Had Sankho Chaudhuri not died 10 years ago on August 28, he would have celebrated his 100 birthday on February 25 this year. An eminent sculptor and a worthy student of the legendary Ramkinkar Baij, he had lived a full life enriched by his experiences as a freedom fighter, as a rebellious yet much loved student at Santiniketan while Rabindranath Tagore was still a dominant presence, as one of the very few friends to whom Indira Gandhi could open up like an ordinary human being, as a teacher who trained a number of sculptors who later became famous, as a visionary who created the famous Garhi art studios in a South Delhi village, and as an administrator who managed the affairs of the Lalit Kala Akademi first as its Secretary and later as its Chairman. In short, his was an extraordinarily rich life.
I had the good fortune of meeting him a few times in the mid-1980s when he was heading the Lalit Kala Akademi and I was working as a correspondent for The Sunday Observer edited by Vinod Mehta from Bombay (now Mumbai). Later, I had the pleasure of meeting his graphic designer son Itu Chaudhuri who happens to be a keen listener of the Hindustani classical music.
In 2001, a collection of his memoirs titled “Smriti-Vismriti” (Remembering-Forgetting) was published in Bengali. Ashok Mitra, well-known economist and former Finance Minister of West Bengal who also served as a member of Rajya Sabha, wrote its Foreword, where, he lamented the sad reality that despite being an exemplary Bengali who was closely related to the most part of the 20th Century and who did so much to enrich the Bengali as well as Indian culture, Sankho Chaudhuri was not so well known even in Bengal and the Vishwa Bharati took so long to honour him with its Deshikottam award in 1999.
Yet, it is a fact that Sankho Chaudhuri belonged to a very cultured and accomplished family of Bengal. His father, Narendra Narayan Chaudhuri, was born in 1873 in a landlord family of Bharenga in the Pabna district of East Bengal. He took a degree in law and set up practice in Dacca (now Dhaka). He had four sons of whom Sankho Chaudhuri was the youngest while the eldest was Sachin Chaudhuri, one of the most brilliant students of the Dacca University who for some time also worked as the General Manager of Bombay Talkies established by the celebrity Himanshu Rai-Devika Rani couple. In 1949, Sachin Chaudhuri founded “The Economic Weekly” which a few years later became “The Economic & Political Weekly”.
Sankho Chaudhuri was sent to Santiniketan along with his elder sister. His memoirs are a treasure trove as they bring a realistic picture of the life in the world famous experimental educational institution founded by Tagore. Sankho became a disciple of Ramkinkar Baij, led students’ protest against perceived injustices and confronted Tagore’s son-in-law Krishna Kripalani although he had very close personal relations with him, acted in a Tagore play under the direction of the great poet himself, and gathered such experiences that stood him in good stead all through his life. In 1942, he was imprisoned because of his participation in the Quit India Movement but returned to Santiniketan after his release to resume painting and to take up sculpture as his full-time activity. From Ramkinkar Baij, he learnt the art of working with minimal resources.
This came handy when he had a chance encounter with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, lovingly called by the Pakhtuns as Badshah Khan and known all over the subcontinent as the Frontier Gandhi, in Kabul in mid-1960s. He made his bust with hardly any material required for such an exercise. He had met Badshah Khan earlier in 1946 in Meerut where he and his friends were invited from Santiniketan to erect artistic welcome arches for the delegates of the All India Congress Committee convention. Sankho tells us how deeply bitter the Pakhtun leader was about the way top Congress leaders betrayed him and his people by accepting the Partition and throwing them at the mercy of the “crocodiles” and “wolfs”. One must remember that by that time Badshah Khan had spentnearly 16 years in Pakistani jails.
These memoirs also familiarise us with a different Indira Gandhi. The person that emerges from the pages of this book is a sensitive, reticent, humane, caring, and self-effacing individual and not the one we know as a very strong willed politician who could even impose Emergency to remain in power. They also make it clear that Sankho Chaudhuri could create the Garhi studios only because of the silent support of Indira Gandhi because the bureaucracy was, as is now, specialising in scuttling anything and everything. “Smriti-Vismriti” is a must read for those who are interested in knowing the cultural history of the 20th Century India.
(The writer is a senior literary critic)
