Banning Pakistanis

Anahita Mukherji writes in this morning's Times of India about books by Pakistani authors being pulled from the shelves of Oxford bookstore in Churchgate. An employee of the book store who is a member of Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena is apparently responsible for the temporary ban.
The question arises: how did a book seller come to employ a person who clearly has no sympathy for, or understanding of, literature? If you've visited the shop (which is not connected in any way with the university of the same name) you'll know how. I've often joked that the owners of Oxford give prospective employees a test, and if any candidate shows evidence of literacy, s/he is disqualified immediately.
When the place opened (about eight years ago, I think) I visited it enthusiastically a few times. The shelves full of publications on Indian history compensated for clueless staff. Since then, the space reserved for intellectually challenging work has dwindled, replaced by who-moved-my-cheese type stuff.
It says something about Bombay that Oxford couldn't sustain its academic section though surrounded by colleges offering degrees in politics, sociology and history. This city's paucity of good booksellers means that no visit to Delhi is complete for me without a tour of stores in Connaught place and, whenever possible, a trip to Daryaganj for more specialised material. On my first visit to Ansari road, I walked into Manohar's outlet after stopping by Oxford University Press, Macmillan and other better known publishers. I was allowed to browse undisturbed by the two people manning the shop: a portly chap at the desk and an older guy with a large moustache, shirtless, wearing a vest tucked into trousers, who sat on a stool unpacking cartons full of books.
After a long time the man in the vest asked, "are you looking for something specific?" I was a bit surprised to be addressed in this manner by somebody I'd assumed was hired help. I told him I was interested in books about Lord Curzon. He rose, walked up to a shelf and pulled out David Dilks' account of Curzon's time in India. I said, dismissively, that I'd read it, and felt it was very dated (the two volumes had been published in the late 1960s). I don't recall his exact reply, but it was something like, "older historiography still has something to offer if you get beyond its limitations".
He was, of course, the owner of Manohar Publishers and Distributors. I ended up buying David Gilmour's biography of Curzon, and shelling out far more than I should have for a second hand copy of Begley and Khan's Illumined Tomb, mainly because I was so impressed by the gentleman in the ganji.

Raza rewards the young and needy

Just got a publicity release that reads, "Raza Foundation, a trust created for assistance and support for young artists in India and exclusively funded by the Paris based Indian master Sayed Haider Raza, has chosen 2 painters, 1 poet, 1 musician and 1 dancer for the Raza award carrying Rs. One lakh each for the year 2008."
The two "young artists" chosen? Atul Dodiya, 49 years old, and Jayashree Chakravarty, 52. Nominating Dodiya is like presenting Roger Federer with the Promising Swiss Sportsman of the Year award. And Chakravarty would be better placed in the jury panel than among the recipients of the prize.
My guess is Atul will donate the award money to a person who really has use for it, but one wonders what purpose is served by giving 'emerging artist' type prizes to internationally acclaimed practitioners.
As a diversion, here's an image of Dodiya's painting, Bindu (After Raza), exhibited at Vadehra art gallery in 2007.


For those who don't get the context, Raza has spent decades painting the 'bindu', or dot, which comes with a lot of philosophical baggage. The Bindu inside Dodiya's dots is an actress of that name. At her peak in the 1970s, she played a variety of molls and bimbettes, most famously Mona Darling in Zanjeer, a film written by the young duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar that introduced Amitabh Bachchan's angry young man persona.

