive of an underlying narrative. Rather than an unfolding plot, we see juxtaposed, contrasting images which offer different perspectives on the event itself. Zupnick makes the mistake of ‘naturalising’ the code most often associated with realism. But as Roland Barthes (1977) has argued, all images, even photographs, are based on a coded relationship with the objects that they represent. Photographic images may, at first sight, seem to be uncoded in that they are related indexically to their objects; but photographs are also ‘read’ as signs that assume a code in which their messages are framed. Painting yields a different kind of semiotic text which assumes a discontinuity at the level of the image itself. In the chapters that follow I will show how different styles of representation and narrative genres make use of the disjunction posited by the painterly image to intervene in the objects being represented so as to produce fields of connoted meaning.

Notes 1. Frank Korom (2006) actually witnessed a jatra on this theme in Naya village (for more details see Mukhopadhyay 2008). 2. Mangala Kavyas, long narrative poems about specific gods and goddesses, written from the 16th to the 18th century in Bangla, circulated in oral form long before they were written down. According to T. W. Clark (1955), these poems have two distinct levels, the popular and the learned, and he believes that there is a chronological relationship between the two levels. The oral lore was re-inscribed in an orthodox Brahminic literary canon but the fact that the medium was Bangla rather than Sanskrit allowed for its mass circulation. Patua songs are often based on popular mangala kavyas. 3. This is the standard width of a sheet of chart paper that is available in the local shops. Sheets of chart paper are pasted together to form the scroll. The number of chart papers used depends on the length of the story. Old saris are pasted to the back of the scrolls for added strength.

104 c Speaking with Pictures 4. Comic books of course allow the viewer to move back and forth between the different frames, which the patua performance does not allow. 5. Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay (2008) refers to Madhusudhan Chitrakar’s patas that place the plane crash at the end of the story. His story begins with the telephone conversation between Bush and bin Laden, which leads to a misunderstanding and then to the cataclysmic event. In one of the patas, Madhusudhan uses an elephant as a symbol of Bush; in that Bush is seated on an elephant while bin Laden rides on a tiger, very much like Satya Pir. 6. One pata only has three registers and is interesting as it describes the essential structure of the story. 7. Private conversation in Delhi, October 2006. 8. Conversation with Manu Chitrakar, Naya village, West Medinipur district, West Bengal, October 2006. 9. Muslim warrior saints (gazis) and holy men (pirs) deified over the centuries are important mediators between the divine and the earthly realms (Amin 2002). Even though most pir legends have roots in historical events and biographies, the stories themselves follow the structure of the mangala kavyas. Pirs are worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims alike. Satya Pir is also worshipped as Satya Narayan by Hindus (Stewart 2002). 10. Contrast Probir’s rendering of the scene of devastation with that of Rohim (Plates 2.9 and 2.15). The tower appears transparent and we see fragmented bodies lying inside. The tower itself as in most of the 9/11 patas is undamaged. Rohim, like Probir, also uses the tower motif to explore multiple perspectives within the same frame. Some of the body parts are shown close-up while others are viewed from a distance. 11. This was pointed out to me by Khandu Chitrakar. 12. Kalighat paintings were a form of bazaar painting that became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Named after a famous pilgrimage site, the painters at Kalighat migrated from villages in Bengal at a time when Kolkata was developing into an important metropolis. They developed their own folk-urban style of painting, derived from traditional Chitrakar styles and popularised the depiction of secular themes. The last Kalighat patua died in the 1930s though there has been an attempt to revive this style by Kalam Patua of Birbhum, West Bengal (Jain 1999, 2004a). 13. Recent variants of the Laden pata have added to the deification of the bin Laden figure by removing his face from the killer plane on the first frame of the pata and replacing it with a demonic head (Plate 2.24 by Chandan Chitrakar). I was told that this substitution was meant to add to the ferocity of the scene — to the impact of the plane as it crashed into the building. Be that as it may, it also dilutes the tension that we see in Probir’s pata that begins by depicting bin Laden as a demonic figure but ends by portraying him as a pir. Chandan’s pata however adds a new motif to the battle scene. The tree of life is stretched across the battle field, separating the two armies. But it appears again above the bin Laden inset in the last frame of the pata, offering shade to devotees who have come to pray at the pir’s shrine — an anticipation of the

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14.

15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

future perhaps (Plates 2.25 and 2.26). I have also seen a version of the Laden pata by Madhusudan Chitrakar that actually depicts bin Laden on a tiger in the very first frame itself (Brittlebank 1995). Bush who shares the frame with bin Laden is shown riding an elephant — the symbol of the Republican party to which he belongs. Bin Laden’s horse sets him apart from the local iconography of the pir whose vahana is typically the tiger. This may well be moulded on popular iconography associated with Shiite martyrdom where Hussain is depicted as a warrior saint mounted on a white horse (Chelkowski 1989). Joideb Chitrakar’s Laden pata emphasises the lack of resolution in the story. The last frame shows multiple bin Laden figures as if to stress that the line between myth and reality has become blurred (Plate 2.27). As Moina, his wife told me, ‘Who are the American soldiers looking for? Does he still exist or is he just a video image?’ I use the term patua rather than ‘chitrakar’ here to highlight their role as storytellers. In the Bangla version of the story Mahisha asks Durga for a boon while he is on the point of her trident waiting for death to release him from his demon birth. He asks that he may receive worship with the goddess so that they will be joined for all time to come. According to Tony Stewart (2002), Satya Narayan emerged somewhat earlier than Satya Pir. The latter is incorporated into Vaishnavism through the doctrine of ‘avatarhood’ (incarnation). Vishnu, the preserver, one of the three great gods in Hindu cosmology, appears on earth as an avatar whenever the earth is mired in turmoil and is in need of a saviour. All translations from Bangla and Hindi are mine. All songs have been translated from Bangla by me. See Das (2002). See also Express News Service. 2003. ‘9/11 part of Patua scrolls show’, 10 December, http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php? newsid=70258 (accessed 20 June 2007). I am grateful to Urmila Bhidrekar for listening to recordings of the patua songs with me and giving me her interpretation of the tunes. The grammatical term parataxis refers to an arrangement of clauses or propositions without connectives. The reader is expected to form the logical connections between the grammatical elements. The term has also been used to study specific forms of art (Zupnick 1962–63). A new version of the Laden song has the following refrain: What terrible news Did I get from the radio station

24. Rosemary Hathaway (2005) while discussing the folklore around 9/11 says that one of the distinguishing features of the narratives around this event was the fact that most people were unable to process it as part of everyday life. She says, “…only through a cinematic filter were they able to process it as ‘real’.” (ibid.: 45).

106 c Speaking with Pictures 25. As is evident, this conversation with Gurupada occurred several years before bin Laden’s death. 26. Jyotindra Jain (1999) describes a Kalighat pata in which a harassed Shiva clasps his baby son, Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of auspicious beginnings, to his chest with one hand while he beats his drum (dumru) in a desperate attempt to distract him. An anxious Durga follows behind clapping her hands in a similar attempt to get the baby’s attention and stop him from crying. Shiva is the god of destruction whose drum is heard only when the world and life as we know it, is about to end. Durga, for many Bengali Hindus, is primarily worshipped as the protector of the universe and the slayer of demons who threaten the world. 27. As Appadurai (1997: 7) reminds us, mass media consumption does not have to be passive. It involves ‘selectivity, resistance, irony’, and reveals signs of agency. 28. I use Arthur Kleinman’s conception (1988) of the ‘local moral world’ to talk about the stake that the Chitrakars might have in giving the 9/11 story this particular form. 29. As is evident I use the term ‘Chitrakar’ as a proper noun to designate the community and patua as an adjective when speaking of their performance style.

THREE

Words and Images: Storytelling in Gond Art In seeking the validation of tribal art in our time, I am seeking the validation of art itself. (J. Swaminathan 1995) [Swaminathan] talked and wrote about the importance of the numinous image at a time when most artists were dealing with phenomena. He emphatically stated again and again that the obsession with the phenomenal world was western and no matter how elegant or competent and efficient its art, it was too self evident and immersed in the practical day-today – nor did he think that the manner in which it was painted could retrieve it. By the very nature of its concerns it failed to gain access to the regions of mystery which were central to Art. He had little patience with narrative or didactic paintings no matter how well they were painted. For him they lacked the mysterious realm of poetry. He found in Paul Klee a kindred spirit as he did in the folk and tribal artists. (Khanna 1995)

G

ond art is a form that emerged self-consciously in the precinct of a modern institution, Bharat Bhawan, at a time when modern art the world over was questioning its European legacy. It was through the so-called primitive arts — the arts of marginal cultures — that an alternative genealogy for modernist abstraction was sought. In India, artists turned to the folk and traditional arts to construct an alternative history of Indian modernism — a history that shared some of the concerns with art movements in the West.

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Swaminathan’s ideas for the art collection for the Roopankar Gallery therefore resonate with the discourses circulating in the international art scene. ‘Primitivism’, a central value in the attempt to universalise abstraction as an aesthetic value, is translated into the ‘psychic numen’ — an aspect of tribal art that could be found in its ‘colour geometry’ (Swaminathan 1995; Trilling 1995). The tribal artist, he said, was not trying to represent physical reality but was trying to create a parallel reality through art. He did this by filling up the two-dimensional space within the painterly frame with primary colours in such a way that it became an ‘inward growing meditative space’. Even when representational forms were introduced in this two-dimensional space, such as birds, mountains or trees, they no longer served to represent the manifest world of physical reality but became symbols of the human psyche (Swaminathan 1995: 49). Apart from bringing the Gond pantheon to the realm of pictorial form, Jangarh tapped the narrative tradition of the Pardhan bards without depicting the stories per se. The singular moment of the Bharat Bhawan experiment — the encounter between Jangarh Singh Shyam and J. Swaminathan — shaped a collective imagination inherited by successive generations of Pardhan-Gond artists. Jangarh responded to modern ways of looking by making his paintings self-explanatory.1 They had the power to move spectators to respond by reaching out to their own myth-making potential.2 Gond art is figurative without being realistic. It is abstract enough to tap into current thinking about modernism and its concerns with purity of colour and form (Gyorgy 1999). Jangarh thought of forms as design elements. They suggested a timelessness that was emancipated from specific legends or myths. Whilst his paintings exhibited decorative traits which were thought to be derived from traditional art, his style was eclectic in a way that appealed to an art market that was in search of novelty. He learnt to articulate traditional elements in a new idiom that was intelligible to urban audiences and which addressed the concerns of modern art.3 It was precisely by using the strategy of de-contextualisation associated with modernism that Jangarh was able to create this new genre (Elkins 1999).

Timeless Abstraction as Stylistic Mode The first generation of Pardhan-Gond artists did not draw on the traditional corpus of stories for themes to paint. Instead they painted single figures or juxtaposed different objects on a single plane in a way that emphasised the flatness of the painterly surface (Plates 3.1 and 3.2). There was no attempt to embed the figures in a context. Even when the artist tried to

Plate 3.1: Kala Bai Shyam, Forest Scene. c. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown.

Plate 3.2: Anand Singh Shyam, Deer. 2010. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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show the interrelation between different figures it was colour and surface design that was used to suggest the relationship. This probably added to their naive charm for the urban viewers in Bharat Bhawan. Apart from the semi-anthropomorphic representations of gods and goddesses they also took to depicting forest creatures — wild boar, deer and birds. However, these were no ordinary animals. Instead snakes had wings; deer preened and strutted about with leafy branches growing from their antlers; and birds lay on their backs with their legs thrust in the air, gasping for water (Plates 3.3 and 3.4). A famous painting by Anand Singh Shyam shows a cat with four grinning heads atop a fan-like arrangement of necks (Plates 3.5 and 3.6). When pressed for explanation, artists admit that such phenomena are rare but are known to occur.4 The forest throws up many fantastical creatures and the human eye can only grasp some of them. Thus the prone bird with its beak wide open, the rain cloud above showering droplets everywhere but into its mouth, is real. Its plaintive cry resembles the human words for water — pani de do (give me water). It was cursed to drink water only once in 12 years under a particular astrological configuration. Its gullet is so small that it cannot even swallow normal drops of rain water (Plate 3.3).5 It was the capacity to address multiple registers of experience and imagination that must have appealed to Swaminathan. He saw in adivasi art a possibility of combining myth, ritual and symbolism with the world of nature and lived experience. He was fascinated by their world-view and their courage in being able to bring their experience with the forest to painting so that figures overlapped and boundaries were blurred. Swaminathan says that this has something to do with the way adivasis experience time and the forest — time goes both ways, backwards and forwards at the same time, and in the forest it is easy to mistake one animal for another. A hunter may think that the rustle in the leaves denotes the presence of a deer that he is stalking but it may turn out to be a tiger instead. In the forest one does not have the luxury of identifying figures from a distance. There is no horizon; depth and distance are felt and heard — they are not seen. Human and animal forms mimic each other, inanimate objects such as boulders, mounds, trees and plants seem strangely human, pregnant with life, and humans sometimes take on the appearance of natural forms. It is the patterns that Pardhan-Gond artists use to cover their figures that lead to the identity between different classes of objects. The pattern gives an illusion of texture and movement in figures that are rendered flat but it also draws objects that are radically different into a strange kind of kinship with each other to create a world that appears very much like the worlds represented in myth and folk tale.

Plate 3.3: Mangru Uikey, Swati Bird. c. 2008. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection Unknown.

Plate 3.4: Anand Singh Shyam, Deer with Birds. 2006. Poster paint on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 3.5: Anand Singh Shyam, Cat with Multiple Heads. 2010. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Jangarh won a national award for giving form to adivasi gods — gods who were formless (nirakar; see Mukherjee and Kaushal 2006). But were they really formless? They were aniconic forms, symbolised through sacred stones, earth mounds, trees and other natural objects. To mark them out as sacred and therefore ‘set apart’ they were also adorned with vermillion paste, tridents and flags. Jangarh’s gods did not look human and it is thought that the interlocking lines and arabesques were inspired by the designs that were used to decorate Pardhan village homes. It also gave his figures an air of mystery that appealed to sophisticated urban audiences. The images seemed to replicate organic shapes emerging from the forest landscape of Mandla (Plates 3.7 and 3.8). The association between ‘primitivism’ in modernist aesthetics and abstract form is reflected in the representation of adivasi gods as part human and part abstract — though these abstract forms appear as organic rather than geometric shapes. Saroj Shyam’s painting of Maharilin Mata, the goddess of boundaries, whose shrine is normally located on the raised boundary of a field (khet), follows the contours of an earth mound layered

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Plate 3.6: Anand Singh Shyam, Cat with Multiple Heads. 2011. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

with stones to which a human head is affixed (Plate 3.8). The connotation is explicit — artistic figuration follows cultic figuration (Freedberg 1989). This is so especially when we contrast such images with Pardhan-Gond

Plate 3.7: Kala Bai Shyam, Bada Deo. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.8: Saroj Shyam, Maharalin Mata. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Collection Unknown.

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images of Hindu gods which are recognisably human. There seems to be a perceptible need to signpost the aniconic when adivasi gods are being portrayed. The stone symbols of adivasi gods may have been left unworked to symbolise the sacredness that inheres within. But what of the painting that is not sacred, which is a product of the artist’s imagination? It becomes a symbol of the ‘primitive’, signifying the self-reflexive nature of this art form, signposting its location in a modern art world (Duve 1996). Aniconism could be seen to be a sign of ‘primitivism’, an index of the spirituality of tribal religion that refuses to reduce the divine to human scale. Thus the attribution of ‘numinous’ qualities to adivasi art is a consequence of modernism — to the angst brought on by ‘the de-mythicisation’ of contemporary life. Jangarh was able to tap into this modernist angst. The appeal of his paintings lies precisely in their paradoxical quality. The source of his subjects lie in myth but they are rendered in a way that is uniquely his own. Swaminathan’s valorisation of the spiritual qualities of primitive abstraction was sincere but ultimately not of much use in charting a different trajectory for Indian art history. Adivasi art is willynilly incorporated into the grand narrative of modern art, a narrative that is singular even if it appears to be inclusive of some plurality. In this climate what is the scope for innovation in this style? Many have tried to break out of the primitivist straitjacket, so as to expand the visual range of the art form, by actually telling stories in paint. Ram Kumar Urveti and Mangru Uikey among others have experimented with the concept of a series but have met with mixed responses. I find it paradoxical that most Pardhan artists that I have met insist on embedding their paintings in a narrative context, yet these stories find no presence in the galleries where they are exhibited.6 As Mayank, Jangarh’s son, a gifted artist in his own right, told me, ‘most buyers are not interested in our stories’. However, recourse to a ‘transcendental nature’ cannot explain Jangarh’s sustained appeal in the art world. There were many talented adivasi artists associated with Bharat Bhawan but none of them became leaders of new art movements in the way that Jangarh did. Jangarh settled in Bhopal. People who knew him as a young man describe his intelligence and his responsiveness to new ideas. He was quick to gauge the market for tribal art and was able to integrate elements from other artists’ work such as pointillism, which was highly regarded in the work of artists such as Belgur and Pema Fatia, into his own style (Plates 1.2, 3.9). He developed a motif-centred style and tied it to a mode of collective production in that he trained successive generations of Pardhan apprentices who assisted him in his work.

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Plate 3.9: Pema Fatia, Pithora. c. 2000. Pigment on Paper. Collection of Ruma Ghosh.

From Oral Narratives to Pictorial Art Gond art is a hybrid genre. At first sight its symbolism seems to suggest a stability of meaning that inheres in an ancient narrative tradition. However this is misleading as every mature artist develops his or her personal vocabulary. There is no established iconography. Some of the themes recur and we see them being repeated by successive generations of artists such as the crab with an elephant’s head (Plate 1.3) or the deer with branches growing from its head (Plate 3.4). But they are rendered differently by each artist. We see a creative friction between a collective storytelling tradition and a newly emergent visual vocabulary. Some themes are getting stabilised, becoming collective representations but not the way that they are rendered in painting. The contradiction between the collective narrative tradition of the Pardhan-Gonds and their personal visual vocabulary as painters raises important questions especially in the context of new sites of performance and display where the idea of Gond art as a traditional adivasi art form becomes a marketable resource. As the current generation of Pardhan-Gond artists are increasingly turning to their traditional corpus of myths and stories for new themes to illustrate, we see a range of experiments with the storytelling form

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that impacts the canon itself. While the repertoire of themes that was established by the first generation of Pardhan artists are still in circulation, new subjects inspired by the Gond narrative tradition are now in vogue. Interestingly it is not so much the heroic epics that are translated into pictures but rather stories that most artists heard as children. Using ‘folk art’ styles for children’s book illustrations is popular in India today and traditional stories are increasingly being seen as symbolic capital by artists who are turning to these narratives as viable subjects for Gond art. In fact many artists make special trips to the village only to collect stories, which are then written down and stored for future use. I use ‘translation’ as a key concept to analyse the successive mediations that are taking place between traditional repertoires on the one hand and new interventions — by the state, the market and increasingly by new media who have all sought in their different ways to keep this ‘traditional’ art form alive by adapting it to suit new tastes and forms of community.7 To call pictures based on stories ‘illustrations’ may be a misnomer in the case of Gond art. Unlike pata painting which follows a linear and continuous style, Gond paintings being strongly motif-centred usually follow a synoptic mode of organisation. Given the recent interest in folk art in the children’s book publishing industry, many artists have switched to painting single episodes following the conventional mode of storybook illustration. In the following sections I will show how the pictorial vocabulary of Gond art is modified as new forms of media are increasingly turning to folk and tribal art in search for an alternative indigenous style. As the fields within which these images are located keep shifting, so do the images, undergoing subtle changes as they adapt to the new demands of genre and medium. However, as the next section will show, the pictorial image still follows the temporal structure of the narrative universe. But more recent interventions such as experiments with animation and other modern forms of storytelling may lead to radical changes in the Gond style. Can we still speak of a canonical Gond style in the face of these new interventions? I shall attempt to address this question at two levels. First, I describe the transformation that occurs at the level of the image — as it comes to carry the weight of narrative it changes its nature from still to ‘movement’ image (Deleuze 1992). Thus in a recent attempt to adapt folk art forms to cartoon film, Gond images have been used to animate folk stories for children. Second, I discuss script development for such cartoon films, which transform orally transmitted stories into texts with plot and storyline. But before I do this let me describe how the compulsion to tell stories has

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impacted the vocabulary of the present generation of artists by recounting the story of Basin Kanya. The choice of story is determined by its popularity. The figure of Basin Kanya recurs frequently in the painterly repertoire.

Story Basin Kanya (Bamboo Maiden) is a popular story and has been a source of inspiration for many painters. To the best of my knowledge motifs from this story occur more often than other folk tales in the Gond repertoire. To understand why we must first read the story. There was a young girl, Sundariya, who had seven brothers. One day, while cutting red spinach leaves, blood spurted from her finger staining the leaves of the spinach plant. She staunched the blood with the spinach leaves that she had gathered and then cooked them for her brothers’ evening meal. The brothers had never tasted such spinach before. They insisted that she tell them what she had put in the dish for it to be so delicious! Finally she admitted that the only new substance added to the dish was some of her own blood. Upon hearing this the six older brothers thought that if a drop of Sundariya’s blood could make their meal so delicious then her body would probably make a meal fit for a king. They decided to kill Sundariya and cook and eat her flesh. Their youngest brother tried to dissuade them but to no avail. The next morning the six brothers took Sundariya to the forest. They made her climb the Sulli Semar tree and then aimed at her with their bows and arrows. The seventh brother stood by helplessly. When all six arrows missed their mark the six older brothers insisted that the seventh brother also try. Sundariya loved him more than her other brothers and his arrow might find its true mark, they thought. And indeed it did. The arrow pierced her heart and her lifeless body fell at the feet of the seventh brother. The six older brothers then sent the seventh brother to collect firewood to cook their sister’s flesh. But the condition that was attached to the task was an impossible one. He was to bring back a bundle of twigs with no rope to bind them with. The seventh brother wandered into the forest weeping piteously. Not only was his the hand that had been used to slay his beloved sister but he had also been set an impossible task — how was he to gather together a bundle of firewood without rope to bind the twigs together? Seven snakes called the seven sisters (saat bahini) lived in the forest. They asked him why he was weeping and when he told them the reason they offered to bind the twigs with their bodies. The seventh brother returned to the other six with a bundle of firewood on his head, tied with

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the bodies of the seven sisters. The sisters slipped away as soon as he took the bundle off his head and it seemed as if the twigs had been magically bundled together. The six older brothers then sent the seventh one to fetch water from the river in a pot with seven holes. The boy stood on the bank of the river sobbing, not knowing what to do. Seven frogs, who were floating on lotus leaves, basking in the sun, asked him why he was crying. When he told them why, they offered to plug the holes in the pot with their bodies. The boy filled the pot and took it back to his brothers. As he emptied the water into a water vessel the frogs jumped out and vanished into the forest. He was then forced to cook the flesh of his dead sister while his brothers went off to bathe. They gave him their dirty clothes to wash but he was to use neither soap nor a stone to scrub the clothes clean. The brother went back to the river bank. A duck and a turtle attracted by the sound of his weeping came up to him and offered their help. The turtle gave him his shell to use as a stone and the duck her feathers to be used as soap. The clothes came out of the water a brilliant white. When he returned he saw that the brothers had started eating their sister’s flesh. They insisted that he taste it as well. Sundariya had had a premonition of what her brothers had in store for her. She had made her youngest brother promise not to eat her however much he was coerced but to bury her in the forest. The brother pretended to chew her flesh and spat out some bones from a corner of his mouth. What he had in his mouth was actually the flesh of the jeemta fish and the bones that he spat out were pieces of the crab’s shell. Both creatures had offered their help in his hour of need. One week later he went to the spot where he had buried a portion of his sister’s flesh and in the dry patch of land he saw a tall bamboo plant with luxuriant foliage. His sister was reborn as the bamboo tree that is used in all the significant moments of a person’s life. Bamboo poles are used to support the canopy over the bride and groom during the wedding ritual, after death, bamboo shoots are plaited to carry the corpse for cremation and bamboo shoots are cut to make vessels in which food is cooked and water carried. Sundariya may have lost her human body but she came back to earth to touch all human life with her beneficial presence. I have summarised this story from a printed text. Oral versions of Basin Kanya do not have the kind of compact structure that we normally associate with em-plotted narratives. Themes and motifs are repeated across a range of stories and the same protagonists are found playing minor roles in other stories. Themes suggest complexes of ideas that resonate with other storyable occurrences in the narrative universe (Sacks 1992).

