Bidar, India - At the crossroads of cultures

Bidar in north Karnataka (India) is rich in history and culture. However, it is not well known outside the region and gets relatively few tourists. Bidar is just 3 hours' drive away from Hyderabad. The most important tourist place of Bidar is its 15th century fort. However it has much more to offer. This post presents some of the main tourist attractions of Bidar.

Bidar has been selected on the World Monument Watch list  for 2014 for the preservation of its historical monuments. Hopefully, this fund will help the town in improving the tourist infrastructures and maintenance of its historical buildings.

Reaching Bidar

The nearest airport is in Hyderabad on the National Highway 9 (the Mumbai-Hyderabad highway). I had travelled on this road in 2009 and the quality of highway was good at that time. The journey had taken less than 3 hours. This year (2013), some stretches of the road were very bad and the journey took almost 4 hours.

Hyderabad and Bidar are also connected by trains (3.5 to 5 hours) and buses. You can also find buses for Bidar from Bangalore and other cities of Karnataka such as Hospet (near Hampi).

At the Crossroads of Culture - A Brief History of Bidar

Recorded history of Bidar begins with the Mauryan empire around 300 BC and was followed by different dynasties including the Chalukya (6 to 12 century AD) and Kalachuri empires (12 to 14th century). The capital of Chalukya and Kalachuri empires was in Kalyani (present day Basavakalyan) about 40 km from Bidar. Basveshwara or Basvanna, prime minister of Kalachuri kings in 12th century, was a key figure of the Hindu social reforms and is still a venerated figure in the region. Almost all the villages and towns of north Karnataka have the statue of Basvanna sitting on his horse at some prominent place. You can read more about Basavanna and his tradition of Hindu reformist poet-saints in my post.

Early 14th century saw the arrival of Turkish-Afghani rulers from Delhi, starting with Allauddin Khilji and Muhammed Bin Tughluq. An Afghani general of Tughluq, Bahman Shah initiated the Bahmani kingdom at Ahsanabad (present day Gulbarga, about 120 km from Bidar). In 15th century the Bahmani kings shifted their capital to Bidar and built the Bidar fort, at the site of a pre-existing fort.

In 1527 AD the Bhamani kingdom was taken over by Bareed Shahi, who started his own kingdom that ruled over Bidar and surrounding areas of Deccan for a century. Bidar then came under the Mughal empire, through the Nizam of Hyderabad. In 1948, the kingdom of Nizam of Hyderabad was merged in the Indian republic.

This brief overview of the history of the region explains the presence of different influences from different parts of the world in Bidar.

Bidar Fort

Bidar fort is a huge area surrounded by thick walls and a moat. Inside the citadel there are different buildings and ruins that can be visited. A narrow road enters the main entrance of the fort and leads to an open parking space. Before proceeding towards different buildings, take a walk back towards the entrance to see the external and internal walls and the overall structure of the fort. This is the best preserved part of the whole complex. You can climb up to the platform on the inner wall to admire the robust defensive structure of the building including the imposing Gumbaz Darwaza (Gate with the dome) with clear influence of Persian architecture.

The image below shows the Gagan Mahal (sky palace) with its garden and the fountain. This palace was used by the king for his harem. On the right side of the image you can also see the "Solah Khamb mosque", the mosque of 16 pillars, also called the "zenana mosque" (women's mosque) as it was close to the harem.

The low building in front of the Gagan Mahal is used as a museum. It hosts pieces of ceramics and armament from 15th century and some older Hindu sculptures. The museum is old fashioned with signs prohibiting photography or videos. Personally I feel that today such laws banning photography are not useful (if you really wish, you can "steal" pictures with your mobile) because today the world is all about sharing pictures about your visits through facebook and blogs, which help in creating awareness (and free publicity) about the places and bringing more visitors.

The image below shows a sculpture from the garden outside the fort museum.

In 2011, we had gone on car through the fort grounds to visit different buildings inside the fort. However now (2013) cars are not allowed to go inside and you need to walk, which is actually not bad since it allows you to spend more time to see the different buildings and ruins (like the one shown in the first image at the top of this post).

One of the most scenic places to visit inside the Bidar fort is the Boomgondeshwara lake surrounded by verdant fields. According to the person accompanying us, this lake is supposed to be very deep, though I had seen boys taking bath in it so probably parts of it are not so deep.

One of the most beautiful buildings inside the fort is the Rangeen Mahal (Palace of colours), that I had visited in 2011. Placed just after the main entrance, close to the parking, it is decorated with coloured tiles and beautifully sculptured stones, showing a mixture of different architectural styles. However, in 2013, I found that this building was closed to visitors. Hopefully the funds from the World Monument Watch will help in its restoration and it will be opened to public.

Papnash Linga temple

This is a small but old Shiva temple on the outskirts of Bidar, placed on a small hill inside a verdant valley close to a lake. Below the steps of the temple, covered with a small white chattri (dome) is a natural water spring. People believe that taking bath in the waters of this spring leads to pap nash (cleaning of the sins), giving this temple its name. Pilgrims come from far away to visit this temple.

The theme of sacred water-bodies, linked with some mythological story to explain their holiness and the ritual of taking bath in the sacred waters are recurring themes in most cities of India. If you want to understand more about this, I suggest you to read Diane Eck's wonderful book "India - a sacred geography". You can read Dalrymple's review of this book on The Guardian:

Hindu mythology consistently visualises India as a spiritually charged and "living landscape in which mountains, rivers, forests and villages are elaborately linked to the stories of the gods and heroes. The land bears traces of the gods and the footprints of the heroes. Every place has its story and, conversely, every story in the vast storehouse of myth and legend has its place … In this mental map, geography is overlaid with layer upon layer of story."... Just as the sacredness of the landscape percolated from pre-Vedic and tribal folk cults into classical "Great Tradition" Hinduism, so in the course of time the idea slowly trickled from Hinduism into Buddhism, Sikhism, Indian Islam and even Indian Christianity....

"The affirmation of the everywhere of the sacred – this is the peculiar genius of the theology given expression in the landscape of India." No one, she writes, "says it better than the poet saints of south India who praise the supreme lord who is right here where the rivers meet, right here where the herons wade, right here where the hillock rises, right here where the palms sway over the estuary, right here where the mango blossoms are fragrant. The places they praise are different. The taste of the lord is different in each. But each one is a 'beloved place', and each one enables the pilgrim soul to catch a glimpse of the vast reality of God."

Nanak Jhira Saheb Gurudwara

Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikh religion, came to Bidar in 15th century and his visit is linked to the discovery of a sweet water spring (Jhira). The sikh temple ("gurudwara" or the "door to the Guru") of Nanek Jhira Saheb stands at that place. The beautiful white building with a huge hostel for travellers and an amrit pond (nectar pond) with the spring water repeat the ideas of nature's sacredness as described above for the Papnash temple. However, compared to the temple, the Gurudwara is more imposing and better maintained.

A big picture in one of the Gurudwara buildings shows the journeys of Guru Nanek in India and in other countries. The biography of Nanek says that he had also visited "Turkey, Italy and Soviet Union". However, the map of his journeys does not show his visit to Turkey and Italy. On the other hand, now that Soviet Union is no more and places visited by Guru Nanak are independent countries (probably he had travelled through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakistan and Kyrgyzstan), this list needs to be updated.

Bekanpalli Santoshi Ma temple

The small and unassuming temple to goddess Santoshi Ma in Bekanapalli, on the outskirts of Bidar, behind the Bidar fort, is an important pilgrimage place. Followers gather here on every Tuesday and Friday.

Jharani Narsimha Cave Temple

Downhill from Bidar, on the outskirts of the city is the Jharni Narsimha Cave temple (Narsimha  or the Man-tiger - an incarnation of Vishnu).

A walk down the stairs lined by shops selling trinkets and things needed for the temple prayers, leads you to an unassuming temple on one side and an open air bathroom on the other. Inside the temple, there is a small statue and behind it, steps lead to a cave with water flowing at its base. You need to wade through waist deep water for about 90 metres to reach the second temple, where a water spring comes out and on the rocky wall you can see the back of the deity Narsimha.

I did not want to get my clothes wet and I am afraid of narrow and dark closed spaces, so I did not get into the water to visit the inner temple. For persons like me, if you are keen to wash your sins and purify your soul in the sacred spring water, you can take a bath in the open-air bathroom on the other side of the temple.

Mahmud Gawan Madrassa

The 15th century Gawan university building is an example of Persian style Bahmani architecture. It was built in 1472 by Khawaja Mahmud Gawan,  minister of the Bahmani kings. It was a residential university. The three storey building housed a library, a mosque, lecture halls, houses of the professors and rooms for the students. It had two three-tiered minaars (turrets), one of which can still be seen. Multi-coloured tiles on its outer surface with arabesques and Koranic writings gave it a distinctive appearance.