The Art Market's Blue Period

On August 27 last year, Delhi's posh art set crowded a spacious room at the Oberoi hotel to hear Sotheby's representative Oliver Barker speak about Damien Hirst, and to view a selection of paintings and sculptures from the auction house's sale titled Beautiful Inside My Head Forever. It was part of an effort to stimulate international buyer interest in the event, which offered 223 new works by Hirst directly to bidders without any dealer intercession.
At one point, Barker quoted Hirst as saying, "After the success of the Pharmacy auction, I always felt I would like to do another auction. It’s a very democratic way to sell art and it feels like a natural evolution for contemporary art." A few audience members snorted at the use of the word 'democratic' to describe the vending of works estimated at a million rupees each for small sketches and many millions of pounds for large sculptures. But I could only chuckle. It was just Hirst being his usual self. I'm sure he knew exactly how outrageous the statement sounded.
The Hirst auction's first session was held in London on September 15, even as Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy filing triggered a global sell-off in equity markets. By the close of the second session the next day, over 111 million pounds had been bid, well above the auction's high estimate.
Beautiful Inside My Head Forever turns out to have been an apt title for an unforeseen reason: the phrase encapsulates how the early 21st century will be viewed by dealers, artists and curators who benefited from the unprecedented market expansion of that period, which is now decisively behind us.
Sotheby's obviously realised long before September 2008 that the world's largest economies were in trouble, and that sustaining prices in the future would involve getting Russians, Chinese, Indians and Arabs interested in buying outside their immediate cultural sphere. The Hirst display in Delhi was a step in that direction. Unfortunately, the rot in the global financial industry were so serious that it set off a domino effect. Consumers in Europe and the US cut back on spending, driving down demand for manufactured imports as well as commodities like oil and steel, hurting China, Russia and the Middle East. No country, cartel or corporation was left with the financial strength to boost support for art.
In late 2006, I had predicted the art market would see a downturn. I wrote in my Time Out column, "if the market keeps its present course, it’s heading for a crash sometime in the next two years", and outlined the reasoning behind the prediction. "[Speculators] are pricing genuine collectors out of the market. The turnover of paintings is frighteningly high: it’s not unheard of for a single canvas to be sold half a dozen times within a year. Auction houses have turned advocates rather than neutral sellers. Even Christie’s and Sotheby’s are featuring raw artists and accepting fresh-minted works consigned by galleries, in contravention of normal international practice. The boom that began with established masters has spread to artists with no proven track record or historical merit. Gallery owners, who should be turning off the tap of speculation by carefully vetting clients, have little power to set conditions. They have to suck up to popular artists in order to get a few works out of them. The artists, meanwhile, many of whom have known privation in the not-too-distant past, are keen to make their pile as quickly as possible by selling to the highest bidder.
Despite these unhealthy symptoms, the experts have convinced themselves the party will go on forever. They, like everybody else, are having too much fun to think hard about tomorrow."
I then suggested what would cause the slump: "The rise in art prices has been congruent with a global boom, and the crash is also likely to be triggered by global factors, as yet unknowable."

The point of quoting these lines is not to say I told you so (OK, maybe there's a teeny-weeny bit of that involved). Pretty much everybody in the industry knew prices were absurdly high and would fall sometime. The more polemical point in my article was about how Indian art would react compared to art worldwide: "Once the tipping point arrives, developments intrinsic to India will take over and probably make the correction deep and painful. Since few buyers are purchasing for love, people holding stock will want to cut their losses immediately, feeding supply even as demand fades. There is the additional dimension of mushrooming art funds to consider. These funds usually operate for stipulated periods, and will have to unload their wares even in a declining market, exacerbating the slide."
Four months into a severe downturn, it is unclear if Indian art is doing better or worse than its emerging market peers. Everything has gone down so quickly that comparison at this point is useless. The question is how matters will play out over the next two or three years. The Indian economy is doing relatively well, so one might expect Indian art to outperform. But the art fund issue remains crucial. Nobody knows how many works these vehicles hold because their functioning is so opaque. It's certain that 2009 will see substantial liquidation of stock with very little counterbalance in the form of investments in new funds.
One important factor has emerged since I wrote the column: about half a dozen contemporary artists are now established globally, represented by well-known international galleries. A dozen more are on the verge of such recognition. The work of these artists might end up delinked from India-specific ups and downs, and move in tune with global prices.

