8 Indian Art


protective, acting as a defence against wild animals while hunting. Cane helmets worn by the Padan (Adi) men in combat functioned not only as protection, but also as symbols of male status and identity. Ironically, these Padan helmets distinctly resemble Colonial army pith helmets. One wonders which came first. In the past, Adi brass pendants


were strung together and worn as girdles beneath skirts by young girls and women until the birth of their first baby. Today they are not only highly prized as signs of wealth and status, but they are also used by some local designers as fashion accessories, though proudly worn over local textile skirts, along with masses of local beads.


A photograph of a beautiful Bhil


Colonial Encounter by Bhupendra Jaidev Baghel, 2016. Kondagaon, Chhattisgarh, India. Commissioned with Art Fund support. Copyright Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, 2017


buried ‘heathen’ ornaments. So


Pongen has covered his many-tiered male figure with symbols and motifs which are pan-Naga (a huge area). Tis emphasises his assertion that Nagas are one people, not divided into ‘tribes’, as the Indian government continues to assert. Numerous are the antique bows and arrows in the exhibition, along with a decorated parrying shield and other combat weapons. A telling photo, taken in 2003, shows Santals carrying bows and arrows on a protest march against the mining of their land. Particularly for people who lived nomadic lives, personal adornment was not only portable, but as in every society, an affirmation of identity and enjoyable.


Much of this


embellishment was worn by men, including a dramatic Tangkhul Naga head-dress centred by a brass disc, with equal-sized roundels on either side and a large u-shaped appendage, fringed with long tassels of black hair. All three are studded with red seeds of the coral tree (Erythina) and white seeds known as Job’s Tears (coix lacryma-jobi). A bangle or armlet, also Tangkhul, of solid brass and very heavy, is both ornamental and


woman, dated 1885-1895, shows her in the elaborate dress of a married woman, wearing many bangles and anklets, and holding a cluster of dancing bells. Te brass anklets were expensive,


presumably her husband, is extracting what is probably a thorn. He too is clothed in a broad grass waistband, a pig slung over his shoulder, and is also covered in lacerations from the hunt. Te Todas, living in Tamil Nadu, southern India, have a culture and appearance very different from other Adivasis. Te frontispiece of an 1832 monograph depicts a couple with a child. Te couple are clothed in Biblical drapes; the woman has Victorian style ringlets. Clearly this is a 19th-century fantasy; however, we have material evidence of intricately embroidered Toda textiles, putkulis. Tese are large pieces of cloth, outer garments worn by both women and men. Te cloths were actually woven by Hindu people, and then bought by Todas at bazaars, using ghee as their currency. Subsequently, they were embellished with their own embroidery.


A contemporary maker from cherished possessions,


though extremely heavy, each leg carrying almost a kilogram. Naga women wore mini-skirts –


very mini – to which decorative items were attached, including silver bells and cowry shells, which were once used as currency in some areas. An 1875 drawing of ‘Phemi, wife of Soibang’, the chief of a village in what is now Arunchal Pradesh, shows her wearing her mini-skirt low on the hips, leaving the top of her right hip exposed. A band of red zigzags is embroidered along the bottom edge. She is also wearing a woven headband, loop earrings, and thick necklaces of seeds covering a good portion of her chest and shoulders. Two Konyak girls, photographed in 1937, shows them wearing far more jewellery than skirts. Even more minimal is the outfit of a Chenchu woman, depicted in a watercolour of 1785. Elliott writes that historically the Chenchus were one of the poorest Adivasi communities in India, leaving little material culture to be spirited away to foreign lands. Tis woman wears only a necklace and a quiver of arrows, as well as a grass skirt around her waist, leaving the rest of her bare. Clearly a hunter holding a bow and arrow, her body is scratched from the chase. She raises a foot from which a man,


Nagaland, Ajungla Imchen, studied at an art school in West Bengal. Her textiles fuse the traditions of both West Bengal and her native land. Te kantha technique is a tradition of West Bengal, while the motifs on her silk scarves in the exhibition are Naga. Another vivid aspect of Adivasi


culture is its celebration of performance, including music and dance. Balubha Rathwa from Chhota Udaipur, Gujarat, has created a complex, realistic sculpture in wood of a gheriya, or dancer. Tis is a significant symbol of Rathwa and Bhil identities across Gujerat, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. Such dancers travel to Gher Melas during the eight-day harvest festival of Holi. Tey paint their bodies; wear towering peacock feather head- dresses and belts strung with gourd rattles and brass bells. All of these come to life in Rathwa’s sculpture, though he also includes a bow and arrow. Mark Elliott describes Jadopati


scrolls painted to celebrate Santal (Adivasi) people performing their creation myth. Tey depict men doing a


‘knees-up’ dance, and women


swinging from trees in harmonious unison and also dancing. He writes:


‘Assembled here with ornaments such as the women’s anklets and the Santal lute, the dhodro banam, they (the scrolls) help to articulate the significance of performative culture for Santals today – a significance that is grounded in harsh realities and has become intensely political’. As Jay Tudu, a Santal community worker and activist, said in 2011, when explaining the importance of contemporary Adivasi performance:


‘Are these important? Yes they are important. For generations we have been told that we have no history, we have no culture. But when we see these images from almost a century ago, we can point to them and say:


“Tis is our history. Tis is our culture!”.’ A distinguished Santal sculptor


‘How do I Look?’ (Anonymous No. 6), photograph by Zubeni Lotha. Dimapur, Nagaland, 2014. Copyright Zubeni Lotha


ASIAN ART OCTOBER 2017


from Bikajol in West Bengal created a wooden piece for the exhibition. Som Murbu carved dhodro banam, the Santal lute, ‘in many ways the most iconic piece of Santal material culture’ writes Elliott, and highlighting ‘the importance of music, dance and performance… Contemporary Santal author Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, in the title story of his collection Te Adivasis Will Not Dance (2015) vividly expresses the tensions surrounding Santal dance as a cultural symbol today. He describes Mangal Murmu, an ageing Santal musician, who is invited to perform before the President of India… Lying pinned to the ground by the police, with the sound of his troupe being beaten in the background, Murmu reflects on


Naayo (mother.) Her face is movingly dignified, somewhat remote, arguably from the historic and modern pressures on women, whether from repression, industrialisation or just accelerated change. Traditional Santal tattoos (khoda) cover her arms and shoulders, created nowadays not by Santals, but by Jolha Muslims living on the edge of Santal villages. However her clothes illustrate symbols of hereditary Santal culture, such as twin peacocks and floral patterns.


Also from Chhattisgarh, Bhupendra Jaidev Baghel has sculpted another monument to motherhood, using the gadwakar or lost-wax technique, synonymous with his particular region of Bastar, whose artefacts are now covetable in the Indian and international craft markets. Baghel’s evocative sculpture is of an Adivasi woman in traditional dress and jewellery, holding a baby in one arm, and her other hand holding that of a young child. Traditional images of goddesses, or devi, were often simultaneously known in Adivasi as mata, meaning mother, indicating the supreme importance of family and genealogy. When Ruby Hebron visited Oslo


Ocean of Blood by Bokli Nageshwar Rao, 2016. Godavari, Andhra Pradesh. Commissioned with Art Fund support. Copyright Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 2017


how and why he turned this performance into an opportunity for peaceful protest. ‘I only said, “We Adivasis will not dance any more”. What is wrong with that? We are like toys – someone presses our “ON” button, or turns a key in our backsides, and we Santals start beating rhythms on our tamak and turndak, or start blowing tunes on our tiryo while someone snatches away our very dancing grounds. Tell me, am I wrong?’ In 2016, Som Murmu, a Santal


from Bekajol, West Bengal, created an ironic interactive sculpture titled Chadar Badar: How the Santals Learned to Dance. It is an example of a traditional Hadar Badar puppet show that Santal performers have toured around villages for generations. However, the sculpture is subtly critical in the sense that the mechanical figures are operated by a single cord from beneath the curtained main structure. Tough life was and is so often harsh for Adivasis, for women in particular, softer themes are covered too by the contemporary artists contributing to the exhibition. In the past pillars were carved as memorials to ancestors, depicting their lives in relief panels. In 2016, renowned sculptor Pandi Ram Mandavi from Chhattisgarh, who was inspired by traditional memorial pillars, carved a wooden one incised with scenes of the daily lives of modern Adivasis of his area. He incorporated traditional forms, styles and techniques depicting agricultural,


performance, hunting


scenes and portraits on all sides. Clearly


pillars are a significant


genre of Adivasi art. Saheb Ram Tudu, a Santal from West Bengal, has contributed an exquisite pillar sculpture of a mother and baby, titled


two years ago with other Indian participants in the symposium, she took with her the hopes of her Adivasi elders, scholars and activists, who were banking on negotiation of the return of the Norwegian collection of their artefacts. (Tese are Santal.) But this was not to be, even though the Museum of Cultural History and the National Library were open to repatriation. Hebron describes it as ‘a huge reality check. We soon realised that the great expectation is a non- question. Santals as individuals and organisations are not ready yet to receive them… We do not have the infrastructure,


resources and


manpower to move or sustain this transfer’. A digital memory bank is proposed, along with an online catalogue. Tis ‘could be the best solution for us, just now’. It is also worth noting that the contemporary artwork commissioned by MAA was bought by the museum, so will stay in Cambridge, not to be exhibited, or retained, in India. In a different key, it is worth remembering that Hebron had said:


‘Another India is our India… We seek inclusion, equality and acceptance of our distinctiveness as peoples and communities… We continue to live invisible lives. One way of being visible then is becoming a museum artefact, sometimes even at the cost of tokenism. Being a museum artefact or being displayed is a validation of existence – the existence of a people who created or inspired others to. Tis tears up labels of being a people of no culture or one of low culture. It shatters typecasts of an unintelligent, “backward people”


incapable of


creativity or utility’. Hebron continued, ‘Tese objects


assert the necessity to leave otherness behind. Tese objects form the links that connect us to our ancestors and next generations.


Tese objects


amplify the voices of invisible peoples. Tese objects are the testimony of peoples refusing to be forgotten in every India’.


Until 22 April 2018, at the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology , maa.cam.ac.uk. Te exhibition is the centrepiece of the University of Cambridge’s India Unboxed season, marking the UK-India Year of Culture 2017. Another India catalogue is by Mark Elliott,


ISBN 9780947595241, £20


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