Barid Shahi Park and Tombs

Few kilometres outside Bidar, at Ashtur there are 12 Bahmani tombs, that are worth a visit. However, we did not have time and limited our visit to the Barid Shahi tombs in the city. Barid Shah had replaced the Bahmani rulers and his dynasty had ruled Bidar till 1619 AD. The tombs in the Barid Shahi park are of the family of king Kasim Barid II (1587-91 AD).

According to the local legends one of these tombs is supposed to be of Chand bibi (Chand Sultana), the regent of Bijapur (1580-90 AD) and a warrior, who had fought against the forces of Mughal emperor Akbar. However, others believe that her tomb is in Ahmednagar, in a building known as "Chand Bibi ka Mahal".

The park also has some colourful (few are tacky) looking statues showing scenes from the local village life, like the man with his cows in the image below.

Clock tower of Chowbara

The clock tower of Chowbara (literally  a four-sided platform) is a 22 metres high defensive watch tower in the old city, near Mahmud Gawan Madrassa and the Jama Masjid mosque. The top of the tower is supposed to give you a panoramic view of the surroundings. However when we had visited, its stairs were closed.

This part of the old city is full of small workshops where traditional artisans make the ancient art of "Bidri", that is designs made on a metal by in-laying with silver or other materials. You can visit these shops to see these artisans at work, working patiently with silver wires and with very basic instruments, sitting on the ground.

Other Places In The District

Apart from Bidar city, there are some other important places to visit in the district of Bidar. These include the Basavanna shrine in Basvankalyan, about which I have written a separate post. Other important places are Manikprabhu Devasthan in Humnabad and the Madonna shrine in Bhalki.

Manik Prabhu Devasthan in the periphery of Humnabad  (about 30 km from Bidar) is devoted to an ascetic guru Manik Prabhu (1817-1865). His spiritual legacy is continued by the persons of his family who act as the guru of this sect.

The gurus are is shown like kings with a crowns, in the pictures above the shrine (very different looking compared to the usual Hindu ascetics and gurus). The present guru has a rich palace like house close to the temple, showing that his followers contribute generously.

On the other hand, the shrine to Madonna in Bhalki town (about 40 km from Bidar) is a pilgrimage site for Catholic christians of the region. In the first week of November, every year hundreds of followers of Madonna, walk to this shrine accompanied by floats, music, prayers and processions.

Conclusions

To conclude this picture essay, the last image is of a Gray langur monkey (Semnopithecus entellus) from Bidar - a gray coloured monkey with a black face. It is also known as Hanuman langur. It is just one example of large variety of birds and animals in the area.

If you have been to Bidar and know of other interesting places to visit that I have missed in my visit, do let me know.

***

The reformist poet-saints of Karnataka

Ever since Gautam Buddha and Mahavir, India has a tradition of social and religious reformers. 15th and 16th centuries' India saw a surge in social reformers such as - Kabir, Surdas, Rahim, Meera Bai, Gyaneshwar, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Tulsi Das, Ravi Das - who had spread their messages through poems and songs. In Karnataka, the tradition of poet-social reformers goes back to 11th and 12th centuries. This post is about three of those poet-social reformers from Karnataka - Basavanna, Akka Mahadevi and Kanaka Dasa.

I was familiar with the works of poet-saints like Kabir, Surdas and Meera, but I had little knowledge about Basavanna. Recently I spent a couple of weeks in Bidar district in the north of Karnataka for a research project. It was an opportunity to visit some of the places linked with Basavanna. This photo-essay is about this visit.

Basavanna statues in the villages

For our research we were travelling in a small town, when I noticed the statue of a man sitting on a horse. I had seen similar statues in many other villages. The statue had a man with wearing a crown and his right hand was raised up in benediction.

"Whose statue is that?" I had asked.

That was Basaveshwara, Lord Basava. Others called him Basavanna, brother Basava.

"Why do people in villages put up his statue?" I wanted to know.

"He was a poet, he wrote vachchanas or prayers. He was also a social reformer, predicating the abolition of castes from Hinduism", someone had explained.

Later on, when I had searched for information on the internet, I had discovered that Basvanna was from 12th century, thus, had preceded Surdas, Kabir and Rahim by about 400 years. While poet saints of north India, including others like Gyaneshwar and Meera, are well known to common public, they are not objects of public worship like Basavanna. I have never seen statues of Kabir or Surdas in the villages in northern India, while Basavanna seemed to be more popular among the people in north Karnataka.

Basavanna was a minister in the south Kalachuri kingdom in the ancient city of Kalyani. Apart from writing vachchannas, he had also promoted radical social changes through the setting up of Anubhava Mantapa, a democratic community decision-making body that had representatives of different groups including women and persons from different castes. He was part of a social reforming tradition, and was succeeded by other vachchanna writers such as Akka Mahadevi. Their followers are called Lingayats.

Basavkalyan - The ancient city of Kalyani

The ancient city of Kalyani, the kingdom of the south Kalachuri kingdom in 11-12th century, is now known as Basavkalyan, and is also the central town of the Basavkalyan sub-district (taluk) in Bidar district.

Basavkalyan has a temple at the site of the ancient Anubhava Mantapa set up by Basavanna. The central part of the temple is shaped like a giant linga, though inside the Mantapa there are no statues or shrines of Shiva. Instead, the Mantapa is adorned with the pictures of the different social reformers of the Basavanna tradition, while the central part presents paintings showing episodes from life of Basavanna.

Close to the Anubhava Mantapa is a lake and an ancient Shiva temple. From the lake, on the horizon you can see a giant statue of Basavanna.

On the other side of the main road that connects Basvaklayan with the district headquarters in Bidar, a new shrine to Basvanna has come up recently that has his 108 feet high statue at the top of a small hill, visible from far away.

The work on this shrine is still on-going. Underneath the statue, a cave has been dug in the hill which has statues of different social reformers of Basvanna tradition.

Unfortunately, most statues of the new Basvanna shrine seem to be made with plaster of Paris, and some are already showing cracks, loss of colour and some damage. This means that this shrine will require lot of regular maintenance.

Akka Mahadevi

Akka Mahadevi (Sister Mahadevi) was one of the women social reformers in the Basvanna tradition in the 12th century. She had given up clothes and went around nude.

In 2000, film director Madhushree Dutta had made "Scribbles on Akka", where Seema Biswas had played the role of Akka Mahadevi.

The iconography of Akka Mahadevi is challenging for the traditionalists because of her nude female body. Thus, in the paintings, in the front views she is shown with long hair covering her breasts and lower part of her body. Similarly her back views hide her body with her long hair.

In spite of these challenges, her figures continue to adorn the village temples and continue to be an example of emancipation to women. Her poetry (vachchannas) are also challenging to traditionalists because she raises questions about her body and her soul.

In my opinion, the figures of persons like Akka Mahadevi and Basvanna are one of the best examples of the robust openness of Hinduism that questioned the sacred texts and presented alternate views. That these figures continue to be popular with huge number of followers is an important sign of continuing living traditions of Hinduism against those who wish to present a narrower and more monolithic view of the religion.

Kanaka Dasa

Bidar was full of giant posters showing persons of different political parties with the figure of Kanaka Dasa, a poet-saint from 16th century Karnataka. Kanaka Dasa can be considered as a contemporary of  poet saints of north India such as Meera Bai, Kabeer, Raheem and Sur Das. The figure of Kanaka Dasa reminded me of paintings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a 15th century poet-saint from Bengala.

In his poetry Kanaka Dasa talked of class differences and inequalities between the rich and the poor. He also talked of getting above the rituals for a true meaning of god.

I asked my companions about those posters and they explained that these were for celebrating the 526 anniversary of Kanaka Dasa and all the political parties want to be associated with his figure. I am not sure if today in north India any poet-saint enjoys that kind of common popular support, except may be for Sant Ravi Das, whose annual processions used to be an important social event in north India, especially for the dalit groups.

Conclusions

In the traditions of Gautama Buddha and Mahavira, Basvanna and his group of poet-saints from 12th century Karnataka were social reformers. I was surprised by the continuing relevance and popularity of these figures in the contemporary rural Karnataka.

Few centuries later, in 15th and 16th centuries, different parts of India had many other poet saints - Meera Bai, Gyaneshwar, Surdas, Kabeer, Raheem, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Ravi Das and Tulsi Das. Today, the poetry and the works of these later poet-saints from north and central India, continue to be alive and known, though none of them has received the iconic status reserved for Basvanna in northern Karnataka. In other parts of India, I have never come across statues of the other poet saints in the villages, like the Basvanna statues in north Karnataka villages.