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There are several off shoots of the Basin Kanya story that use motifs such as the ‘seven sisters’. They play on the theme of identity — snake or human — and the cutting up of Sundariya’s body, which yield other narrative figures such as Jal Rani (the water queen), reincarnated from a remnant of Sundariya’s fertile flesh that fell into the water in the process of dismemberment. Francesco Brighenti (2009) describes a Khond myth about the origin of human sacrifice that has a similar structure. The primordial mother, Amali-Baeli, cut her finger while peeling vegetables. Blood from her finger fell on the earth which was marshy till then. The mud on which the blood had fallen solidified and became fertile. She offered her body to the Khonds so that the process of creation could be completed. They refused to kill her and substituted her body for that of a human. This is the origin of human sacrifice according to the Khonds whose territory once bordered that of the Gond tribes.8 What makes this such a painterly story is the proliferation of motifs that it allows. The figures portrayed in the story — the plant woman, the animal helpers and the seven sisters, who are snakes here but can become human in other narratives — go well with the fantastic bestiary that is such an important part of the traditional Gond vocabulary. The shape shifting qualities of some of the protagonists, not just Sundariya but also the snakes who double up as ropes, the frogs who become rags to plug the holes in the water pot, the turtle who serves as a stone, go well with the Gond style of representation where figures overlap, morph into another or suddenly merge with or emerge from the background. In the following section I describe some of the ways in which Basin Kanya is rendered as a painted narrative. Artists use a variety of narrative forms ranging from the monoscenic to the synoptic and sequential to narrate the tale visually.9

The Images Unless they are working as illustrators for specific book projects, most artists mine the traditional corpus of stories for characters that are then depicted as stand-alone figures. Venkatraman Singh Shyam, Narmada Prasad Tekam and his son, Ravi Tekam, have all gone back to the bamboo maiden theme repeatedly. Both Narmada and Ravi Tekam have painted evocative images of trees in bloom — though the flowers blooming are women’s heads instead (Plates 3.10 and 3.11). Venkat has two paintings, Vana Deviyan and Vana Devata (Forest Goddesses and Forest God) that are inspired by the bamboo maiden theme. Branches sprout from the sinuous limbs of figures that look human but have green skin and serpentine locks

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Plate 3.10: Narmada Prasad Tekam, Basin Kanya. c. 2002. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection Unknown.

instead of human hair and skin. Narmada Prasad takes the association between snakes and the figure of the bamboo maiden even further in his painting of Vish Kanya (The Poison Maiden, see Plate 3.12). Even though the painting of a wild woman sitting amidst a set of six serpents that swirl around her refers to another story, the motif of the snakes also connects her with this one. The story of the poison maiden does not specify the number of snakes. In this painting by showing the seventh snake as a human figure, Narmada plays on the association between the seven sisters (snakes) and the bamboo maiden. Kala Bai Shyam has a beautiful painting of a mermaid (Jal Rani), the bamboo maiden’s alter ego as we have seen. We do not need to know the story to appreciate these paintings. Their attraction is enhanced by the mystery — snake women, mermaids and flower maiden motifs are archetypal figures and occur in myths found in many parts of the world.

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Plate 3.11: Ravi Tekam, Basin Kanya. c. 2005. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection of Narmada Prasad Tekam.

Durga Bai Vyam’s paintings of Basin Kanya are somewhat different. Durga Bai loves this story and she paints it over and over again on large sheets of canvas with acrylic paint, and on small A4 size sheets with poster colours. For her the bamboo maiden is not merely an evocative motif.

Plate 3.12: Narmada Prasad Tekam, Vish Kanya. c. 2000. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection Unknown.

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Rather, it is the story that is important and in successive paintings of this story she depicts different stages in the transformation of the maiden. In a painting reproduced in Jangarh Kalam, the book on the Gond art tradition published by the government of Madhya Pradesh in 2006, Durga Bai shows the bamboo maiden atop a tree, her limbs awry. She is supported by a crab while the figures of a fish, stork and a pair of snakes enframe her body. A single arrow has pierced her side, hit by her youngest brother; his mouth stretched wide open in a paroxysm of grief. A pot with seven holes stands near the figure of the brother. Two other brothers are shown with bows drawn but their arrows have been deflected, merging with the foliage of the tree. The tree bristles as is if it has suddenly sprouted arrows instead of leaves. In the other bamboo maiden paintings by Durga Bai, the maiden is depicted at the moment of her transformation. She is either held aloft by her youngest and most favourite brother while she displays her limbs at the moment of transformation exalting in the rich foliage that springs from her or she is held up by the crab who willingly sacrificed his body so that she could nourish and transform the earth (Plate 3.13). In one large canvas the youngest brother is depicted with limbs like an octopus’s tentacles. He carries a pot on his head, with seven holes; balanced on the pot is a bundle of twigs, bound by the seven sisters, whose furled hoods serve as a throne for the maiden whose face emerges from the lush foliage of leaves and branches, made even more luxuriant by the many birds that seem to be nesting among the branches of what were once human limbs. The crab has vanished but has left a trace of its presence in the claws that we see on either side of the tentacle-like legs of the brother. The frogs swim up towards the figure of the maiden (Plate 3.14). Durga Bai loves bright colours and apart from the first bamboo maiden painting that I saw reproduced in the book Jangarh Kalam, which depicts the afflicted maiden in muted earth colours, Basin Kanya is always coloured a radiant orange as if to suggest the fecundity of her flesh. The brother no longer has human limbs as in the first picture in the book. His torso bulges like the bulb of a lily and even when he does have limbs they look non-human. In an important essay on Walt Disney, Sergei Eisenstein (2006) traces the ‘moving contour’ of the animated cartoon image back to the amoebalike shapes found in the imagery of caricaturists like James Thurber and Saul Steinberg (ibid.: 204–207). Figures seem to hover in space, their arms and legs like pseudopodia, suggesting movement in their ‘plasmaticism’

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Plate 3.13: Durga Bai Vyam, Basin Kanya. c. 2007. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

(ibid.: 194). Many Pardhan-Gond artists use fluid amoeba-like forms to suggest human figures. Figures contract into concentrated colour patches or expand suddenly by growing new limbs depending on the artist’s conception of the painterly surface. Mangru Uikey, who has also illustrated the story, uses this technique to such an extent that there is often no

Plate 3.14:

Durga Bai Vyam, Basin Kanya. c. 2006. Acrylic on Canvas. Collection Unknown.

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continuity between the characters in successive episodes of the story. Plates 3.15 and 3.16 both show the brothers at different moments of the story and Plate 3.17 is Mangru’s rendition of the figure of the bamboo maiden at the point of transition from human to plant. (see also Plate 3.18 which is Mangru’s synoptic version of the story).10 In Durga Bai’s paintings all the significant moments in the story are represented through the figures of the protagonists that feature in them. Unlike the arrangement of the pata narrative that is linear and continuous, Durga Bai’s paintings are synchronic. Unlike the Basin Kanya stories painted by other artists that could easily be mistaken for personal symbols unless specified, Durga Bai’s paintings seem to be articulated within a narrative universe — the episodes and the characters that figure in them are available in simultaneity not succession. They reveal an epic imagination, in that the stories are always already known. The juxtaposition of the different figures in the paintings suggests a tale that has to be unravelled and reorganised into its successive episodes. It is through Durga Bai’s narrative paintings that I can best understand the significance of the aniconic form in the social imaginary of the Pardhan-Gonds. Her pictorial language has a ‘fluid naturalism’ (Subramanyan 2006: 39). Each figure, whether a tree, a bird or a human form has an enlarged visual reference; it points to something other than itself by mirroring it or taking on its shape and form. Mangru Uikey, unlike Durga Bai, follows the conventions of modern storybook illustration and is faithful to the plot by sequentially depicting the important episodes in the story as we shall see. However, while being faithful to the broad outline of the plot structure he glosses over formulaic motifs, such as repetitive sequence of actions that involve the ‘helpers’ who come to the aid of the younger brother in the forest. Such motifs are crucial to oral storytelling — they function as mnemonic devices, moving the narrative forward while pointing to the overall pattern behind the narration. Later, when I compared the two versions as told to me by the artists, I realised that they were both using the folk tale merely as background support — as a frame to help organise the picture. Thus Durga Bai did not narrate the whole story — only enough to explain her painting. She told me that I would find it in the book Jangarh Kalam. For her the larger narrative served as a diegetical horizon. Mangru’s narrative was made up of a sequence of sentences, each describing a single episode that he had illustrated.11 However, Durga Bai, more often than Mangru, did bring in formulaic utterances, another typical feature of oral narration, especially

Plate 3.15: Mangru Uikey, Basin Kanya, frame 1. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.16:

Mangru Uikey, Basin Kanya, frame 6. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 3.17: Mangru Uikey, Basin Kanya at Point of Transformation. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.18: Mangru Uikey, Synoptic Version of Basin Kanya Story. 2011. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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through the voices of the different helpers (Lord 1976). Both artists combined fragments of dialogue between the characters and third person description in their narrations.

Cartoon Films and Gond Art As a motif-centric art form Gond art follows the logic of traditional storytelling in which each story is embedded in a universe of stories. The links between the different stories are not at the level of plot or episodic structure but at the level of motifs so that figures such as the bamboo maiden can become characters in other stories. I have already referred to the transformation that occurs when her flesh falls in water as opposed to the earth. She becomes a mermaid — Jal Rani or Son Machhli. As Son Macchli she becomes part of a new story which is in a relationship of transformation to the story that we have previously discussed. The seven brothers are replaced by seven sisters. The brother, the main protagonist, falls in love with the mermaid Son Machhli and secretly feeds her. The sisters, made suspicious by the sudden growth of his appetite, follow him to the forest and kill Son Machhli and feed her to their brother. The brother recognises his beloved and brings her back to life by throwing her into the water. Paintings based on stories typically follow the logic of the narrative universe by depicting key figures in the narratives rather than illustrating individual episodes. Each of these figures can become nodal points in a vast network of stories. Each figure functions as a motif suggesting new associations in a chain of such motifs, becoming sites of transformation where episodes and characters combine and recombine. As a collective phenomenon, storytelling involves working with synchronic structures. Individual stories are not discrete items with fixed beginnings and endings. Instead, formulaic themes and motifs co-exist in the narrative universe from which individual storytellers make their selection. The authorial signature of a particular storyteller can be found in the selection he/she makes and the manner in which thematic combinations are constituted (Levi-Strauss 1975). The storytelling potential of Gond art is increasingly being tapped by new forms of narration such as film and storybooks. Gond artists are in great demand as illustrators for children’s stories, cartoons and other such ‘educational’ projects.12 Durga Bai has illustrated several books for Tara Books, a small but very innovative publishing house in Chennai about whom I shall have more to say in Chapter 4.

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An important aspect of this move to new media and to non-traditional modes of storytelling is the change in the structure of the story itself. In oral cultures, narration is often an ongoing activity. Embedded in a narrative universe, events that are potentially ‘storyable’13 are linked to other such events in a complex network. Stories in print culture, however, are thought of as discrete entities with clear cut beginnings and endings and a continuous storyline with a fixed episodic structure. However, even more important than this is that when stories move from the oral to the print medium they also move from third person to first person modes of narration and are usually character-driven rather than organised around formulaic themes and motifs. Shifts in genre lead inevitably to changes in the story. Each genre carries a distinctive structure of intentionality and expectation that orients its prospective readers. Shifts in genre are like acts of translation — they change the scope of the text through an infusion of otherness, as Walter Benjamin so eloquently reminds us. For him this allows texts to live on, even beyond the lives of their authors (ibid. 1968). But what actually happens to the story in the process? I try to demonstrate the process of change that translation brings about in the rest of this chapter. Tara Douglas, a British animator who lives in New Delhi and runs the Adivasi Arts Trust, an association that promotes Indian tribal art through animation, collaborated with Leslie Mackenzie, an animator based in Scotland, to develop a project called ‘The Tallest Story Competition’ in 2001–03. Four folk tales were animated using different adivasi art styles. Leslie Mackenzie, who directed the Gond film, chose ‘cut-out animation’ as the technique that was best suited to the Gond art style of patterned shapes (Douglas 2003).14 A workshop was organised in Bhopal to which 14 Pardhan-Gond artists were invited, and Leslie Mackenzie worked with them to create the art work. The stencils demonstrating the animation poses were prepared in Scotland and the Pardhan-Gond artists only had to fill and colour them in, using their distinctive patterns as texture. Each character was cut out and the body parts separated. Then these separate parts were fixed back together with blue tack creating two dimensional puppets. The characters were then ‘animated’ by moving the puppets ‘in small increments captured frame by frame on the video camera. The characters seemed to move when the scene was played back’ (ibid.: 14). I will take up the story that was chosen for animation for detailed discussion. But first we need to consider the changes brought about when painted images on a flat ground are treated like puppets and made to move. In Gond painting, movement is portrayed by the use of ambiguities

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suggested by depicting overlapping figures and interlaced design motifs. Two or more design motifs are used to create an overall pattern on figures painted in flat colours suggesting movement by articulating limbs. PardhanGond artists do not use shading as a technique. Instead they use surface design — two or more patterns, painted over the figures — to suggest depth, volume and bodily movement (see Plate 3.19). Bodily movement however is never naturalistic. Even in the case of human figures, faces and bodies are covered with an overall design as if to suggest a deliberate

Plate 3.19: Shambhu Shyam, Ganesha. c. 2007. Ink on Paper. Collection Unknown.

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estrangement from the ‘natural’ world. In the cartoon film by contrast, the figures become coloured shapes. The designs are purely decorative, used for ‘texture’ rather than to suggest bodily movement. The moving images are hybrid objects — the form and mode of organisation following a structure that conforms to the Western canon of image production and storytelling but using stylistic features that belong to a different tradition. I had a feeling of unease when I first saw the Gond animation film titled ‘Best of the Best’. It was only after repeated viewings that I was able to pin-point the source of that unease. It was not because still images were suddenly moving but because the movement was rendered in a ‘naturalistic’ way. ‘The Best of the Best’ is the story of two friends — a mouse and a bird. Chhote, the mouse, is lazy and irresponsible. She does not prepare for the rainy season and has to take shelter with Litia, the bird, when the monsoons arrive in the forest. Litia tries to be hospitable but Chhote refuses to eat the variety of edible foods — berries, insects and worms — that Litia offers her. Finally, at her wits’ end, Litia cuts off Chhote’s tail and ear while she is asleep, cooks and offers them to her in the morning for breakfast. Chhote has never eaten anything so delicious but later discovers, to her horror, that she has no tail and is one ear short. The film ended with the homily — ‘Only the best was good enough for Chhote. But the best is not always good for you’. This glosses over the suggestion of cannibalism in the story. Litia is portrayed as a mother figure who indulges the naughty little mouse. In the film Litia is depicted as a pigeon and her animated image involves complicated neck and wing movements. Even though the colour of her feathers are pink and not grey or white, naturalistic neck movements are suggested by using two circular cut-outs of the head and neck. Small incremental changes in the position of the head against the circle of the neck suggest the expansion and contraction of the pigeon’s neck when it coos. Similarly, flapping wing movements suggest the presence of a hinge joint in conformity with the skeletal structure of a bird’s wing. Pardhan-Gond painters have a variety of different ways in which they depict birds in flight. Sometimes they stream out like watery columns or are fluid shadows framing the bird’s body like a fiery halo (Plates 3.20, 3.21 and 3.22). Some birds seem to be wingless, like the hapless bird that lies on its back with its beak open, desperately trying to swallow drops of rain that might fall from the parched sky overhead (Plate 3.3). Birds do not always look like birds in this tradition. Sometimes they look like fabulous creatures from another world. Material for this section was culled from reports of the workshop by Tara Douglas and from the film itself. I was not actually present at the workshop

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Plate 3.20: Mayank Shyam. Fish and Bird. c. 2006. Ink on Paper. Artists’ Collection.

in Bhopal where the decisions regarding story and actual techniques for production were discussed. However, in July 2008 I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop to develop scripts for short animation films based on ‘tribal’ art forms and stories at the IGNCA. Tara Douglas, the main organiser, had selected three teams of artists and storywriters from the states of Madhya Pradesh, Manipur and Jharkhand respectively and a team of student animators from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmadabad. I use some of the experiences from that workshop to discuss the transformation in storytelling that occurs when a new medium inter-

Plate 3.21:

Mayank Shyam. Birds. c. 2006. Acrylic on Paper. Artists’ Collection.

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Plate 3.22: Sambhav Shyam, Sanpankhri. c. 2006. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

venes in the narrative universe. My discussion will focus exclusively on the Pardhan-Gond animators and their story. I will return to the story of Chhote and Litia in the concluding section.

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By the time that I arrived at the workshop, the stories for animation had already been selected. The choice of story was dictated by the fact that it needed no dialogue and therefore no complicated lip sync movements. The Gond story, ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ (Gilheri ke sapne), is a much loved story and often illustrated by Pardhan-Gond artists. To think of it as a single story is somewhat of a misnomer as it, like all other traditional Gond stories, has many variants.15

The Story There was a squirrel that lived on a tree. She was very despondent and wished that she could be someone else — perhaps if she was a flower she would be happy. But then she saw a bee sipping nectar from the flower. Perhaps it would be better to be a fruit instead. As soon as these thoughts came to her mind she was magically transformed. She became a flower and then a luscious fruit. But then she saw a bird coming towards her and was frightened as she suddenly remembered that birds eat fruit. The squirrel transformed herself into a bird only to nearly fall prey to a fox. She managed to evade the fox and decided that it would be better to become a powerful animal like the fox rather than a small bird. But no sooner had she taken on the shape of a fox than she was confronted by the mighty lion, the king of the jungle. She next took on the form of the lion but the lion, she thought, can be killed by wily predators like jackals who may look small but have weapons that can fell even lions (the smell of a jackal’s urine is so powerful that it can even disorient large animals like the lion). The squirrel then decided to become a jackal only to be confronted by man, the most powerful predator in the forest. The squirrel decided that the human form is the best of all. All animals are afraid of humans, she thought. But she had not taken into account the conflictual world that humans live in, torn by myriad different wants and desires. She came to realise that the human world was the worst of all the many worlds that she had experienced. It was better to be a squirrel after all.

The Process of Animation This story had to be summarised keeping in mind Tara’s dictum that we had all heard that morning: The most successful animated stories follow a beginning to end structure. The objective has to be clear at all times. It begins with the set-up stage where we introduce the audience to the setting, characters and circumstances of the story. It is followed by the conflict stage, that is, the

144 c Speaking with Pictures point in the storyline where things start to go wrong for the characters. Then finally we have the resolution stage, the point in the movie when the conflict we have introduced comes to a climax and is resolved. A failed story is when the audience is confused about the end. In an oral tradition there is much dialogue and many side stories. In animation there is more action, less dialogue and a simple storyline. A film should be a fulfilling storytelling experience and an expression of characterisation and personality.16

There was a moment of confusion when the NID students who were advising the group asked about the motivation of the story — what it was about. Tara had talked about the financial aspect. Animation is an expensive business and the artists had to think of a log line (saaransh), i.e., a few sentences that would give a prospective investor or distributor an immediate sense of what the story was about. Narmada Prasad and Venkat, the two most articulate members of the Gond team, said that the theme was motivation enough. The story recounted the lifeline of all creation — from birth to death. The squirrel’s dream was the dream of each atma (soul). The squirrel represented the atma. Narmada Prasad said, ‘We have to go through 84 wombs to be born as human’. ‘84 lakh’, Venkat corrected. ‘Man is the biggest animal of all but even he is scared of something. Man is scared of life.’ But the NID students were not satisfied. ‘There must be a reason why the squirrel is dissatisfied. We will have to show it in the film.’ They went over the story step by step. According to the logic of animation, the story had contradictions which made the motivation of the main protagonist unclear. The story was divided into stages, each stage determined by the transformation of the squirrel. The motivation for transformation was clear to the students. ‘The squirrel changes into that which she most fears at that particular moment. But in the beginning she envies the beauty of the flower. That too is understandable. But why should she change into a fruit when she sees the bee approaching?’ So it was decided that instead of a fruit the next transformation should be into a bee. Ravi, Narmada Prasad’s teenage son who probably had the most experience with modern forms of storytelling such as cartoons, was not convinced that the fox posed a threat to the bird. ‘Birds can fly away,’ he said. The logic of the original story is such that the successive stages of transformation are determined by the idea of sentience. Flowers and fruit are inanimate. Birds and bees can fly. The animals are all earth-bound, but four-legged like the squirrel, except for man who walks on two legs. It was decided that the storyboard — the pictorial script which animators use to maintain continuity — would depict the bird as a low flying one (see Plates 3.23 and 3.24). There were further problems. Apart from the older Pardhan-Gond

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Plate 3.23: Storyboard for Animation Film, frame 1. Collection of Venkataraman Singh Shyam.

artists no one present had heard about the potency of jackal’s urine. The artists were reminded that the film would be viewed by children who were unfamiliar with the Gond milieu. As one would expect the jackal avatar was dropped from the script.

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Plate 3.24: Storyboard for Animation Film, frame 2. Collection of Venkataraman Singh Shyam.

The artists were asked to think about the profiles of their characters. Their motivations and personalities; where they were situated and why. The students said that the artists had to get under the skin of their char-

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acters in order to animate them successfully. The team was divided up. Venkat, as the most experienced artist, sat with the NID students to make up the script, while the others took charge of drawing the different characters. Each one had to be drawn in three different positions — front, left profile and right profile.17 Three-quarter face is not a position that is used in Gond art and it was left out after some discussion. These were the ‘performance poses’ that the characters might get into. The poses were not attached to specific words but could express a range of thoughts and emotions. The story had no words but the artists were asked to think of sounds that might convey background atmosphere and the different moods and action sequences in the story. There was to be no narrator, no ‘voice-over’ and sounds had to be built into the characters themselves. The sounds had to convey the meaning of the story. Some excerpts from the storyboard and script are given in the next section (see Plates 3.23 and 3.24). The two complement each other. The script gives details of camera angles, background sounds, movements, etc. The storyboard is the visual support to the script, giving a drawing of each frame of the story to make for smooth coordination between the different functionaries working on the project.

Extract from Script Sound fades in> early morning jungle sound, birds chirping, etc. Fade In It’s a cluster of leaves, and with the rustling of leaves the squirrel shows its face which seems sad and dejected and goes back in with the same rustling noise and we hear something moving behind the leaves> camera slowly pans down to reveal the trunk of the tree on which the squirrel goes down slowly> and with a jump it exits the frame. Sound< rustling of leaves, and birds chirping. Cut Mid shot> amongst some dried leaves and a few debris you can see the squirrel’s face and eyes wide open as if staring at something. Then with a sudden introduction of music consisting mainly of string instruments [the bana] the title fades in> after sometime a flower falls on the water creating ripples. Thus the title fades away and so does the music. Sound< wave sounds, lake ambience. Cut

148 c Speaking with Pictures Mid shot> the ambient jungle sound continues. The squirrel is looking down at the flower and then she looks up and in excitement her tail rises up and the body gives a twitch and she moves a bit18 and we cut (we are able to see a part of the pond with the tree and a part of the jungle in the background). Sound< music of excitement.

