6 Indian Art ANOTHER INDIA by Juliet Highet


Another India is a unique groundbreaking exhibition exploring the cultural heritage of India’s minority Adivasi people and creative responses from contemporary Adivasi artists. Tese people are described as


‘original inhabitants’, or indigenous communities nowadays rather than ‘tribes’, a term widely seen as derogatory with connotations of primitivism, backwardness and even savagery. In fact, ‘tribal’ Indigenous and Adivasi identities are still being fiercely contested. Adivasis tend to live in isolated areas such as hill and forest regions, away from large population centres. Te exhibition’s historical aspect draws on a vast collection of 10,000 plus Indian artefacts held by Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology (MAA). Te excellent catalogue describes the collecting of the Adivasi component, the effects of Empire on their communities, in effect – how the holding comes to be in Cambridge.


‘Many of the artefacts were acquired through colonialism sometimes with fair exchanges, sometimes as gifts, sometimes not – the legacies of Empire,’ writes Dr Mark Elliott, a senior curator at MAA and author of most of the catalogue. Te exhibition includes 200


artefacts, photographs and 23 new artworks commissioned and purchased using a New Collecting Award from Art Fund (UK). Tey tell a riveting tale of the creativity of Nagas and other peoples in the hills of northeast India; the Gonds, Todas and Chenchus of the south; the Santals and Bhals from the east and west of the country.


IS THE ONLY INDIA WE ADIVASIS KNOW. ‘ANOTHER INDIA’ IS OUR INDIA


- Ruby Hebron,


Adivasi writer and publisher and Executive Director of adivaani, a cultural organisation dedicated to preserve and amplify the Adivasi voice.


‘ANOTHER INDIA’


and describes being in a sterile, air- conditioned storage room of Adivasi artefacts, where she experienced ‘an inexplicable feeling of reverence for a presence I felt in that space. I was interacting with an aura that brought alive the intangible relevance of those objects.


Tose shelves were


commemorations of my people and their life ways – telling stories of a civilisation that has stood the test of time’.


‘Tis exhibition is about 104 million people of Indigenous or Adivasi backgrounds who are marginalised by majority populations and the state,’ says Mark Elliott. ‘It is not just a historical exhibition. It is also about identity, diversity and belonging, and the role that objects play in creating a sense of who we are… Tey resist pigeonholing, just as people do. Te artefacts and the stories they tell are the stories of communities who are living, struggling and thriving today… We did not want to do a show about Bollywood, saris and curry, but instead highlight a massive body of marginalised people… who to a great extent are not seen as having culture, heritage and history of their own.’ Ruby Hebron, of adivaani, in a chapter of the catalogue written by her, adds: ‘Identity is belonging and we belong to this India. We belong to the objects of this India and belong to the feelings they trigger and emotions they evoke. Te India that “others” use is the one where we are confronting hatred, racism, sexism, exploitation, brutality,


dehumanisation and


stereotyping in our everyday lives’. She attended a symposium in Oslo, along with Santal (Adivasi) people


At workshops in India, Mark Elliott showed photographs of some of the MAA’s Adivasi collection to Adivasi artists who had been commissioned to contribute to the exhibition. Hebron continues: ‘When Mark showcased the photographs, reactions similar to what I had witnessed in Oslo unfolded here as well. Te Gonds and Santals instinctively formed separate groups and moved to their area where photos from their region were arranged. I caught snatches of excited voices recognising an object or a sigh acknowledging some exquisite craftsmanship. Ten as groups crossed over to ‘other regions’, there were whispers of “we have this, too”.’ Sahib, one of the artists, at one point remarked: ‘Look at the sophistication of the objects themselves,


the


technique and intricacy in design – and they call us uncultured and backward!’ Te work of these modern artists is displayed alongside the photographs, among which are powerful portraits of elderly Naga men with tattooed faces and bodies. Historically, the Adivasi were by no means supine – there were frequent uprisings against British authority and Indian landowners. A year before the great Uprising of 1857, the Santal Rebellion was suppressed. A year later the Bhils of western India rebelled and throughout the 1870s Adivasis in the Naga Hills rose up. All of these conflicts – and more – enabled local artefacts to be transported abroad. One of these at MAA is a head-


taker’s trophy from Nagaland, worn on the chest by a Konyak warrior who had captured an enemy head. One of the most prominent of the colonial administrators,


‘Bhil. A woman’. Albumen print. Edward Taurines Studio, Bombay, 1885-1895. Baron Anatole von Hügel collection. Copyright Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge


camp for so-called ‘Criminal Tribes’. Elliott describes such camps containing: ‘Communities of people who were considered… bandits or poachers, often because the Imperial administration had forced them out of their traditional lands or livelihoods’. Some of the artworks contributed


by contemporary Adivasi artists celebrate their heritage; others are confrontational about their treatment. A photo, dated 1935, showing a young Gond woman covering her face, who is described at the time as ‘too shy to look’ – maybe at the solar- topeed ‘colonial’ beside her, leafing through a book. Tis photo inspired Bhupendra Jaidev Baghel, a sculptor from the Ghassiya Adivasi people of Kondagaon,


to create John Henry Hunt,


‘collected’ this macabre memento, which was in fact a monkey’s skull, and which he kept under a glass jar on his desk for decades after he returned to England. It was typical of trophies still worn by Nagas at festivals, since head-taking was an aspect of their traditional culture of great social and spiritual significance,


and has


continued to be a symbol of their cultural identity.


Such trophies


Tangkhul Naga head dress. Ukhrul, Manipur. Collected by Captain John Butler, 1870-1875. Copyright Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 1919


ASIAN ART OCTOBER 2017


continue to be worn at their festivals, although head-taking has ceased. Other head-takers’ artefacts in the exhibition are very different. One is a delicate brass head suspended on beads as a pendant. Another more ferocious example, also a pendant, and also a human head, is wooden with a grimace of a mouth baring teeth. It does resemble a skull. In the 1930s, an English sculptor named Marguerite Milward was also taking photos in India, including of Adivasi people. One of these, a Rajput Bhat woman called Mamie whom she photographed, wears jewellery of coins, cowry shells and silver charms, which Milward bought, no doubt supplementing Mamie’s meagre income. Mamie lived in an internment


Colonial


Encounter. Using the traditional dhokra lost-wax technique of metal casting, Baghel has created two figures, a girl similarly clad and ornamented as the Gond one in the photo and a man in typical colonial gear.


Ocean of Blood by Gond sculptor Bokli Nageshwar Rao draws on his heritage of memorial pillars. Tis rusty looking tower, the colour of dried blood, memorialises the treatment of Adivasis during a counter-insurgency. But Rao’s intricate monument of scrap metal also comments on issues pertinent to his people’s lives today. Tableaux of environmental degradation depict the widespread dam building, deforestation and strip mining going on. Lanu Pongen from Kohima,


Dhodro Banam by Som Murmu, 2016. Bikajol, West Bengal. Commissioned with Art Fund support. Copyright Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 2017


Nagaland, has created Naga Warrior, which he describes as a ‘totem pole.’ Parts of this wooden sculpture have been charred and waxed, producing a dark sheen in contrast to areas of the bright original colour. His sculpture is about rupture and loss, burning and burying, as a response to the many Adivasi villages burned under colonial martial law. In addition, Christians Continued on page 8


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