Deccan arts of 16th-19th C to unveil at National Museum

Nauras: 53-day show from Jan 27 to showcase rarely-focused culture of southern sultanates

New Delhi, Jan 24: The eclectic but relatively neglected art of southern India during roughly 400 years till the 19th century when the peninsular belt was particularly cosmopolitan will be on display at the National Museum (NM) here from next week.

Ajaib al Makhluqat

Titled ‘Nauras: The Many Arts of the Deccan’, the 53-day exhibition starting on January 27 is being organised in collaboration with The Aesthetics Project which is a platform of academics, artisans and performers to explore a variety of topics on India’s art history and its aesthetic heritage.

Concluding on March 20, the show, curated by art historians Dr Preeti Bahadur and Dr Kavita Singh, will have all but one of its 120-odd objects from the museum itself — a chunk of them from its reserves. An exquisite selection of the famed Ragamala painting will be loaned from Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art, making it yet another joint venture for NM in the recent past.

The exhibition will also throw broader academic light on vintage Deccani arts, as NM and Aesthetics Project are hosting a two-day symposium in the capital on January 28 and 29. That event at Indian International Centre (IIC) will feature 10 presentations by leading art historians of the country.

NM Director-General Dr Venu Vasudevan noted that ‘Nauras’ holds special relevance given that the exhibition would be the first-ever showcasing Deccan’s art between the 16th and the 19th centuries when the region witnessed a lot of give-and-take in its culture.

“While exhibiting the arts, we are also outlining the fascinating history of the region,” he said. “The exhibition is the result of six months of work. It must trigger fresh academic and general interest on Deccani culture of the yore.”

The 2014-floated The Aesthetics Project’s trustee and sponsor Renu Judge said ‘Nauras’ would lend unprecedented focus to the art of the southern sultanates known for their tolerance, syncretism and composite culture. “The Deccani art has rather been under-researched; its contribution to the Indian culture often less acknowledged. ‘Nauras’ that way will be momentous,” she added.

al-Buraq

Dr Vasudevan and Ms Judge will open the exhibition at 11 am on January 27.

Split into six sections, ‘Nauras’ highlights Deccani cosmopolitanism, its singing sultans, perfumes, the Mughal Presence, trade goods and royal lineages.

Important objects at ‘Nauras’ include a painting of al-Buraq (a marbled painting from Bijapur showing Rustom capturing a horse), leaves from an early Ragamala from Ahmednagar or Bijapur, a Kalamkari coverlet from Bijapur of 1630, an 18th-century Qanat from Burhanpur, an embroidered temple hanging from Vijayanagara, the Kitab-i-Nauras manuscript from Bijapur, Deccani copies of the Ajaib al Makhluqat, a book of the wonders of the world, and the armour of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb who spent years fighting military campaigns in the Deccan.

Kitab-i-Nauras

Dr Bahadur, who along with Dr Singh of Jawaharlal Nehru University here began gleaning the Deccani artworks from the NM reserves since September last year, noted that the highly skilled artists and craftsmen of Bahamani Sultanate produced exquisite paintings, manuscripts, metal-ware, textiles, and arms.

“The long coastline of the peninsula fostered trade contacts with regions as far as Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe and goods from the Deccan were in high demand in many parts of the world. Intercultural contacts also resulted in the adaptation of aesthetic tastes and diverse traditions at the local level,” she said, adding: “Deccani advances in music and the arts had a profound influence on Indian art in the north as well.”

Dr Singh said even as the art of the Mughals is widely known and celebrated, the contemporaneous kingdoms of Ahmednagar, Bijapur, Golconda, Berar and Bidar in the Deccan have been comparatively ignored.

The IIC symposium will have five speakers each on the two days. The talks by scholars Navina Haidar, Naman Ahuja, Deborah Hutton, Mark Richard Brand, Katherine Butler Schofield, Jagdish Mittal, Omana Eappen, Susan Stronge, Ali Akbar Husain and Emma Flatt will be followed by conversations with experts.

Qanat