The artists had initially suggested that the film should begin with a close-up of the squirrel’s eye in which we would see the reflection of a flower. The moment of transformation when the squirrel morphed into another form would be signalled by a jump to prepare the viewers for what was to follow. The choice of story reflects the artistic choices made by this pictorial genre. Figures are shape shifters, one form morphs into another. Each form is composite and whole stories unfold from a few synoptic representations. Venkat has a beautiful painting of the monkey god, Hanuman viewed through the eye of the fish that swallowed a drop of his sweat and became pregnant with his future son. He wanted the motif of the eye to signal the beginning and the end of the story. The eye, the symbol of the soul, would reveal the inner world of the squirrel. At the end of the film, he suggested that all the figures be shown sucked into the eye again and the squirrel left clear eyed and content having experienced the world in its manifoldness. Gond pictures do not convey emotion. As I have already said, the intricate pattern that covers the figures serves as a mask, distancing the figures, making them non-human. It is the overall design that makes the Gond pictorial world different from the one that we occupy in everyday time. It is set apart as the world of imagination. By insisting that the figures be able to convey emotion through bodily expression, are the Pardhan-Gond artists being asked to move out of their own pictorial tradition into another one — i.e., the pictorial vocabulary of cartoons? I now turn to another variant of this story called the ‘Chameleon’s Dreams’ (Girgit ke Sapne), given to me by Mangru Uikey. Mangru, a schooleducated artist, has been collecting stories from his older relatives in Patangarh to be used later as themes for his pictures. I have been able to acquire paintings of at least four narrative series from Mangru. As a literate artist, Mangru treats the story as a text and tries to match the sequence of episodes in the story to the images that he paints. He always describes the sequence of actions that make up the particular episode being depicted at the back of the picture in writing. Individual paintings in the series are numbered to indicate the order in which events occur in the narrative.

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Even though Mangru’s story has a similar episodic structure to that of ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’, it differs in some important aspects. The substitution of the squirrel by a chameleon as the main protagonist brings the message into sharper focus.19 The chameleon takes on the image of its environment by changing its colour. It has no identity of its own. In Mangru’s rendition of the story, the dream motif recurs frequently. Unlike the story recounted in the animation script where the dream finds scant mention, the chameleon goes from one dream state to another without waking up.20 Alfred Schutz describes our experience of the phenomenal world in terms of multiple realities. As sentient creatures, human beings have the capacity to move from the paramount reality of the ‘wide awake world’ to finite provinces of reality such as the spheres of dreams and sleep (Schutz and Luckman 1973: 31). But every journey to a finite province of reality culminates in a return to the wide awake world. Unlike the chameleon in Mangru’s story, we cannot go directly from one finite province of reality to another. We cannot jump from one dream world to another. Schutz describes the life world of an individual, an autonomous self who engages in a world of work and action (ibid.). The extension of the boundaries of the self is possible but only in rare moments when we experience transcendence. The Gond story describes the journey of the soul (atma) through a complete cycle of rebirths. When asked to summarise the story’s message, Venkat and Narmada had both said that it was about self-reflection (atma ki soch). They said that the soul reflects on its journey through life, not merely this one birth but the many rebirths that it undergoes, through 84 lakh wombs.21 In Mangru’s story, as the chameleon jumps from dream to dream, each dream world becomes real for a time. The phenomenal world itself is in a state of flux, shaped by desire — the desire to be like the other, to seek perpetually to become the other. Phenomenal reality, the world of appearance, is maya (illusion).22 Mangru’s picture narrative of ‘The Chameleon’s Dreams’ focused on only one of the dream incarnations that the chameleon takes on. The first three pictures in the series portray the chameleon’s experience of its snake body in the phenomenal world from the point of view of the snake itself. The first picture shows two interlocked figures (Plate 3.25). These could be interpreted either as the chameleon and his friend or as the chameleon in two phases of its existence — at the moment of transformation. The next two pictures show the snake revelling in its new body, climbing up a tree to steal eggs from a bird’s nest and slithering sinuously on the ground unmindful of the sharp rocks that are scattered around (Plates 3.26 and 3.27). Mangru’s snake dwarfs the image of the tree, as if to convey the overwhelming experience of its new body. The fourth and fifth pictures in

Plate 3.25: Mangry Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 3.26: Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.27: Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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the series depict the new experience not from the subjective aspect as the last two did, but from the perspective of the outside, as the perception of danger, of threat from the other — the mongoose (Plates 3.28 and 3.29). The fourth picture shows the snake’s body contracted, drawn into itself, no longer stretched out sinuously in graceful coils. The fifth shows the snake being attacked by a kite.23 The chameleon’s successive incarnations are depicted in the sixth picture — chameleon, snake, mongoose and kite (Plate 3.30). The seventh picture depicts the same scene but from a different perspective. The dream — the cycle of rebirths is shown on a bill-board — a synoptic narrative embedded within the larger pictorial series, an object of reflection, for all to see and think about (Plate 3.31). If the last two paintings sum up the story, then the penultimate one presents the story from the subjective perspective of the successive incarnations. Immersed in phenomenal experience, they are unable to see beyond the present incarnation. The last painting depicts them as signs — indexes of the soul’s journey through time. As if to make the distinction between the subjective and the objective perspectives clear, Mangru only draws the outlines of the figures on the bill-board. He does not cover them with an ornamental design, as if to show that these are not the characters in the story, only their signs, traces in fading memories. The sign board is the past, made visible through the act of remembering (Plate 3.31).24

From Painting to Storytelling through Pictures In an important work on perception and the development of ‘realism’, John Hyman (1989) says that, ‘modes of depiction differ on what can be depicted and hence what can and cannot be asked about the depicted’ (ibid.: 105). The questions that Tara Douglas posed to the stories in the workshop at the IGNCA were to do with character development and the expression of their personalities. Questions posed to the characters in the narrative such as ‘Who am I? When am I? What do I want?’ are supposed to ‘thicken’ the story — develop its plot and action structure. Can these questions be posed to the stories that we have discussed here? If they are then the answers given will reach out not to hidden dimensions of an individual’s personality but rather to other births and incarnations. The adivasi animation project was an attempt to translate the idiom and subject matter of Gond art into the language of cartoons. The changes that occurred in the medium were a result of the kinds of questions that were being posed to it. As mentioned previously, Gond stories point to a narrative universe. An event or episode becomes meaningful only in terms of its diegetical relationship with that universe. Stories are not discrete entities with ‘beginning to end structures’. ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’

Plate 3.28:

Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 4. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.29: Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 5. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.30: Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 6. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.31: Mangru Uikey, Chameleon’s Dreams, frame 7. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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evokes other stories that are to do with mythic themes such as cosmic time and the nature of self-realisation — this was clearly stated by the participants in the workshop. Perhaps it is only in the state of dreaming that we experience the truth of all being when the superficial specificities of identity are dissolved. In this story it acts as a form of pralaya — the cosmic dissolution that periodically puts an end to the phenomenal world in Hindu mythology (Gandhi 2002; Pocock 1986). The motif of the dream in the story points, in a playful way, to a radical theological question about the nature of self-identity. Are we identical with our bodies? Can we be imaged in other forms of life?25 Artistic techniques that obscure distinctive identity, such as morphing and overall design that estrange familiar features of the human landscape, have already been discussed. J. Swaminathan thought that this particular feature of Gond art reflected the spiritual relationship that they as an adivasi community had with their forest environment. Dense forests do not allow clarity of vision. One is dependent on other sensations such as sound and smell, neither of which allows us the hard-edged clarity of form that we associate with vision. But rather than reflecting a vague sense of spirituality, the stories discussed here seem, to my mind, to be addressing sophisticated theological problems. Rebirth eschatology predates Hinduism and is found associated with tribal societies in many part of the world (Obeyesekere 2002). A re-examination of Gond art from the point of view of their religious system might yield rich dividends. This fact was brought home to me recently when I saw a series of paintings on the story of Chhote and Litia by Mangru Uikey (Plates 3.32–3.41). As always he had described the particular episode to which the painting referred on the back of the sheet. There were some differences in the story that Mangru narrated and the one recounted in the ‘Best of the Best’. Thus, Mangru’s story did not tell us the identities of the two friends. In his story, Litia was not as altruistic as she was made out to be in the film. She was initially reluctant to let Chhote into her house. Then she fed Chhote her own ear because she did not want to go out in the rain to forage for extra food. Finally, when Chhote discovers the loss of her ear she throws Litia out of the house and appropriates it for herself. Mangru’s paintings play on the ambiguous identities of the two friends. In the first frame we see images of mice and birds, resting on the branches of a tree (Plate 3.32). But from the second frame onwards Chhote and Litia are both depicted as mice (Plates 3.33 and 3.34). It is only when Chhote appears before Litia’s house that we see two bird-like figures sitting on the roof (Plate 3.35). Litia is again shown as a bird-like figure in the scene where Chhote’s ear is cut and cooked (Plate 3.39). We do not actually see

Plate 3.32: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.33: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.34: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.35: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 4. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.36: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 5. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.37: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 6. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.38: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 7. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.39:

Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 8. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.40: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 9. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 3.41: Mangru Uikey, Chote and Litia, frame 10. 2009. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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the action as it occurs. The scene is set with a hearth, a pair of scissors, a bird form emerging menacingly from the corner of the hut and a mouse with two ears in the foreground. Again in the final scene of confrontation the two antagonists are both mice, one of them with only one ear (Plate 3.41). In Mangru’s paintings, the specific form of embodiment is less important than the depiction of an evolving relationship between the two characters. In the scenes of interaction, Litia takes on the self-image of Chhote by changing from bird to mouse. The specific form of embodiment of each character in the story does not seem to be important for Mangru. The story that anchors his depiction is well-known. Freed from the necessity to follow the plot he is able to explore some of the nuances of the story. After setting the initial scene of the story, where mice and birds are both shown playing in the forest, all scenes of interaction between the two characters show them both as mice. Litia reverts to her bird form only when she is plotting an act of violence on the sleeping Chhote (Plate 3.39).26 Sequential narration is not the preferred mode in the pictorial storytelling of Gond art. Even when artists choose to tell stories by using separate frames for successive episodes in preference to the common synoptic or monoscenic modes, they never consciously seek to maintain continuity of scenes and characters over the successive phases of the narrative.27 Each frame in Mangru’s narrative series could just as well be a single picture in which the different forms are related to each other in such a way that the picture becomes a coherent whole. Unlike patas where the depiction of temporal succession is achieved through techniques such as referral and repetition to inspire ‘the anticipations and retrospections’ of the viewer (Jakobson 1971: 217), Mangru tries to link each frame with its successor through the fragment of text written at the back of the sheet. But the link is weak and is easily uncoupled. Rather than referring to successive episodes in the plot, the series portrays the different moods of the characters in relation to the contexts in which they find themselves. As a mode of storytelling then, Gond art seems to be closer to traditional Indian forms of narration than to modern Western ones, emphasising sentiment and emotional state rather than event or episode (Williams 1996). Mangru’s images seem to be able to relate to the emotional tenor of the story in a way that the cartoons cannot. They bring together images and words in a way that the animation film, based as it is on the organisational principles of naturalistic representation, finds difficult to do. The professed aim of the animation project was to try and extend the life of a folk art form by reaching out to new audiences via a new medium. As Stanley Cavell (1971) reminds us, a medium is defined by its giving significance to specific possibilities. It is only when it acquires the capacity to

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express itself in more than one genre that we become aware of its potential as an art form. Gond art is also a new medium that rediscovers the potentiality of the bardic tradition from which it originally developed. By learning to converse with its narrative tradition, a new possibility emerges. Precisely those values that made it attractive as an ‘adivasi’ art form — fluid contours with two dimensional, overlapping figures, bold colours and overall design — can be used to portray the mysterious though playful world of adivasi myths. K.G. Subramanyan (2006) talks about the enlarged visual reference of traditional Indian painting — a triangle becomes a mountain, that in turn stands for Mount Meru, the axis mundi in Hindu mythology, a bird becomes Garuda or Kak Bhushundi, boon companions of Vishnu and so on. One sees this ‘fluid naturalism’, this enlarged reference in Gond art only when it is allowed to tell stories. Jangarh’s figures are never just abstract shapes. They seem to be enigmatic because they gesture to a cosmology that is unfamiliar to us. I do not think that animation film will become a successful new genre in the way that Gond art has become. Judging from the two experiments that I have described in this chapter, this medium will not be able to grasp the full potential of the mythic universe. Trapped in a clichéd vision that sees folk tales as children’s stories that must be simple and didactic, it is unable to explore the multiple layers of meaning that the story suggests. Perhaps these images are not meant to move. Movement diverts our attention from the image itself, extending it instead to action, to some sensory motor response (Deleuze 1992; see also Trifonova 2004). I conclude this chapter with a few thoughts on the idea of translation. Semioticians such as C.S. Peirce tell us that the meaning of a sign emerges only when it is translated into another sign. The sign leaves the system that it is a part of and travels to another sign system (Peirce 1955). In a similar vein, Walter Benjamin (1968) says that translation allows original texts to live on by infusing them with the presence of the other (see also Brodski 1999). In this chapter, I have described several different events of translation — of one genre or medium into another. Gond art of course is also a product of a dramatic act of self-translatability when Jangarh and other young Pardhan storytellers first began to use the idiom of the other, i.e., modern art to occupy another region of the social imaginary (Das 2001). Thus, the appeal of Jangarh’s painting for the art public lies in the fact that he was able to translate a mythic universe available in the mode of oral narration and ritual practice to painting, thereby bringing out the otherness of myth now embodied in figural motifs. As Barbara Johnson says, ‘translation is a bridge that creates out of itself the two fields of

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battle it separates … [it] paradoxically releases within each text the subversive forces of its own foreignness, thus reinscrib[ing] those forces in the tensile strength of a new neighbourhood of otherness’ (1985: 123; Brodski 1999). Texts, from this point of view, are not autonomous objects but rather constituted though the activities associated with their reception — activities of reading and interpretation that involve some element of translation. The ‘neighbourhood of otherness’ so eloquently invoked by Johnson is the art public made up of strangers for whom these stories have been entextualised, i.e., articulated in a form that is transmutable to other genres and other media — forms that also address new readers and new publics (Warner 2002). The very process of ‘entextualisation’ by which ‘context dependent speech acts’ are detached from face-to-face interaction and embedded in new contexts can be thought of as acts of translation (Barber 2007: 3). As Karin Barber reminds us, the process of entextualisation does not always lead to a freezing of the text but it can also lead to its greater mobility as the segment of discourse now detached from the conversational flow becomes available for repetition, re-creation and quotation. In the course of its journey, however, a text may also change — shifting from one genre to another, taking on new possibilities as it orients itself to new publics.

Notes 1. See Chapter 1. 2. See the section on ‘Primitivism, Folk Art and the Modern’ in Chapter 1. 3. The influential art critic, Krishna Chaitanya (1994), while describing Jangarh’s style says that ‘the clarity of his contours with the impulse of rhythm through pointillism’ evoke ‘primal feelings’ (ibid.: 50). Chaitanya gives an example of his ability to adapt adivasi representations to conform to new perceptions. In a painting about the worship of Mara Deo, a deity in the Gond pantheon, he is depicted in the form of Kali to enhance the cruelty of the sacrifice performed for him. An aniconic form would not have conveyed the suggestion of barbarism that Jangarh probably wished to convey. I have not seen the painting but it clearly made an impression as I have descriptions of it from several people who were associated with Bharat Bhawan when it was first exhibited. 4. This is a recurrent image in Anand’s oeuvre.The number of heads vary and sometimes the necks become serpentine. Anand insists that he had actually seen such a cat in his village in Mandla. It died soon after birth. But the use of serpentine necks owes much to Vaishnavite imagery.

172 c Speaking with Pictures 5. Venkataram Singh Shyam, Bhopal, 2008. This story has roots in the Sanskritic tradition. Another variant of the story describes how the ancestor of this bird was cursed by Bara Deo to live in perpetual fear of annihilation. She would give birth to her offspring in pain and would always be afraid that the eggs that she had laid with such difficulty would break. During thunderstorms she would lie with the eggs under her to protect them from falling branches (Mukherjee and Kaushal 2006). 6. In keeping with the modernist paradigm such elements would be characterised as ‘non-art’ (see Elkins 1999). 7. Bruno Latour (1999) uses ‘translation’ to refer to all the displacements that occur through the mediation of the multiple actors and materials that makes up an action programme. ‘Chains of translation’ refer to the work through which actors modify, displace and translate their various and contradictory interests (ibid.: 311). 8. A similar story is also found among the Santals. Here the body of Basin Kanya becomes the first musical instrument that the Santal know of. 9. Vidya Dahejia (1997) describes some of the visual modes of narration available to the Indian tradition. The monoscenic mode centres on a single event in a story. In the synoptic mode several episodes from the story are depicted within a single frame without a temporal sequence. Sequential narratives follow the temporal order of events in the story and depict them sequentially. 10. Plate 3.15 introduces the brothers and Plate 3.16 shows the brothers cooking and eating their sister’s flesh. 11. Each episode was described in a single sentence at the back of the painting. All the paintings were numbered giving the narrative a sequential structure. 12. The Madhya Pradesh government has initiated a large-scale painting project with Gond artists on subaltern freedom fighters as part of its commemoration of 60 years of Indian independence. 13. Harvey Sacks (1992) uses this term to characterise the story-making potential of certain events. 14. In contrast, the story animated in the Worli style of stick figures used cel animation. J.R. Bray first developed the process of cel animation. Cels are translucent sheets of celluloid onto which areas of cartoons are drawn. If the area to be animated (i.e. to be shown as moving) is drawn on cel then the corresponding still area will be drawn on paper over which the cel is laid for photography (Callahan 1988: 224). 15. Another variant of the story does not actually have the squirrel changing shape. The squirrel dreams of being a frog, but when she sees a frog being eaten by a snake, she decides that it might be safer to be a crow instead. But when she sees the crow trying in vain to protect its young ones from the jaws of the dreaded snake, she realises that she is better off as she is. But little does she realise that the tree that she is climbing is actually a snake waiting patiently for its prey (see Mukherjee and Kaushal 2006).

Storytelling in Gond Art d 173 16. Quotation taken from lecture notes circulated by Tara Douglas at the workshop. 17. The artists found it very difficult to maintain uniformity in the proportions of each figure drawn. They are not used to copying and found it difficult to imitate the same figure in different angles. 18. The NID students felt that the squirrel had to show some pleasure in each new birth. She had to experience each sensuously before harsh reality hit her. They also discussed possible features such as personality quirks that could be made to travel across the different forms that the squirrel morphed into to suggest continuity of character. Gond art tends to deal with archetypes and not with individual personalities which would make this difficult to do. 19. See Appendix II for ‘The Chameleon’s Dreams’. 20. Venkat’s script for ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ begins with the sentence, ‘With a dream in his eyes, the squirrel becomes a flower’. The final script uses less poetic language. 21. As with many other stories in the Gond repertoire the theme on which ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ is based is also found in the Mahabharata. But there the story is about cosmic classification and the importance of keeping different categories apart. The Gond story instead is about the way one could imagine how others could live in the world (Hiltebeitel 2001; also see Chapter 5). 22. I am reminded of David Pocock’s (1986) discussion of the Bhagavat Purana which says that the various dissolutions [of being and the universe] are experienced only in the mind. Pralaya, dissolution, never occurs in reality. In a similar vein Ramchandra Gandhi (2002), in a meditation on advaita through the paintings of Tyeb Mehta, says, ‘courage, compassion, curiosity — work, rest, and play — unravel apparent self and apparent not-self as Self’s self-images’ (ibid.: 37). 23. Mangru does not conform to strict episodic sequence in his pictorial depiction of the narrative. Otherwise the snake should have been a mongoose in Plate 3.27. 24. Here I am reminded of Barthes’ distinction between the painted and the photographic image as one involving the experience of time. He sees the former as a ‘consciousness of the being — there of the thing [being represented] and the latter of its having been there’ (1977: 44). 25. A beautiful painting by Dilip Shyam shows the squirrel climbing up a tree in the form of a snake. His version of the story ends with a conundrum — is the snake that is wound around the trunk of a tree, part of the tree or not? Of course the squirrel, in imminent danger of being swallowed by the snake, may not have the time to ponder the question. 26. Compare Mangru’s series with sections of the storyboard prepared for the animation project on ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ (Plates 3.23 and 3.24). 27. Vidya Dahejia (1997) discusses the different narrative modes that artists used for visual depiction in ancient India. She distinguishes between mono-scenic, continuous, sequential and synoptic modes of narration.

FOUR

Patua Art and the Graphic Novel: An Experiment in Inter-Textual Communication T

his chapter takes up the questions posed in the previous chapters pertaining to issues of intertextuality, mediatisation and canon formation. It asks if it is still possible to speak of originary texts and autonomous traditions when the quality of mobility is built into the process of entextualisation itself. To address some of these issues I take the Ramayana as my case study. The Ramayana is more than a text however. It is a meta-narrative made up of a corpus of different tellings1 available to successive generations by the diverse performative traditions through which it is embodied. Each new telling assumes knowledge of prior tellings. This relationship to previous Ramayana texts allows a certain freedom to later composers. Since the story is already known composers are free to dismember the text and to detach particular episodes for fresh enactment or commentary. I take up four separate tellings, all focusing on the ‘Abduction of Sita’ (Sita Harana) episode delineated in the ‘Aranayakanda’ of the Valmiki Ramayana. These tellings are all by Chitrakar artists, one of them a traditional enactment with song and picture narrative and the other three are experimental works, explorations in a new genre — the graphic novel. As experimental pieces, these tellings are one-off events and will probably not contribute to the living body of Rama katha in the region.2

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The Rama Katha in the Chitrakar Tradition The Chitrakars have their own distinctive genre of Rama katha enactments. While these enactments do refer to the textual Ramayana tradition, especially the Ramayana by Krittibash,3 they are far more dependent on oral tellings of the Rama katha prevalent in the region. The Chitrakars divide the story into different episodes for narrative performance. These episodes have come to acquire a certain fixity through repeated enactments, but previous generations of Chitrakars probably distributed the episodes in the Ramayana into narrative blocks differently from the way it is done today.4 Be that as it may, some of the most popular narrations in Medinipur are of episodes such as the ‘Abduction of Sita’ (Sita Harana), ‘Ravana’s Death’ (Ravana Vadha) and the ‘Bridge over the River’ (Setu Bandhan). Briefly, the Sita Harana story begins with the exile.5 After the framing scene (Plate 4.1), the second register of the scroll shows Sita walking in the forest flanked by Rama and her faithful brother-in-law Lakshmana (Plate 4.2).6 Some of the background information such as the events leading to the exile may be imparted through the musical refrain that is part of the accompanying song but this too is presented in a way that assumes prior knowledge (see Appendix IV). The next scene shifts abruptly to the Panchavati forest — to the hut where Rama and Sita played the dice game (pasha) together while Lakshmana stood guard. It also includes the scene of Surpanaka’s enticement and mutilation (Plate 4.2). The court scene in Lanka — Ravana enthroned with Maricha in attendance and a weeping and bloody Surpanakha — usually follows (Plate 4.3). Then comes the scene with Maricha disguised as a golden deer, Ravana’s appearance in the forest in the guise of an ascetic, the abduction of Sita and finally Jatayu’s ill-fated attempt at rescue (Plates 4.4 and 4.5). A comparison with the story of the Ramayana given in Appendices III A and III B shows us that the Chitrakar performance elides many of the events that give coherence to the story. In fact the story is unintelligible to those who have no prior knowledge of the text. In keeping with the multimedia style of the performance described in Chapter 2, episodes are selected that will allow for the possibility of iconic play both in the song as well as in the painted scroll. It is precisely this feature of the Chitrakar art of picture storytelling that has motivated new interventions in this tradition. Beginning with the state government of West Bengal as we saw in Chapter 1, there have been several non-governmental organisations who have commissioned ‘new’ stories from Chitrakar artists.7

Plate 4.1: Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 1. c. 2000. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 4.2: Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 2. Author’s Collection.

Plate 4.3: Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 3. Author’s Collection.

Plate 4.4: Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 4. Author’s Collection.

Plate 4.5: Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 5. Author’s Collection.