I was also struck by the dominant statues of Ambedkar in many towns of north Karnataka. I don't know if this is linked in some way to the caste-defying traditions of Basvanna.

Though Ambedkar was not a poet-saint but for dalit and marginalised population groups of India, his messages of emancipation and dignity have achieved an iconic status and perhaps he can be considered a rightful heir to the Basvanna tradition of social reforms.

***

The abusers and the lynching mobs

When Tahehlka's Think Fest had started, we were getting ready to start our research on "Violence and Abuse" in north Karnataka. Reading the list of the speakers at the Think Fest, I had briefly fantasized about somehow flying to Goa to listen to some of them. About two weeks later, as the first news about Tarun Tejpal's sexual abuse of a journalist had come out, we had just started to discuss the preliminary research results. We were trying to make some sense out of the terrible situation that had come out of our research.

Our research was on "violence and abuse, including sexual abuse, towards persons with disabilities in the Bidar district of Karnataka". The research was conducted jointly with local associations of disabled persons and persons working in a community programme.

A group of disabled persons and community workers from Bidar district, both women and men, were trained to conduct the research. The aims of our research were two - (i) to gain an understanding about factors influencing violence and abuse towards disabled persons and (ii) to initiate a dialogue on how can violence and abuse be prevented.

During the initial training of the researchers, it had come out that this issue directly concerned both disabled persons and community workers. In the past 12 months, many of them had also been through personal experiences of emotional, physical and sexual violence.

Our daily feedback sessions during the research, when we discussed the information collected during the day, brought out sharing of peoples' stories and invariably had some of us crying.

In the next few weeks, I will be working at the analysis of the information collected during this research. However, the preliminary analysis of our data shows a terrible situation -

• More than 80% of the disabled persons interviewed had at least one experience of significant violence and abuse in the past 12 months. For most of them the experiences were more frequent, some times even daily.
• More than one third of the women interviewed had had at least one episode of sexual violence in the last 12 months.  Married women suffered more violence and abuse compared to unmarried women.
• Disabled men were also victims - more frequently of emotional and physical violence, but about 9% of them had had at least one episode of sexual violence in the last 12 months.

Our research shows that violence and abuse are common in our homes, in our families and in our communities. Few persons had the courage to talk about the abuse they had suffered. Often, those who were supposed to protect them, including police and authorities, were themselves complices and even perpetrators.

While reading about Tarun Tejpal and the journalist, everyday I am listening to the shrill debates, to the cries for jail and stringent punishment, to those who ask for castration and death. And I think of our research.

They shout - kill the rapist, hound anyone connected with them, make examples out of them, better if they are well known persons. The shrill noise means we are exempted from looking inside ourselves, to recognize and understand our societies. We do not need to look at what we do every day in our homes and our communities.

One Nirbhaya every now and then, is fine for breaking news, prime time debates and candle light vigils, so that abuse of hundreds of silent unknown Nirbhayas in our homes, families and communities can go on.

***

Tulsi Das: Retelling Ramayana

Ramayana (Story of Rama) is an ancient Indian tale about prince Rama. Centuries ago, the tale of Ramayana had spread from India to the neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. In the sixteenth century, Tulsi Das rewrote Ramayana as "Ram Charit Manas" in Avadhi language (close to Hindi language). Till that time, the most well known version of Ramayana in India was in Sanskrit, written by Valmiki. Thus Tulsi Das is credited with making the sacred text accessible to a large number of persons in India, because Awadhi is a language of common people while the knowledge of Sanskrit is limited to a few.

Tulsi Das (1554 - 1644), is credited with different literary works in Awadhi and Brajbhasha variations of Hindi. A contemporary of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), his influence on large parts of India has been enormous, but unlike Shakespeare, Tulsi's historical figure and his literary abilities have largely been ignored by academics in India and internationally. In recent years, Tulsi's figure has been "taken over" by some conservative Hindu groups, who give a selective interpretation of his works that supports specific political and socio-religious ideologies.

This article reviews “Manas ka Hans” a bio-fiction about Tulsi Das, written by Hindi author Amrit Lal Nagar in 1972.

INACCESSIBILITY OF RELIGIOUS TEXTS

A few years ago, while visiting Mongolia I had started thinking about the way different religions use languages across the world, to ensure that sacred texts are not understood by majority of their followers. We were in the Gandam Buddhist monastery in Ulaan Bataar and I had asked the person accompanying me, to tell me about the words written on a giant bell in the temple courtyard.

“I can’t tell you what it says, because the monks use Tibetan language for all their prayers!” he had told me. Buddhism had come to Mongolia through the Tibetan monks and even today in their temples their prayers continue to be in Tibetan.

I had heard something similar in Vietnam, where the temples often have their prayers in Chinese and not in Vietnamese.

In Catholic churches around the world, the mass was celebrated in Latin till some decades ago. It is relatively recently that the Bible has been translated to languages like Malayalam (some years ago I had met Fr Sebastian, who had done this translation).

In India, majority of Hindu prayers for specific religious rites, are in Sanskrit. Thus, Tulsi’s "Ram Charit Manas" played a fundamental role in making Ramayana accessible to common persons. Because of this, many persons consider him as a saint and call him Sant Tulsi Das or Acharya Tulsi Das.

HISTORICAL FIGURE OF TULSI DAS

If you look for information about Tulsi Das on internet, you will mostly find mythical stories - about his being an incarnation of Valmiki, his miracles and his meetings with ghosts and gods such as Hanuman and Ram.

He was born around the time Mughal emperor Hamayun had returned to India in 1554 AD. Tulsi saw the reigns of three more Mughal emperors during his life time - Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. He was a writer and a poet during those reigns. Yet analysis of his historical figure are few.

In recent years, some persons have worked on collecting historical information about Tulsi Das. For example, some years ago Anshu Tandon had presented a play called "Jo chaho Ujiyyar" focusing on Tulsi's struggles as a Hindu reformer. Excerpts of this play (in Hindi) are available on Youtube. Still much more can and should be done to understand the historical figure of Tulsi Das. (Below a scene from"Jo chaho ujjiyar" play)

BIOGRAPHIES OF GOSWAMI TULSI DAS

According to Amrit Lal Nagar in his introduction in the book “Manas ke Hans”, there are five biographies of Tulsi Das written by persons who were his followers - Raghubar Das, Beni Madhav Das, Krishna Dutt Mishra, Avinash Rai and Sant Tulsi saheb. However, Nagar explains that according to expert academics, none of these biographies is accurate,and they differ from each other about significant events in Tulsi Das' life.

For writing "Manas ke hans", Nagar looked at these biographies, as well as, looked at other oral traditions and works of academics on Tulsi Das. He also did a critical reading and analysis of Tulsi Das's own writings. He acknowledges that the information he found was not complete and thus his book is a bio-fiction rather than a biography.

Nagar mentions two additional important sources of information, " Among others, I want to make a loving mention of friend late Rudra Kashikey (Pen name of Shiv Prasad Mishra) who could not complete “Rambola bole”. Rudra ji was a walking encyclopedia of Kashi. Late Dr Rangey Raghav had also expressed his ideas about Tulsi Das through his work “Ratna ki baat".

TULSI DAS'S LIFE HISTORY FROM "MANAS KA HANS"

The book is written in flashbacks from the point of view of an old Tulsi Das telling his story to his followers.

Context: In 1540, Hamayun had to leave India after losing the war to the forces of Sher Shah Suri. Over the next 12 years, Sher Shah was followed on Delhi's throne by Islam Khan and Adil Khan. In 1554 when Tulsi Das was born in Vikrampur, Hamayun was engaged in the war with the Pathan forces of Adil Shah.

Childhood: Tulsi's mother Hulsi died while giving birth to him. His father Pandit Atma Ram prepared his son's horoscope and found that his son had an unfortunate mix of planets in his birth chart and asked the child to be given away.

Muniya, a shudra ("low caste") servant in the home of Atma Ram, took the baby across the river to her mother-in-law Parvati amma, a beggar. Soon after, Mughal forces destroyed Vikrampur and Pandit Atma Ram died childless after some years. Parvati amma named the child Rambola, and he grew up as a singing beggar, who walked the village streets asking for alms and singing prayer songs (bhajans) of poet saints like Surdas, Kabir and Mira. When Rambola was five years old, Parvati amma died and Rambola, tormented by the Brahmins of the area, ran away to Sukar, at the junction of Ghagra and Saryu rivers.

At Sukar, Rambola was taken as a disciple by Swami Narhari, who took him to Ayodhya for his religious initiation and thus Rambola became Tulsi Das.

