It happened in Baroda last summer...

Nobody of us, some 250 people inside the Faculty of Fine Arts (FFA) campus, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara (/Baroda), were there on some invitation. We perfectly knew we are here inside examination halls and any concerned authority has not solicited a public presence here.

Nor was the ‘moral battalion’ that consisted of a handful local Vishwa Hindu Parishad / Bharatiya Janta Party activists as well as some ‘Gujarat Police’, was expected here.

Yet, the Moral Battalion was different from the rest of us. We saw the display of works by students of Final year (Bachelor or Masters degrees in disciplines of Visual Art) as part of their examination, and we were here as well-wishers. The moral battalion, in turn, was surely here to obstruct the examination display, and to subjugate the FFA under the Modi-fied politics that justifies a pogrom.

The trouble was first evident at about 3.35 pm on Wednasday, May 9th, 2007; when one Neeraj Jain, a lawyer by profession whose white car boasts that he is an ‘advocate’ and whose white clothes amplify it, entered the campus. A havildar from the Baroda City Police accompanied this man with a ‘Kesariya Tikka’on his forehead (enough to declare him a proud Hindu). Neeraj Jain went straight to Printmaking Department of the FFA, where a 23-year MVA (Masters of Visual Arts) student of the department had chosen to display his examination work. Whie objecting to one of Chandramohan’s works, Neeraj Jain had a short-but- heated exchange of words with the art-student. Neeraj slapped Chandramohan, and made him leave the display hall. Neeraj and his accomplices took Chandramohan downstairs, then out of the Printmaking Department Building and ultimately out of the Faculty Campus.

A group of people with still and video cameras, mike-booms with logos of local TV Channels and a hindi channel ‘Aaj Tak’, were standing in front of Neeraj Jain by 3.45 p.m. and before they asked him any questions, Neeraj Jain was happily informing them of the ‘very peaceful operation’ that he did to save public life. The brief that these reporters got from Neeraj Jain was, ‘A student has willfully molested a cross… this act of disrupting public life should not go unpunished’.

As the TV ‘byte’ was over, Neeraj Jain chose to go to his men and say, ‘ now arrest the Dean… who has given a permission to hang these obscene works? Do they teach this here?’ He also complemented his men by saying : this is perhaps the very first time that we have not actually broken anything, nor have caused any loss of property… we have this as our plus-point. So, we continue to say we will not break of vandalise anything, but will go ahead with our fight against this obscene exhibition.

The oratorial skills that Neeraj Jain showed at the campus were quintessentially marked by his being ‘in-charge of the situation’, and eventually, of the campus that belonged to a State-run academic institution. By the same time, an unnamed terror (it is very hard to name this kind of terror in Gujarat, or you end up with a constitutional functionary’s name!) had its spell over the campus, and as a measure of safety, all the halls (that contained the works of art for the examination display) were closed and locked. Confusion prevailed, and the situation, at least, had to be understood first! Every well-wisher of the FFA present at the campus then, waited eagerly for some collective decision.

By this time, the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) T. R. Parmar also appeared on the scene. Neeraj, who ruled the roost, talked to Parmar as if he is instructing something. The demands of arresting the Acting Dean (in the absence of the Dean, Deepak Kannal) and confiscating the work objected to, were made by Neeraj Jain again, and the ACP seemed to be trying to comply. Physically, it was impossible to move the huge cross-shaped work, but the Police, under the able guidance of the ACP, were ready with an empty van.

The reporters and cameramen ‘needed some visuals’ for the story. Some of them had photographed Neeraj Jain manhandling Chandramohan, but they seemed to know these images would only ire the powers-that-be in Gujarat. They wanted to photograph the ‘objectionable work’. For this, Neeraj Jain was helpful to the media! He decided to take a press-tour of sorts, inside the department. This BJP man made his intentions clear to the ACP. The latter hesitatingly said yes, and said to the media, ‘you will go there only for two minutes… not more than that’. Interestingly, this was the ONLY sentence that this in-charge of Police Stations under this zone of Baroda spoke directly to the mediapersons.

The press-party, led by (who else than) Neeraj Jain, went inside. Once in, Neeraj also objected to some other works by Chandramohan, and yet other works by ‘some other student’ displayed at a different hall in the same building. The tour lasted for five minutes, and the ACP, who accompanied Neeraj Jain, did not object. After coming out, Neeraj Jain offered to entertain the media… ‘Come for a cup of tea’ he said, and barring some three or four mediapersons who rejected the offer politely, Neeraj Jain left the campus with the reporters and cameramen.