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In 2008 I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop exploring new themes and new genres with some Chitrakar artists. Tara Books has been collaborating with folk artists from different parts of India to produce illustrated storybooks. The conceptualisers at Tara often work with the same artists over a period of many years — getting to know them as individuals and selecting specific types of stories that might best suit their individual styles of painting.8 It was in this light that they thought of involving some of the Chitrakar artists in an experiment with the graphic novel form. The Tara team has had some experience with this art style and has produced a book based on the Chitrakar telling of the tsunami.9 But three of the five artists invited to participate in the workshop were unknown to them, never having done book illustrations before.

Time and Narrative Sequence ‘Tell the artists that theirs is the only indigenous form of the graphic novel that we have.’ This utterance was addressed by Gita Wolf, the founder of Tara Books, to me, the designated interpreter for the team. ‘We try and work within the grammar of the idiom. The stories may be from somewhere else but the style of representation, the text as a combination of words and pictures, must never be artificially imposed’.10 What do graphic novels have in common with picture scrolls? Time is the first response that comes to mind. Both genres are used to depict sequential narratives and both are cross-discursive. The story is told through a combination of words and images without, however, blending the two into a unified whole (Imamura 1953). The images are not merely illustrations of the story as it is told in the text. Instead they tell a separate story using the verbal or textual story as a ‘diegetical horizon’ — that is, they gesture towards the text without allowing themselves to be fixed by it (Chute and Koven 2006: 769). The differences, however, are equally striking. In the Chitrakar mode of storytelling, unlike the graphic novel mode in which each story is broken down into many incidents, the action sequences are abbreviated with only the start and climax of the sequence being depicted often in the same frame. Ideas from the long epic narratives are distilled into elliptical images. Thus in some depictions of the ‘Abduction of Sita’ (Sita Harana) story the presence of the golden deer near the hut where Rama and Sita live, Rama’s chase and the transformation of the dying deer into the demon Maricha are synoptically depicted in one frame like a tableau (Plate 4.6; see also Appendix IV).11 Or conversely time is frozen as Rama, Sita and Lakshmana are enframed as icons in keeping with the sacred character of the story being depicted (Plate 4.7).12 Such ‘interruptions’

Plate 4.6: Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 6. Author’s Collection.

Plate 4.7: Anonymous, Sita Harana, frame 7. Author’s Collection.

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in the narrative flow are in keeping with the genre of the narrative and follows from the mode of storytelling. The storyteller keeps rolling up the successive registers of the scroll as the story progresses and it is necessary for the audience to be brought back to the main theme again and again. The audience is reminded that Sita Harana is a sacred story by the repeated acts of iconisation both at the level of the picture and the scroll. Icons are images that use stock figures and standard features to draw the audience into a ritualised space in which it becomes aware of the divinity of the characters being depicted in relation to itself (Shulman 1978). In comparison the graphic novel depicts very long though often severely fragmented sequences of events. Each panel on a page presents a separate location in time or space and a different point of view. The narrative depicted is full of gaps and it is left to the reader’s imagination to connect the events over the gaps and build the narrative. The gaps are represented pictorially by the space between the panels on a page also known as ‘gutter’. According to some graphic novel specialists, it is in the gutter that the real action takes place (Hansen 2004). The gutter represents the passage of time and time can be made to pass rapidly or to slow down depending on the number of panels used to depict the action sequence (Williams 1996). The specific feature of the genre — the organisation of time and sequence — arises from one overarching difference between the two forms. Graphic novels usually present stories that are new so that recognisability of the characters and legibility of the episodic structure become major issues for the reader. Characters are built up over successive episodes in the story that are anchored firmly in a plot. This is not the case as far as the Ramayana is concerned. It has an initial legibility as Williams reminds us — no one ever hears the Ramayana for the first time (1996: 5). The narrator of Rama katha is not constrained by the demands of a fixed episodic structure as her audience is already familiar with the plot. Instead she can select specific events for elaboration depending on her performance style and the emotions (rasa) that she wants to convey to her audience. All Chitrakar narrations portray at least two contrasting moods and play upon the tension so generated. Depending on the events chosen these could be the monstrous vs. the maternal, as in the slaying of the demoness Taraka by the youthful heroes Rama and Lakshmana, or it could be the comic vs. the heroic, as in Angada, the monkey hero’s first visit to Ravana’s court (see Appendices III A and III B). Thus, when we are talking of Rama katha we are not talking of a text arranged in a particular way with a linear order and clear-cut sections,

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but rather of blocks of events or narrative sequences arranged in terms of specific kinds of imagery selected to evoke particular sentiments. A key factor in this type of composition is the choice of figures depicted in a scene. It is the figures that lend resonance to a performance. Thus specific figures can be detached from the larger narratives and can be used as motifs in other stories. One such is the image of Jatayu, the giant vulture, friend of Dasharatha, Rama’s father, who opens his mouth wide enough to swallow the chariot in which Ravana is fleeing with the captive Sita (Plate 4.8). This scene is usually depicted in the last register of the Sita Harana scroll. But it also occurs independently in many paintings and even figures in other stories which have nothing to do with Rama katha.13 This is the story as is usually seen in Medinipur. In Birbhum, an adjoining district, it ends in a different way. Ravana’s abduction of Sita is followed somewhat abruptly by scenes from hell where Yama, the god of death, presides over scenes of torture.

Rama Katha: Two Moments of Occurrence Consider the following excerpt: Of Panchavati forest Rama took charge; Rama–Sita sit while Lakshmana stands guard. Surpanakha came one day to Panchavati forest; Cut off her nose did he, Lord Lakshmana With nose in hand went the lady to Lanka city Flung herself at Ravana’s feet. The wise king — the ten-headed one — what wisdom did he show? On seeing his sister’s sorry state his body burned [with anger]; Calling Maricha to him, he dressed him as a deer With dainty steps, the deer dances — a beautiful sight to behold. Humbly did Janaki say to Raghubir: Catch this deer for me — make me happy My sorrow I will bear lightly with this deer in my sight. You must stay brother Lakshmana — the companion of my heart To catch the deer I must go after Sita’s request As long as I do not return to the hut You will keep Sita under your gaze Crying catch-catch kill-kill Rama chases [after the deer] Like a golden bee the deer flies away. (‘The Abduction of Sita’ sung by Niranjan Chitrakar)14

Plate 4.8: Dukhushyam Chirakar, Sita Harana, last frame. c. 2000. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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The narrative presented in this song is synoptic and discontinuous, frequently summarising whole episodes in a single line. Instead, it is the figures of Sita, Surpanakha and Ravana on whom the song lingers, using them to evoke different emotions so that they resonate with a range of phenomenal experiences, connecting not only the different registers of the story, presented in the song and painting, but also reaching out to the audience by touching on their emotional lives. The narration of a Ramayana story always takes place in the context of a narrative universe in which no story is ever told for the first time. For the audience there is already an empathic connection to the full story even before it unfolds through the telling. The story of the Ramayana is known before the events actually take place so that it is a latent potential gradually unfolding through the characters. Unlike the genre of the novel, the characters in the Ramayana have no internal life. Their personalities and their deeds are all known in advance (Shulman 2000). Thus narrative devices made familiar through various sub-types of the novel form, such as suspense created by the gradual unfolding of the plot, the attribution of agency, and the description of personalities are not foregrounded. Instead actions become modes of contemplation turning characters into icons (see Dahejia 1997; Shulman 1978). Now let us turn to another telling of the same set of events but rendered in a different medium. As part of the exercise to introduce the Chitrakar artists to the graphic novel form there were a series of interactive lectures by Orijit Sen, an author of note who works with this form. He took particular episodes from some of the novels he had created to show how the genre worked. I shall describe two episodes that he took up primarily because of the impact that they had on the artists when they started their own experiments with the form. Orijit began his lecture with a story he is currently working on, on the life of the Bengali mystic Rama Krishna Paramahansa. The particular episode that he chose was Rama Krishna’s first mystical experience when he was a child. He showed us a page from the prospective work. It was divided into a series of rectangular panels of different sizes, arranged in a horizontal series. The first panel showed the bird — the view from below, as if the viewer was at ground level looking up. The next one depicted the same bird but seen from above, as if the viewer was another bird flying in the sky. The eye of the viewer was like the lens of a moving camera, focusing on the same object from different points of view. In the third panel we saw the bird from close-up until finally — and this was shown as an inset of the main panel — we saw only the eye. We then saw the face

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of a child, transfixed, staring up at the sky, then a path with a hut and a speech balloon on one side of the frame, as if to tell us that the voice came from elsewhere, with the text, ‘Where are you? Come inside.’ As Orijit said, ‘We cannot see the child’s mother but infer it from the words and the position of the speech balloon on one side of the frame, outside the scene of the mystical experience.’ He showed us the next page. It consisted of a single panel — multiple eyes — erupting from the page, the third eye of the Mother Goddess. ‘The child sees the Goddess in the bird’s eye,’ Orijit said. ‘We move from the outer to the inner vision.’ Orijit used this episode to demonstrate how the text in a graphic novel can shift between different points of view precisely by breaking the story into empanelled units — an effect achieved by the song used in the patua performance.15 An incident from another story was used to demonstrate the importance of the protagonist of a story. To drive home the point Orijit chose a story that he had composed where the main character, the subject whose story was being told was a machine, whose bad karma in a previous human life had led to this present incarnation. After the lecture the five artists were asked to choose some common themes to illustrate in the graphic novel style. All the artists were worried about the speech balloons and texts — how much space to leave for the writing and where to position the balloons. One of the artists, Swarna Chitrakar, is unlettered, but showed the most confidence. She said, ‘If I think the scene requires a lot of words I will leave lots of space, otherwise not.’ Three of the artists, Moina, Manu and Swarna Chitrakar chose Sita Harana and the other two, Joideb and Montu Chitrakar, decided on ‘Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 Strike’. Even though the three artists who chose the Sita Harana theme did not discuss the selection and modes of depiction to be used to tell the story in advance, their modes of editing the story to fit this new narrative genre were remarkably similar — each one chose to focus on the abduction itself, leaving out all reference to the exile that frames the way in which the story is traditionally told. The two women, Swarna and Moina, chose Sita as the narrator, Manu chose Ravana. However, their modes of narration and styles of depiction were remarkably individualistic. Orijit had discussed the different roles of protagonist and narrator in his lecture. All three artists chose to collapse the two, making the chief narrator one of the main protagonists in the story. Let me begin with Moina’s telling, as hers is the closest to the conventional patua style of storytelling. Moina, whose mother bears the distinction of being the first woman Chitrakar to win a national award, is proud of being literate. One of her

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prized possessions is a notebook in which she writes down old patua songs. Her ambition is to reclaim the old songs that have fallen into disuse and are thus in danger of being forgotten. She was also very happy to be associated with a book project and felt that it would take their art form to a new level and give it added status. She picked up the idea of the speech balloon and incorporated it in her drawings, adding text to each scene as she went along. (The traditional rendition of this episode moves through the story adding one event to another in the form of a paratactic chain without explaining the context in which the events occur. Thus the song only tells us about Surpanakha’s arrival in the Panchavati forest, at the abode of Rama and Sita and her subsequent mutilation. It leaves out the intermediary events that connect the two moments.) Her depiction took the form of a synoptic narrative, each moment represented as a kind of tableaux with accompanying text that explained the scene (Plate 4.9). Since she did not use frames to separate the different scenes, the fragments of text next to each scene were necessary to follow the story. She did not differentiate stylistically between first and third person speech, using the speech balloons for both kinds of texts. She also used direct quotations from the song to lend resonance to a particularly intense moment — Sita’s lament as she ascends the heavens in Ravana’s flying chariot (pushpak rath). Her telling began with Rama and Sita’s abode in the forest, showed the hunt of the golden deer, Maricha, the abduction and Ravana’s battle with the great vulture Jatayu. Scenes such as Surpanakha’s mutilation and Lakshmana’s drawing of the protective boundary around the hut before he goes to rescue his brother at Sita’s behest were not depicted in picture form but mentioned only through the written text. At first she did not understand that her story lacked a frame. Orijit pointed out to her that she had to develop a situation in which the telling could be located. For her, the narrative universe of the Ramayana was the location; she said everyone knows the story. But then she understood and added a new image — a flashback scene in which the captive Sita is narrating the story of her abduction to Hanuman in Lanka (Plate 4.10). In a radical departure from the mode of storytelling that is familiar to the Chitrakar tradition, Moina decided to eschew the sequential mode of narration in which one scene follows another and use the synoptic mode which presents the story synchronically instead, so that all the different moments in the story appeared simultaneously within a single pictorial frame. She re-did her narrative several times but each variant was a synoptic presentation. Her figures however were rendered in the Chitrakar style where figures use gesture to indicate speech, conveyed in the song, but do

Plate 4.9: Moina Chitrakar, Sita Harana. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

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Plate 4.10: Moina Chitrakar, Sita Harana. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

not express emotion. It was as if Moina was using two traditional narrative modes — one taken from temples and the other from song. In an erudite survey of the different modes of narration used in ancient India, Vidya Dahejia (1997) shows how multiple modes of organising events from the Buddha’s life were juxtaposed in Buddhist shrines, creating points of intellectual interest for viewers who already had access

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to the narrative universe in which these stories were situated.16 Moina’s depiction of the Sita Harana story shows a sophisticated understanding of alternative modes of visual narration even though she herself is bound by her tradition to use only one — the linear, sequential mode. A new medium and a different genre gave her the opportunity to put her knowledge to use. This suggests that particular modes of narration always occur in the context of other narrative genres. Each event of storytelling, even one that is as conventional as the patua form, involves a self-conscious selection from a range of genres potentially available within the narrative universe (Barber 2007; Chatterji 1987). Swarna’s rendition was completely different. She was probably the most visually intelligent of all the five artists present at the workshop. She was the only one to take up the challenge that Orijit’s lecture had posed to them that morning — ‘See if you can use pictures to tell the stories, without the supportive tool of text,’ he said. ‘The patua song that accompanies the scroll painting tells the story. In comic books the written text should not be separate from the picture story. Try and convey what the song is saying through the pictures. In comics the pictures must dominate, not the written text. The story must be enacted not recounted.’ Swarna used what Jacques Ranciere (2007) calls the technique of ‘fragmentation’ to break up the narrative sequence to achieve a dramatic intensity that is more conventionally associated with the medium of cinema. In contradistinction to the Chitrakar convention of depicting full figures in their paintings, she used bodily dismemberment to achieve what Gilles Deleuze (1992) calls an ‘intensive series’. In the first volume of his monumental two-part work on cinema, he describes montage as a duration that flows from a series of movement images (ibid.: 29).17 As series of movement images, bodies sometimes can be dismembered, breaking up into independent parts to form an autonomous series of affects separate from the coherent outline of a figure or face unified in all its features. Deleuze calls this the process of ‘facification’ in which a series of organs, detached from the coherent body image, embody successive scenes traversed by a range of affects culminating in the ‘paroxysm’ of the climactic moment (1992: 88–91).18 Let me elaborate by describing Swarna’s story frame by frame. Her story begins after Rama and Lakshmana have left in pursuit of the golden deer. Frame 1: Sita sits in her hut adorning her head with vermillion (sindoor), a symbol of her auspicious status as a married woman. The face that stares back at her in the mirror is serene. But one ear is enlarged, straining to

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capture the sound of the drum that she hears outside. At the bottom of the page we see a hand holding a small drum — the dug-dugi — commonly played by sadhus as they go on their rounds seeking alms (Plate 4.11). While explaining this composition, Swarna said, ‘Sita is alone in her hut. She thinks, ‘I was happy once; my household was complete. It lacked for nothing (shundor shajano shaungshar chhilo).’ Frame 2: We see a small, thatched hut in the upper right hand corner of the page, and in the foreground, a single figure dressed as a sadhu with a water pot in one hand (Ravana) dominates the scene. On the upper left hand of the page we see a pair of hands adorned with bangles (Sita) offering a bowl of rice. The sadhu’s other hand, claw-like, reaches out to grasp the bowl. Below the hands, still on the left side of the page we see a pair of women’s feet, toes close to each other, indicating hesitation, framed by a bunch of flowers (Plate 4.12). ‘These are the flowers that Sita offers in her daily puja,’ Swarna said, ‘they are bowing down to touch her feet (pronam).’ Frame 3: The page is divided between two images; tall stemmed flowers with smiling faces frame the lower half of a woman’s body. Her legs and feet are bordered with a band of flowers — the Lakshmana rekha — the same flowers that she offers in her puja now form a protective barrier. Juxtaposed with this happy image of Sita in her natural surroundings amidst the flowers that she plucked for her daily worship, we see the sadhu’s hand grasping a dug-dugi (Plate 4.13). Frame 4: Sita stands with face averted, the band of flowers still curved around her feet, the flowers now drooping, framing her body. The sadhu’s claw-like hand reaches towards her, his other hand with the dug-dugi held aloft triumphantly, the bowl of rice is seen falling to the ground (Plate 4.14). Swarna said that one hand holding the water pot seemed to be that of a benevolent sadhu but the other hand was claw-like revealing his real identity as a rakshasa (demon). In her initial drawing she had left a blank space where Sita’s face was supposed to be. She drew it only at Orijit’s behest. Frame 5: The upper half of the page is dominated by a pair of steaming eyes, a smeared bindi (vermillion dot worn by married women on the forehead) above and a mouth grimacing below. The motif of the eyes is repeated again in the bottom half of the page, this time shut, covered by a pair of feminine hands adorned with bangles (Plate 4.15). The last two frames were drawn first, the others added later to give the storyline. The image of Rama Krishna’s mystical experience in childhood

Plate 4.11: Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 1. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.12: Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 2. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.13: Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 3. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.14: Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 4. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.15: Swarna Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 5. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

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that Orijit had shown us in the morning had made a deep impression on Swarna. For the first time I think she saw the affective force that dismembered body parts can convey. Chitrakars often use bodily distortion or expansion to convey intensely emotional scenes such as battles for instance, but this was the first time that they saw fragmentation being used as a technique to tell a story. In Swarna’s narrative, the body is dissolved into its successive features, each part taking on a kind of momentary independence as affect, traversing a series of such affects to climax in a paroxysm of grief. Manu’s narrative was the most coherent of the three. Unlike Swarna he had worked out the storyline before he started the actual execution. Each frame was systematically plotted with full figures, rendered in the Chitrakar style. He also incorporated blank spaces in his frames for the accompanying text. (Unlike Moina however, he did not incorporate actual text into the picture frame.) He also took a suggestion that Orijit made somewhat light-heartedly, about combining the ‘religious’ with the ‘social’ theme — showing the pushpak rath colliding with the killer plane of the bin Laden pata (Plates 4.16 to 4.22). Fantasy, a sense of the absurd and the whimsical, is what appealed to Manu in the comic book genre. In common with many folk traditions in India, Ravana is presented as a ludic figure in the Chitrakar tellings of the Rama katha — the new form allowed him to play with the potential in his own tradition. However, even though his interpretation of the abduction theme was very radical, his pictorial vocabulary was very close to the Chitrakar mode. Manu and Swarna are siblings. Both enormously talented, the differences in their approach to the narrative tradition are quite striking. Manu is always on the lookout for new subjects for composition. Politically aware, he was among the first to compose on contemporary themes like the war in Afghanistan and the 9/11 strike on the World Trade Centre. His songs always carry a message and are often experimental. But he rarely transfers this experimentation to his paintings. He is an accomplished though conventional painter. Swarna, who is his artistic collaborator, uses a very different approach. She also composes songs like her brother, but her sphere of innovation is painting. She was the first to put bin Laden’s face on the killer plane — an innovation that was quickly absorbed within the collective repertoire. During the workshop itself, Moina, who decided to elaborate on the Ramayana theme, adopted some of the motifs that Swarna had used in her telling, one such being the hand with the dug-dugi to signifying Ravana’s menacing presence.

Plate 4.16: Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 1. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.17: Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 2. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.18: Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 3. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.19: Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 4. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.20: Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 5. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.21: Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 6. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.22: Manu Chitrakar, Sita Harana, frame 7. 2009. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

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The two artists who chose to explore the 9/11 theme, Joideb and Montu, were less successful in their experimentation. Even though the pata narrative is about an event, it does not really tell a story. The narrative highlights the horror, concentrating on emotions such as pathos, dwelling on the relationship between Bush and bin Laden. There were some initial attempts at composing stories around the 9/11 theme, Manu’s being one such attempt, but these were soon dropped in favour of a more generalised narrative. Inspired by Orijit’s story about a machine’s past lives, Montu chose the killer plane as his chief protagonist. But having taken that decision he was unable to situate his main character in a suitable context. Finally, after some prodding, it was decided that the damaged airplane would be placed in a museum, where it would tell the story of its adventures to the visitors passing by. But he found it difficult to tell the story from the plane’s point of view and kept returning to the iconic figure of the patua storyteller that is so popular in contemporary pata paintings. The first frame of his series initially showed a plane and, below it, a storyteller in the midst of his audience, his hand gesturing towards the plane. When it was pointed out to him that the chief protagonist in a story would not need a mediating character, he re-composed the frame, setting the plane in the midst of rectangular cases filled with a variety of figures such as butterflies, tigers and birds (Plate 4.23). I remarked that these were all figures that Montu loves to paint and includes in all his patas. He said a museum should have beautiful and wondrous things — the plane would acquire distinction by being placed in such surroundings. Montu was the only artist present who tried experimenting with the idea of a flexible panel size. He divided the first page of his story into panels of different sizes to show the movement between narrative perspective and modes of address. Thus, while the objects in the background are enframed to indicate the scene in which the narration is set, the plane is not enclosed within a panel and hovers above a group of figures, all of whom make the gesture of conversation, typical of the Chitrakar style. The plane is both the object of the story as well as the sole narrator. But in spite of this promising beginning, he was not able to develop a storyline with a connected sequence of actions in a way that could humanise the airplane (Plates 4.24 to 4.27). Instead he showed successive moments of the plane’s approach towards the tower of the World Trade Centre. Joideb was even less successful. His theme was ambitious. He wanted to focus on bin Laden’s hubris. The man wished to become famous, be remembered in history by plotting a horrendous event. As he thought

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Plate 4.23: Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 1. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

about the ways in which he could achieve this status, his thoughts turned to reality and the event actually took place even as he sat planning it with his friends. But Joideb was unable to execute this idea and ended up producing a conventional patua 9/11 story.

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Plate 4.24: Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 2. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Why were the Ramayana stories successful in achieving the transition to the graphic novel form and not the bin Laden ones? To answer this question we must first turn to the concept of genre — the form that a particular narration might take — and its relationship to the narrative universe and to the performative environment in which such acts of narration take place. The Ramayana stories are transmitted in a performative context in

Plate 4.25: Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 3. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.26: Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 4. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.27: Montu Chitrakar, Laden, frame 5. 2009. Pencil on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

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which different genres are in conversation with each other. Ravana, Sita, Rama, etc. are stock figures that feature in literary forms that range from riddles to sacred songs sung on the occasion of the goddess pujas. Specific genres may choose to highlight different aspects of these characters. Let us take the Ravana–Sita relationship that we have encountered in this chapter. Typically riddles pick up on the contradictions in Ravana’s personality — his valour and his reputation for being a great and powerful king with the unbridled lust that led to the destruction of his family and his kingdom. But rather than highlighting the tragedy or pathos of the situation that folk theatre might do, the riddle portrays Ravana as a ludic figure as the following one shows: Dausho shir mauha bir nauye to Rabon Stri loker hate taar nischoye mauron. Ten heads but not Ravana At the hands of a woman he faces certain death.