First Families

The two lands over which India and Pakistan have fought wars just held elections. It seems that Jammu & Kashmir will be led by Omar Abdullah, grandson of Sheikh Abdullah; and Bangladesh by Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Mujibur Rahman. India's largest party, meanwhile, is headed by Sonia Gandhi, daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi and widow of Rajiv Gandhi. Pakistan's current president, Asif Ali Zardari, is the son-in-law of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and widower of Benazir Bhutto.
The intertwined story of the four families -- Nehru-Gandhis, Bhuttos, Abdullahs and Rahmans -- is packed with visionaries and dupes, courage and cowardice, idealism and cynical manipulation, liberation and genocide, betrayals and reconciliations, power, fortune, fame, imprisonment, exile and assassination.
History as soap opera.

Manjit Bawa

Manjit Bawa, who had been in a coma for three years following a stroke, died today. It is often said, not without justice, that he brought colour back to Indian painting.
Bawa began his career in India after a stint in London as a screen printer in the late 1960s. While he was in England, screen printing (also called silkscreen printing or serigraphy) was revolutionised by Andy Warhol's brightly-coloured portraits of iconic Americans like Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy. Bawa adopted the idea of depicting figures against a bright, flat background, and introduced a number of important variations to it. He worked with oils on canvas rather than serigraphs. He painted, for the most part, full figures floating in a field of colour. He chose vivid hues from Indian visual culture, whether miniatures or street signs. And he adapted myths and legends that told of the communion between humans, birds and beasts through the medium of music. A favourite theme was Krishna fascinating the animals of the forest with his virtuosity; another was the romance of Heer and the flute-playing Ranjha. Bawa's deep attachment to sufi mysticism and music led him to looked for harmony and gentleness in art where many of his peers focussed on violence and conflict.
Whether one liked Bawa's work or not was very much a matter of taste because he favoured colours which verged on the gaudy. He would defend himself against allegations of producing kitsch by pointing out that similar colours were found in universally admired miniatures. His argument ignored the fact that using a colour for flowers taking up a few square millimeters of paper has an entirely different impact from spreading the same shade over many square feet of canvas.
Leaving aside the issue of taste, his work began to feel repititious soon after he achieved critical and commercial recognition. He arrived at a mature style sometime in the late 1970s, and replicated it for over two decades with little variation. It appeared like a successful decorative formula, mass produced to satisfy his burgeoning client base.
Among the prominent artists whose work shows the influence of Bawa are Rekha Rodwittiya, Surendran Nair and Chintan Upadhyay. These younger painters have added a conceptual dimension which Bawa's canvases lack. In purely painterly terms, however, Bawa's output is undoubtedly superior to theirs.