Young Tulsi: Tulsi studied with Guru Shesh ji Maharaj in Varanasi and received the title of Shastri. During this period, he composed "Hanuman Chalisa" (Prayer to Hanuman) to overcome his fear towards the evil spirits (bhoot-pichash) and became famous for his singing of religious texts and compositions of prayers.

He journeyed as a rich young Brahmin man, to the place where once his birth-village Vikrampur had stood, and there he built his new family home and a temple. His fame as a singer and a poet brought back many other persons who had lived in that area in the past and knew his family. Thus a new village called Rajapur (named after Tulsi's friend Raja Bhagat) came around his house.

Marriage: Raja convinced Tulsi Das to visit Pathak maharaj, an old friend of his late father, pandit Atma Ram. Pathak had no sons, and wanted a learned husband for his daughter Ratnabala, so that he could leave his valuable book collection to his son in law. Pathak asked Tulsi to marry his daughter and finally Tulsidas agreed.

Tulsi fell in love with his wife and together they had a son Tarapati. For earning livelihood, Tulsi Das decided to go to work in Varanasi, while his wife went to stay at her father’s home. After a few months, Tulsi Das went to see his wife. During this visit, Ratna said to him that he did not have self-control and that he could not wait for sex.

Renouncing of marriage: Hurt by his wife’s words, Tulsi Das left home that night and went to Ayodhya. For different months he wandered around as a beggar and did occasional work - including work as an accountant in a math (Abbey of Hindu monks) for some time. In this period, he travelled in different cities of the region between Ayodhya, Varanasi and Chitrakoot. For a period he was responsible for a gaushala (cow home) in Varanasi, and thus earned the title of Goswami or Gosain.

Full of remorse, Ratna went to see her husband to ask him to come home, but Tulsi Das was firm that he had renounced his household duties, he was now a Brahmachari (celibate) and that he would not go back to married life. Their son Tarapati died due to small pox. Thus, Ratna lived alone in their house in Rajapur.

Writer Tulsi Das: Tulsi Das on the other hand, continued his writing of prayer-poems and retelling of "Ram Charit Manas", the story of Ramayana. Other Brahmins of Varanasi felt that making the sacred book accessible to general public was against the scriptures and thus started different campaigns against him. However, with popular support, Tulsi Das managed to thwart their machinations. Called “mahatma” (Great spirit) by general public for his literary works and for his emotional singing of prayers, Tulsi Das died in Varanasi at the age of ninety years.

In the book Tulsi’s faith in the figure of Ram constantly moves between the life and stories of Ram as the God incarnate and Ram as the symbol of a formless infinite God.

VIEWS OF TULSI DAS ABOUT CASTE SYSTEM

It must have been painful for the child Tulsi to understand that his father had preferred to believe in the stars and had abandoned him. Perhaps that was the reason, why as a grown up young man, he went back to his old village and built his home there, as a message to his father that he was not unlucky and that he had managed to accumulate enough wealth to build himself a house?

How much of those early experiences of rejection from his father and his life as a child-beggar  searching for an identity and security, influenced his later decisions to renounce married life and to fight with Brahmins?

I felt that his early years as a child growing up in a "low-caste" shudra home and his difficulties at different periods of life with the Brahmins in Ayodhya and Varanasi, should have given him an understanding and a feeling of solidarity about the oppression and marginalization faced by persons who are seen as inferior in the caste hierarchy.

At the same time, I had read other criticisms about Tulsi Das. For example, a line from Ram Charit Manas "Dhol Ganwar Shudra Pashu Nari, Sakal Tadan ke Adhikari" (Drums, the illiterate, lower caste, animals and women, all need to be beaten to make them work), is often quoted to explain Tulsi Das's views on castes and women.

Thus, while reading "Manas ke Hans" I was curious to read about Tulsi's socio-religious views. Since the book is a bio-fiction, we cannot say that these were really the views of Tulsi Das but these can be considered as the understanding of the writer Amrit Lal Nagar about Tulsi Das. In the introduction to the book, Nagar explains how he wrote it:

"Before writing this novel, I read with particolar care "Kavitavali" and "Vinaypatrika". Vinaypatrika contains different invaluable moments about inner conflicts of Tulsi, and thus I thought it appropriate to build the psychological framework of Tulsi on their basis. Even about the psychological background to his writing of "Ram Charit Manas", I found help in "Patrika". Some details about Tulsi's life can be found especially in Kavitavali and Hanumanvahak and occasionally in "Dohavali" and "Geetavali". From the innumerable oral-stories that are so popular about Gosain ji, I have included those that could fit in with this psychological framework..." 

In the book, Nagar's Tulsi answers these accusations about his being a casteist and being against the women by explaining, "Ram Charit Manas is a story and in the story, different characters have different beliefs. If you take the beliefs of any of those characters and say that this is Tulsi Das' belief, then it is wrong. You can also find some other character in the story who has completely opposite belief." Thus Nagar felt that it was manipulative to quote of a line from Ram Charit Manas as a justification for characterizing the personal views of Tulsi Das.

The book also has an episode where Tulsi helps a hungry chamar (one of the "untouchable" castes) man who is accused of killing a Brahmin and gives him food, going against the Brahmins of the city. In this episode, Tulsi justifies the killing of the Brahmin because "he was cruel and did not behave as a Brahmin." (p. 319-20)

The book also has different references to poet-saints of his time - there is a small episode (p. 179) about young Tulsi's meeting with eighty-five year old Surdas in Mathura and another episode about his meeting with Rahim (p. 364). The book mentions some disagreements between Tulsi and the followers of Kabir, though Tulsi expresses respect for Kabir's ideas (p. 325). As these poet saints were reformists and against the caste oppression, we can see that Nagar's Tulsi Das was more humane and progressive figure.

TULSI DAS, MUSLIMS AND BABRI MOSQUE

Babur had come to India in 1526 and he had died in 1530. Thus building of Babri mosque at the site of Ram Janamabhumi (birth place) had occurred a couple of decades before Tulsi Das' birth. He had lived through the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Though the book was written in 1972, I was also curious to know about how Nagar has depicted Tulsi Das' relations with Muslims and if he had written about the Babri mosque controversy, that had inflamed opinions in India in 1992 when the mosque was demolished by some Hindu groups.

In the book Nagar depicts the UP villages as places where Hindu and Muslim communities have been living together in close relationships. Many episodes of the book located in Tulsi's native village Rajapur, have different Muslim characters, shown as Tulsi Das's close friends and neighbors. For example, in the book, a Muslim neighbor, Bakridi baba, born a couple of days before Tulsi, tells the story of Tulsi's birth and his banishment to Parvati Amma's village. They also come to him for his advice about stars and future foretelling.

There are different episodes in the book where Nagar mentions Babri mosque. Here are some examples:

After a pause Medha Bhagat said, "Recently I was in Ayodhaya. There, where after destroying the holy temple of the birthplace, king Babar has built a holy mosque. Nearby, on a hillock I met a young man [Tulsi Das], lost in Rama's love... from morning till sundown, sitting behind a tree, he kept on gazing at the mosque. Sometimes he laughed, sometimes cried, and sometimes like a yogi he became lost in meditation .." (p. 135)

[A disciple asked to Tulsi] "After leaving the abbey, where did you go?" "I stayed in Ayodhaya, where else could I go? I begged for food and in the night, I slept outside the mosque together with other fakirs .." (p. 283)

One day he went to the Babri mosque that was built at the site of Rama's birth place. A Sufi saint was reading the verses of Mohammed Jayasi to the soldiers and the public. Written in dohe and chaupai (two and four lines verses), that divine love poem was so beautiful that even Tulsi lost himself in its words. (p. 294)

The date of Ramanavami (Rama's birth date) was close. A lot of movement had started in Ayodhaya because of it. Ever since, they had destroyed the birthplace temple and built the mosque in its place, since then followers of Rama could not enter the place to pray to their lord. Everywhere in India, the holy day of Ramanavami brings joy but in Ayodhaya, this day comes on the sharp edge of a sword... the area of Rama birthplace is made wet with the blood of martyrs every year... thus the ruler prohibit any public telling of the Rama's story.. the followers celebrate the day hidden in their homes .. Tulsi felt these things in his heart. In Rama's birthplace, Rama's story cannot be told was an unacceptable injustice for Tulsi. .. Everyday around mid-day he always went towards the Babri mosque. Behind the mosque, a short distance away, there was an old hillock. Tulsi used to sit on that hillock in such a way so that he could see the mosque built on the birthplace. For long time he sat there. He was friends with Muslim fakirs who sat in front of the mosque. (p. 295)

[When Tulsi was not allowed to sit behind the mosque:] "Lord Rama, you are my witness that I have never thought anything bad about this mosque. A place of worship remains worthy of worship even in this form. Even now, it is a place where people pray in front of the infinite formless supreme consciousness. When I had come away from Ramanujiya abbey, I used to come to sleep here. I was friends with these same persons, but then I was also seen as a fakir but now I am seen as a Hindu. Rama, please come back to stop this injustice." (p. 296)

Around mid-day, the drummers announced in different parts of Ayodhaya .. the government of emperor Akbar had sent orders from Delhi that in the courtyard inside the Babri mosque, people can make a platform for the worship of Rama. .. Tulsi was very happy. (p. 298)

[While Tulsi was writing Ram Charit Manas] Ever since the platform for worshiping Rama was built in the mosque and people could visit it, the people of Ayodhaya were happier. The soldiers of the mosque behaved less harshly. The anger between Hindus and Muslims had reduced. Even though some conservative Muslims were against this decision of Akbar, but they did not have any power. Tulsidas, every day, before starting writing, used to visit the Rama's statue on the platform inside the mosque. (p. 301)

Thus, Tulsi's views about Babri mosque in Nagar's book ask for the possibility of praying to Ram but they are also about living in harmony and friendship with Muslims and respecting the mosque. Nagar's Tulsi is happy to worship Rama in the courtyard of the mosque and looks at it as a place of the worship to the "infinite formless God".