The din in the campus seemed to be over, but everybody knew this is not a single incident… the ‘encounter- murder’ of artistic expression has just happened, only to mark a beginning of an ‘operation’ that would repress the advocates of cultural freedom. The repressive forces would be happy only when they see an all-pervading success and subjugation of their perceived enemy.

The peace-loving artists, art students and some teachers at the faculty had a meeting which took stock of the situation. The meeting made known to everybody that Chandramohan’s arrest was against the legal procedures. The police did not even have a proper warrant, nor did they contact any authority of the Faculty. This meeting was not enough, everybody knew, and the students and well-wishers wanted Chandramohan’s detention to end. Somebody suggested that one can go in front of the concerned police station, and this suggestion was upheld by many. A draft of a complaint against Neeraj Jain’s attempts to disrupt the campus was read out to everybody who signed it.

Apparently, this draft complaint was almost neglected by the police. They refused to register it as a First Information Report (FIR) of an unlawful act, but kept it only as an ‘application’, with a condition that it is written in Gujarati, the State language.

The voluntary gathering of students in front of the Police Station also had a support from some civil rights activists. They tried to mediate, but had little success. Venkat, a friend of Chandramohan whose name did not even appear in the so-called FIR filed by Neeraj Jain, was ‘freed’ by the police, while everybody in the gathering did not understand, why in the first place did the police detain Venkat! Then, it was known that Venkat was a person who had helped Chandramohan with some technical specificities of the so-called ‘objectionable’ work of art.

‘Chandramohan has to be given a bail. We have to follow the legal procedures. So boys and girls, please do not wait here. You can expect your friend (Chandramohan) to be freed when we take him to court tomorrow (on Thursday), and anyways, we are not troubling him… nobody has beaten Chandramohan’… these stunning words came from the Assistant Commissioner of Police, T. R. Parmar. Everybody chose to believe him… for more than one hour before this, some 200 students were sitting in front of the police station. They returned their dwellings, not knowing that Chandramohan’s detention would last longer and longer.

- Abhijeet Tamhane.

The tenants of history : Bombay Art Society and the hysterias that surround Café Samovar

Borders are often a site of contests that make history. Café Samovar was born 43 year ago on the border, and continues to stay there: on the narrow passage between the Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastusangrahalaya ( previously Prince of Wales Museum) and Jehangir Art Gallery. Displeasures are not as old. They started when the Museum fenced its area with a barbed wire. By that time, the late seventies, Café Samovar was a name associated with film and art personalities. These and more well-wishers of Café Samovar protested the ugly barbed wire fence. The displeasures further grew when Jehangir Art Gallery asked its tenants, including Gallery Chemould and Café Samovar, to vacate the place. People like me, who have been visiting Jehangir, Samovar and Chemould, have chatted over the last decade about this great tenancy dispute.

‘When the Gallery was growing up, when the art scene was nascent, they almost invited us. Now they want us to go! Why?’, was the irate lament you’d hear from Kekoo Gandhy of Chemould or Usha Khanna of Samovar. Chemould gave in, and moved out of the Jehangir premises this month ‘for good’. Even before, the dinghy ‘Terrace Art Gallery’ moved out, when many of us came to know it was there… ‘Yes, for thirty years that Chetan did business with bad art’, somebody would say, and we all laughed and smoked. We all knew Chemould or Samovar could not be equated with Terrace Gallery, and when Chemould decided to move out, most of us seemed to know what loss it was to the Jehangir building, the Kala Ghoda locale. One was also happy, anyways, that the Chemould shifted to a much larger, contemporary space at Prescott Road.

Samovar now fights the lone battle of preserving the tenancy. The issue is already in court, and is sub-judice. To put things straight, the land belongs to Government of Maharashtra and who gave the occupancy rights to Prince of Wales Museum. Jehangir Art Gallery is a tenant of the Museum, and Samovar a sub-tenant. The Bombay Art Society has its very small office in the Jehangir premises, but the legislation about the inception of Jehangir Art Gallery makes special arrangements for the Society. The same legislation also states that the Society will use the Jehangir Art Gallery space for its annual exhibitions.

Things have changed since the legislations were passed some 54 years ago. Given the government’s understanding of cultural agenda that time, the Bombay Art Society under the leadership of (then young) people like K. K. Hebbar was the only trustworthy agency of change and betterment in visual art scene of the city.

Yet, last fortnight, the Bombay Art Society members had a public gathering that proclaimed ‘Samovar must vacate the space’. ‘Samovar started at a time when there was no restaurants and eating joints nearby. Now there are kiosks around the Gallery that feed the struggling artists. If Usha Khanna of Samovar boasts of having fed the stugglers way back in the 1970s, I would like to ask why are todays’ strugglers away from Café Samovar? What keeps only celebrities stand up for the Café?’ asked the speakers to a gathering of about 250 people, while the Bombay Art Society Secretary Gayatri Mehta declared, ‘the historical task of Café Samovar is over now. There is no point in still using the same space for a restaurant’. These protestors against Samovar had a so-called positive agenda: they wanted the Samovar space reclaimed for art exhibitions.