The answer is the pumpkin plant commonly found in rural Bengal, a creeper that bears clusters of small pumpkins (Chatterji 1987). In some of the eastern tellings of the Rama katha, Sita is portrayed as a martial goddess who is able to defeat and kill an even more powerful Ravana than the ten-headed demon vanquished by her husband (Coburn 2009). The riddle alludes to this story but achieves the effect of surprise and laughter by subverting its message. By contrast, songs sung on the occasion of Bhadu puja that thematise the abduction of Sita sometimes portray Ravana as a bridegroom whose vehicle is death.19 Bhadu, a local goddess worshipped in rural West Bengal, has come to absorb some of the traits associated with the great goddess Durga who comes to earth once a year to visit her parents, leaving her husband Shiva behind. Bhadu, a virgin goddess, is often described as a young married woman who pays fleeting visits to her worshippers. In one Bhadu song, Sita takes the place of Bhadu and Ravana is the described as the bridegroom who has come to take her away from her natal home (Chatterji 2009a). Different genres may re-arrange the order of events as they unfold in the act of narration or bring out different kinds of connotation in the narrative message, but the fact that the story is known in advance allows for a clear cut distinction between the order of narration and the order of events (Das 1986).20 As mentioned in Chapter 3, patua compositions do not emphasise the episodic aspect of storytelling. Mood (bhava) and emotion (rasa) are stressed on instead. Apart from the problem of emplotting the

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9/11 narrative so that it had a clear cut episodic structure, Joideb also had to find a protagonist from whose perspective the story could be told. Both these aspects figure in the stories by Swarna and Manu. Other genres in the performative environment in which they compose their stories add colour to patua narrations. These genres give a flexible orientation to their stories, tapping hidden possibilities, allowing for translation of themes from one genre to another and for the formation of innovative hybrids (Barber 2007: 43). Thus both Swarna and Manu took a highly emotive moment in the Sita Harana narrative, and were able to successfully emplot it in the mode of storytelling suitable to the graphic novel genre. Montu tried to pick up one action sequence — the approach of the killer plane towards the Twin Towers. He was also able to break up this sequence into phases so as to prolong suspense. He was able to understand the organisation of the page into multiple frames, each with a specific perspective, located in its own time and space, but could not use this device successfully to tell a story. His inability to translate the bin Laden story into the graphic novel genre is not due to a failure of the imagination or a lack of comprehension. The 9/11 event is a mediatised one, pieced together from successive news bulletins shown on television. Exposure to television is a very recent phenomenon for Chitrakars and it will take time for the medium to embed itself in their performative environment. However, as we saw in Chapter 2, this event is beginning to circulate across different genres and has already absorbed some of the iconography of a traditional stock figure — Satya Pir.

Genre, Audience and Translation As Karin Barber (2007) reminds us, genre orients us to the potential reader or listener of a text. A reader familiar with the genre will be attuned to potential devices that will give clues about form and about possible interpretations of the text. But in this case we have a situation where the narrators and listeners come from different performative and textual traditions. The audience, i.e., the team at Tara Books, is not familiar with the patua genre of storytelling. Can the genre speak across this gulf? Chitrakar performers are already used to reaching out to an audience of strangers by inventing hybrid compositions. Many of the new compositions about events based on news items are set to non-traditional tunes, tunes that convey a generic sense of folk music popularised by radio and television and are therefore recognisable even by people who do not understand the language of the songs.

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Inter-genre shifts are part of the performative tradition of the patuas. Conversations between different genres were enabled by the fact that they shared common themes. Grammatical devices such as reported speech and quotation enhanced the awareness of the meta-narrative potential of genre.21 From this perspective text production itself could be seen as a mode of reading. New texts, new genres of expression even, may grow out of creative interactions with texts. In fact the full potential of a genre may only be revealed through the process of its translation into another medium or another genre (see Benjamin 2002; Cavell 1971).22 Reflexive artists like Manu and Swarna are aware of this. The performative genre of the patuas already uses a combination of two media — sounds and images. The use of the scroll format that allows for a succession of frames expands the spatial field of the pictorial narrative. New characters can be introduced in successive frames as the scroll is unrolled. Old characters can disappear or reappear. The song that accompanies the display of the scroll completes the picture narrative, drawing the viewers’ attention to specific details in the painted scene but also supplementing the scene by presenting verbal images that are not depicted in the pictorial scene unfolding before the viewers. The suggestion of movement and temporal depth are given by the combined activities of rolling and unrolling the painted scroll, showing one frame at a time and the song which expands and develops in time (Metz 1985). Thus, it is the singer who is displaying the scroll who projects movement in the narrative painting, creating suspense or anticipation through the act of revealing one frame at a time. Graphic novels also use the devices of multiple frames and inter-medium dialogue to break down a narrative into successive moments as we shall see. Panel images on a page can be used in the way that reported speech is used in dialogue — to condense or expand time, to quote or repeat (Mikkonen 2008). In short, they make explicit a problem that all narrative paintings have to address — how to tell a story without referring to a text. The page broken up into panels which depict a series of closely linked events, the speech balloon and the book format that forces the reader to turn the page to follow the story, are the techniques that this genre uses to create anticipation in the reader and project movement in the narrative (Carrier 2000). In an effort to make their stories more accessible to urban audiences, young artists like Amit Chitrakar in Naya village who have had formal schooling and are exposed to the genre of comics, are already experimenting with the traditional Chitrakar genre of scroll painting by

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including written text embedded in speech balloons in the painted frames (Plate 4.28). Manu, who is also literate but of an older generation that has not been exposed to comic books, has also been thinking of ways to make their storytelling more potable and thus expand the ‘address’ of the patua performance, was very excited by the possibility that the workshop offered to learn ways of incorporating the song text into the painting in the form of words as graphic images.23 Let me now shift the focus of discussion to the public that is being addressed in these narratives. The problem of reaching out to a public that is unfamiliar with the performance codes of this genre has already been discussed. Can we think of the Chitrakar artists’ experiments with the graphic novel genre as an attempt to address this problem? If so, can we then stretch this question a little further and think of the next phase of the experiment — scanning the sketches so that they could be manipulated digitally with the appropriate computer software as an attempt to ‘read’ the narratives and translate it into a different language? In a thought provoking essay on text production as a mode of reception, Barber (1997) shows how audiences may respond to performances, not only by re-interpreting them in terms of their own situations but also by extending the interpretative exercise by producing new texts. In this context she discusses the work of Brian Larkin on the influence of Hindi films on Hausa culture. Bollywood films have not only been enormously popular in Northern Nigeria for several decades but have also had a role in the emergence of a new genre called the ‘Soyayya’: The Soyayya books … explore the themes made popular and familiar by Indian film; it seems that their popularity derives in part from the fact that they do so in a language and a discursive medium that renders these themes more available for discussion and criticism. Soyayya books, then, can be seen as modes of reception, a way of capturing the implications of Indian films for local digestion. In turn, the booklets give rise to further written documents in Hausa and to video dramas (ibid.: 358).

Production and reception are viewed here as different aspects of a single act. They are not separate acts. When members of the Tara team used Photoshop to re-work the sketches, they were, I think, completing the act initiated that morning, of extending the patua genre to a new audience unfamiliar with the performative code of the genre. In the process, narrative possibilities that lay latent in the genre were suddenly brought to light. Let me explain by describing the nature of the re-working, story by story.

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It had been decided earlier that the creative team at Tara would re-do the narratives that the artists had been working on that afternoon to show them how their images could be interpreted in terms of the graphic novel genre.24 The artists had explained their stories to me and had even indicated possible ways in which text could be incorporated into their sketches. I, as the go-between mediating all communication between the two groups, was supposed to sit with the designers, give them a background to the stories, and help them interpret the sketches in the light of what I had been told by the artists already. I also had the important though troublesome task of censorship. The team would consult me from time to time on whether their attempts at re-interpretation were authentic, whether there was a danger that some unstated taboo was being transgressed. This did not happen so much in the women’s stories; I think that the idea that the feminine voice is always subversive is generic, at least in the Indian narrative traditions (Das 1998; Chatterji 2009a). Both Manu’s story of Ravana and Joideb’s interpretation of bin Laden’s personality did pose some problems however. The element of grandeur often associated with demonic figures posed a problem for a genre that specialises in presenting the ludic. Since Ravana is shown as a comedic figure in the patua tellings of the Rama katha, Manu’s story did get a go-ahead but Joideb’s was dropped, the character being too close to the present for playful re-construction. Let me begin with Orijit’s makeover of Swarna’s story. His additions included the incorporation of two new panels in the interest of narrative continuity along with some graphic text. He also re-arranged and enframed figures on some of the pages to enhance the effect of multiple time dimensions that Swarna had self-consciously tried to incorporate in her composition. Thus, on the first page he detached the enlarged ear on Sita’s face. Swarna had shown Sita twice on this page — first as a tranquil bride, a reflection in the mirror held by a hand that was applying sindoor in the hair parting, one ear enlarged as if it was extending itself to catch the sound of the dug-dugi outside. Orijit repeated this part of the face lower down on the page, on the right hand corner, separating it from the other figure by putting a frame around it. Next to this box he placed the hand holding the dug-dugi. The addition of graphic sound symbols — DUG – A- DUGA – A — a clever adaptation of the onomatopoeic word dug-dugi, and the fact that this image was not enframed enhanced the narrative potential of fragmentation that Swarna had used successfully as a device for emplotment. Orijit’s written text was a kind of voice-over, presenting the story as a flashback (Plate 4.29). Apart from Gita Wolf who used dialogue in the form of speech balloons, the three other designers used reported

Plate 4.28: Amit Chitrakar, Nativity Scene from Bible. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 4.29: Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

speech in their tellings, a direct reference perhaps to the song text that is outside the frame of the pata story. The voice-over that displaced the time of the narrative from the telling, together with the disaggregation of the

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figures on each page emphasised the presence of multiple time perspectives as Swarna had indicated through her use of repetition. The face in the mirror and the figure holding it represent two moments in time. The face in the mirror is not a reflection of the present moment but rather of a time gone by. The hand holding the dug-dugi is the presage of the future as the text re-affirms (Plate 4.11). Orijit added a panel — Sita at the doorway holding a bowl of rice — to connect the disembodied hand to Ravana who appears only in the third page of the narrative (Plate 4.30). The second and third pages now showed the same scene from different perspectives. The eye of the reader would now move from Sita standing at her doorway on the second page, to the scene outside on the third page — flowers anthropomorphised, with smiling faces, happy to catch a glimpse of the goddess placed in a panel on top of the page, and her feet encircled by flowers in a separate panel at the bottom (Plates 4.30 and 4.31). Swarna’s image was far more enigmatic. She had merged Sita’s torso with the plants growing at her side and the flowers under her feet (Plate 4.13). The vertical stalks of the plants were parallel lines, lines repeated in the pleats of her sari. The bold DUG-DUGA-DUGA-A-A, the graphemes that suggest the sound of the dug-dugi, are spread across the first three frames, first clustered around the dug-dugi in Frame 1 and then spreading outward, suggesting visually the idea of the ‘elsewhereness’ of sound. The size and shape of the graphemes also convey the power and immediacy of raw sound and contrast with the small font of the voiceover text — Bangla words written in Roman script. Orijit changed the sequence of Swarna’s frames — the second and third pages were switched — so that the figure of the sadhu begging for alms comes after the image of Sita’s feet (Plate 4.32). He then repeated this figure in a smaller panel on the next page, this time showing the grasping, claw-like hand of the demon king that was hidden from view on the previous page (Plate 4.33). The bottom half of the page is taken up by two staring eyes and a string of graphemes A-A-A. The cry of terror is carried over to the next page that shows Sita, full figure, with face averted being dragged away by Ravana, still in his sadhu’s disguise. This panel has no voice-over (Plate 4.34). The last page was left untouched except for the voice-over text that says, ‘that weeping did not stop’ (Plate 4.35). Orijit’s modifications were largely in the nature of clarifications in terms of the requirements of the genre. For example, his use of graphemes to suggest the elsewhereness of sound enhanced the anticipation of a climactic moment. He disaggregated some of the

Plate 4.30: Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.31: Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.32: Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 4. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.33: Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 5. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.34: Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 6. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

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Plate 4.35: Swarna’s Reworked Story, frame 7. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

figures and put them on separate panels on a page to try and achieve a more sequential narrative. Thus, the third page of Swarna’s narrative, which shows Sita’s torso merging with the forest plants, lost some of its

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ambivalence as the figures were separated and arranged in separate panels. At times he kept her conception of the in-built frame, using objects in the picture to suggest boundaries at other times when he wanted to explicitly indicate shifts in perspective; he imposed them by drawing outlines. Swarna, in her composition, had repeated the full page picture of Sita’s feet and hands twice, shown in different contexts on two successive pages as if to suggest that this event must be read on two registers, the everyday and the mythic (Plates 4.12 and 4.13). First her hands are shown and her feet encircled with a band of flowers — the Lakshmana rekha — and then juxtaposed with the hand holding the dug-dugi, the body merged with the forest plants. She is shown both as a woman torn between her sense of duty to give alms to the mendicant and the obligation to obey Lakshmana’s command, and also as the Great Goddess, the mother of the world who will bring about Ravana’s downfall. Orijit uses the technique of repetition but with the figure of Ravana. At the first appearance, Ravana’s claw is concealed. We only see one hand in the gesture of begging. In the next his real identity is revealed (Plates 4.31 and 4.33). But this repetition is used to build up our anticipation for what we know is yet to come. Swarna’s use of the same device was really to stress the iconic dimension — repetition being used as a way of arresting narrative time rather than making it move forward. Gita Wolf, who re-worked Moina’s narrative, was the only one to use speech balloons, to present Sita as both narrator and chief protagonist. This fact was clearly stated in the title page which read ‘Sita’s Story’ under an image of Sita (Plate 4.36). Gita has known Moina for many years and respects her achievements in book learning. Moina, as stated earlier, was the only artist who tried to incorporate speech balloons and written text in her narrative (Plate 4.9). Gita re-organised Moina’s narrative arrangement by disaggregating the figures to form a linked chain of events (Plates 4.37 and 4.38). After her intervention, Moina’s Sita, unlike the tragic figure that we saw in the previous narrative, comes across as a forceful character who tries her best to resist abduction. Gita said Moina herself is a dynamic and intelligent woman and had tried to keep this fact in mind when she was working on her telling of the Rama katha. Manu, narrating the abduction story from Ravana’s point of view, had shown Ravana dressed as a 19th century dandy in keeping with the painterly code of the Bengal Chitrakars.25 Shirish Rao took this as a cue to turn Ravana into a somewhat senile old man who reminisces about his misspent youth. Like the two previous stories this too was presented as a flashback, using Ravana’s speech as a voice-over. Manu had wanted to

Plate 4.36: Moina’s Reworked Story, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.37: Moina’s Reworked Story, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.38: Moina’s Reworked Story, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

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frame his story in terms of the Vaishnavite myth that shows Ravana as one of the three incarnations of Lord Vishnu’s divine companions.26 He was excited by the idea proposed in jest by Orijit that the abduction theme from the Rama katha could be connected to the 9/11 story (Plate 4.22).27 He thought that he could use reincarnation as a theme to connect the two, hence his choice of Ravana as his chief protagonist. Shirish’s contribution to his narrative was solely in the form of text. He did not touch the images or rearrange the sequences. But the text changed the mood of the story, displacing its location from the register of myth to that of fantasy so that one is no longer clear whether the narrator is also the real protagonist of the story (Plate 4.39). The narrator shown in the last frame of Manu’s story points to the airplane above and says, ‘I was also Osama bin Laden in another life and again …’ (Plate 4.40). Does this reduction of scale — from Ravana whose demonic nature is revealed as much by his fanatical devotion to the god Vishnu as by his violent conduct, to senile old man — have anything to do with the genre of the graphic novel? The scaling down of the main protagonist results in a loss of aura. In a pioneering work on Indian comic books, Karline McLain (2009) discusses how Anant Pai, the founder of the Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Tales) series, struggled to present mythic events as scientifically plausible occurrences. Thus, for its first issue, Krishna, he did not show the miracle of the divine Krishna lifting Mount Govardhan on his little finger. Instead there was one panel depicting boulders falling and another showing astonished faces, mouths agape as the villagers exclaimed, ‘Govardhan is moving!’ (ibid.: 30). Even though, as McLain tells us, subsequent versions of the story do depict the miraculous event, images from Amar Chitra Katha comic books rarely become subjects of worship. Unlike the re-prints of Raja Ravi Varma’s god pictures, they do not adorn puja rooms (Pinney 2004). Is it the added text that humanises the story? Is it too close to everyday speech? David, who took charge of Montu’s narrative, had a difficult task. As I have already mentioned Montu chose to narrativise the 9/11 event. The story as depicted in the patua repertoire is not organised around a plot. Unable to select either Bush or bin Laden as the chief protagonist as the reciprocity in their relationship is the main theme of the patua story, Montu settled on the damaged plane — the one that was hijacked and made to dive into the towers. But he was unable to humanise the plane. David chose to interpret the narrative in terms of the science fiction genre. He turned the iconic killer plane that wears bin Laden’s face and is really about the anthropomorphic representation of an event, into a

Plate 4.39: Manu’s Reworked Story, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.40: Manu’s Reworked Story, last frame. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

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humanised subject. The story then became an exploration of the inner life of the airplane and the transformation wrought by the cataclysmic event (Plates 4.41 to 4.45). David’s use of text was minimal. Instead, variations in panel size and break ups and slight shifts in the position of the plane on the page were used to suggest shifts in mood and changing points of attention. Thus, the first page shows the plane in a horizontal position, in mid air as it were, not suggesting any specific direction. The text at the bottom conveys the mood, ‘Once I was a happy plane.’ From the second page onwards however, the position of the plane is oriented towards the tower as if to suggest that its goal has now changed and is focused on destruction. David removed the beard from the face of the plane in the first few panels so as to mark the transformation in personality (Plates 4.41 to 4.43). The bearded plane now signified an evil personality, mirroring bin Laden’s face, reinforced by the text in the last panel, ‘Something evil was in me that day’ (Plate 4.45). The chain of signification set up by the conflation of beard– bin Laden–monstrous act that might give a certain sense of agency to the protagonist was avoided however, by the addition of a teardrop to the face of the bearded plane as it approaches the tower, as if to suggest that the plane was a victim of circumstance and not a willing participant in this terrible event (Plate 4.44). David used the gutter — the blank spaces between the panels on a page — to shift between different points of view in the narrative. He also positioned the voice-over texts in the gutter on each page to link the different points of view into a coherent plot (Plates 4.41, 4.42 and 4.45). In Montu’s story, more than that of any of the other Chitrakars, the self of the chief protagonist has to be shown changing over time. David used subtle clues to suggest this change, not merely by varying the direction and appearance of the plane as I have described but also by using the expressive potential of the plane’s shape (Plates 4.42 to 4.44). Graphic novels often vary the size and shape of the panels on a page to suggest shifts in time, mood and point of view. The last page of David’s re-working of Montu’s narrative is especially striking. Thus, a circle with a close-up of the plane’s demonic face is positioned as an inset within a larger rectangular panel that depicts the scene of destruction (Plate 4.45). The use of varying font sizes in each narrative added an emotional texture to the narrative. However, there were also interesting differences in the way each story related text to the visual images. Sometimes, as with the stories re-worked by David and Gita, the position of the text and size

Plate 4.41: Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 1. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.42: Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 2. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.43: Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 3. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.44: Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 4. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

Plate 4.45: Montu’s Reworked Story, frame 5. 2009. Ink on Paper. Collection of Tara Books and Tara Educational Research Society.

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of the letters enhanced the dramatic quality of the scene, taking the story forward (Plate 4.38). Orijit’s text was in Bangla, in Roman script, all letters in lower case. The small font size contrasted with the large jagged forms of the letters used to depict sound, as if to suggest that the affective resonance of the remembered moment made speech difficult for Sita (Plates 4.29 to 4.35). Gita used alternate font sizes to indicate tone of voice and shifts between first and third person utterance. Her use of speech balloons drew attention to the text in a way that Orijit’s text did not. Shirish’s handprinted and very wordy text, suggested that the narrator was an old and rather garrulous man, rambling through his story (Plate 4.40). In each case I feel that it was the added text that served to change the way in which we might read the story — shifting it from a grand to a more reduced human scale. This shift in interpretation has something to do with the nature of the storytelling that the workshop enabled. Discussions of image and text in the graphic novel genre seem to suggest that the overall conceptualisation and script precedes the actual drawing of images in the organisation of the production process. There is a strict hierarchy of functions so that a storyboard with text in their supporting speech balloons, background story and detailed instructions about the image on each panel is given to the artists who illustrate the stories (McLain 2009). The process followed at the workshop reversed the relationship between text and image. The text was added to the visual images so as to suggest a possible storyline but by no means an exclusive one. The stories however offer multiple potential readings, depending on whether the attention of the reader goes first to the images or to the text, very much in keeping with the way in which the traditional Chitrakar narratives are emplotted — in the song and then again in the painted scroll, the two structures being irreducible to one another (see Chapter 2). As Roland Barthes says: ‘the text loads the image with a culture, a morality, an imagination … there is an amplification from one to the other’ (1985: 15). In a sensitive piece on Mithila painting, Mani Shekhar Singh (2004) explores the relationship between inscription and pictorial images in a painting by the renowned artist Ganga Devi. He shows how the presence of graphic symbols within the pictorial field ‘quickens’ the images suggesting possible interpretations for those who can decipher them. However, for those who cannot, the position of the inscription within the pictorial field, the embedding of the picture within another text, i.e., a book about the painting etc. may suggest other possible readings and other ways of relating the graphic with the visual.

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In my first attempt at presenting this material, I was asked if this form of radical makeover was not a violation of a community’s rights over its creative production. Apart from a somewhat uncritical acceptance of the category of ‘community’ which would disallow any consideration of folk art being an emergent phenomenon and a narrow view of ownership, the point of view implied by this question forecloses the possibility of inter-textual communication that may lead to the creation of hybrid forms. Ideas of hybridity and intertextuality tend to be associated with the realm of high culture and metropolitan art while folk art and culture remains within the sphere of authenticity and of tradition (Spielmann and Bolter 2006). However, such questions are valuable because they foreground issues of power and patronage. Are collaborative relationships envisioned by the team at Tara Books possible between actors in such unequal relationships? The Chitrakars have been professional performers and painters for many centuries. Their participation in a commodity market may be recent but they are used to orienting their activities according to the demands of their clients. Their performance styles, their compositions, music and painting styles have always co-existed with other performative styles and musical genres in rural Bengal. Chitrakars have borrowed popular themes and adapted them to their performative style. In this context of co-habitation of different performative and painterly genres it makes little sense to speak of the Chitrakar tradition as if it was hermetically sealed from outside influences. I will return to this point in a later section. Let us consider instead if such acts of radical de-contextualisation offer opportunities for creative innovation for traditional artists. The conventional view of folk tradition assumes that folk artists produce objects whose reception will be confined to a bounded community. However, if we consider the poetic and symbolic dimensions of the folk art forms then the opposite must be assumed. The symbolic dimension of the art allows the art works to travel in different and sometimes unexpected directions. Symbols combine with other symbols, endlessly deferring the destination of the ‘true’ meaning (Barthes 1985). This is what Walter Benjamin meant by the inherent violence of translation, I think. Translation, Benjamin (1968) says, comes to be when a work travels outside the area of its birth and tries to engage an audience that does not understand the original. The act of translation de-contextualises the work, detaching certain properties of the original which are then put into circulation. Is this a form of impoverishment? Yes, perhaps, but it can, as I have shown, also be enormously productive.28

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By Way of Conclusion The dominant medium in which storytelling occurs in our time is cinema. We see its influence on the media discussed here, such as rapid shifts in location and points of view, disruption of event sequences and so on. Devices that have been naturalised by these forms such as plot structure and character development pre-date cinema. They go back to the era when novels were emerging as a genre but have been given a new lease of life through these forms (Ranciere 2007). Not all films are plot-centric of course. But films, like other forms of storytelling that emerge in the modern period, assume that the plot is unfamiliar, that the story is being heard for the first time. The structural constraints imposed by modern forms of storytelling have led to significant changes in the traditional art forms as we have seen. The introduction of a plot with a definite beginning-to-end structure and the delineation of events are innovations on only one of the registers that multi-media modes of storytelling have to contend with. The other is at the level of the visual. Techniques such as fragmentation introduce changes in the textual level of the story as well. The use of fragmentation in Swarna’s story does not simply break up the narrative sequence, it reduces action to its essence and maximises affective potential. It allows for a compression of action into sequences of disrupted movements thereby ‘short-circuiting any explanation of the reasons’ (ibid.: 5). Ranciere’s elaboration of the technique of fragmentation is very close to the Chitrakar mode of storytelling, a fact that may account for the ease with which Swarna was able to use its potential to re-tell Sita’s story in a new way. But I feel that the animation experiments were, unfortunately, less successful. They were not able to capitalise on the novelty of introducing movement into a traditional art that works with posed images. Tara Douglas and the team of animators that she worked with were not able to integrate the two registers of words and images. Not only were they unable to explore the potential of the visual imagery so that the figures looked flat but the scale of the stories were also reduced. Perhaps they were constrained by their intended audience, by the children’s genre of fairytale. Folk tales can be read on multiple levels and painters such as Mangru Uikey play with the different levels in their compositions. The vantage point from which I enter the field of folk art is painting, and within that sphere, the art object itself — a strategy that allows me to problematise the idealised representation of craft community as the bearer of India’s cultural heritage. More important than offering a critique of such representations — a task already accomplished by scholars such as

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Soumhya Venkatesan (2009) and Helle Bundgard (1999) — it is necessary to examine the effects such representations achieve in the field of art production. As objects these paintings are able to move between different worlds, from rural milieus to state-sponsored craft melas and cultural events. Institutions such as Dilli Haat and the Crafts Museum function not only to expose the urban publics to India’s ‘rich’ craft heritage, but also to open up new avenues for networking. Many folk artists cultivate alternate sources of patronage during their stints at such melas. More importantly, these are also the spaces where folk artists come into contact with representatives of the art world. Most such interactions are due to chance encounters but they can have long-lasting effects. I have already described the meeting between Manu Chitrakar and the artist Gulammohammad Sheik that led to the conceptualisation of a pata on the Gujarat riots. Arpana Caur’s introduction to Godhna29 painting via the folk artist Sat Narayan Pande was also through a chance meeting at the Crafts Museum. Their interaction resulted in a fruitful period of collaboration of which the joint exhibition entitled ‘Between Dualities’, held in 1997–98, is the most visible result (Bowles 2009b). In an interview in 2008, Arpana Caur told me that for her the appeal of folk art lay in the use of juxtaposition and disjointedness. She said that she would sometimes stop the artist from completing the picture so that the decorative elements were in a creative tension with the negative space in the painting. She showed me a painting by Jangarh where only the head of the figure was finished with dots in his characteristic style. She herself uses motifs from Godhna and Worli painting to destabilise the painted surface (Chatterji 2009b). I think it is the narrative potential of folk art that appeals to artists like Arpana Caur and Gulammohammad Sheik.30 It has a suggestive capacity which does not require elaboration. The visual imagery is able to recall the past, to stretch backwards and pull out motifs from the symbolic imaginary, to allow them to inhabit new media and speak to new publics.

