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Of Religion, Representation,
Politics and other things

Representing religion in art has become a contentious issue in our contemporary times. A students’ seminar organized in Kalabhavan, Santiniketan discussed this volatile issue in an effective way. Oindrilla Maity reports from Santiniketan.

Seminars, in most of the cases tend to become unappealing, owing to the fact that they are both pedantic and pedagogical. As a consequence, they remain once in a year activity/normative practice, whether at Shantiniketan or in any of the city based art institutions in Kolkata. However, for the young enthusiast Parvez Kabir, who currently teaches at the Department of Art History, and also happens to be the convenor for the seminar in discourse, they take a different stride. Their effect is far reaching and multifarious. Or at least that is what became apparent after I experienced it as an observer to the National Level Students’ Seminar on Religion and Visual Arts: Representations and Contestations (on 2nd and 3rd March 2008) at the Kala Bhavana, Vishva Bharati, Shantiniketan.

Organizing a seminar under normal circumstances always waits for an occasion - Centenaries, birth centenaries and so on and so forth. Parvez Kabir had a better pretext – an urge to do it. The students’ seminar was organized at a prime time, in the month of March – when the final year students both at the B.F.A and M.F.A levels are about to have their final examinations (this probably explains why there was a lack of participation from among the students themselves, or what most of them had used as a subterfuge for not attending the seminar). Also, it is important to note that possibly nowhere in the history of the art institutions in West Bengal a notable students’ seminar has ever made its claim so seriously and successfully (a students’ seminar is generally a utopic concept. Its success is a far cry in these institutions).

The idea of organizing a students’ seminar evolved from the “genuine feeling of the absence of the religion in the academic discourses. If the religious scene today has a decisive bearing in our lives, perhaps we have no excuse on why we do not discuss religion, in the life or in the academies. It is true that many of us feel that religion is a matter of private faith that we are not suppose to discuss in the public,” writes Parvez in his synopsis for the seminar, as he tries to trace back the causes of our apparent blindness about the issue. One of the major causes for organizing a students’ seminar is to open a platform for constructive criticism and this was not to meet a short term end. Students, more often than not are decisive in choosing the good from the bad. As an aftermath of such events (seminars) their responses take a dynamic shape. One virtually becomes critical in all that he takes into account after a rigorous exchange of such dialogues.

The participants included Abha Seth, Senior Research Fellow, from the Department of Art History, M.S. University, Baroda, who had her paper titled ‘Logistics of Architectural Space and Sculptural Program – a case study of the Saptamatrka Icons (early 5th to 8th c AD)’. Her paper focuses on both the collective value as well as on the contestation for space in the architectural fabric of temples dedicated to male godheads such as Siva, Vishnu and Surya. She delves into the problems of examining the legal and social notions of permissibility and obscenity while acknowledging the dual nature of the art object in question as located in the sphere of religion as well as the sphere of post independence, modern Indian art, with reference to the political implications of being located in post 2002 Gujarat. At one point of her synopsis Seth mentions: “What I seek to illustrate through the Baroda incident is how the making of the political Hindu as a major term is achieved through a suppression of the spiritual/philosophical Hindu, reducing it to a minor term, by freezing the dialectical play of the institutional vs the the anti-institutional Hinduisms.”

Samudra Kajal Saikia’s (Creative Director, ka Studios, New Delhi, and also happens to be an ex-student of Baroda) traces the religious undercurrent behind the search of a ‘new space’ in the Indian art practices. He made a parallel between the practice of visual arts and the modern Indian dramaturgy. Saikia observes that the imagination and the planning of the city of gods are as important as the gods themselves. Such as, a Muhammedian fakir desires to go to Nabi’s country, a Vaishnab wishes to go to Vrindavana, for which there is no existence in the Geographical map and Kabir wishes to send messages to Maiharwa, Sai ki Nagri. Later, a performance bearing strong connotations about our times and the fruitless fanaticism, by Saikia left a deep impact.

Sritoma Halder’s paper (she is a IVth student year currently studying Art History in Kalabhavan) daels with ‘Body, Religion and Representation: ‘looking’ into Amar Chitra Katha’s Mirabai’. She inquiredinto the fact how Mira’s body is imagined produced and what definition it carries. In her process of finding, she traces the multifarious roles the ‘body’ plays, both as a means of protest and as a means of pleasure.  Rahul Bhattacharya’s  paper titled ‘A Story of Magicians and Baskets: This is not a story’ primarily focuses on the vision, magician, pattern and grave, as points of departure trough which to understand Christianity’s role as an agent of modernity. Among the other papers were Rahul Dev’s ‘ Visual Representation Of Dalits’ , Kunal Duggal’s ‘The Politics and Visual Culture of  Dera Sacha Sauda’( through the cultural violence between the different sects of Shikhism) and Shravan Kumar’s ‘ Spell on Indian Democracy: a note on Shankar’s Aparichit” were some of the interesting observations on the most celebrated/ contested issues.

My personal feelings, both as an observer as well as a teacher is that – students often going nonplussed, shy away from taking an active involvement in the seminars more often than not as a consequence of inadequate vocabulary, which largely involve an insufficient curricular and an archaic process in teaching. I guess it is high time that we look for an alternative that would resuscitate us now.  There was a conspicuous difference in involvement between the participation of students from Kolkata as well as Shantiniketan and those from elsewhere of the country (a population mostly comprising of students from Baroda) in terms of ideas, issues and constructive criticism. The difference in major lies in the very way of ‘seeing’. To put it blatantly, the participation of students from West Bengal as a whole, showed a marked retrograde tendency out of a feeling of some kind of guilt, and what can loosely be termed as a ‘persecution complex’ – a fear (here) that generates out of the sheer feeling of incompetence.

Despite the fact that the seminar raising several issues (including a few impertinent as well as ludicrous ones) such as ‘why such a seminar at all?’ ‘Whether it is legitimate to involve religion within the realm of the academics’ or ‘why is there a majority of students representation restricted only to Baroda?’  Lastly, ‘why did some of the participants who read their papers were not students but seniors (research scholars, teachers and senior research fellows, vis-à-vis)?’ – a successful (or even an unsuccessful) seminar bears far reaching results. Students, being a tractable and more receptive lot tend to show greater enthusiasm and an immediacy to learn more about the most celebrated issues (which of course took a serious turn in the open discussion with the panelists relating to politics, religion and the more complex issues) once such an event is over. Last but not the least, teachers and students alike, fall back upon these discourses readily long after the seminar is over. After all, they stir up the questioning self.