Samuel Huntington

Samuel Huntington, who died last week, is a hate figure for the sort of people who pepper every presentation with the word 'radical' (see previous post). At seminars, they charge at the phrase 'Clash of Civilizations' like a bull at a matador's fluttering cape. When I hear speakers criticise Huntington's central thesis, I try and enter into conversation with them over lunch or coffee, posing a question like, "Do you think Huntington's emphasis on demographics in his book is a natural extension of his argument in the original essay from Foreign Affairs magazine, or do you believe it might be a tactic to sidestep the angry response to that essay?" Without exception, I have found that the speakers haven't read Huntington's book. In most cases, they have not even read the essay which first used the term 'clash of civilisations'.
Such reflexive, ignorant criticism is regrettable, because the book has a lot to offer even those like me who have substantial reservations about its central thesis. The problem is that the multifarious conflicts Huntington wrote about have been obscured in the past ten years by one central clash: that of Islam versus the West. Huntington is not at his strongest when writing about Islamic societies. He's much better on Latin America, and the sub-chapter about Russia as one of the world's 'torn civilizations' is excellent. It explains a lot about Vladimir Putin's ascent and manner of ruling, even though it was published while Yeltsin was still in power.
I like, also, the discussion on westernisation versus modernisation, two terms which are often taken to be synonyms. Huntington points out how, in the initial phases of industrialisation within developing countries, societies adopt western habits as they modernise. At one point, a cultural reaction sets in, after which increased economic and technological modernisation leads to a reaffirmation of indigenous values.
The book contains some fodder for post-colonial activists, in the data relating to the economic power of different civilisations over the course of centuries. India produced a fourth of the world's manufacturing output in 1750, the eve of the Battle of Plassey. Its share began to sink precipitously, reaching 1.4 percent in 1914. It was only when Indians began to govern themselves, first under the British umbrella and later as a completely independent nation (or independent nations, since the data cover the entire subcontinent), that our share of the world's production rose. The figures are as strong a rebuke as can be imagined to those who still suggest that colonial rule was generally beneficial to India. It's true, part of the drop in India's relative position is explained by the boom in the west engendered by the industrial revolution, but that's clearly not the whole story.
For instance, between 1750 and 1800, China increased its share of world manufacturing marginally, from 32.8 to 33.3 percent, even as India's contribution dropped from 24.5 to 19.7 percent. What caused this sudden fall relative to China? Certainly not the industrial revolution, since China wasn't industrialising. China's own decline began around the time of the Opium wars, going down to a shocking 2.3 percent in 1953 before recovering somewhat.
Among the negative features of Huntington's most well-known book (the only one by him that I have read) are the nebulousness of his categories; his lack of fluency as a writer (the Russia pages are an exception); and his steadfast belief that the United States acts with the best intentions even when its actions have disastrous consequences.
Since he was an advisor to the state department during the Vietnam war, and never questioned that war's moral legitimacy, his stance is not surprising. If you get past hurdles like Huntington's moral blind spots there are valuable insights to be had from The Clash of Civilizations.

Ravi Varma the Radical? Part 1

'Radical' is among the most overused and misapplied terms in academia. It has the feel of a shibboleth: only those who employ it can gain acceptance in the world of cultural theory. Sprinkled liberally through a text, the word transforms the most conventional ideas into incendiary-sounding propositions, in the way that monosodium glutamate imbues even thin soup with a hearty, meaty taste.
These thoughts are spurred by Ketan Mehta's film-in-the-making, Rang Rasiya, a biopic about the late nineteenth century painter Ravi Varma. As part of the publicity surrounding the movie, there's a plan to produce a reality show / talent contest for young artists. The art critic Rahul Bhattacharya, who has been working with Ketan Mehta, sent out an email publicising the film and its television spin-off. His note and the text on the competition's site bathes Ravi Varma as well as the proposed show in the glow of radicalism.
Bhattacharya writes that Ravi Varma "succeeded in bringing art out of the clutches of the aristocracy and the orthodox temple priests, making art an integral part of popular culture. Often celebrated as a reformer who brought God outside the confines of the temple, Raja Ravi Varma was successful in radicalising and energising the relationship between the audience and the painted image."
Was Indian art ever in the clutches of the aristocracy and temple priests? Was it not part of popular culture before Ravi Varma's time? Only a dreadfully narrow definition of art would allow these assertions any validity. And nothing can justify the statement that God was confined in temples before Ravi Varma freed Him. Even a cursory reading of Indian history reveals that, for centuries, divinities have been worshipped in every conceivable place: in groves, in caves, on mountains, on river banks, in homes. One of the defining features of Hindu religiosity is the variety of forms taken by worship of the divine.
Arvind Rajagopal, who teaches media studies at NYU, believes that Ravi Varma was the precise opposite of a radical reformer. He has written: "Varma's oleographed paintings of gods and goddesses, made in an enormously popular naturalist "realist" style, were promoted by the royal house of Travancore to create a Brahminical cultural lineage rivaling that of the British. Simultaneously, this attempted to deflect insistent demands for social reform from below by illustrating an idealized myth-history of a golden age whose rulers practised a steadfast benevolence, culminating in the present" (Politics After Television, page 97).
In Rajagopal's view, Ravi Varma cast Hindu gods and goddesses in new forms suited to the puritanism of the nineteenth century Hindu renaissance. These forms were then adapted to cinema by the likes of Dadasaheb Phalke, and the iconography found its culmination in the enormously popular televised epics that, Rajagopal believes, served the agenda of Hindutva.
If the Rang Rasiya crew push the idea of Ravi Varma's political radicalism too far, Rajagopal, in my opinion, overstates the case for a Brahminical, Hindutvavadi reading of the artist. But let's stay with Rang Rasiya, and consider the reality series that might accompany the film's release. Called the Rang Rasiya Freedom of Expression Movement, the project aims to "bring about a socio cultural movement which discovers new talent, and brings contemporary art into the discursive domain of the middle class. It attempts to create a domain for contemporary art outside the current dominant systems."
In other words, not content with radicalising Ravi Varma, Bhattacharya is suggesting that Reality TV is politically radical as well. He speaks of moving out of the dominant system of contemporary art viewing, but says nothing of the implications of moving into a system governed by corporate media houses. This kind of doublespeak would be laughable if it weren't troublingly pervasive within the Indian art world. People familiar with the society will know a number of artists who spout phrases like 'resisting commodification' while blithely exhibiting their work in the most commercial galleries across the country.
I will continue this discussion on radicalism, elitism and democracy in a bit. There's so much to say, one post can't do it justice.