Notes 1. Following A.K. Ramanujan (1992), I prefer to use the term ‘telling’ rather than ‘variant’ when speaking of the Ramayana tradition. ‘Variant’ assumes that there is an original text such as the Valmiki Ramayana, from which the other texts diverge. Most scholars would agree that Rama stories (Ram katha) in both oral and written forms have existed side by side with the more authoritative Ramayana texts from time immemorial.

Patua Art and the Graphic Novel d 245 2. I may be wrong on this count. A new rendering of the ‘Birth of Jesus’ includes speech bubbles in the painted scroll after the style of comic books. It seems as if the painter was conscious of the fact that the painted story would have a life beyond the moment of the patua performance (Plate 4.28). 3. Pandit Krittibash Ojha, who is supposed to have lived in the second half of the 15th century, composed a Bangla version of the Ramayana. This Ramayana is deeply influenced by Vaishnava Bhakti and presents demons such as Ravana and Maricha as devotees of the god Rama (Benoit 1998). 4. My source for this is Gurusaday Dutt’s collection of patua songs (Dutt 1939). 5. See Appendix III A for the story. 6. The first frame of a pata is called sadar, the common or public area, and depicts King Dasharatha giving the order for exile. The first frame is supposed to enable entry into the story and the performance, therefore the name. 7. The stories may be new but Chitrakar artists have no difficulty in adapting their traditional techniques of bardic composition — using formulaic images to articulate new ideas (see Chapter 2). Thus most government- or NGOsponsored patas on new themes take this form and are no longer considered to be an artistic challenge for the better artists. The graphic novel experiment was approached very differently by both the sponsors as well as the artists, as we shall see. The workshop was organised by Tara Books and sponsored by the Tara Educational Research Society. 8. In their collaborations with Pardhan-Gond artists, the Tara team has chosen stories that can complement a distinctive feature of this style, i.e., the quality of morphing suggested by the pattern effect, where a figure is captured in paint at the very moment when it is about to merge with or transform itself into something else. 9. The Tsunami book is in the form of one continuous page which folds up like an accordion in keeping with the format of the painted scroll. 10. Several Chitrakar artists whom I have met have experience with book illustration. However none of these projects have been collaborative ventures. The story is narrated to the artist and the pictures are commissioned. The text writer and designer do not actually work with the illustrator or explain the book project as a whole. 11. Ravi Vasudevan (1993) says that unlike an icon, the tableau presumes an underlying narrative structure. The stance and expression of the characters give a synoptic account of the emotional situation. 12. An iconic framing assumes that the image being enframed has achieved a stable, even formulaic meaning (Vasudevan 1993). 13. The ‘Bird Wedding’ story describes the marriage of two birds. All the birds in the forest come together to offer their help at the wedding. All is well till the vulture appears at the wedding feast and swallows all the invitees in one gargantuan gulp. 14. See Appendix IV for the full text of the song.

246 c Speaking with Pictures 15. The significance of flexible shapes and sizes of individual panels for conveying shifts in narrative perspective will be discussed in the next section (see also Mikkonen 2008). 16. The 17th and 18th century terracotta temples of rural Bengal that depict scenes from sacred stories also use multiple modes of narration (Datta 1975). 17. See also Deleuze (1989). 18. Gilles Deleuze (1992) makes a distinction between the face as a reflecting unity, an outline, an expression of quality which is common to several things — in this case to the separate features held together by the coherent and unified outline of the face; and the face as an intensive series in which separate features that go up to make the face are separated from its outline to make up an intensive series — a series of affects that can also be expressions of power and desire that are successively embodied in one feature or bodily organ after another. Deleuze says that whilst wonder may be expressed best through the face as outline, desire and power, the intense emotions of ‘love–hate’ can only be expressed through the dismemberment of the face into an intensive series. 19. In some Bhadu songs, Ravana rides an earthworm, which is popularly supposed to be the vahana (vehicle) of Yama, the god of death. Thus, in the song of parting as the goddess leaves her earth-bound devotees after her puja: The earthworm has come with the winds from the south The golden palanquin has come to take our darling away. 20. Michael Nijhawan (2006) has an exhaustive discussion about the relationship between different dimensions of narration with reference to epic texts. 21. ‘Genre is the principle by which texts converse with each other’ (Barber 2007: 43). 22. Charles Saunders Peirce, one of the founders of modern semiology, complicates our notion of ‘reading’ by insisting that it involves more than mere decoding. The reading of a sign means that the act of interpretation has to be translated into another sign and so on ad infinitum (1955: 98–119). 23. He told me that he was trying to get the songs translated into Hindi and English to enhance the readability of the scrolls that now circulate largely among people who are not familiar with Bangla or her folk musical traditions. Even though he had been able to identify potential translators of his songs, his efforts were unsuccessful because they soon realised that the poetic of the original text could only be conveyed by the distinctive tunes that he uses. The graphic potential of writing is explored by the comic book genre and can be used to create emotional resonance in the way that music is associated with dhwani (see Chapter 2). 24. This mode of production may be quite novel for this genre. Karline McLain’s discussion on the Amar Chitra Katha comic book series shows that the writer rather than the illustrator is the one who organises the layout of each page of

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25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

30.

the comic book, and positions text panels and speech balloons in each panel, even giving a written description of the image that the illustrator has to draw (2009). The influence of the decadent zamindar theme made popular by the popular performance tradition of 19th century Kolkata is evident here, I think (Banerjee 1989). Joy and Bijoy are the two companions who guard the entrance to Vaikuntha, Vishnu’s heavenly abode. They are cursed, because of a transgression, to be born in mortal wombs. To mitigate this curse, however, Vishnu gives them a choice of seven mortal incarnations as good beings or three as evil ones. They choose the shortest route back to Vaikuntha and are reborn as demons in three successive lives (Chatterji 1987). In this frame Manu shows an old man, the storyteller in his narrative, who points at an airplane and tells the children who make up his audience that that was his pushpak rath (chariot) in which he abducted Sita. Both Manu and Swarna have composed patas on the graphic novel themes that they have been commissioned to illustrate. Swarna’s project, which is to interpret the Pinocchio story, incorporates the speech balloon as a decorative device. She has also started to experiment with the figurative and gestural aspect of writing. She is, as I have said earlier, unlettered. The Godhana style evolved from tattoo art. This is another example of a recent folk art tradition. It was developed by members of the Dusadh community in the Mithila region of Bihar with the support of the anthropologist Erica Moser in the 1970s (Singh n.d.). Worli is a form of folk art practiced by the community of that name in Maharashtra. Gulammohammad Sheik came across the Rajasthani movable shrines called kaavad in the Crafts Museum and was inspired by the medium to create his own personal narratives in that form. Kaavads are portable boxes that are carried by the storytellers. They have doors that can open and shut to show the painted narratives within. Each surface of the box shrine carries a painted story, usually sacred myths. They are like ‘three dimensional paintings’ with multiple themes. The storytellers can tell different stories by opening and closing the doors to manipulate the painted panels (Sheik 2008).

FIVE

Conclusion: Pictures and Myths T

he main problematic of this book has been to examine how newness emerges within a tradition of narrative performance through image making. Working with the Chitrakar and Pardhan-Gond artists, I asked how their distinctive narrative traditions when placed in new contexts among publics with different kinds of visual and storytelling orientations, become transformed even as they retain their connections to earlier forms. How are old contexts displaced by novel kinds of context-making as these artists begin to participate in new markets? What are the demands made on them as they translate stories into images and images into stories? Translation entails many risks as we saw in the earlier chapters. Literalist interpretations of the text may result in an inability to address larger questions regarding style and medium — questions that may be crucial for understanding the nature of the image itself. At its best, a good translation enables a text to explore its potential by transcending its immediate context by allowing it to be affected by another language or to find a new life in another medium (Benjamin 1968). In this work ‘translation’ is used in this sense — not so much to describe the movement of a text from one natural language to another but rather from the medium of words to that of painted images. In the course of their circulation the images that I discuss acquire material expression through the interaction of the visual medium and that of aurality.

Pictures and the Narrative Universe The art of the Chitrakars has always assumed a multi-media context so that the viewing of the painted pata coincides with the hearing of the story.

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However, the pata is also considered to be a separate entity and the story that is depicted visually may diverge in some detail from the song that accompanies it. Painting and singing were always seen as separate activities and patas were often shared by a community of performers. Thus painted images were open to differences of interpretation depending on what part of the picture the singer chose to emphasise. This aspect of the narrative tradition has been significantly enhanced in recent years as the pata is increasingly becoming detached from its traditional performative context. In new compositions like the 9/11 crash that was discussed in Chapter 2, the painted story and the song are connected only tenuously by a common theme. The contradiction between the demonic and the divine in the figure of Osama bin Laden is never expressed in the song, yet it has become a central theme that frames the narrative depicted on the scroll. Lest we assume that only new themes allow for such creative experimentation, I acquired a Manasa Mangal pata from Swarna Chitrakar in 2009 that also carries ‘storyable’ potential that is not reflected in the song. Conventional renditions of the story of the snake goddess Manasa begin with a frame that displays her lakshana (attributes) and is usually accompanied by the invocation that begins the narrative. The song describes her sitting on a throne that is made up of snakes; snakes adorn her body and they are her companions coming to do her bidding when she calls upon them. It depicts her adventures on earth and her antagonistic relationship with Chand Saudagar, her chief opponent, whose worship she must win to be able to establish herself in the divine pantheon. It ends with another iconic framing showing Manasa surrounded by snakes being worshipped by Chand and his family (see Plates 5.1 and 5.2). In Swarna’s rendition of the story the first frame showed snakes with human faces. In a mirror reversal of this image, the last frame depicted Manasa with a serpent’s head. In each case Manasa’s ambivalent position is made manifest. She is not merely the overlord who presides over the serpent kingdom but is a snake herself. Her kinship with the snakes is depicted in the first frame in the faces of the snakes that mirror Manasa’s own face and in the figure of Manasa in the last frame where her face, in the form of a snake’s head, reflects her serpent nature — a reversal of the first frame as it were (see Plates 5.3 and 5.4).1 The images in Gond art, as compared to the art forms of the Chitrakars, are visually autonomous. But even here they acquire a certain ‘aura’ from the mythic universe of which they are a part. The deliberate evocation of the aniconic form when depicting Gond deities by masking devices such as

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Plate 5.1: Banku Chitrakar, Manasa Mangal, frame 1. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

ornamentation through the use of an overall pattern, overlapping contours and morphing was discussed in Chapter 3. The use of ‘visual equivalence’ is another. Thus, the antlers of a deer turn into the branches of a tree

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Plate 5.2: Banku Chitrakar, Manasa Mangal, last frame. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

Plate 5.3: Swarna Chitrakar, Manasa Mangal, frame 1. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 5.4: Swarna Chitrakar, Manasa Mangal, last frame. 2009. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

so that a single figure can stand for a whole forest (Plate 3.4) or its roots become the tributaries of the sacred river Narmada. The term sadrisyabodha (similitude or visual equivalence) is used in Indian aesthetics to describe the power of connotative meaning (vyanjana) that is associated with narration (Misra 2009: 163; Bose 1999: 27). These terms can be used to describe both verbal and visual images, but in the two cases that are discussed here it is the point of intersection between the two mediums that gives the images their particular resonance.2 Time is a key component in the art of storytelling. But painting organises time differently from that of verbal narrative. Successive episodes in a story have to be narrated sequentially. A story unfolds in diachronic time, but in a painting events can be presented simultaneously. Thus the painting can present the story in synchronic time. The Chitrakar performer plays on the different ways in which time is organised in the two mediums to generate interest in the audience. All narrative genres, however, make a distinction between narrative time (‘the order of narration’) and the ‘order of events’ as they actually occur (Das 1986: 26). Events that are supposed to be chronologically earlier are presented after events that have occurred much later. This gives an impression of multiple possibilities to the audience.

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Alf Hiltebeitel (2001) calls this mode of narration ‘side shadowing’ — so that ‘shadows of an alternate present’ fall on the events in the story as it unfolds (ibid.: 38). The shadow of other tellings that explores alternate storylines from the side as it were is central to the way in which images are framed in much of Indian folk art and even in the case of new media such as film (Vasudevan 2010). The characters represented in a pata are also part of other narratives as is suggested by the technical means deployed to organise the images. Thus certain modes of iconic framing carry traces of alternative telling, such as the use of multiple frames within a single panel in the case of pata painting or the use of devices for visual enhancement such as ornamentation and morphing in Gond art. Stanley Cavell (1971) says that the possibilities of a medium are made known only by successful work in that medium — by discovering the possibilities ‘that [declares] its necessary conditions, its limits’ (ibid.: 146). In the case of folk art, it is in the cross over to a new medium and to a new genre of storytelling that its essential form is revealed. Chapters 3 and 4 both describe new kinds of experiments with cartoon animation and comic strips in which Gond and Chitrakar art styles are used for new modes of storytelling. Visual equivalence (sadrisyabodha) in painting is used as a way of pointing to other stories outside the picture frame. The strong motifcentred orientation of Gond art and the iconic framing of the images make them seem timeless, but even though these images do not tell stories they seem to suggest that they are embedded in a distinct world-view. The animation film The Best of the Best that was discussed in Chapter 3 tried to tap the inherent animism of the Gond world-view. Following the convention of some classic cartoon films, such as those produced by Walt Disney, the inhabitants of the cartoon world are talking animals and birds — they are anthropomorphic in all aspects except their bodily forms (see Cavell 1971). It is in this last aspect that they are made to conform to Gond figural types. Yet without the iconic framing that gives the images their distinctive aura, the figures look like paper cut-outs that are made to move by an external force.3 The graphic novel experiment, however, was able to tap some dimensions of the Sita Harana story that are not always highlighted in traditional telling. Thus, Swarna’s use of bodily fragmentation gives emotional depth to the visual narrative not usually found in Chitrakar painting. In a sense, the art of the graphic novel allowed her to bring the emotional plane of the narrative, usually expressed through the song, into the painting itself. One may question

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whether she is still working within the bounds of the patua genre. I believe that she is. As Walter Benjamin (1968) says, it is precisely through the infusion of otherness — in the act of translating her style into that used by another genre — that the inherent possibilities of her art are revealed. To explore this idea further, let us turn our attention to the image as it is discussed in Indian aesthetics.

The Image in Indian Art In the preceding chapters I discussed some of the technical issues involved in framing and organising images so that they are suggestive of a larger universe. The conclusion is perhaps the best place to turn to a consideration of the ‘image’ itself as perceived in terms of Indian aesthetics. The folk arts are generally thought to be in a subversive relationship to the classical arts4 but some discussion on the way the image is thought about in a scholarly discipline may also help us to ground specific forms of folk art and their practitioners in a distinctive aesthetic such that they may be considered as capable of responding to changes in their artistic environment in an active manner by innovating creatively with the technical means at their disposal. The most radical changes that have occurred in recent times have been brought about by the creation of new kinds of exhibition and performance spaces where folk artists are confronted with other forms of art, both folk and modern. I have tried to show that these artists are not mute witnesses to the changes that modern art has brought in its wake but are able to respond to these new influences from their own perspectives that is strongly grounded in an aesthetic tradition which has a sophisticated theory of image and representation even if it is not consciously articulated. Stories that tell us about the origin of painting speak of the image as a mode of making the present, as a way of reclaiming something that is invisible or no longer manifest. Thus the ancient treatise on Indian art — the Chitralakshana by Nagnajit — recounts the story of a righteous king who fought with Yama, the god of death, to reclaim the son of one of his subjects who had died an untimely death. On the point of victory over Death, Brahma, the lord of creation, intervened in the battle and persuaded the king to lay down arms by teaching him the art of painting. The king was able to paint a portrait of the dead boy and Brahma decreed that it should take his place and be gifted as a ‘living person’ to the bereaved father (Goswamy and Dahmen-Dallapiccola 1976: 68).5 Other stories tell us how the artist created the first Buddha image by looking at his reflection in the water or by colouring the shadow of the Buddha cast on a piece of

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cloth (Misra 2009). Interestingly, Jangarh Singh Shyam, the ‘founder’ of the Gond style is also said to have learned painting in this way. Vivek, the art student who drew Swaminathan’s attention to Jangarh, was told by the latter’s relatives in Patangarh, Madhya Pradesh, that he used to be fascinated by his own shadow when he was a boy. He would use a stick to draw the outline of his figure, cast as a shadow on the earth and then complete it by putting in the features of his face and body (Vajpeyi and Vivek 2008; Vivek 2006). The image, as these stories suggest, is a visible reminder of the one who is absent (Kinnard 2001). The stories play with our notion of time by making the past co-present. The artists do not create the illusion of presence by making copies of the persons being represented but invoke their presence through lakshana or signs. Lakshana are signs that relate that which is distant to the immediately present, thus allowing reality to be represented at two different levels. Paired terms such as rupa–pratirupa are used to designate this dual aspect. When we talk about sacred images or icons as in the case of the Buddha image we talk about the visual form of that which is essentially unmanifest. Thus, the rupa of the deity is incorporeal or unmanifest but becomes present to our gaze as chhaya purusha through his/her reflection (pratirupa). It is the reflection that the artist uses as a model for his/her painting (Misra 2009: 151). The images that are discussed here are not sacred and are therefore not prepared in accordance with canonical prescription. Rather, they are transgressive as the origin myth of the Chitrakars tells us and have led to the low status of the community in present times (see Chapter 1). Other stories speak of the pata, the painted scroll, as a mirror that reveals past events so that we can reflect on them anew. When the patas portray events related to the lila (play) of the gods, the mood in which the images are depicted is one of bhakti (devotion) so that the gods make themselves present in ways that are accessible to their devotees. It is the Chitrakar’s duty to make the gods visible in a manner that is suitable for this limited gaze. It is as if the gods are speaking to us, their faces half turned to the audience, their gestures drawing us into their world.6 The songs that accompany the display of the patas explain the significance of these gestures by invoking the mythic context in which these stories are embedded. In an earlier work I have discussed how myth is thought of as ‘utterable truth’ or katha in the folk religion of Bengal (Chatterji 1987). Myths are personified discourses that take on different forms when embodied in different media. They are simultaneously the narrative as text, the narration

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of the story both as painting and song and also the events retained in memory and reproduced in new performative contexts. In the patua performance it is not just the song that can be thought of as personified discourse. The paintings with their polyphonic images that can be interpreted in several different ways may be telling another story as well (Singh 1995b). The Pardhan-Gonds are sometimes described as animistic — their gods are present as natural formation in rivers and ant hills but also in unexpected corners of their homes and villages (Pare 2008). One of the Gond myths of origin describes the travels of Devi Mata from the sacred centre at Karbematta. Wherever the goddess went there appeared sacred shrines — shrines that are the traces of her journey through the territory of the Gonds. As she traversed their territory she called forth the gods who now people the Gond pantheon and reside among them. As she passed by the fork in the road she uttered the name ‘Chaurahin’ and called forth the deity who would reside at the cross roads and make it a sacred place. She did the same when she came to the river by pronouncing ‘Jaldahin’. When she went into the houses, sat in their verandas or flew past their roof tops, ‘Chhaprahin’ she announced. From then on the gods and humans have lived side by side. Most of the time the gods are invisible, but sometimes they take embodiment by possessing the bodies of their devotees or as the invocation in the epic songs sung by Pardhan-Gond bards. They also come to reside in sacred places like anthills or in special rocks, stones and water bodies and acquire aniconic form. When Pardhan-Gond artists give form to these deities in their paintings they also try to invoke their luminous presence. These do not take the form of stories however but through devices that mask the divine figures as mentioned previously. Thus every Gond artist also draws upon a mythic universe not so much to tell stories about their gods nor to make their gods visible but rather ‘to give form to their invisibility’ (Kinnard 2001: 36). The pattern with which all figures are covered do not so much adorn the deities as draw attention to the fact that Gond deities are always present in aniconic form. Even when figures are depicted anthropomorphically they retain a quality of abstraction and are never humanised. The images in Gond art achieve a kind of luminosity by positing the aniconic form as a kind of absence. Even when the painters choose to depict secular themes the techniques of ornamentation, morphing and superimposition of figures one upon another all work to charge the image with a presence that transcends the narrative that it is supposed to depict.

