Whenever Syed Haider Raza (1922-2016) visited Mandla, as the car that drove him from Jabalpur approached this sleepy town in a clearing of the dense forests that still cover the Satpura range, he would ask the driver to stop the vehicle.
Impeccably turned out though he would be, this tall, elegantly put together rather elderly man would get down on his knees on the road itself, gather some dust from the ground with his hands, and smear it on his forehead.
Ashok Vajpeyi, writer and poet, who was a friend of Raza, was recounting how he had witnessed this amazing ritual, as we drove back to Jabalpur from Mandla, where the second death anniversary of this distinguished Indian contemporary artist was “celebrated” from July 19-23 on the banks of the Narmada that girdles this small town in Madhya Pradesh. The dark clouds and the rain-washed greenery uplifted the celebratory mood.
Pilgrim’s progress
Mandla was to Raza like a pilgrimage centre, although he was born in Babaria, 200 km away. He went to school in Mandla for a few years and it played a vital role in his development as an artist.
If there is one motif that is synonymous with Raza it is the iconic bindu — that black circle pulsating with energy which represents a void as well — and it is the legacy of Mandla, a fact that has acquired the status of a legend. His parents worried about the future of their son with a “wayward mind”, met one of the teachers in his school at Kakaiya, a village few kilometres away from the town. Raza’s father, Syed Mohammed Razi, was a deputy forest ranger posted there.
The teacher drew a bindu on the verandah, and asked the boy to focus his mind entirely on it. Thus was born one of the best known of Raza’s constructs. This, too, probably explains how he acquired his remarkable ability to discard extraneous elements from his work to arrive at the essence.
When we visited the school in Kakaiya established in 1890, we discovered that the humble classroom with a pantile roof quite indistinguishable from other hutments had turned into a bare patch surrounded by newer buildings. The teachers enthusiastically showed us the original register of Class IV in which the name of the artist and that of his two brothers, Imam and Yusuf, are still decipherable.
Raza had gifted the school a small canvas with a bindu in memory of his teacher, and behind it was inscribed his name, Sri Nandlalji Jharia. Adjacent to the school was their home, now reduced to a skeletal structure.
Another event that left its imprint on Raza’s young mind was Gandhiji’s visit to Mandla when Raza was only eight. His father could not take him to it as he was a government servant. So a plainclothes forest guard took him there. Later, when his entire family decided to move to Pakistan, Raza chose to stay back. He did not want to “betray” his memory of Gandhi and he remained an Indian citizen to the last. In keeping with his wishes, Raza was even interred in a Mandla graveyard next to his father.
Humming with activity
Yet Mandla has forgotten him. Few remember its most famous son. And it was to perpetuate his memory that the Raza Foundation, established in 2001 and run by a small team, decided on the artist’s first death anniversary to hold a festival at Rapta ghat on the banks of the Narmada. There was hardly any response from the local populace on the first year, and it did not help that Raza was a Shia in a Sunni-dominated town.
But things were different this time as local people and students and artists from Mandla, Kanha, Sewani, the tribal village of Patangarh, and Indrakala Sangeet Vishwavidyalaya, Khairagarh, in Chhatisgarh were invited to participate in clay-modelling and umbrella-painting workshops in the morning, followed by concerts of folk musicians in the evening. The shamiana decorated with white-painted umbrellas hummed with activity.
Ashok Vajpeyi, artists Akhilesh and Manish Pushkale, culture critic and writer Sadanand Menon — who are also trustees of the Raza Foundation — Nuzhat Kazmi, who teaches art history at Jamia Milia Islamia, and Sanjiv Choube, member secretary of the foundation, had gathered there for the festival.
For one of the aims of the Raza Foundation, Vajepyi said, is to “identify, promote and mentor” young art writers in a programme named Roop Aroop. The foundation has ambitious programmes to support publishing projects and other arts besides visual, hold memorial lectures and ultimately create a Raza museum, although Vajpeyi admitted it is difficult to procure his prized early works. This will culminate in Raza’s centenary celebrations in 2022.
So on a rain-soaked Monday morning in Mandla this July, a group of Raza’s admirers trooped into the graveyard where the artist is interred, laid a chaddar of flowers and strewed rose petals on the graves of father and son lying side by side. A rangoli of golden marigolds and red rose petals formed on the white marble graves.
The writer focuses on Kolkata’s vanishing heritage and culture.