CONCLUSIONS

Tulsidas was a historical figure whose name has been familiar, not just to a lot of Hindus, but to most Indians. He had played an important role in simplifying the story of Rama and making it understandable to the common public.

He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare. Like the influence of Shakespeare on the English literature, Tulsi Das' literary works have had an enormous influence in India. However, while Shakespeare's works have been the subjects of an enormous amount of studies and analysis, Tulsi Das did not receive much academic attention. In the recent decades, there has been some attention towards Tulsi Das' work but often it is in mythological terms rather than historical. It also tends to make a manipulative use of his works to justify specific political and religious ideologies that support conservative Hindu worldviews.

However, the biography of Tulsi Das written by Amrit Lal Nagar, presents him as a more humane and progressive thinking, creative and mystic person, who was shaped by his early life experiences of marginalization and exclusion. In the book he comes through as a person of his times. At the same time, he is someone, who was also linked to some of the key progressive figures of those times.

Note: I have translated from Hindi the different passages from the Book quoted in this article. I have tried to remain faithful to the sense of the phrases rather than doing literal translation.

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Scam with a touch of humour

We are all familiar with the email based scams where they write to you saying that you have won some lottery or the rich widow is dying and has decided to leave you her inheritence. I sometimes stop to admire these emails - the sense of irony and humour they sometimes contain is absolutely marvellous. I Especially remember some of the emails originating in Nigeria!

Here is an example that I found in my mailbox today:

"Attn: Beneficiary,

I am John Dagogo Chairman Debt recovery and settlement mainly on lotto, inheritance and contract payments. The recent meeting of world economic leaders in Davos Switzerland agreed with African leaders present that there is need to pay compensation to the above category of victims in other to qualify African countries for debt forgiveness from the G20 and G8 countries,

The compensation is to be made by the Federal Government of Nigeria and some other bodies like the Nigeria National Petroleum Co-operation (NNPC), Dagote Group of Companies (DGC), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Ministry of Finance, due to the scam the citizens of Nigeria and other West African countries has done on the internet.

The selection of the people to be compensated was made randomly via internet, so if you receive this mail that means you have been selected among the lucky ones to receive the sum of FIVE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS (US5,000,000.00).

Note that all necessary documentation to make the withdrawal of the fund legal and free from any breach of the law will be your responsibility. Kindly contact me with the following information for the claim of your fund.
<removed>

I will advise you make sure your fund gets to you through the normal process to avoid any problem in future, so please you have to abide to all information as directed.

Thanks

John Dagogo"

I love the references in this scam-email to Davos, G8, G20 and promises of debt forgiveness. And I really love the reference to compensation for the scams carried out by Nigerian citizens - it is a masterpiece! Is this email an example of a sense of self-deprecating humour or is a scammer from another country pulling the leg of his Nigerian brother/sister?

I really don't know who would believe such a letter but perhaps some of us do and immagining millions in our bank account, fall in this honey-trap. I do not believe in such messages and my recommendation is that when you receive such messages, cancel them straightaway and never write back.

However, at the same time I can smile and express my appreciation at the scammer's sense of humour!

***

Human anatomy and royal coat-of-arms

Archi-gymnasium or the old university is one of the key buildings in the city-centre of Bologna in northern part of Italy. Though unassuming from the outside, it is also one of the most beautiful buildings of the city. It includes the old anatomy hall which had played an important role in modern understanding of the human body and the evolution of medicine.

Many persons feel a macabre fascination for scenes of post-mortems in TV serials about crimes, police and medical investigations. In fact such TV serials are very popular. The anatomy hall of Archi-gymnasium can be considered as a medieval equivalent of such TV shows because, at that time, cutting up of the human bodies was not just about scientific knowledge, it was also about public entertainment.

Join me in this "history-arts-science tour" to discover this wonderful place.

ARCHI-GYMNASIUM OF BOLOGNA

It is full of coats-of-arms of the royal and noble families of Europe that cover its walls and roofs, creating a wonderful baroque effect. Thus, you can also call it "Coat-of-arms museum" of Bologna.

The word "gymnasium" originated in Greece, where athletes used to practise naked (gymnos). With passage of time, athletics, education and medicine were seen as part of one group of activities for developing the mind and the bodies of persons. Thus, they started to use the word gymnasium for education institutions also.

THE BUILDING ARCHITECTURE

After a short corridor, the entrance leads to a square-shaped courtyard surrounded by porticoes. The building extends mainly in a horizontal direction, parallel to the street outside. However parts of the building on the ground floor are not open to public.

A pair of stairs are located on the two sides of the building leading to the upper floor. Both the stairs are like a kaleidoscope, completely covered with bright colours of coat-of-arms. (Below, a view of the roof of the left-side stairs)

Across the entrance, on the first floor is the anatomy hall, while two corridors in the front lead to smaller rooms and some big halls. Thus, it has a simple layout that gets its charm from the symmetry of the square courtyard and the gentle porticoes, adorned with colourful coat-of-arms.

HISTORY

Bologna university started as a law school in 1088 AD, and was considered as the oldest university in Europe. The first university statute was approved in 1317. At that time, university education was structured along two main disciplines - Law (including civil law and canonical law) and artistic studies (including philosophy, medicine, mathematics, physical and natural sciences).

In 1562, when Bologna was part of the Pope's empire, it was decided to build the Archi-gymnasium to bring together all the schools scattered in different parts of the old city. It was called "the new school building".

The law faculty was considered more prestigious and thus they occupied the rooms along the main corridor, while artistic disciplines were considered less prestigious and they were given the rooms on the opposite side, on the back of the building. There were rivalries between the two groups of students and thus, to avoid mixing with each other they were supposed to use seaparate stairs.

In this period, visiting and studying in Italy and more specifically in a university like Bologna or Padua was considered essential for the education of sons of all royal and noble families of Europe. Universities like Bologna were responsible for the scientific revolution of Europe that started in renaissance. For example, the archi-gymnasium was linked to the studies of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), that led to the understanding that electric current causes muscle contraction. It was also linked to Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), a naturalist, who is called the father of geology. (Below, a night view of the left-side portico of archi-gymnasium facing the street entrance on the ground floor)

In 1838, Archi-gymnasium became the municipal library of Bologna, while university schools were shifted to other buildings.

Some of the important events held in this building include the first execution of the music concert "Stabat Matar" of Gioachino Rossini in 1842 - that hall is today known as the "Stabat Mater hall". In 1888, the 800th anniversary of Bologna university was also celebrated in this building. (Below the Stabat Mater hall)

The archi-gymnasium building was damaged when Bologna was "liberated" from the Pope's reign by the army of of Napoleon. However, more serious damages occurred in 1944, during the allied bombings, during when some parts of the building were destroyed, and were rebuilt after the war. You can make out these rebuilt parts of the building as they do not have the frescoes.

COAT OF ARMS

The archi-gymnasium building has the world's largest collection of coat-of-arms from different countries - it has about 7000 of them. These coat-of-arms represent kings, barons, dukes, lords and other nobles of Europe and some other countries. Each coat-of-arm can be the object of a research to understand the meanings of its symbols, why they chose a particular motto to represent them and what happened to that family.

For example, I was curious to see if an Indian prince had ever come to Bologna university for studies and if his coat-of-arms is represented here. I did find a couple of coat-of-arms that could be Indian. (For example, the coat-of-arms on the left side in the image below, has the title "Indorum" (Indian) written on it and the logo has an upright tiger in two colours, while the name of the student is Caesar Castaldius Mutinensis - the name is not Indian, though it could have been from Goa, or may be he had some links with India?)