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Recent attempts to illustrate stories such as Mangru Uikey’s narrative series are still presented in discrete frames with no attempt at interconnection via gesture in the manner of Chitrakar pata painting.7 Other Pardhan-Gond artists like Venkataraman Singh Shyam are turning to the painterly image itself as a site of exploration and are increasingly looking at modern art as a source of innovation. Venkat’s experiments with Cubism have already been touched upon in Chapter 1 (see Plate 1.16). Using the somewhat enigmatic connection between myths and visual images to their advantage the device of side shadowing is also used quite self-consciously by many artists to create alternate narrative frames within which the pictorial images can be interpreted. Thus, a picture of a serpent with a tree on its head can refer to the Shesha Naga, the mythical serpent who bears the weight of the earth on its coils, or it could be Sita whose descent into the bosom of the earth is shown through the image of a snake. But what about the art of the Chitrakars? At first sight the imperative for storytelling seems to pose a constraint on innovation in the painterly image. However, artists like Kalam Patua have started to reflect on the medium itself and treat it as a narrative device. For Kalam, learning the water colour technique of the Kalighat painters also meant learning the language of satire so as to be able to use the style to comment on contemporary events. Paintings with evocative titles like ‘9/11 and Coffee’ resonate with the mood of the Kalighat style. This painting, which was exhibited at a Delhi gallery about seven years ago, depicts a middle-aged couple busy with their morning tea while the television shows us an image of the Twin Towers burning. It is a contemporary critique of urban middle class life in Bengal in much the same way that the original Kalighat paintings were (Jain 2004). Kalam is not interested in mechanically reproducing a style of painting; rather, by re-contextualising a global subject he is exploring the inherent potential of the genre itself.8 Swarna Chitrakar and her brother Anwar are increasingly trying to break out of the storytelling mode by abstracting figures from their narrative context (see Plates 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7). The figure of Christ lends itself most readily to this endeavour because the Biblical story is not part of the conventional Chitrakar repertoire. But its iconic framing — the fact that the cross on which Christ is impaled can also be read as a lakshana forcing the viewer’s attention away from the form per se to the narrative intention of the image — seems to contradict this. However, experimentation with the positioning of Christ’s body so that his legs are curled up instead of stretched along the vertical length of the cross by Swarna, and the use of

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Plate 5.5: Swarna Chitrakar, Christ. 2010. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

ornamentation and a different colour palette to highlight the flat surface of the painting by Anwar, all point to a new awareness of the ‘medium’ of painting itself. Anwar, in some of his most recent works, has gone much further in his experimentation with the painterly image. His painting of Ganesha uses the technique of distortion to fragment the figure and assemble it anew (Plate 5.8). Other paintings, such as the Earth Mother, are an exploration of the Gond techniques of ornamentation and morphing

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Plate 5.6: Swarna Chitrakar, Christ. 2010. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

in the language of Chitrakar art (Plate 5.9). The figure of the woman is shown as about to morph into a tree with roots emerging from her lower limbs and branches shooting up from her head. Like the Basin Kanya of Gond painting, she represents the spirit of vegetation.

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Plate 5.7: Anwar Chitrakar, Christ. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

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Plate 5.8: Anwar Chitrakar, Ganesha. 2008. Pigment on Paper. Author’s Collection.

The conclusion is perhaps the best place to dwell on some of the complexities of the painterly image. By using concepts from Indian aesthetics I have tried to show that there is no simple relationship between repre-

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Plate 5.9:

Anwar Chitrakar, Earth Mother. 2010. Ink on Paper. Author’s Collection.

sentation and object. The images that are discussed here are idealised representations that acquire their suggestive appeal from a mythic imagination. But this does not mean that they adhere to a strict ritual code and cannot therefore be read as texts. Both Gond and Chitrakar art belong to heterodox traditions and their appeal lies in their ability to subvert taken for granted ideas about tradition by engaging creatively

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with the contemporary world. I have tried to draw attention to the joyous abundance of their art language that draws on analogies and disjunctions to create unexpected juxtapositions between different kinds of things. Even though neither of these two traditions is a ritual art form per se, by using the technique of iconic framing they can evoke corporeal presence infused with a spiritual charge. Icons, however, exist at once removed from the things that they represent. They have an autonomous existence and can come to represent more than one kind of object over time. A.K. Ramanujan (1999) and Gunther D. Sontheimer (1995), both of whom have written extensively on folk culture, say that turning the gods into icons and giving them corporeal presence is one way of domesticating orthodox and hierarchical traditions. But as we have seen, folk art can also mythicise the mundane. As part of the katha tradition they have the capacity of ‘lived synchronicism’ (Chatterji 1986). Sacred narratives bring mythic events into ‘real’ time and make them part of our day-to-day lives. To a large extent the two art forms that we have been discussing here do the same. They are in a reflexive relationship not only with other narrative traditions but with the phenomenal world as such (Ramanujan 1999).

Side Shadowing as Narrative Technique The folk art forms that are discussed here are testimony to centuries of interaction between Islam, Hinduism and tribal religions so that they are oriented to trans-national traditions but also embody elements of the local environments from which they have emerged. Orality and writing have co-existed in India for many centuries. Written literature in Sanskrit as well as other vernaculars was superposed on folk traditions producing, as Sheldon Pollock says, literary imaginations that tended to be selfconscious (2006: 26). Both the Chitrakars and the Gonds have long histories of interaction with other cultures and with oral and written literatures. Literary texts such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are ‘disjoined’ and themes selectively re-emplotted in a variety of local genres (Hiltebeitel 1999). According to Hiltebeitel (2001), ‘side shadowing’ is one of the techniques that the Mahabharata uses to ‘allow the shadow of an alternate present to fall on the episodes’ as they unfold in the narrative (Das 2010b: 4). While foreshadowing and back shadowing are the two most commonly known techniques used to break out of a sequential ordering of narrative time, side shadowing allows us to think of the present as consisting not just of events that occur but also of unrealised possibilities.

Conclusion d 265

Thus many of the characters and episodes that appear in the Mahabharata also feature in stories outside the textual tradition. Characters in folk stories often acquire a certain aura because they resonate with characters found in the Sanskritic tradition — recognisable yet with different life trajectories. One such story is ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ discussed in Chapter 3. The Gond story, ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’, has a theme similar to one of the instructional tales that the dying patriarch Bhishma recounts to his nephew Yudhishthira, the Pandava king in the epic Mahabharata. This story is about a forest dwelling ascetic and a dog that adopts the former’s lifestyle and as a result becomes weak and vulnerable to predatory animals. The ascetic turns the dog into the predator that threatens him only to find it being threatened by an even more terrible beast. Finally the dog is turned into a mythical beast — an eight-legged sharabha — who turns on the ascetic himself when there is no food left in the forest to satisfy its raging appetite. Forewarned, the ascetic turns it back into a dog and expels him from his hermitage. This story, according to Hiltebeitel (2001), is about cosmic classification and the importance of keeping different categories apart. In the beginning the dog misrecognises itself, wanting to be human by emulating the ascetic’s lifestyle and vegetarian diet and thereby causing injury to itself. The ascetic responds by turning it into progressively more savage and cruel animals that ultimately threaten his own life whereupon it is restored to its former state as a wretched and depressed dog and banished from the hermitage. The story is about dharma, and about cruelty and non-cruelty as Hiltebeitel tells us. The dog violates its dharma by behaving like a human being and is punished for this transgression. The sage shows no compassion towards his faithful dog companion. Instead, he encourages it in its delusion and finally punishes it by reducing it to an even more wretched existence than before. This theme in the Gond version is narrated from the point of view of the creature that undergoes the transformation. ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ is also about category confusions and about the misrecognition of the self (atma). But the story is emplotted differently from the Mahabharata story. It ends with a positive resolution rather than a negative one. If one thinks of this story as discrete, i.e., located in plot time, then the successive transformations of the squirrel are oriented to a particular end. The squirrel takes on the form of the creature that is perceived as an immediate threat until it comes to realise that the greatest threat of all is its dissatisfaction with its state of being. However, some sequences in the story seem to fall outside the logic of the plot structure, such as the transformation of the squirrel into a fruit and then a flower (see Chapter 3). Such sequences

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seem to be more about classification than about threat perception. Here the story points to the act of narration rather than plot. The narration presupposes a synchronic relationship, a form of ‘side shadowing’ that makes these sequences intelligible (cf. Hiltebeitel 2001). Every narrative act assumes that other narrations have occurred in the past and will occur in the future. Translations, displacements and transformations brought about through the intervention of new media can also be thought of as acts of narration. As storytelling events they allow us — the narrators and the audience — to participate in a narrative universe. Storytelling is one of the ways in which we make sense of the world, not so much as propositional statements or didactic truths, but rather as utterances that enable us to relate sacred events that occur in cosmic time to mundane this-worldly issues. The Mahabharata tale about cruelty and non-cruelty becomes an exploration of the self’s experience of otherness and its own identity. Dharma itself may be humanised by bringing it into an animal tale (Das 2010b). The use of side shadowing in the Mahabharata may also point to the Gond story as an unrealised possibility. What if the dog had agency rather than the sage? The Mahabharata story is a moral tale. It warns us about the dangers of category confusion — flouting the law of dharma leads to disastrous consequence. The story shows no compassion for the dog who was trying to express kinship with his host, the sage, by emulating his lifestyle. The Gond story, in contrast, is about relationality as a form of intimacy. The squirrel/chameleon is curious about other creatures in its environment and learns to know them by taking on their embodied forms. It chooses its path of exploration and comes to self-realisation through its own endeavours. Mangru Uikey’s pictures foreground this aspect of the story, showing the creature revelling in new experiences suddenly made available through an altered sense perception but also vulnerable to new threats. Myths, as Audrey Cantlie (2003) says, are great travellers. They may sometimes present themselves to us as entities complete in themselves. It is only when we view them as part of a larger universe that we become aware that they are fragments which may appear different as they become part of other texts, their meanings transformed by other contexts. The stories that we have encountered here have the same potential, to appear as motifs in new kinds of texts without however losing the resonance that has kept them alive to be passed on to the next generation of storytellers. Scholars like Annapurna Garimella (2010) have described the ‘contemporary of vernacular arts’ as a ‘question about the diversity of temporalities in one present’ (ibid.: 73).9 This may not be a quality ascribable only to the ‘folk’ or the ‘vernacular’ arts but one that is a fundamental feature of traditional

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Indian art that has always conceptualised culture in the form of a palimpsest by complicating their rendering of time so that any narrative, whether in the form of a written text, a painting or a performance, constitutes a present of the telling within the story but also harks back to a past and to events that have preceded the time of the narration. It is this particular technique of storytelling that allows folk artists to be responsive to new stimuli without losing their mooring in tradition and makes them so attractive to new audiences.

Notes 1. Figures and themes that are often part of established ‘folk’ repertoires are taken up as ‘subversive’ by artists trained in modern art institutions. See, for instance, the work of Vijay Siddramappa Hagargundgi, displayed at Devi Art Foundation in December 2010, Gurgaon. Hagargundi trained at Gulbarga Fine Arts College and Shantiniketan but then decided to paint in ‘the old way’ of Vijayanagara artists. One of his paintings in black and white is of Ketu, shown with a serpent’s head (Garimella 2010: 13). 2. Even though there are separate treatises on painting as opposed to the other arts such as the Chitra sutras in the Vishnudharmotara Purana, classical Indian scholarship tends to think in terms of a coherent body of concepts that applied to all the fine arts (Krishnamoorthy 1979).The circulation of core myths between different mediums such as writing, dance, painting and sculpture has been documented by many scholars (see for instance, Hiltebeitel 1988, 1991; Dahejia 1997). 3. As I have said in Chapter 3, there is an implicit assumption of realism in the way that movement has been depicted in the film. The animated figures have none of the wondrous quality of the Disney cartoon characters. Perhaps, as Stanley Cavell (1971) says, this is because the Disney characters are anthropomorphic without being corporeal. Their enchantment is due to the fact that their bodies do not follow the laws of nature such as gravity. Interestingly, Mangru’s character also abrogates corporeality. The characters in his stories change their shape from frame to frame. 4. This is the stance adopted by much of mainstream folkloristics in India. See articles in journals such as Lokoshruti and the Journal of Indian Folkloristics among others. However scholars such as Alf Hiltebeitel (1999) have problematised this way of viewing folk tradition. 5. The Chitralakshana is one of the earliest works on the canons of Indian art. Written in Sanskrit in the Gupta period, it is known to modern scholarship only through its medieval Tibetan translation (Goswamy and Dahmen-Dallapiccola 1976).

268 c Speaking with Pictures 6. Figures are usually rendered with faces in three quarters position in the Medinipur style of pata painting. 7. Experiments with storytelling in a sequential mode by many of the younger generation of Pardhan-Gond artists point to a new classification that is emerging between folk and high art. On the one hand, practitioners of indigenous craft traditions are being asked to adapt their practices to accommodate narration, while on the other folk artists are turning self-consciously to the image itself to explore its potential outside the narrative mode. 8. The painting by Kalam reproduced in Chapter 1 is also interesting because it shows an artist being interviewed during an interactive workshop that combined folk and contemporary arts. We see here a case of a folk artist comment on the practices of modern institutions that make up the contemporary art world (see Plate 1.12). 9. This was one of the issues that Annapurna Garimella raised in an interview with Jyotindra Jain in the catalogue that was brought out on the occasion of the exhibition that she curated, titled ‘Vernacular in the Contemporary’ in December 2010 at Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon. Jain, of course, has endeavoured to present the complex layering of time through the landmark exhibition ‘Other Masters’ that he curated at the Crafts Museum, New Delhi in 1998. He organised an expanded version of this exhibition in Paris in 2010. The strength of Jain’s approach is the fact that he can demonstrate this complex idea of time concretely through the work of individual folk artists working in specific traditions. He never talks in merely abstract terms.

APPENDIX I

Adim Juger Manush (People of Ancient Times) by Probir Chitrakar O listen all you people, Listen with attention. The truth of people of primitive times I will now describe. They live in forests wearing loincloths, They wear bark cloth. They will be formed as humans, They think in their hearts. O listen all you people, Listen with attention. The truth of people of primitive times I will now describe. Wearing pant and shirt, They went to become literate. Literacy — they too must read. Let us all vow collectively.1 O listen all you people, Listen with attention. The truth of people of primitive times I will now describe. I say to all you unfortunate mothers in the village, Send all your children to school. Don’t feel ashamed,

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Literacy is necessary for all. O listen all you people, Listen with attention. The truth of people of primitive times2 I will now describe. They all go to Posh mela (Winter fair), In lines and lines they all go. Durga puja, Kali puja — none will miss the celebrations. O listen all you people, Listen with attention. The truth of people of primitive times I will now describe. Come let us all vow together, In one voice let all our voices mingle. To the cause of humans of primitive times We will be attentive.

Notes 1. There is a shift from the third person mode to that of second person here. Up till now the adivasis were objects of description. Now they are referred to directly as Santals and addressed directly. 2. Posh parab is an important winter festival that is also celebrated in Shantiniketan, the institution set up by Rabindranath Tagore. The Posh mela frames the Santal-Bengali cultural interface that is depicted in the literature and painting of many artists associated with Shantiniketan (Subramanyan 1987). One can read this motif as an attempt to re-contextualise the tribal motifs that were introduced by the early Shantiniketan painters into their paintings. I have seen patas that borrow from the Santal dance motifs used by the artist Nandalal Bose (1999).

APPENDIX II

The Chameleon’s Dreams Story Narrated by Mangru Uikey Once there was a chameleon. He lived in the dense forest. He had a cosy shelter at the foot of a tree and plenty to eat. But in spite of having all the material comforts of life he was despondent. He wished that he had been born as something other than a chameleon. Every living creature has a colour of its own except for him, he thought. A while ago he was blue, now he had become green to match the colour of the leaves around him. In a while he would become purple, then perhaps maroon or even black. Was this an existence worth having, he wondered. It is true that this ability to change his bodily hue had saved him from many a dangerous situation in the forest but it was as if he had no identity (pehechaan) of his own. In the day time, yellow as corn; at night, dark brown like caramelised sugar — every two hours to become a stranger to oneself. He was envious of all the other forest creatures. A snake lived near the pond next to the tree in which the chameleon had his nest. The other small animals like the mice and the bats were terrified of the snake. The chameleon would gaze at the snake in admiration, safe in his protective camouflage. He thought how wonderful it would be to be a snake — to be recognised and feared by all the other creatures in the forest; to slither on the ground carefree, basking in the sunshine; to be able to unfurl one’s hood and sway in the breeze. The chameleon could not sleep. His head was full of thoughts. Finally he went to his friend, another chameleon, who lived on a tree that had leaves which could send one to sleep. The chameleon chewed on the

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sleep-inducing leaves. As his eyes began to droop, he felt his body begin to stretch. It became longer and longer, as if it was slithering on the ground! He had become a snake! He admired his reflection in the pond. He watched the light shining on his scales. He unfurled his hood and swayed in the breeze. He had got his heart’s desire. The bats, the mice and all the other small creatures that lived in the forest, even his friend the chameleon, scampered away in fear. He slithered on the ground ignoring the pain pricks from the pointed thorns and sharp stones. Suddenly the bright eyes of a mongoose appeared before him. Like the chameleon that he still was at heart, he tried to change colour to protect himself. Nothing happened, but he managed to crawl up a tree just in time. He thought how wonderful it would be to be a mongoose. His head felt heavy; he was drowsy again. Suddenly his eyes opened wide; his beautiful striped body was covered with fur, he had paws and a tail! He gambolled about trying to catch his own tail, leaping up to touch the branches of a tree. He jumped so high that he got entangled in the branches. He was trapped. He could not come down, nor could he climb up. How wonderful to be a bud or a leaf, he thought — never to have to move; never to have to climb up or down or crawl on the dangerous earth. And lo and behold, he got his wish! He could stay still, suspended on a branch, never having to move. But then he saw a crow tearing at a clump of leaves. Perhaps it is better to be a crow. As the thought came to him, he felt his eyes droop and his body begin to change. He had shiny black feathers — he could fly! He looked down. Some boys were aiming their slingshots at him, stones were whizzing past him. He woke with a start. It had all been a dream. How wonderful it was to be a chameleon again!

APPENDIX III A

The Story of Ramayana Rama is the seventh avatar of Vishnu, the preserver. The gods appealed to Vishnu for help against the tyrannies of Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, who through his austerities acquired a boon that made him invincible against gods and demons alike. Since the boon once given could not be revoked, Vishnu took the form of a man to bring about Ravana’s death. In his capital city, Ayodhya, Dasharata, the king of Koshala, lived with his three wives — Kaushalya, Sumitra and Kaikeyi. In answer to his prayers for sons, Vishnu was born to Queen Kaushalya as Rama, the eldest son. His brothers, Lakshamana, Bharata and Shatruhana, born by Dasharata’s other wives, were all emanations of Lord Vishnu. When Rama was 16, the sage Vishwamitra sought his help in vanquishing the demons who disturbed the peace of his ashrama (hermitage) and interfered with the sacrifices. Rama and Lakshmana accompanied the sage, and succeeded in driving off the demons. Rama slew Taraka and drove her son Maricha away. With Vishwamitra they journeyed to Mithila, the kingdom of Janaka, whose daughter Sita was to be given in marriage to the man who was able to lift and string the mighty bow of Lord Shiva. Rama was the only man who was able to do so. Thus, he was married to Sita — the daughter of Mother Earth — who had been found in a pot in a furrow of a field by King Janaka who raised her as his child. When the time came for Dasharata to lay down the cares of kingship, he named Rama as his successor. The coronation was fixed, but through the machinations of the youngest queen Kaikeyi and her hunch-backed maid, Manthara, Rama was sent into exile for 14 years and Bharata named as his successor.

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Accompanied by his faithful wife Sita and devoted brother Lakshmana, Rama left Ayodhya for the Dandaka forest. King Dasharata died, brokenhearted shortly after. Bharata refused to accept the crown and went after Rama to beg him to return. Rama insisted on upholding his father’s promise to Queen Kaikeyi even though it was extracted in an underhand manner. Bharata was persuaded to return and take charge of Koshala in Rama’s absence. Rama killed several demons in Dandaka forest including Viradha who tried to abduct Sita. He visited many ashramas including that of the great seer Agastya, who gave him magical weapons and advised him to settle in Panchavati forest. It is in Panchavati forest that Ravana’s sister, Surpanakha accosted the two brothers and was mutilated by Lakshamana. It is to avenge his sister that Ravana abducted Sita. (The events leading up to the abduction are described in Appendix III B). This act led to the Great War between the armies of Rama and Ravana. Rama and Lakshmana found evidence of Sita’s abduction in the form of jewels gathered by the subjects of the monkey king, Sugriva. Rama entered into an alliance with Sugriva. He got his support in the search for Sita by slaying Valli, Sugriva’s brother and usurper of his throne. Hanuman, the commander-in-chief of the monkey army and son of the wind god Vayu, jumped across the ocean and landed in Lanka, in the Ashoka forest where Sita was being held captive. Wishing to make his presence felt in Lanka, Hanuman swept through the forest like a tempest causing destruction all around. He let himself be captured by Ravana’s soldiers and be led to the demon king himself. He warned Ravana to release Sita or face destruction. The irate Ravana ignored the warning and instead ordered Hanuman’s tail to be set on fire. Hanuman used his tail as a torch and set Lanka on fire before leaping across the ocean to return to his forest abode. The preparations for the march to Lanka began. The monkey chief, Nala, and his compatriot, Nila, supervised the building of a causeway across the ocean. In the great war that ensued, there were heavy losses on both sides. Ravana lost his brother Kumbhakarna and his favourite son, the mighty Indrajit. The distraught father killed Lakshmana who had been responsible for Indrajit’s death. Lakshmana was revived by the administration of life-restoring herbs that Hanuman managed to get from the Himalayas. Finally the time came for Rama and Ravana to confront each other. When Rama’s arrows had little effect on Ravana, he used the deadly Brahma astra weapon that sage Agastya had bestowed upon him. Thus did the ten-headed Ravana meet his end. Vibhishana, Ravana’s brother, who had fought side by side with Rama, was crowned king of Lanka.

Appendix III A d 275

Sita was finally rescued, but because she had been associated with another man she was forced to prove her innocence. This she did by mounting a pyre and emerging unscathed. Rama, Sita and Lakshmana returned triumphantly to Ayodhya and Rama ascended the throne. Rama’s reign is known as Rama rajya — a golden age, proverbial for a happy and just rule. However the insinuating words of a washer man in Ayodhya about Sita’s stay in Ravana’s kingdom led Rama to banish his beloved wife in the interests of maintaining dharma (righteous order, law). Sita took refuge in the ashrama of the sage Valmiki where she gave birth to the twins — Luv and Kush. Rama meets his sons 15 years later when they capture the sacrificial horse (ashva) that had been let loose as part of the ashvamedha sacrifice to establish his supremacy over the land. The twins capture the wandering horse and when challenged, defeat Lakshmana and Sugriva in battle. They were willing to take on Rama himself when he recognises them. Reconciliation was effected. Sita however, did not return to Ayodhya. Instead she asked to return to her mother, the earth, whereupon the earth opened up and took Sita back into herself.

APPENDIX III B

The Abduction of Sita (Adapted from the Aranyakanda of the Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of India. Introduction and translation by Sheldon I. Pollock. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 2007.) On the advice of the sage Agastya, Rama, Sita and Lakshman set up their ashrama in Pancavati forest. Surpanakha, Ravana’s sister, tries to first accost Rama and then Lakshmana with a proposal of marriage. Enraged at these repeated rejections she attempts to attack Sita. Rama orders Lakshmana to cut off her nose and ears. Bleeding, and in pain, Surpanakha goes to her brother Khara seeking vengeance. Khara and his army are decimated by Rama. She then goes to Ravana. Not just angry on his sister’s behalf, but also seduced by Surpanakha’s description of Sita’s beauty, Ravana orders Maricha to take on the form of a bejeweled deer and draw Rama away so that he can abduct Sita. Maricha is an ascetic even though he is of demon birth. He tries his best to dissuade Ravana from this fool hardy enterprise by describing his two previous near-fatal encounters with Rama. Ravana is in no mood to listen to his advice and Maricha goes to Pancavati forest knowing that he will die. Sita is enchanted by the antics of the bejeweled deer and insists that Rama go after it. Rama leaves Lakshmana behind to protect Sita. Rama manages to wound Maricha, who with his last breath, cries for help in Rama’s voice. Sita hears what she thinks is her husband’s cry for help and forces Lakshmana to go after him with many angry and insulting words. Lakshmana, suspecting a trick, does so with extreme reluctance. Ravana is waiting for an opportunity to catch Sita alone, disguised as an ascetic. Sita welcomes him to the ashrama. He tries to persuade her to elope with him but when she refuses, he forcibly carries her away. Jatayu, the vulture

Appendix III B d 277

king and friend of Rama’s father Dasharatha, tries to stop the abduction but is mortally wounded by Ravana who flies away with Sita in his winged chariot (pushpak rath). Rama and Lakshmana hear about Sita’s abduction from the dying Jatayu. Two interesting points of divergence from the popular tellings on which the patua narrative is based are: a) the fact that Surpanakha does not take on the disguise of a beautiful woman when she attempts to seduce the two brothers even though as a demoness she has shape-shifting ability; and b) Sita is not bound to her forest dwelling by the Lakshaman rekha (the charmed boundary created by Lakshmana to protect Sita from external harm). Instead she welcomes the disguised Ravana into her home and he first tries to persuade her to leave with him before he shows his true colours and abducts her by force.

