In the shocked and awed reaction to the election result, the minor ministries appear to have slipped under the radar. Recent newspaper analysis has described the BJP victory as a ‘cultural’ phenomenon, one that permeates the country’s religious and social fabric.
The jeering dismissal of the ‘tukde tukde gang’ or the ‘Khan market gang’ — all reminiscently named like the Chinese post Maoist Gang of Four — have merged with a larger argument of the victory of a pervasive cultural nationalism that overrides a clutch of sub-nationalisms. Even more pressing arguments have been made in favour of a long overdue cultural homogenisation.
Effectively then, the political is not only personal, it is cultural. In the words of Yogendra Yadav, “party, government, nation and religion are merging into and becoming one identity in popular imagination.”
Where does this leave functionaries like the Ministry of Culture? Has the definition of the state’s role in cultural management irrevocably changed? How altered is the character of cultural institutions and how can we determine the nature of change? If the Congress’ governance template has been vilified and rejected, what happens to its models of culture?
Leading artists
Decades later, when the cultural history in India is written, 2014 to 2019 may well be seen as a decisive turning of the page. If we map a cultural trajectory of India, some periods and decades stand out for outstanding initiatives that altered the course of artistic history. The decade of the 1930s stands out for the big broad strokes mapped in virtually every area of artistic endeavour. The decade fostered three leading artists of the 20th century — Amrita Sher-Gil, Rabindranath Tagore and Jamini Roy — each of whom became a fountainhead of art practice for those who followed.
In the middle of that decade, Gandhiji commissioned Nandalal Bose to paint panels that engaged the ordinary Congress worker at Haripura. Coming out of the Progressive Writers’ Movement of 1936, headed by Munshi Premchand, the Indian People’s Theatre Association left its stamp on the theatre, literature and cinema of the 40s. Identifying with peasants and the working class, it also reflected the nationalist struggle of the time. Formed in the summer of 1943, as a protest against an “alien bureaucracy”, and a fast deteriorating food situation, it invoked the participation of Sombhu Mitra, Bishnu Dey, Mulk Raj Anand and other luminaries, who represented a consolidation of art interests.
In 1936, the Uday Shankar Academy was established, and his global collaboration with international dancers gave modern Indian dance a fillip. In the South that year, Rukmini Devi founded Kalakshetra, even as she modified Bharatanatyam for the stage.
In cinema in the 1930s, the introduction of film noir by master cinematographer for Bombay Talkies Josef Wirsching and director Franz Osten was a profound influence.
In retrospect, what drove the decade was not only the promise of Independence, or India’s forgotten arts, and certainly not the lure of well-funded institutions, cultural policies, or a grand vision. At least in part, it was the participation of individuals like Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay in the march to Dandi. It was the spirited discussion on the role of the arts in the making of a nation. Most importantly, it was a spirit of a free-flowing cosmopolitanism, which allowed the artist to pursue a singular vision, untrammelled and free.
National profile
Several of these initiatives were driven by individuals, others were collectives, some perished with technological change or depleting capital, while others grew under government patronage. In these adoptions by the state, a narrative of a loose cultural framework emerged. A national cultural profile gained a more structured approach with the forming of the three art academies, the Lalit Kala, the Sahitya and the Sangeet Natak, and the National Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art, all in the early 50s, giving India visible sites of institutional culture. It is these which represented the country through the Festivals of India, where ‘culture’ became the face of diplomacy.
In the present context and the rebooting of ‘culture’, the shift from the past opens up a minefield of possibilities. It is hardly worth reiterating that our material culture, monuments, manuscripts and artefacts, and the immaterial heritage of languages, music and dance are already disappearing at a deadly rate. What support will be rendered and what is determined worthy of patronage will determine this government’s cultural values, institutional heft, and its reading of the public sphere.
The writer is an art critic and curator who runs www.criticalcollective.in.