I have seen some research papers on individual coat-of-arms displayed in this building but I have not seen any comprehensive studies on the whole collection. To research the seven thousand coat-of-arms would require a huge effort.

Some of the coat-of-arms are very curious like the ones in the image below. On the right side, the coat-of-arms represents someone from Gallorum (Wales) and its motto is "Non semper imbris" (Not always it rains) and the logo shows a timid sun peeping through the clouds - I wondered why would a royal family choose such a coat-of-arms? The coat-of-arms in the centre is from Portugal and its motto is "Nec tibi nec michi" (Neither you nor I), and it shows a man plucking a fruit from a tree, while a dog is ready to jump on him - once again, I asked myself, why would a royal house choose such a coat-of-arms?

If you are curious about such things, you can spend days or weeks in the archi-gymnasium peering at the coat-of-arms and trying to guess their histories.

ANATOMY HALL

The anatomy hall is the jewel-in-the-crown of the archi-gymnasium - it is exquisite with wood panels and carvings.

Teaching of medicine was introduced in Bologna university in the thirteenth century. Till then the texts of Hippocrates and Galen written in pre-christian era were used to understand anatomy, though they were based on the study of animals. Dissections of human bodies started in Italy around thirteenth century. Bodies of hanged criminals were usually used for dissections. The first public human dissection in Bologna was carried out by Mondino de' Liuzzi in 1315, who later wrote a well known manual on this subject.

At that time, this anatomy hall was not there, only some temporary structures were built and then removed. The dissection of human bodies was done in public - it was like a fair or an entertainment event, in which public came to watch. It was also organised as a part of the carnival festivities. 

Andreas van Weasel (1514-1564), a Flemish anatomist, is considered the father of modern human anatomy. He had also taught in Bologna university for some time. Around that period, anatomy classes were organised in 16 lessons, during which professors read from texts, while surgeons used to make incisions and show those parts of the body to the public and to the medical students to illustrate the text.

However, the church that ruled Bologna in that period was not always happy about human dissections. For example, Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1546-99), a professor of anatomy and surgery at the Bologna University, was famous for his plastic surgery techniques. His book "De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem" (The surgery of defects by implantation), printed in 1597, was the first European scientific treatise on plastic surgery. The Church regarded plastic surgery as an interference in the divine affairs and thus Tagliacozzi was excommunicated.

The decision to set up the first anatomy hall in the Archi-gymnasium was made in 1595. That first anatomy hall  was later demolished. Since large number of persons were coming to see the dissections of human bodies, in 1631, it was decided to make a second and a bigger anatomy hall.This is the anatomy hall that you can still visit in the Archi-gymnasium. It is a rectangular room, with a dissection table in the centre and the teacher's podium on the right side. This hall was used till 1803, when the anatomy department was transferred to Palazzo Poggi on Via Zamboni.

STATUES IN THE ANATOMY HALL

The anatomy hall is lined with fir-wood panels and has different statues on the side-walls and the roof. The side-wall statues are at two levels and include famous doctors from the antiquity such as Hippocrates and Galen, as well as famous doctors from Bologna university including Mondino de Liuzzi, Marcello Malpighi and Gaspare Tagliacozzi. (Hippocrates statue in the image below)

The roof has the statues of the Greek god of medicine Apollo in the centre, surrounded by 14 constellations including Gemini, Virgin, Sagittarius, Aquarius, Leo, Boote and Andromeda, as shown in the two images below. This indicates that in those early centuries of scientific understanding, most people still believed in astrology and the influence of stars.

Finally on the speaker's podium on the right side of the hall, there are two statues of the "Spellati" (Without skin) showing the main groups of muscles of the human body. These were made by Ercole Lelli in 1734, a sculptor famous for his wax-statues used for studying anatomy. You can admire many more works of Ercole Lelli at the science museum of Bologna in Palazzo Poggi on Via Zamboni.

STUDIES OF HUMAN ANATOMY IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD

This part of the post is not about Archi-gymnasium, but rather it touches on another aspect of human history, that is to put into wider historical perspective the role of the anatomy hall in Bologna.

Though we often think that globalisation and exchange of information and skills between countries is something recent, the history tells us of antique links between far-away cultures and countries. Thus, I think that science and human knowledge do not move and develop in isolation, but rather different parts of humanity contribute to this process.

The Charaka-Sanhita (The treatise by Charaka) and the Sushruta-Sanhita (The treatise by Sishruta) in India are among the oldest known medical treatises. They are part of Ayurveda (the Indian science of medicine), going back to pre-christian era. Charaka-Sanhita deals with medicine and has only a few passages on surgery. The Sushruta-Sanhita deals with surgical knowledge and describes seven branches of surgery - Excision, Scarification, Puncturing, Exploration, Extraction, Evacuation, and Suturing. It also touches on nose-surgery (plastic surgery), eye-surgery (ejection of cataracts) and the study of anatomy in the dead bodies.

An Egyptian papyrus from 1600 BC has shown that the ancient Egyptians also knew about anatomy of human organs like heart, liver, spleen, kidney and hypothalamus. The ancient Egyptian techniques of mummification required taking out of the internal organs and placing them in separate jars.

Bows and arrows first and rifles and guns later, allowed people to wage wars on the others from a distance, but for the most parts of the human history, fights were by direct combat including through the use of swords and other sharp-edged weapons. The Mayan practice of sacrifice included taking out of the victim's heart. These practices must have provided additional opportunities to the ancient vaidyas, shamans and barber-surgeons for learning about human anatomy.

CONCLUSIONS

I think that a part of my fascination for the Archi-gymnasium depends upon my background of being a doctor. When you join a medical college, usually anatomy is the among the first subjects that you study and the anatomy dissection hall is the first contact between the medical students and the human bodies.

I still remember my first look at the body of a woman in the anatomy hall of the medical college in India and the sensation of giddiness as our teacher had shown us how to make the first skin incision. The pungent smell of formalin-soaked human bodies and our nervous laughs as we had learned to open them for learning, are still vividly etched in my memories.

Yet, I think that my love for this beautiful building goes beyond the affinity for the anatomy hall. For the culture and the art enthusiasts also, the Archi-gymnasium offers so many treasures. These developments in sciences also had an impact on arts such as paintings and sculptures - knowledge of anatomy, geoglogy, physics of the light, all of them transformed the way artists painted and sculpted. For example, in another post about paintings in San Giacomo church of Bologna, I have written about the influence on artists of the works of Aldrovandi in  the areas of natural history and geology.

So if you are visiting Bologna, keep some time for a slow and lingering visit to the Archi-gymnasium and you may also like to take a look at my other posts about Bologna!

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Kalakaar - Visual artists in contemporary India

Avijit Mukul Kishore's documentary film in two volumes, "To let the world in", provides an intimate and rare glimpse of some of the better known visual artists from contemporary India.

The world of visual artists is a hidden world and a largely ignored world, except by the people who deal with art. The only exceptions are when suddenly some artist gets in the limelight because of some scandal, like M. F. Hussein. In the recent years, economic magazines and investment bankers have also started talking about some Indian artists whose works command big money. However, both these kinds of spotlights on the artists, have little to do with them as artists and with their art.

This article is about the first volume of the documentary film "To let the world in". The film presents brief interviews with some important visual artists of contemporary India, and shows some of their works. The interviews deal with issues like early influences, finding one's own specific path of artistic expression, and interactions between artists. The visual arts touched in the film vary from paintings, sculptures, installations, photography and performances. A key area of discussion on which many of the women artists talk about is gender and art.

The film starts with artists born in the 1930s and proceeds towards younger persons.

UNDERSTANDING ART

Whatever be the area of a creative expression - writing  or painting or acting - people are always interested in understanding what made the artist reach that specific artistic expression. "What did you and why did you want to express that?", they ask.

Arpita, one of the artists in the film illustrates this when she says, "If I have made a fish, you should also see a fish. But people ask you 'what is it?' so you have to write down everything that this is a fish, this a flower ..."

I think that there is some confusion among artists and among general public in differentiating between the "artistic expression" from "understanding art". At one level, art is about experiencing it, feeling it emotionally and instinctively rather than trying to understand it logically. At another level, somehow people are also interested in whys and hows of the art.

I feel that not all persons who are good at "artistic expression" are equally good at "explaining and understanding their art", and that these are two specific and separate skills. Good artists may be skilled at expressing their feelings and emotions in their art-form, but they may not be good at explaining the subconscious processes and ideas that prompted that artistic expression.