APPENDIX IV

Sita Harana (The Abduction of Sita)1 sung in Bengali by Niranjan Chitrakar Village: Habichak, District: East Medinipur, West Bengal Translated by Roma Chatterji Originally published in Bengali in Ashok Bhattacharya (ed.), Paschimbanger Patachitra (Kolkata: Loksanskriti and Adivasi Sanskriti Kendra, 2001). Ramachandra was married; his coronation took place. To honour his father’s promise he accepted exile to the forest. In front goes Ramachandra, after him Janaki And after her in the rear comes Lakshmana — the bow bearer. Above the heat of the sun, below the roasting sand, Sita, delicate as a doll made of thickened milk, cannot walk. Breaking a bough [from a nearby tree] Lakshmana holds it above his head, Then, in the shadow of the leafy branch, Lakshmi [Sita]2 walks slowly. In the Panchavati forest Rama took up residence. Rama and Sita sit together while Lakshmana stands guard. Surpanakha comes one day to the Panchavati forest, There her nose was torn asunder by the Lord Lakshmana. With her [torn] nose in her hand goes the woman to Lankapuri, Throws herself at [brother] Ravana’s feet. The wise king Ravana — what wisdom did he speak — On seeing his sister’s plight his body burned with rage.

Appendix IV d 279

His whole body burned, set alight with an [inner] fire; Calling Maricha he dresses him as a deer. With many a dancing step, a beautiful sight to behold. With Raghuvar [Rama], Janaki pleads, ‘Catch this deer for me, make me content With this deer I will contain my sorrow.’ ‘I can no longer resist [Sita’s pleading]; stay with her, Lakshmana, my heart. To catch the deer I go in compliance with Sita’s words. As long as I do not return back to our hut, Keep Sita under your watchful eye.’ Crying, ‘Catch it! Kill it!’ Rama rushed [after the deer]. [With the speed of] a golden bee, the deer flees ahead. Some distance ahead Ramachandra caught the deer. ‘Lakshmana! Lakshmana,’ cried [the deer]! ‘Where are you Lakshmana, my heart, show yourself.’ ‘Come to me in my hour of distress.’ This heart-rending cry went to Sita’s ears. Calling Lakshmana to her side she started to say, ‘Come quickly brother-in-law Lakshmana take [this] betel nut to your mouth.3 To seek your brother, to the Dandaka (deep?) forest you must go.’ [Lakshmana] ‘My brother has left me to watch over you Lakshmi; Now to seek him do you send me?’ [Sita] ‘Now I understand you, brother-in-law Lakshmana, Your intentions I now know. If Ramachandra dies you will be my spouse.’ ‘Vishnu! Vishnu!’ Cries Lakshmana in alarm, his hands on his ears, ‘You are [like] my mother Sumitra, my father is Raghunatha (Rama). But come now, rishi maiden, first take an oath. I will make a boundary mark outside your hut. If you look at the face of the one outside the boundary mark, The three worlds will quake, you will suffer great grief.’ Pronouncing this curse did Lakshmana proceed [on his quest], From beneath the banyan tree did Ravana emerge. ‘Give me alms O Janaki before I return home.’ ‘Your husband’s arrow do I greatly fear.’ ‘Without alms if you wish to slay me.’ ‘Man slaughter is a great sin,’ he threatens Sita. Filling the platter with gold and jewels,4

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Gave the platter as alms, did the daughter of Janaka rishi. With her offering across the boundary mark she stepped; Catching Sita’s hand [he] lifted her to his chariot. Weeping, with tearful face Sita cried, ‘Show yourself, brother-in-law Lakshmana, in my hour of need.’ Flying across the sky the chariot went, Till the friend of Dasharata, Jatayu, appeared in sight. With open mouth did Jatayu swallow the chariot in mighty gulp. Then began the fight between Jatayu and Ravana. ‘Abstain O Jatayu! Abstain [from this fight] The daughter-in-law of your friend is in the chariot.’ Ashamed at his friend’s daughter-in-law’s words, He regurgitated the swallowed chariot. Then Ravana struck him with Brahma’s weapon, His wings cut off did Jatayu fall from the heavens to the earth. With sweet words of sympathy does Ramachandra gaze at Jatayu’s face; Jatayu is blessed with the sight of Ramachandra’s feet. ‘Vanquishing me has Ravana taken your wife in his chariot. First rescue Sita Raghu.’ In grief does Rama fall in the shadow of a tree. ‘My mother is at home my father is at home, in my land By some quirk of fate was Sita captured in the forest,’ In sorrow did Ramachandra lament. Taking Sita did Ravana keep her in the Ashoka forest. Medinipur is my district, my home Habichak, The song of Sita’s abduction do I narrate; I am Niranjan Chitrakar.

Notes 1. In the patua tradition, the Ramayana is divided into sections (palas) which are performed separately. This is one of the best known palas. 2. Just as Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu so is Sita an incarnation Of Vishnu’s consort Lakshmi. In Bengal, however, ‘Lokkhi’ (the Bangla pronunciation of ‘Lakshmi’) also describes the state of being good and is used as an appellation for young boys and girls. 3. The gift of betel leaves and nuts was used to cement relationships of super and subordination between overlords and lesser chieftains (see Curley 2008). Here, it suggests the hierarchical relationship between a king and his subject. 4. As the goddess of prosperity and good fortune, Lakshmi (Sita) is always associated with precious objects that symbolise prosperity.

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About the Author Roma Chatterji holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Delhi, and is currently Professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Apart from an abiding interest in folk culture, she has also worked on medical sociology and collective violence, and her publications include Writing Identities: Folklore and the Performative Arts of Purulia (2009) and Living with Violence: An Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life (co-authored, Routledge, 2007). Her areas of research are folk culture, narrative theory, phenomenology and everyday life, bureaucratic institutions, and she is currently working on the interface between new media and folk art.

Index d 293

Index Abhijnan Shakuntalam 42 Abhinavabharati 97–98 Abhinavagupta 97 abhinaya (modes of conveyance) 97 adivasi animation project 153 adivasi art 108, 111; animations 137; and J. Swaminathan 15–24; and narrative of modern art 118 Adivasi Arts Trust 137 Adivasi Lok Kala Kendra, Bhopal 41 ‘adivasi’ patas 34, 50 African art 3, 19 Agricultural and Industrial Fair, Suri 12 Ahmed, Rafiuddin 60n50 Alliance Francaise and Crafts Council of West Bengal 28 Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Tales) series 232, 246n24 ‘Amrika Jolchhe’ (America is Burning) jatra performance 64, 90 Ananda Niketan Kritishala 24 aniconism 118 animation films: based on ‘tribal’ art forms 140; Disneyesque style of 53; ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ (Gilheri ke sapne) 143–47 ‘Art and Life’ workshop 29 art exhibitions, significance of 4 art forms, stylistic features of 10 art galleries 5, 7, 10 ‘art world’, concept of 5 Asia Heritage Foundation 6 ‘authentic’ primitive art 15 back shadowing, as narrative technique 264 bana 60n46 Bangiya Chitrakar Unnayan Samiti 43

Banglanatak.Com 27 Barber, Karin 45, 50, 171, 214, 216 Barthes, Roland 103, 173n24, 241 Basin Kanya painting 121–23, 127, 130, 260; Tekam, Narmada Prasad 124; Tekam, Ravi 125; Uikey, Mangru 131–35; Vyam, Durga Bai 125, 128–29 Basu, Rituparna 56n16 Bauhaus exhibition, Kolkata 12 Bede Patuas 43 Behrampur–Murshidabad Samajik school 43 Bengal Chitrakars, painterly code of 228 Bengal School of Art 11, 13, 56n18 Bengal’s folk art 12–13 Benjamin, Walter 170, 242, 255 ‘Best of the Best’ Gond animation film 139, 254 ‘Between Dualities’ exhibition (1997–98) 244 Bhadu puja 213 Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal 1–2, 15–18, 30, 41, 57n20, 107–8, 111, 118; role in evolution of Gond arts 21 Bhattacharjee, Binoy 9–10, 43, 61n51 Bhattacharya, Malini 28 bhonita 95 bimba–pratimba, concept of 102 Birbhum–Kandi–Katwa Samajik school 43 bodily movement 138–39 Bollywood films 216 Brahmavaivarta Purana 42, 100 Brighenti, Francesco 123 British Council 28 Bundgaard, Helle 5, 47, 244

294 c Speaking with Pictures Bush–bin Laden relationship 64–65, 70–71, 76–77, 80–83, 85, 90, 92, 94–95, 99–100, 199, 207, 232, 235, 249 Cantlie, Audrey 266 cartoon films, and Gond art 136–53 Caur, Arpana 102, 244 Cavell, Stanley 169, 254 Centre of International Modern Art (CIMA) 29 ‘Chameleon’s Dreams’ (Girgit ke Sapne) story 148–49, 271–72 Chandi mangala scroll 9 Chhote and Litia story 158–69 Chitrakar 5–6; of Birbhum 12; caste occupation 100; demotion to lowcaste status 100; identity 41–45; of Medinipur 31, 34; Nava Shaka group of 42; origin myths 12; subcaste hierarchies 43; title of 9 Chitrakar, Amit 215; Copy of Santal Origin Myth in Medinipur Pata Style 36; Nativity Scene from Bible 218 Chitrakar, Anwar: Christ pata 261; Earth Mother pata 263; Ganesha pata 262 Chitrakar art 254; ‘chokkhu daan’ (gift of the eyes) style 34; ‘jado patia’ style 31, 34; and primitivism 31–38; Rama katha 175–81; ‘tribal’ themes 31 Chitrakar, Dukhushyam 44, 101 Chitrakar, Gurupada 97 Chitrakar, Jomuna 85–86; Kalighat Cat pata 49 Chitrakar, Khandu 93 Chitrakar, Malek 77; mini Laden pata 78, 80, 83 Chitrakar, Manu 3, 70–72; pata on the Gujarat riots 244; Sita Harana painting 200–206

Chitrakar, Moina: Cat with Fish pata 39; reworked story of Sita Harana 190–91, 230–31 Chitrakar, Montu 188; Laden painting 208–12 Chitrakar, Probir 65; Laden painting 68–69, 76, 81–83, 85 Chitrakar, Rani 94 Chitrakar, Swarna 3, 29, 45, 70, 188, 192–99, 214–15, 217, 243, 249, 258; Christ pata 258–60; Laden pata 73; Manasa Mangal pata 249, 252–53; reworked story 220, 222–27; Sita Harana painting 194–98 Chitrakar, Tagar 71, 77, 81, 90, 92; battle scene, depiction of 83; Laden pata scroll painting 65–68; Tsunami pata 32, 98 Chitrakar, Yakub 65; Laden pata 70 Chitralakshana 255, 267n5 ‘chokkhu daan’ (gift of the eyes) style, of Chitrakar art 34, 38 Christ pata: Chitrakar, Anwar 261; Chitrakar, Swarna 259–60 civil disobedience movement, paintings on 28 Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 11, 100 craft melas 5–6, 9, 28–30, 45, 244 Craft Museum, New Delhi 6, 10, 29, 244 Dahejia, Vidya 172n9, 173n27, 191 Danto, Arthur C. 5 Das, Veena 102 Deleuze, Gilles 192, 246n18 Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon 54n5, 268n9 dharma 265–66, 275 Digbijoy Opera 64 Dilli Haat 6–7, 29, 55n11, 244 Disneyesque style of animation 53 Douglas, Tara 137, 139–40, 153, 243

Index d 295 Durga Mahishasuramardini painting 9 Dusadh community 247n29 Dutt, Gurusaday 8–9, 12, 25, 57n19 Earth Mother painting 259; Chitrakar, Anwar 263 Eastern Zone Cultural Centre 27 ‘Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India’ exhibition (2006) 2–3, 30 Eisenstein, Sergei 127 Elwin, Verrier 17, 40 entextualisation 45; process of 50 Enwezor, Okwui 4 ethnic arts, emergence of a market for 4 Fischer, Michael 55n8 Fishes’ Wedding scroll painting 30 folk aesthetics, scholarly reflections on 8–10 folk art 31, 255; aesthetic features of 8; of Bengal 12–13; canonical and classical forms of 5; for children’s book illustrations 120; and development of postmodernism 10; exhibitions 1; museums, exhibitions and the new spaces for 24–25; state patronage of 10–12; ‘vernacular modernism’ of 2–8 folk artists 3–5, 8–9, 11, 13–15, 19, 24, 27–31, 45, 47, 52, 181, 242, 244, 255, 267 folk communities, representation of 38–39; Chitrakars 41–45; Pardhan-Gonds 39–41 folk tales 45, 111, 121, 130, 170, 243; animation of 137 Food for Work Programme 40–41 foreshadowing, as narrative technique 264 Ganesha pata: Chitrakar, Anwar 262; Shyam, Shambhu 138 garhs 40

Garimella, Annapurna 54n5, 266, 268n9 gazis 104n9 ‘genre,’ concept of 47 Ghosh, Pika 9 Godhna painting 244, 247n29 Gond animation film: ‘Best of the Best’ 139 Gond art 15, 31, 107, 249; Basin Kanya, see Basin Kanya painting; cartoon films and 136–53; depiction of forest creatures 111; Jangarh Kalam 1, 127, 130; market for 7; from oral narratives to pictorial art 119–36; semi-anthropomorphic representations of gods and goddesses 111; spiritual relationship 158; stylistic mode of 108–18; techniques of ornamentation and morphing 259–60 Gond identity 39 Gond mythology, paintings from 21 ‘Gond–Pardhan’ style of painting, Madhya Pradesh 5 Gond style of painting 6, 15–16; Basin Kanya, story of 121–23; images 123–36; vs pata painting 120 Goodman, Nelson 34, 59n43 gotra 40 Government School of Art, Kolkata 13 Greenough, Paul 10, 55n9 Guha-Thakurta, Tapati 5 Gujarat riots (2002) 19, 244 Gurusaday Museum, Kolkata 8, 12, 24 Handicrafts Board of West Bengal 27 Harsha Charita 42 Hathaway, Rosemary 105n24 Hausa culture, influence of Hindi films on 216 Hauser, Beatrix 9, 28, 58n34 Havell, E. B. 11, 56n18 Hiltebeitel, Alf 254, 264–65, 267n4

296 c Speaking with Pictures Hindi films, influence on Hausa culture 216 Hindu nationalist organisations 43 Hivale, Shamrao 40 Hyman, John 153 Indian art, image in 255–64 Indian Art Summit 5 Indian Society of Oriental Art 12 Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) 6–7 ‘jado patia’ style, of Chitrakar art 34, 38, 46, 47, 56n15 Jain, Jyotindra 4, 19, 106n26 Jain, Kajri 8 Jal Rani painting 123, 124, 136 Jangarh Kalam (Gond art) 1, 127, 130 Jangarh’s paintings 50, 170 jatra (folk theatre) 25, 62; ‘Amrika Jolchhe’ (America is Burning) 64, 90 Jayakar, Pupul 6 Jishu ( Jesus) mangala pata 83 Johnson, Barbara 170–71 kaavad 247n30 Kala Bhawan, Shantiniketan 12 ‘Kalighat cat with a lobster’ painting 47 Kalighat paintings 15, 59n43, 104n12 kalpana shakti 18 karamchari kalakaar 17 katha tradition 264 Khan, Mushtak 18, 57n19 Khond myth, about the origin of human sacrifice 123 Kopytoff, Igor 58n28 Korom, Frank 64 Krishna 232 Kulkarni, Bhaskar 6 Laden pata scroll painting 64–65, 76, 98, 101; Chitrakar, Baneshwar 84; Chitrakar, Chandan 74, 87–89;

Chitrakar, Jomuna 86; Chitrakar, Joideb 91, 105n14; Chitrakar, Malek 78, 80; Chitrakar, Manu 70–72; Chitrakar, Montu 209– 12; Chitrakar, Probir 68–69, 76, 81–83, 85; Chitrakar, Rohim 69; Chitrakar, Swarna 73; Chitrakar, Tagar 65–68; Chitrakar, Yakub 70 Laden songs 92, 95, 97, 105n23 lakshana 249, 256, 258 Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi 1, 53n1 Larkin, Brian 216 Levi-Strauss, Claude 17, 90 Luhman, Niklas 59n40 Mahabharata 265 McCutchion, David J. 25, 58n29 Mackenzie, Leslie 137 McLain, Karline 232, 246n24 Madhubani painting 6, 30 Madhyam 17 Mal Patuas 43 Manasa Mangal pata 249; Chitrakar, Banku 250–51; Chitrakar, Swarna 252–53 mangala kavya 62–63, 95, 103n2 marginal cultures, arts of 107 Maria tribe 57n25 Maskata Patuas 43 Medinipur tsunami pata 30 Mithila paintings 6, 30, 241 Mitter, Partha 11–12 Mukhopadhyay, Bhaskar 64, 80, 104n5 murti making 44, 60n50 Museum of Modern Art, New York 3 National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmadabad 140 Natyashastra 96–97 Nava Shaka group of Chitrakars 42 Naya artists 27, 55n11, 58n28 Naya patuas 95 Nijhawan, Michael 246n20

Index d 297 Ojha, Pandit Krittibash 245n3 ‘Origin of the Santals’ theme, in pata paintings 38 ‘Other Masters: Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India’ exhibition (1998) 4 Padamsee, Akbar 102 Pai, Anant 232 Palchowdhury, Ruby 28 Pande, Sat Narayan 244 Paramahansa, Rama Krishna 187 parataxis 95–96, 102 Pardhan-Gond artists 30, 50, 108, 111, 119, 128, 137–38, 143, 148, 248, 257–58, 268n7 Pardhan-Gond poetry 41 pata chitra, see pata paintings pata paintings 5–6, 12, 207; bimba– pratimba, concept of 102; on Bush– Osama relationship 64–65, 70–71, 76–83, 85, 90, 92, 94–95, 99–100, 199, 207, 232, 235, 249; chokkhu daan style 31, 34, 38; exhibition of 24; ‘French Revolution’ theme 28; vs Gond paintings 120; in its commodity phase 27–31; Laden pata, see Laden pata scroll painting; Medinipur style of 268n6; ‘Origin of the Santals’ theme 38; ‘People of Ancient Times’ theme 38; and rule of parataxis 96; rupa–pratirupa, concept of 103; for storytelling 63–85; sub-regional schools of 43; use of devices for visual enhancement 254; visual equivalence (sadrisyabodha) in 254 patua art 5, 12–13; and Bengali Society 12–15; genre, audience and translation 214–42; recognition as folk artists 9; of storytelling 63 Patua, Kalam 3, 45–46, 54n3, 258 patuas 9, 34, 42–44, 93, 101, 215 Patua song 93–100; composition of 93

Peirce, Charles Saunders 170, 246n22 ‘People of Ancient Times’ theme, in pata paintings 38 ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India 55n9 Piatigorsky, Alexander 101 pictures: and the narrative tradition 248–55; storytelling through 45–53, 153–71 Pinney, Christopher 55n9 pirs 63, 86, 90, 104n9 Pollock, Sheldon 264 primitive art, definition of 11 primitivism, in avant-garde art in the West 11 ‘Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art’ exhibition 3 Raj Gonds 40 Rama katha 174, 273–75; in the Chitrakar tradition 175–81; time and narrative sequence 181–85; two moments of occurrence 185–214 Ramanujan, A. K. 244n1, 264 Ramayana patas 25, 83 Ranciere, Jacques 192, 243 Rao, Shirish 228 rasa 13, 184, 213 Ravana–Sita relationship, depiction of 175–206, 213–14, 217, 221, 228, 274, 276–80 Ray, Sudhansu Kumar 43 religious identity 9 Roopankar art gallery 1, 15, 30, 108 Roy, Jamini 24 rupa–pratirupa, concept of 103, 256 sadrisyabodha 253–54 sahaja marg 13, 57n19 samaj bandhanis 43, 61n51 Sambrani, Chaitanya 2–3 Santal Bidroho 28, 58n30 ‘Santal’ pata, painted in chokkhu daan style 31

298 c Speaking with Pictures Satya Pir patas 76, 85; Chitrakar, Jomuna 86 School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University 28 Schutz, Alfred 149 scroll painting 24, 30, 54, 62, 64, 101, 192, 215 self-reflexivity 30–31, 47 Sen, Orijit 187–89, 192–93, 199, 207, 217, 221, 228, 241 Sheik, Gulammohammad 19, 102, 244, 247n30 Shesha Naga 258 Shyam, Anand Singh 1, 21, 111; Cat with Multiple Heads paintings 114, 115; Deer painting 110; Deer with Birds painting 113 Shyam, Jangarh Singh 1, 16–17, 54n7, 108, 256; Baradeo painting 2 Shyam, Kala Bai 30, 124; Bada Deo painting 116; Forest Scene painting 109; Source of the River painting 33 Shyam, Mayank: Birds painting 141; Fish and Bird painting 140 Shyam, Sambhav, Sanpankhri painting 142 Shyam, Saroj, Maharilin Mata painting 114, 117 Shyam, Shambhu, Ganesha painting 138 Shyam, Venkataraman Singh 258; Experiments with Cubism painting 258 side shadowing, as narrative technique 21, 264–67 Singh, Kavita 8 Singh, Mani Shekhar 241 Sita Harana story 175–84, 254, 276–80; Chirakar, Dukhushyam 186; Chirakar, Manu 200–206; Chirakar, Moina 190–92; Chirakar, Swarna 194–98 Society for the Advancement of the Chitrakars of Bengal 43

Sontheimer, Gunther D. 264 Soyayya books 216 spiritual reality 13 ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ (Gilheri ke sapne) story 143, 265; extract from script 147–53; process of animation 143–47 Steinberg, Saul 127 Stewart, Tony K. 92, 105n17 storytelling: patua art of 63; in a sequential mode 268n7; side shadowing, as narrative technique 264–67; through pictures 45–53, 153–71; time, importance of 253 Subramanyan, K. G. 170 Swadeshi Movement 56n18 Swaminathan, J. 1–2, 40, 108, 111, 118, 158, 256; and adivasi art 15–24 ‘The Tallest Story Competition’ project 137 Tamluk–Kalighat–Tribeni Samajik school 43 Tara Books 181, 214, 242, 245n7 tattoo art 247n29, see also Godhna painting Tekam, Narmada Prasad 21, 123; Basin Kanya painting 124; Vish Kanya painting 126 Tekam, Ravi 123; Basin Kanya painting 125 Thurber, James 127 tradition, interpreters of 100–103 tribal art, see adivasi art tsunami pata: Chitrakar, Tagar 98; Medinipur 30 Uikey, Mangru 118, 128, 258, 266; Basin Kanya painting 131–35; Chameleon’s Dreams painting 150–52, 154–57; Chote and Litia painting 159–68; Swati Bird painting 112

Index d 299 urban art collectors 6 Urveti, Ram Kumar 118

Vyam, Durga Bai 125, 128–30 Vyam, Sukhnandi 7

Vana Devata painting 123 Vana Deviyan painting 123 Venkatesan, Soumhya 10, 55n9, 244 ‘Vernacular in the Contemporary’ exhibition (2010) 268 Vish Kanya painting 124; Tekam, Narmada Prasad 126 visual equivalence (sadrisyabodha), in painting 250, 253–54

Walt Disney 254 Wolf, Gita 181, 217, 228 women’s empowerment themes 29 Worli painting 244 Yama pata 42 Zupnick, Irving L. 102–3