Satyameva Jayate has India all abuzz. It’s a weekly TV talk show hosted by a Bollywood super star that examines social issues such as female foeticide and the dowry system- practices deeply ingrained in Indian society – with unusual frankness and much publicity.
The women artists of Mithila welcome Satyameva Jayate to their long struggle. They have been producing paintings on injustice to women for over 20 years, at least since Lalita Devipainted the militant goddess Durga with pots and pans in her hands instead of her battle weapons. “People look for Durga in the sky”, she said, “but don’t see the working Durgas all around them”.
Today, of the many artists in Madhubani who paint on women’s suffering, there is no one who does so as steadily and with such pictorial success as Rani Jha.
Here is her Abortion Clinic 22″x30″ 2005.
The anemic blood red color and the female doctor, more dangerous than a cobra Rani Jha says, set the tone of the painting. Our disquiet grows as we become aware of the various pieces in the story – the discarded fetuses, the sharpenend scissors, the syringes, the surgical glove, the 5,000 rupee note – the local cost for an abortion. The doctor and uniformed nurses work with clinical precision to fulfill society’s demands. In the foreground a woman sits hunched over, arm wrapped around her knees and weeps.
With The Husband Leaves 22″x30″ 2005 Rani Jha treats domestic relations.
The piece is stunning in color and visually arresting with its flattened perspective and top down view. It appears to be a scene of domestic perfection – the flower garden, fruit trees, the decorated facade, the neatly arranged cookware in the front yard. But then we notice that the woman is crying and the child is withdrawn, her back to the adults. The father is leaving. With a sack in one hand and a suitcase in the other, he walks through the flowering garden and is gone. The painting is based on a popular song about the exodus of Bihari men to other parts of India to look for work. Some never return.
While Rani Jha seems to mask her concerns with the beauty of her work as if she feels society is not yet ready to face these issues directly, Rupam Kumari, who was 17 years old at the time,had no qualms about being direct in her painting of bride burning for dowry. Drawn in a quick, rough style, she tells the story of a young girl’s short journey from wedding ceremony, to suffering daughter-in-law, to being doused with gasoline and set on fire. The husband is then free to remarry and gain another dowry.
Bride Burning or A Woman’s Fate 22″x30″ 2004
In an innovative, contemporary style Pinki Jha paints a more complicated picture of the dowry practice by showing the participants tied into a system they cannot escape. Although the dowry is technically illegal, it is still expected. Refusal to pay is certain to cause problems with the in-laws and even payment is no guarantee of peace. The upside down figure at the top is the bride praying to Krishna to free her from the torment of dowry much as he freed Draupadi in the Mahabharata epic. At the bottom of the painting the new couple, ritually tied to one another, circle the sacred fire seven times to assure that they will remain together through seven rebirths. Meanwhile, in the center of the painting the dowry chains continue to maintain their iron grip on all the participants.
The Dowry 22″x30″ 2004.
That same year Sangita Kumari effectively used primal colors to tell yet another tragic story of inter-caste relations. We read from left to right of a bright lower caste boy hired as a tutor for an upper caste girl. They are overheard expressing affection for each other and their story is spread at the communal well. The girl’s parents insist she marry in her own caste. The wedding takes place but later, in despair, she sets herself on fire. The young man is blamed and attacked by the family. He then also commits suicide. The painting is said to be based on actual events in a neighboring village.
Here a melancholy piece by Gunjeshwari Kumari on the forced abortion of girl babies. Set against a black background, the incised white images, like specters in a nightmare, tell the story of a marriage and the young mother’s reluctant abortion of her female fetus. In her sorrow, she sees a tree in blossom with its many pink flowers and imagines the flowers to be the spirits of all the aborted baby girls. It would be better to be a tree than a girl, she muses, because then she would have her baby girl.
Up to now, the paintings, whether subtle or direct in their criticism, are still respectful of societal norms. Today however, with a younger generation, we see a change. Below are two pieces by two different young women who take a new assertive, defiant stance.
Bibha Kumari Woman is Malleable 22″x30″ 2012.
Like potter’s clay, a woman will adapt to circumstances and do her duty as daughter, wife and mother. But if attacked, she will fiercely defend herself. The killing of her male attacker is modeled on the standard image of the great goddess Durga slaying the monster Mahisha with a lance at the request of the gods who were powerless before him. The painter’s use of this familiar imagery gives the woman’s action a religious connotation that emphasis both the validity of the act and the latent power residing in women if they were just to use it.
And finally this radical piece by twenty three year old Supriyah Jha What Should Happen, But Has Not Yet 22″x30″ 2011.
After seeing a student painting on wife burning at the Mithila Art Institute where she was studying, Supriyah became so angry she painted this piece as a response. The husband pours the gasoline and the mother-in-law strikes the match. With her wrists bound, the despondent bride awaits her fate. But now, submissive no longer, like heaven-sent angels in a medieval painting, a procession of women arrives to save the wife and put an end to these horrific acts. They are prepared to set the would be killers on fire! Whether the artist meant for her painting to be taken literally or not, what stands out here is that this is no longer an indictment of society but a clear call to action. Supriyah said she deliberately did not include any men in the group because this is an action that must come from the women themselves.
Both of these paintings go far beyond commentary or criticism of the deadly social injustices that women suffer much too often. The mood is angry and defiant – the paintings demand that things must change and they call upon women to be in the forefront of this change.
There has long been been a feminist awareness among the artists in and around Madhubai. Their paintings gave expression to ideas that the general public was not yet ready to accept. Now with Satyameva Jayate’s popularity, these often beautiful and somewhat prophetic Mithila paintings may finally receive the recognition they deserve.
