From the ‘Concerns’ Desk ... May 2007

The Fight will be on as You are the real Heroes

For the last one week, we have been updating you with the ‘Baroda Incident’ and its aftermath. Once again we express our solidarity with Chandramohan and Shivji Panikkar.

On 9th May afternoon, I was talking to Abhijeet Tamhane who was visiting the annual display of the Fine Arts Faculty, Baroda. Then I talked to my artist friend Anil Kumar. I was just curious about the annual display. Then suddenly Anil told me that something wrong was happening in the campus.

The rest is now history.

Many people congratulated www.artconcerns.com for being so vigilant and for maintaining balance in reporting the events. Many people congratulated me personally. However, I firmly believe that the real heroes are out there.

Chemould Gallery was the first one to react. They sent out mailers to most of the concerned people and also called for an urgent meeting. Sharmila Samant and Tushar Jog were the two people who alerted Mumbai and the artists friends elsewhere in the country. Chintan Upadhyaya was traveling abroad and he came back to the Fine Arts Faculty and camped there through out the week, always keeping a low profile but actively engaging people through his mailers and blogs. Ranjit Hoskote and Gulam Muhammad Sheikh sent out their statements on the very next day of the incident. In Delhi Vivan Sundaram and Geeta Kapur responded to the issue along with the organization SAHMAT.

Abhijeet Tamhane was the one to file the first report in his newspaper, perhaps the first media report (outside Gujarat) on the Baroda issue. He was constantly updating me with the developments in Baroda. Dilip Narayanan too was there at the Faculty and he could take a lot of photographs, which made the concerns’ editions rich. Baroda based artist and scholar Sathyanand Mohan updated the site with regular inputs. Anil Kumar was a constant help.

Suddhabrata Sengupta, the researcher and scholar of SARAI gave permission to reproduce one of his articles in our site. Amrita Gupta Singh was undergoing a treatment and was bedridden. From there she kept updating me about Mumbai developments through text messages and phone calls. There in Kolkata Oindrilla Maity was quite active and was sending out reports regularly. From Mysore N.S.Harsha, From Kochi Rajan M.Krishnan, from Bangalore Surekha, Rollie Mukherjee, V.Divakar and from Guwahati Kishore Das were alerting people and also artconcerns.

Artconcerns salutes those artists, Anant Joshi, Justin Ponmany, Tushar Jog, Jitish Kallat, Reena Kallat, T.V.Santhosh and many more from Mumbai who reached Baroda against all odds. We salute all those artists who gathered in all the protest marches held in various parts of India. We salute all those galleries who supported the artists’ cause. We salute the media who did not sensationalize the issue. My special salute to Rekha Rodwittiya who argued vehemently for the artists’ freedom in television discussions.

Artconcerns salutes all those students and upcoming artists in Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda and other art colleges in India who came out to street to support and safeguard the freedom of expression. I want to name all the artists, friends, organizations and responsible citizens who supported this cause and came out to protest.

I want to name all those artists and friends who kept sending me messages and information so that I could keep pace with the incidents. I am thankful to all those selfless strangers who sent me photographs of the first day’s events in Baroda.

I am thankful to Oli Ghosh of Chemould Gallery, who provided us with 14th May pictures from Baroda.

Hey guys, you are the heroes in this issue. Chandramohan and Shivji Panikkar, don’t worry. The fight will be on.

www.artconcerns.com is just a vehicle.

Yours,

JohnyML