Forgetting Harold Pinter

When Harold Pinter's death was announced, I sat down to write a few lines about his work. I didn't want to repeat cliches about menace and silence, but realised I couldn't remember enough about his plays to provide a personal impression .
I haven't looked at anything by Pinter for a decade or so, but before that I read much of what he wrote. The major plays, I read more than once. I can recall clearly many passages and characters from works by Arthur Miller, Beckett, Ionesco, Tom Stoppard, even John Osborne, though it's been a long time since I read any of these writers.
The failure of my memory in the case of Pinter suggests I over-rated his contribution to theatre, or at least to my understanding of it.

Jingo Bells

Since the terrorist attacks in Bombay, members of the public have been sending out mixed signals. During peace rallies held after the atrocity, quite a few angry citizens demanded the bombing of Pakistan. Percept Picture company seems to have hedged its bets with regard to audience mood. This ad for its new release Jumbo invites viewers to 'celebrate a non-violent Christmas' with loved ones.



A second ad for the same film sends a rather different message.

What better time than Christmas to 'say no to non-violence'?

Jilt of Seasons

In March and April each year, Indian travel companies blanket newspapers with advertisements for European holidays. In winter, their focus shifts to warm lands like Egypt and Thailand. This year, though, a few firms have decided to plug Europe in December. Two ads pitching France caught my attention this morning. Both play up the romantic reputation of the country. Cox and Kings does it using a historical example.




The Eiffel Tower was built as part of the World's Fair of 1889 which marked the centenary of the French revolution, but calling it a symbol of the country's bloody revolution is a stretch, isn't it? Kuoni's full-pager pretends France is in the middle of easeful summer.



It uses a stock photo provided by the French government tourist agency, of a pretty couple relaxing on the heather, the man wearing a T-shirt, the woman a singlet. The copy speaks of "vineyards with plump, purple grapes ripening under the benevolent sun." A quick check tells me the sun isn't being particularly benevolent to Paris at the moment. The next ten days will see temperatures rise to a maximum of 5 degrees centigrade in the afternoon and sink to a minimum of minus 3 degrees at night. I called Kuoni to ask about the validity period of the Family Fun travel deal, and was told I could travel any time before March 31, excluding the Christmas-New Year period. Which means the choice for punters runs all the way from uncomfortably cold to bloody freezing.
Indians who haven't travelled abroad extensively have a misconception about seasons in the rest of the northern hemisphere. They don't realise that summer begins in earnest only in mid-June and lasts till the end of August. That's because those are the wet months in much of the subcontinent. For us, the warm season kicks off in late March, April is the start of high summer, and by May it's time to head for the hills. Or Europe, if you can afford it.
During my first year in England as a student, I expected to start feeling the weight of the sun's rays on my arms by mid-April. Instead, all I felt was the weight of a thick jacket on my shoulders.