“The State gets into the arts only to get the arts into a state.” The vintage Harindranath Chattopadhyaya aphorism neatly encapsulates the silent boil that many arts institutions under the umbrella of the Ministry of Culture (MoC) have been coming to. The ongoing ferment in Kalakshetra, one of the country's older arts schools, is the latest example of official insensitivity within a constituency which brims over with a surplus of sensitivities.
No matter what the issues are that led Leela Samson, after seven solid years of administrative and artistic achievements as Kalakshetra's director, to put in her papers — superannuation, procedural oversights, internal squabbling and conspiracies, power play within the board — there is a groundswell of opinion that this is no way to treat an artist who was instrumental in pulling the 77-year-old institution back from the brink of an impending implosion. The MoC has been handling it only for the last 19 years and it seemed like hurtling towards a cardiac arrest until Ms Samson arrived in 2005 to administer it some emergency oxygen. The least that the MoC and the institution's board owed her was a dignified exit.
Arts administrators?
However, this swift transformation of Kalakshetra into a Kurukshetra, with even the vocabulary of a “ dharma-yuddha (battle of principles”) being evoked in certain quarters, certainly confronts us with the larger question of how our state-funded arts institutions need to be managed and administered. Should these institutions be headed by artists (generally perceived as temperamental and anarchic) or by bureaucrats or by a trained cadre of “arts administrators”? Even if there is a larger faith today in the idea of an artist as a “professional without a profession,” there is certainly a case to be made out for a specialised cadre that might be better equipped to deal with the complex pressures of sustaining our arts institutions.
Globally, the evolved practice over the past several decades is to prefer professional curators, scholars and historians (who are both authorities and authors in their respective fields) over professional artists and practitioners to head museums, colleges, biennales, arts festivals and so on.
The Indian case is peculiar because we inherited a set of institutions from our “national movement,” which enshrined the idea of artistic renaissance as integral to the idea of “freedom.” Rabindranath Tagore, Mahakavi Vallathol, Rukmini Devi Arundale and Uday Shankar were thus among the first few who built iconic institutions that amplified the idea of freedom to also include the freedom of imagination. It is more than ironic that post-Independence, each of these spaces — Shantiniketan, Kalakshetra and Kalamandalam — have become central or state administered “departments,” answering to the demands of being deemed universities under the University Grants Commission (UGC).
One of the first things the state does when it invades the “arts” is to self-consciously erase the idea of “conflict” in creative expression. It then assumes the task of valorising all expression routed through it as a legitimate validation of its homogenising ideologies that paper over all differences and neutralise dissent. To consistently achieve this, it needs to set up institutions that work and intervene in the field. It needs to strategise these institutions and make them appear as if they “represent” artists, all the while enveloping them in such a cloud of bureaucratese and legalese as to neutralise any artistic involvement in it. The procedural nuances for dealing with finances or executing projects are deliberately designed to produce a paralysing effect on these bodies.
Havell's ghost
This year happens to be the 150th anniversary of E.B. Havell, who was the inspirational force behind Gaganendranath Tagore and the idea of the “Bengal School” of art. Havell's ghost continues to haunt us because we still have not dealt with the problematic he posed in “The Basis for Artistic and Industrial Revival in India,” published by the Theosophist Office, Madras, in 1912, exactly 100 years ago. Reading it you feel time has stood still and that the roulette has brought us back to the very spot we started out from. The issues he raised were not simply for the revival of Indian arts and its pedagogy. He was batting for what he conceptualised as the national genius whose primary condition was the unquestionable need and necessity to be free. Only a “free” Indian would be able to produce “free” art. This, in his mind, was non-negotiable.
We look around today and can reflect on the growing “un-freedom” within which much of our art practices flourish. It is like the “mad-cow” disease. Institutions of arts across the country under the MoC are choking and asphyxiating on themselves. It is a palpable self-destruct. Just look at the crumbling plaster and the clutter and debris falling around our ears.
During the first meeting of the Central Advisory Board for Culture in November 2008, the Minister of State in UPA-1, Ambika Soni, revealed that there are over 1,500 vacancies in the Indian museums under the MoC, mainly due to a dearth of qualified candidates. Most of our arts institutions and museums are in an abysmal state. We do not have specialised personnel, and staff at almost all levels appear untrained. In the National Museum, the flagship cultural institution of the MoC, a stunning number of top posts are vacant as the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) selection process is not able to identify and find qualified personnel and several galleries are shut down due to lack of curators. The Central Lalit Kala Akademi is mired in internal tussles, irrelevant to art practice.
One reason why we lack qualified administrators for art institutions is the lack of courses that impart training in arts management. There seem to be no guidelines or policies pertaining to pedagogy, selection, documentation, archiving, purchase and dissemination. This has already created insurmountable holes in the administration of our arts institutions. We could certainly do with a range of post-graduate courses in the History of Performing and Fine Arts, Archaeology, Museology, Arts Curation/ Management and such. There is no doubt the country will be needing hundreds of art administrators in the immediate future and a special cadre like a Central Culture Service (CCS) or Central Fine Arts Service (CFAS) along the lines of the Central Services might not be such a bad idea.
Officious bodies
The convolutions at Kalakshetra need to be evaluated within this framework. An “artist” appointed at the helm to play a creative role certainly needs skilled and empathetic administrative back-up to minimise the risk of getting trapped in “procedural” tangles. It can be nobody's case that the task of the institution's director is merely to oversee “procedure.” Institutional elegance would require it, but it cannot be held up as the sole yardstick of performance.
The issue of “age” too is a narrow one. Even at the height of a financial crisis in 1985, when a delegation led by Kapila Vatsyayan proposed to bale out Kalakshetra by bringing it under the purview of the UGC, Rukmini Devi had rejected the offer when told that, under its rules, the artist/teachers would need to be retired at the age of 60. She is supposed to have said, “My best dance and music teachers become ‘best' after 65 and 70. I would be a fool to retire them at 60.” This is, of course, a lesson for officious bodies like the UGC to internalise.
It is indeed to Rukmini Devi one needs to revert for the last word on this. Some months before the formidable lady passed away, I accompanied dancer Chandralekha to meet her in Kalakshetra. Sitting behind a desk overflowing with files, the then 81-year-old legend was painstakingly poring through one of them. Troubled at this visual, Chandralekha burst out, “But you should not be doing all this!”
The ailing artist, preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the institution she had doggedly built-up, put down the file and asked amusedly, “Then what should I be doing?” Her tone still indignant, Chandra exclaimed, “Someone else can handle all these files and paperwork. You should be contributing your vision to dance.” Rukmini Devi removed her glasses, looked her straight in the eye and said firmly, “Who needs my vision, Chandralekha?”
The moment is engraved in my mind. Some 25 years later, the same question seems to have come to haunt Rukmini Devi's recent successor: “Who needs her vision”? It is a travesty that nudges us to pose some hard questions to ourselves about what we seek from our arts institutions as a people.
( The author is a senior journalist based in Chennai. Email: sadanandmenon@yahoo.com)