The same logic of ‘the end of historical task’ can fit the Bombay Art Society itself! The Society is no longer representative of the ‘talents in art’, nor does it command an undisputed trust in the art fraternity. To be sure, the Society cannot be stamped as retrograde, but it has, been unable to keep pace with the newer definitions of art. Issues of propriety, of ‘who asks whom to go and in what pitch’ assume an even greater importance when the matter is under the consideration of a court of law. The public meeting devised by the Society in mid-August 2007 can, at best, be called a display of hysteria. The hysteria stems from the fear of loosing one’s voice in the changing situation.

The situation changed because somebody toiled to do so. It was undoubtedly Café Samovar that valued the presence of eminent personalities. It did not discourage the ‘struggling artist’, until such artists could hardly cope with a rate-card that is not cheap by the city standards and leaves a chance only to order for an apparently lousy ‘ready tea’ to the struggling artist. Yet, Café Samovar now attracts a varied clientele that includes tourists and NRIs, lawyers and chartered accountants, the laptop-savvy yuppies and yes, some young artists and critics, too.

It became the talk of the metropolis on August 6, when some ‘noted personalities from art, media and cultural fraternity’ (read : celebrities) met the Chief Minister of Maharashtra to save the tenancy of Café Samovar, even as the tenancy dispute is sub judice. Some noted personalities went to the extent of demanding a ‘Heritage Status’ for the Café from the state government, which in its rightful capacity has duly refused to do so. The celebrities - CM meeting was so well covered by the media that the Bombay Art Society action may be seen rather as a reaction to it. The issues of ego between the Society and the Café are there, but they can be sorted out with a proper dialogue. In fact, such a dialogue has started at the informal levels. September 2007 will go further with the process. This is the juncture when people like the octogenarian Kekoo Gandhy, who happens to be a patron of Bombay Art Society, is not averse to the idea of being a negotiator between the two sides, but this remains his wish.


The court judgments notwithstanding, the hysteria is about getting a chunk out of the history. Any history of the ‘Kala Ghoda Art District’ of Mumbai would have a place for the Bombay Art Society, Jehangir Art Gallery, Gallery Chemould and Café Samovar (in chronological order). Nobody ever owns history. At present, it seems as if all these institutions that ploughed Kala Ghoda to be an Art District, are fighting it out for their place and want to reap from history here and now. These tenants of history vie for a self-contained future. And, it seems, nothing is going to stop them doing that.

- Abhijeet Tamhane

To Claim the space…

Vanita Gupta’s works always have a newer invitation, an intrigue that deserves to be taken along. It was some years back that she abandoned paint at once, and entered the territory of building her works with paper, glue and some fine cloth pieces. From there, she comes back to ‘Acrylic on Canvas’ works, recently (September- November 2006) shown in Singapore, New Delhi and Mumbai. The recent work has retained Vanita’s intense experiences in charting her own territories.

True, the recent work resembled Zen calligraphy at the first, rather hasty sight. One could even have a second, more deliberate look at the works as pieces of abstract calligraphy, done with a ‘Zen mind’: a mind that ‘gains nothing other than the realization that there is nothing to gain, and is thus more than ever in the world’[i].

So, what happens next? A debate, perhaps, between painting and calligraphy? Or, further, a complacent deception that inhabits our so-called ‘appreciation’? I would like to take a brief tour to the areas of my discontent with such complacency.

If one equates Vanita’s work to the pains and pleasures of Calligraphy, it will necessarily draw oneself to observe the black ‘stroke’ on Vanita’s milky white canvas, its solitary existence and its balanced positioning. Lauding Vanita’s effort as Zen, one can firmly point at the purity of experience, the essence of ‘the stroke’ that her paintings transcend.

Or, without overt references to Zen or Calligraphy, one might choose to look at these works as paintings, would expect the joys and highs of seeing a good painting and, most often, be fulfilled with the joys! From this position, one would are the pains and pleasures of Composition in Vanita’s work. The series of artistic decisions that she must have experience while making the work would haunt us while we, as viewers, are destined to cherish the ‘moment’ in her work. The entrapment of the moment through a series of moments would draw us to laud her works in words like ‘abstract in its most severe form’[ii].

Is there a third way? Can a viewer take some other ways of seeing, to match with Vanita’s effort to deal away with ‘habit, convenience and security’[iii] ? How far would the complacency with ‘Zen/Calligraphy’ set of our observations or ‘Composition/painting/ abstract’ schema be able to breathe with a Vanita Gupta work? If a viewer is sure, s/he gets some ‘echantment’ from the work? Can s/he spell enchantment?