To understand this difference, I like to use the example of persons with obsessive dreams. A person can be a wonderful dreamer and may have strong obsessions about some dreams, but that person can not always understand the significance of those dreams and may need the help of a psychologist or a psychiatrist to understand that. However, most of the time we are happy with our dreams as they are, we do not go to psychologists or psychiatrists to understand them.

Thus, in my opinion, when people say that art-experts and art-critics are "frustrated artists" (or even book critics and film critics), I think that they are confusing between two different skills.

Coming back to the film, seeing different artists tell about their creative processes and their lives, was a wonderful opportunity to look at their art through their eyes. It adds new dimensions to their work. For example, I felt moved by the explanation of Sudhir Patwardhan about the changing relationships between the city and the nature, and his conclusions about painting tiny bits of the city seen through windows.

Just seeing the artists as persons can also add to our understanding about their work, though I am not sure if there are ways to define that understanding as "correct" or "wrong" - it becomes your specific interpretation of their work. For example, after listening to Arpita, the images of nude women in the foreground and military men in the background in her paintings, were no longer generic expressions of violence against women during wars but for me they became a depiction of the situation in the north-east of India.

FINDING ONE'S OWN SPECIFIC PATH

Artists explaining how they slowly discovered their own specific way of being an artist was an area that fascinated me in the film. Thus, Arpita's process of making, cancelling and re-making, Nalini's need for an immersive experience of her art, and Nilima's decision to put her children in her paintings, were interesting in understanding their works and also the kind of forces that gave directions to their artistic expressions.

The artists come out of their art schools with knowledge about techniques, norms and the examples of famous masters. Then, they need to find their own distinctive artistic voices that can move away from the recommended techniques and norms, and become something new. In this process, the artists in the film illustrate the importance of inter-action, dialogue and conflict with their peers. They talk about coming together to hold exhibitions or living together in the same area where they can interact regularly.

The name of late Bhupen Khakhar came up frequently in these discussions in the film, as one of the important artistic influences on different artists in contemporary India.The film pays a special homage to him by showing some of his works - thus, he is the only non-living artist featured in the film.

 AGAINST THE CONVENTIONS

Artists are expected to follow their own social rules and flout the conventions. Different artists in the film express it by depicting subjects that are usually ignored in mainstream medias - violence, exploitation, nude bodies, vaginas and even homo-erotic imagery.

I know that "flouting conventions" is a kind of stereotype, yet it was comforting to see that in spite of the rise of the conservatives of different religions in public spaces in India, Indian contemporary artists are willing to raise questions about those issues that are usually hidden behind the walls of morality and hypocrisy.

THE DICHOTOMIES

There are different dichotomies of meanings given to words and concepts such as - visual versus spoken cultures and popular versus elitist art, that were seen as static but have revealed to be more dynamic. The film touches on some of them and raises questions about them.

What is the role of visual arts today? With social media, TV and films, and digital art, are visual arts going to change and disappear? If photography is a visual art form, how is it affected when millions of persons start taking billions of photographs with their cell phones and putting their personal exhibitions up on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr? Is it democratisation of art or the loss of this art-form because it is now a common skill and not a special skill?

In the film Pushpamala talks about the changing meanings of elitist art meaning some higher quality of art form that is accessible to a few, while popular art is that is practiced by simple persons in their communities and homes and should be accessible more easily to the people. She underlines the contradiction by pointing out that today the "elitist art" of Rabindranath Tagore is far better known and accessible to public compared to the more "popular" art of Kalighat paintings.

Before human beings learned to speak, read and write, we were visual beings and we expressed ourselves mainly through visual mediums. For long part of our history, reading and writing were elitist skills reserved for a few and thus, we continued to be mainly oral and visual societies. Then over the past centuries, gradually reading and writing became more accessible to people and slowly we had started to become words-based societies. Finally, now slowly the pendulum has started to move in a different direction, where people can click pictures with their mobile phones and share them or share short-hand messages that use visual icons. So in future will we go back to being visual societies? What would that mean for the visual arts?

I am still wondering about such questions stimulated by watching the film.

ART AND MARKETING

How do we compare and who compares artistic merits, deciding who is a better artist? The film is about certain artists who are considered important in contemporary India. How was their importance decided?

I can imagine that defining someone as "good" or "great" artist is a result of interplay between the skills of the art-making along with a range of other factors including luck, mentorship, influence and the ability to market oneself. Were it not so, we would not have so frequently persons who become famous many years or decades after their death, while during their life-times no one recognizes their artistic worth.

I was wondering about it while watching Pushpmala in the film as she prepared herself for a performance. How is the performance of a visual "artist" different from that of a person like Lady Gaga or Poonam Pandey, who are able marketers of their skills? Is the difference only in their aesthetics, attitudes and motivations?

And now with the increase in the aggressive marketing of some persons on the social media and their ability to create news, will the criteria for defining good artists change in the future? I can imagine that already some artists with better social marketing skills get more attention from media and their art sells for more - will they be the important artists of our future?

ABOUT THE FILM

I loved watching the first volume of "To let the world in" for stimulating all these different ideas in my mind. I am planning to watch it again soon. At one and a half hours, it is almost as long as a feature film, yet it rushed past so quickly. There were so many moments in the film, especially while it showed the artists' works, that I wished that I could freeze it and look more carefully at those art works.

In the film, often the screen goes dark, as if the camera-eye is blinking.I felt that as a metaphor of how we can have the world in front of us and yet not see it. The human mind is a master illusionist. Each of our two eyes sees a different aspect of the world, but our mind learns to bring those two views together and we forget that our two eyes can see two different worlds. Our eyes also keep on blinking, adding intervals of darkness in front of our eyes, but our mind makes sure that we do not notice that darkness. The film reminds you about those intervals of darkness.

Film is visually very rich, full of colourful images of different art styles. The interviews with the artists are very unhurried and gentle, leaving them to choose the kind of things they wish to talk about, making it richer also at the level of emotions.

CONCLUSIONS

As a child, I was very much aware of contemporary Indian artists of 1960s including J. Swaminathan, Hebbar, B. Prabha, Jatin Das, Ram Kumar, M. F. Hussein ... I had even met some of them. However, over the past 3-4 decades, I had lost contact with the world of Indian artists. Thus, the artists featured in the film are my reintroduction to that world. Except for Anita Dube, who had been part of an exhibition in Bologna in 2012, I was not even aware of their names.

Hearing different persons in the film talk about Bhupen Khakhar and thinking that I had no idea who he was, made me feel bad, and was a reminder of what I had lost while I had been away from India. Searching for and admiring his works on internet, made me feel better.

I am looking forward to watching the second volume of the film, as well as go back to the first volume, for a more in depth viewing.

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Delhi or Mumbai, the rape capital?

Since December 2012, after the infamous and cruel rape of Nirbhaya in the moving bus in Delhi, reports of other rapes in the Indian capital and other metros continue to appear in the news, including the recent news about the rape of a photo-journalist in Mumbai. Recently, I was reading a paper from a social psychology research about the messages used for changing public behaviour, that raised some questions and doubts in my mind about the common communications in the Indian media about rape. This article explains the research and those doubts.

Social psychology

Social psychology is an area of study that looks at how persons relate to and influence each other. At present, I am involved in an online course on social psychology from Coursera. These online courses are run by prestigious American and a few British universities. They are free and open to everyone. If you have never looked at the Coursera website, and you are interested in continuing your learning through online courses, my recommendation is that you should take a look at it!

Cialdini's research

The research that struck me and prompted this article was done by Prof. R. B. Cialdini from Arizona university and was published in 2003 ("Crafting normative messages to protect the environment" in journal of American Psychological society). This article is one of the learning materials in the course on social psychology.

In this research Cialdini looked at undesirable behaviours and the effectiveness of different public messages that were used in USA to limit those behaviours. Cialdini's paper is not about rapes - it is about damage to the environment. He suggests that people's behaviour can be influenced by 2 kinds of norms in our communications -

(1) Descriptive norms: these norms are about behaviours that are popular and are carried out by a large number of persons. If a behaviour is seen as common, other people feel like copying it. Thus, we should use these norms in our messages when we wish people to do something.

(2) Injunctive norms: these norms tell us which behaviour is forbidden or wrong in our society and should not be done. These norms should be used in messages when we wish people to stop doing something.

Cialdini's research showed that often messages given to public for stopping some bad behaviour used both kinds of norms in an inappropriate way so that they become contradictory, and thus may not be effective. Cialdini's research showed that such contradictory messages can be counter-productive - that is, they promote the behaviour, they wish to stop.

Let me explain myself a little better.

When we talk about an issue, usually we feel that it is important to underline the gravity and the severity of the problem, because we think that if people understand how bad it is they will try to stop it. However, it may not work in that way.

