I didn’t want the previous post to leave you with the impression that all the paintings related to the Salhesh story are in black and white. Look at this delightful painting of Moti Ram, Salhesh’s brother, by Shanti Devi, the very accomplished Dalit painter. It doesn’t have the look of a Mithila painting. One might think it is a flat weave rug or an embroidered wall hanging from Rajahstan. But it is Mithila, as David Szanton in a soon to be published article points out. This was a style taken up by a number of Dalit painters in the late 70’s, including Shanti Devi. It is distinguished by a double line with black dots outlining figures and outlining the border itself. The central image is Moti Ram. He is facing us flanked by two rearing tigers in profile, almost as if this were a heraldic piece. The open area around the three figures is filled with flowers and birds, standard Salhesh motifs, all outlined with the same double line technique.
Here is a second painting by Shanti Devi on the same theme of Moti Ram hunting.
Again this has the look of a heavily embroidered fabric although Moti Ram’s almond eye tells us we are in the Mithila world. At first glance you just see a maze of color. The entire painting is filled with images, lines, dots. Color everywhere and it takes some work to distinguish individual shapes. But once your eye has made sense of this colorful confusion you immediately take pleasure in the imaginatively rendered individual figures. Particularly look at how Moti Ram is seated on his horse. You see the soles of his feet. Their position indicates he is sitting cross legged on some sort of saddle platform mounted on the horse. And look how that circular form of ( I’m guessing) black saddle and red cloth is repeated in the orange oval body of his horse with its three small black and yellow shapes there set in a semicircle. Circles, and circles within circles – the whole in a delightful swirling motion. Also note how the eyes of the three main figures catch our attention, the large round black dot in the white of the eye, and create this triangle of Moti Ram, the flower girl and Moti Ram’s horse. They, and the smaller ‘flower’ figure below the horse’s head, the only sentient beings in this dense, overgrown jungle of color.
This painting, by the way, is included in the Ethnic Arts Foundation traveling exhibition and, at least for me, is one of the most enjoyable paintings among many in that show.
The Book and the Movie. I want to draw your attention to these because they place the Salhesh paintings in a social context and add a personal, human dimension to the aesthetic appreciation of the work on and about Salhesh.
Let’s do the movie first. Aarakshan was released in India a couple of weeks ago to quite some controversy with two states even banning its showing. The word means ‘reservation’ and refers to the quota system that sets aside a percentage of seats in schools and universities for Dalit and other disadvantaged groups. The movie does not concern itself with Salhesh, of course, but the controversy it has caused adds a contemporary dimension to these paintings of a legendary hero. The Times of India took this opportunity to write an article about the harassment, bullying and intimidation of Dalit students at elite schools, harassment so severe that it has driven a number of them to commit suicide. ( It is a very informative article but the linked pages are so full of ads that one has to look carefully to find the link to the 2nd and 3d page.)
The book. This contempt for the Dalit classes, however, takes a strange turn in modern Indian politics. Badri Narayan in his Facinating Hindutva tells a truly facinating story about how the Hindu nationalist party in India is actively working to rewrite the story of Salhesh, and other Dalit heroes, in order to bring the Dalits into its political fold and garner their votes. The same Dalit, who is shunned and treated with contempt by upper class Hindus and disparaged in some of their classical texts, is now told that Salhesh, their cultural hero against this religiously sanctioned discrimination, is actually a Hindu, a protector of Hinduism and in fact a Hindu god, the incarnation of Lord Ram! Whether this rewrite of memory and history will take hold is still to be seen but Narayan’s book is well worth reading to see the dynamic between the tradition and the new social and political reality.