I would suggest recourse to Vanita Gupta’s work as an art-historical critique. History of abstraction would give us references to Adolf Gottlieb’s brushwork or Robert Motherwell’s action painting in the 1960s, as formally relevant to her work. While Vanita, through her work, takes a position that goes far ahead of these reactions to the canonical western art history. Her work does not celebrate the existence of ‘painting’, as so-called ‘post-painterly abstractionists’ or ‘abstract expressionists’ seem to have done. Instead, her works strongly advocate an indulgence in acts like peeling or erasing the paint off canvas, not to mention the intended blankness of the canvas. These decisions make posit her work with a critique of what others did or do.

For sure, Vanita has not stopped charting territories of her own. The territories are opening up! One remembers her work in the late 1990s when she used folded paper, and left much for the viewer’s intrigue about what the inside of those folds would be like. In early 2000s, she continued her approach without resorting to folds. Her work now shows a strategy for claiming the space without actually using it! The nothingness and the wholeness, the Shunya and the Poorna seem to be revered in all her approaches, while her relation to these values has grown over time.


-- Abhijeet Tamhane.

[i] Fung Yu Lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Princeton1952 , quoted in http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/lieberman/zen.html.
[ii] Deeksha Nath, Exhibition Catalogue for Vanita Gupta, Gallery Threshold, 2006. The observation further goes: ‘ By not beginning with a form ofreference or allowing the viewer to hinge the painting on the visual and material world, through her paintings Vanita goes to the heart of aesthetic experience, pure intuitive reaction’.
[iii] Vanita Gupta, an excerpt from her forthcoming Hindi novel ‘Anshi’, quoted in Exhibition Catalogue for Vanita Gupta, Pundole Art Gallery, 2006.

Why should LaVA spread?

LaVA [Laboratory of Visual Arts] , a show that has traveled five cities in India (so far,) spread reactions everywhere. This huge installation worked like Bose Krishnammachary's critique of the existing (or non-existent) level of contemporary knowledge that India's art institutions have to offer. The show was completely interactive and had so much of choice element that, one's experience at the show would surely differ from others'. All the Books, all DVDs here were accessible, and your experience depended on what you choose to access. Nevertheless, the show had some visual content that annotated the show. The bookracks, the big and small video-screen tables and the walls, all were designed by Bose. While the furniture pieces were rendered in attractive shapes and colour, they looked casual enough to encourage you for sniffing out all your apprehensions for those gloomy grey, dusky steel or dull wooden book storages. Bose's bookracks were inviting. These shelves had an appeal of the aesthetic positions that Bose propones through his abstract paintings.

This ‘Laboratory’ was completely designed for the user. It was not only the hardware that suited as a user interface, but the Books and catalogues, Magazines and monographs, DVDs and CDs… i.e., the software, took into account the different tastes and preference areas. The printed resources engulfed almost everything under the visual art umbrella: contemporary visual art from India, US, Europe and Asia, modern and post-modern Art since 1940s, folk art, books about film, fashion, design, photography. There were books with biographical, polemical as well as educational overtones, studies that referred to surveys and details, books that you would like to share with your friends and students, or some books that you would prefer to savor in your privacy. An equal diversity of cinematographic resources awaited your time. Films ranged from Avant Garde to popular Bollywood.
The software and hardware, both served as entry points to a worldview, a positivist, optimistic attitude toward artistic expressions. Modes might be different, it told the user, but the goal for a more livable world is unequivocal. LaVA perpetuated Bose’s inclinations in more than one ways. His belief in coexistence of varying positions and different levels of understanding, that was amply proved by his curatorial initiatives like Bombay Boys, Double Enders et al, reflected in his choice of films and books. Also, the inherent rhetoric of personal-universal choice that assumes centrality when Bose curates, worked at LaVA. Bose assumed the position of a global citizen while he provided the ‘equipment’ at this laboratory and the place, while you were in it, demanded the same position from you.

The kind of response LaVA reaped, primarily underlined the absence of institutional framework to provide a site of such a wide-ranging contemporary knowledge. Then, it also provided some answers for a more responsible attitude to knowledge, atleast under laboratory conditions.

LaVA was a utopian space that chose to remain un-institutional. It happily dealt away with the institutional assumptions of perpetual existence. Instead, it disappeared when everybody wanted to visit it once again! Presicely by its ephemerality, LaVA attained the heights of a work of art. It raised spirits, it made you dream, it helped you think, but it refused the notion of serving you and being useful to you.

- Abhijeet Tamhane.