Thus, when we prepare messages, we give information that this problem is very widespread. This may give the unconscious message to public that the undesirable behaviour is very common, and that it is carried out by a large number of persons in the society. Some people listening to or watching that message start thinking that "it is something common and popular, so we can also do it". Due to this reason, such messages may have the opposite effect.

Cialdini gives different examples of his studies to support these ideas. For example, in a protected natural park containing important fossils, visiters were taking away small pieces of fossils and it was a big problem. The authorities used a message informing the visiters that every year 40 tonnes of fossils are stolen from the park and asking the visiters not to steal the fossils. However, this message-campaign did not have any effect, rather the stealing increased after this campaign. Thus, Cialdini explained that this message told people that taking away fossils was common and popular, and people felt that if they also take away a small piece it will not make much difference.

Delhi as the rape capital of India

Let me start with some of my own ideas about the issue of rapes in India. Delhi was not a safe city even 40 years ago. From those years, I remember, my sister's worries about the behaviour of guys in Delhi buses going to the university.

I am sorry to confess that at that time even I used to believe that it was because of "provocative clothes" that girls wear, and if they can look like "behen ji" they will be spared. Only much later did I realize that saying that the fault is because of girls' dress or behaviour shifts the responsibility from the guys who behave wrongly onto the girls, and in a way, approves that guys can behave the way they wish and then put the blame on the girl.

I believe that Indian society's emphasis on girls' izzat and how it is equated with "family honour" worsens this situation.

Today the things seem to have worsened. Social phenomenon are almost always complex and have different causes. I think that partly, the number of rapes may have "increased" because now more girls and more families have the courage to report it. In this sense, increase in reporting of rape should be seen as a positive sign.

Asking that police and laws should stop or reduce the rapes can be a superficial solution, because it allows us to ignore the harsh social realities of India where class and caste inequalities are closely interlinked with the way women are treated. It makes us feel that we can continue to be a chauvenistic and unequal society, and that only police or stronger punishments can resolve this problem.

Just listening to the declarations of police officers, politicians, religious leaders and sometimes, even magistrates and judges (including many women), shows how entrenched such ways of thinking are in our society's psyche.

I think that it is the same societal attitudes that are also responsible for dowry killings, female infanticide and violence against women, that are responsible for rapes and the inceased feelings of insecurity perceived by girls and women in India. Unfortunately these are so common among outside the big cities and among more marginalized groups that these are taken as the norm and do not even make it to any kind of news.

However, after reading Cialdini's paper, I was wondering, if in our desire to bring a change in our society, we are not emphasising too much on how frequent and common rapes have become and if this is fueling the perception at least in some men that it is common and even they can do it?

Can talking about "Delhi as the rape capital of India" or "Mumbai as the new rape capital of India" is the wrong message to give to country's men, because it tells them that rape is common or even "normal"?

What do you think?

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My dog’s Contribution to My Photography

In 2004, when I bought my first digital camera, I discovered that I loved clicking pictures. I had had other non-digital cameras before that and while I had always liked clicking pictures, it was just a hobby. After I started using the digital cameras, I discovered the passion for photography. This article is about the way our dog Brando influenced my relationship with photography.

Brando, our dog for 18 years, died last month. I still miss him. Looking at the corner where he used to sit and sleep, brings a lump to my throat. His pictures make me feel like crying. I have talked to other persons who had dogs and who tell me that after so many years, how much they still miss their pets.

If you live in an apartment, like we do, and if you have a dog, you need to take him/her out every day, at least two times, but sometimes even more. Taking out Brando for a walk in the mornings and evenings, was my responsibility. That is where he taught me things that were so important for photography.

If you like taking long walks, when you start going out with your dog, you learn that your dog has his/her own ideas about the walk and often they do not coincide with your ideas of taking walks.

While walking, we humans usually want to walk and at the same time, talk to friends or talk on telephone or listen to music on walkman or Ipod or even day dream. Dogs are not interested in only walking, they want to stop, follow the smells, bark or say hello to other dogs, run after cats, pigeons and rabbits, and mark their territories by leaving small amounts of their pee on the plants and trees. Some times, if they like the smells, especially when the bitches are in heat, the male dogs become difficult to control and they can stay in the same place for a long time with their nose buried in some place where they can smell some chemicals.

BRANDO'S LESSON 1: STOP AND SEE

When Brando stopped somewhere for any reason, if I tried to pull him, it usually provoked an indignant reaction. He usually gave me an annoyed look and pointed his feet at that place. Though he was a small dog, in such moments, it was impossible for me to pull him and make him move even an inch. It made me think about that episode from Ramayan where Angad, the monkey cousin of Hanuman, goes to the demon king’s court and challenges him to try to move his foot.

So whenever Brando did his Angad ji act, I learned that it was better to relax and look around rather than trying to pull him and getting agitated for nothing.

Have you ever just stood in a place in a park or on the roadside, relaxed, doing nothing and just looking around? Right from the time when electricity was invented and people started remaining awake during the night, we humans have continued to invent new things to make ourselves run faster through our lives.

Doing nothing and relaxing is almost a deadly sin or at least, an anxiety laden pleasure, to be hidden behind words like “Actually I was thinking about a complex problem!” And while you stand near your dog, waiting for him/her to finish doing whatever dogs do, joggers and walkers, go past you looking at you with pity.

It was while I was standing around and doing nothing in the park, that I realized that there was the miracle of life all around us. I knew of course that there were different kinds of trees, different colours of flowers and different kinds of bugs in nature, but it had been a long time since I had really looked at them.

So while I waited, I observed the patterns in the barks of the trees, the way their branches divided, the way their leaves moved in the wind. I looked at the flowers, bees, grass and birds. Profound thoughts came to me like the realization that our language is a rough approximation of the reality. For example, I could see so many different varieties of pink coloured flowers, and each had a different shade of pink. In this case “pink” was an approximation to speak of all those different shades of colours that we call pink and that our language can not specify.

All this had happened before I had a digital camera. So I had started buying books about plants, trees and birds. I looked at trees and plants in the park and learned to identify them. I also started to stop and really look at things, at times wonder-struck at the infinite variety of life all around us. Thus, there came a time, when Brando wanted to walk, while I wanted to stand and look at things, so now he pulled me while I tried unsuccessfully, to be Angad ji.

This lesson of not taking the world for granted and to actually look at everything around us, was the most important lesson for my photography. Afterwards, when I got my digital camera, I discovered my passion while passing hours peering at wild flowers, the changing shades of colours of the grass, and the patterns made by the wind in the fields.

BRANDO'S LESSON 2: DIFFICULT SEASONS ARE ALSO BEAUTIFUL 

Normally we go out for a walk or a tourist visit when the weather is good. Rain, hot winds, freezing cold and snow storms are not meant for going out but for staying at home, possibly with air-conditioning. However, it does not matter which season is it and how terrible it is to be outside, your dog needs to be taken out at his usual time everyday.

There were mornings after snowfalls, when the paths in the park were covered with a sheet of frozen ice, and walking on it was like a drunk trying to cross a narrow bridge, constantly afraid of tipping down in the river below. Brando went on unconcerned, some times pulling me suddenly when he saw something interesting and making me crash down. The good thing about it was that mostly I was alone or at the most there were other dog-owners like me, who did not laugh at me, while they tried to hold me to their dogs.

There were other days with terrible heat and a sensation of oppression, when it was difficult to breathe. Some days had gales and monsoon like rain. Others had cold wind that knifed across my fur jacket and stabbed straight at my heart. I went out with Brando on all those days because there was no alternative.

And I discovered that the world changed with seasons. I could see the tiny changes everyday as the first leaves and first buds came out and slowly grew, till one day the leafless trees standing like dark skeletons, were suddenly covered with green leaves and bending down with flowers or the flowers falling down covered the ground like a carpet.

Looking at the world in the early morning light of a foggy winter day or in the evening of a windless hot summer day, created an intimacy with nature that is impossible if you only go out for leisurely walks in good weather. Looking around those familiar and yet strange worlds was another important lesson for my photography. You do not need to go out to far away places to take pictures, you can discover the strange worlds all around you.

CONCLUSIONS

There are so many other things that Brando had influenced, like the possibility of saying hello to unknown persons. Saying hello to other dog owners, persons with small children who wanted to touch Brando and know his name, and even strangers, was so much easier. Now, without him, I will be back to my usual reserved self, finding it more difficult to talk to people I do not know. But the lessons he gave me about the nature and the way I look at the world, they will continue to be with me, as long as I will take pictures with my digital camera!

The pictures I have used with this post are from the park where I used to go for walks with Brando and show the wood horses in the children's playground during different seasons.

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