Rabindranath wanted art to free one from parochialism: Siva Kumar
Hyderabad, Jan 8: Almost a century before globalisation became a vital feature of India economy, iconic cultural leader Rabindranath Tagore had sensed the prospect of the world coming together and paid attention to the issues involved in it, according to a leading art historian.
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Prof R Siva Kumar of
Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan
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Even so, humanity has not reached a stage today where the world is economically, politically or culturally homogenous irreversibly, even as India introduced liberalisation in 1991, he noted at the inaugural lecture of the ongoing Krishnakriti Annual Festival of Art and Culture in the city. “Cultural globalisation is still a value in the making or an ideology striving to gain intellectual hegemony. It is still only among many possibilities in our culture-scape,” he said in his talk titled ‘Negotiating the World with Rabindranath’ at Kalakriti Art Gallery in upscale Banjara Hills on late Wednesday evening.
The 11th edition of the five-day Krishnakriti festival features top-notch dance, music, cinema and painting alongside talks, seminars and workshops. Being held in six venues of Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Cyberabad, the programmes are free for the public. The January 7-11 event is conducting a major art camp simultaneously, the proceeds of which will go for charity.
At his opening talk which was succeeded by another lecture by renowned ontologist Navjyoti Singh, Prof Siva Kumar said that Tagore (1861-1941) was not, all the same, a dreamy poet. “He had a practical sense and a socially-rooted engagement with the local. At the same time, he argued that literature and art should be a means for liberating us from parochialism,” he added.
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| .IIT-H professor Navjyoti Singh |
To the speaker, Tagore saw the “other” not as a cultural threat but an angel of liberation. “He was not afraid of embracing the ‘other’ if it allowed one to be creative; he preferred to become creative through cultural assimilation to remaining culturally fossilised in the name of cultural purity,” Prof Siva Kumar said, adding: “This was his main quarrel with the artists of the Bengal School.”
All the same, Tagore saw that a “dehumanising and standardising force of technology and commerce, and nationalism were closely interrelated. There is little space in both for what is not seen as profitable.”
Overall, Tagore’s identity was not unitary but a constellation of memories, allegiances, debts and belongings even as his own life and creative work demonstrates that a thinking artist has a consciousness of man in his global condition, the speaker said. “Geography and history play on a part in his identity; it does not determine it wholly,” he added.
Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad professor Navjyoti Singh, who is an expert in formal ontology, spoke on ‘Understanding the Origin of Art’ through a narrative of the story of Nagnajit, the Hindu mythological king of Kholsa.
As an expert on scientific study of consciousness, foundations of logic, mathematics and linguistics, crossroads of science and Indian analytic traditions, history and philosophy of science, Prof Singh took an “owlish view” which sought for a “quick vision from very far”.
The evening also saw the screening a film on the hand-painted shawls of a community in the country’s tribal Northeast — at Annapurna International School of Film & Media in the city. This was followed by an interaction between the audience and Ruchika Negi, Delhi-based director of the 52-minute movie ‘Every Time You Tell A Story’, which narrates an over-the-centuries change in profile of Tsungkotepsu, the traditional head-hunter’s shawl, which used to be an honour for the Ao Nagas Naga tribesmen and is now a standardised product available in the market.
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