Artists who’ve kept Gandhi alive on canvas, in raga & with bronze
Being one of the world’s most revered photographers did not earn Margaret Bourke-white the right to photograph Mahatma Gandhi. In 1946, she had to also learn how to work the charkha before being allowed to photograph Gandhi doing the same. In notes that accompanied the film rolls sent to LIFE magazine’s New York offices, she wrote about how she thought of both the spinning wheel and photography as handicrafts, but Gandhi’s aides told her that spinning was the greater of the two. Gandhi, though, seems to have engaged with photography rather seriously from his early days in South Africa. There are several posed portraits of him as a young lawyer, with Kasturba Gandhi, as well as with members of the Natal Indian Congress in 1895.
In January 1908, Gandhi was imprisoned for two months in South Africa for passively resisting the law that discriminated against Indians. There is a photograph from 1914, of a young Gandhi standing barefoot, wearing a sling bag, holding a stick and staring into the camera, with both fists tightly clenched. Similar in resolve is a portrait of women resisters who spent three months in prison, all looking solemnly into the camera, one even carrying a child in her arms. This kind of powerful imagery subverted the conventional use of posed photographs of that time, which were commissioned largely for posterity. Gandhi probably realised the power of photography then, for he used it strategically during India’s freedom movement later.
Not averse to posing for the camera in his early years, as is obvious from a series of studio portraits of him in 1915 in Mumbai, Gandhi can be seen posing against a backdrop wearing his turban, dhoti-kurta and a pair of sandals. Some months later, a similar photograph was recreated, with Kasturba next to him. The only difference being that Gandhi wore no footwear this time. “After Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s death, as a mark of
In 1924, musicologist Dilipkumar Roy met Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Pune. Hearing Roy was a singer, Gandhi requested the younger man to perform for him. Roy arrived the following day with his tanpura, sat at Gandhi’s feet and sang bhajans that made the Mahatma’s eyes glistened with tears. When Roy met Gandhi a few months later in Calcutta, the Mahatma’s eyes were again glinting; but this time, it was with mischief. “Where’s your instrument of torture?” Gandhi asked Roy. He was referring to Roy’s tanpura.
Besides his love for bhajans and a brief period during his early years in England when he took ballroom dancing classes, cultural activities seemed to be an indulgence that had no place in Gandhi’s austere world view. The Father of the Nation was unimpressed by films and once described Charlie Chaplin as a buffoon. He decreed there would be no paintings hanging on the walls of his rooms and when asked why, he said, “I do not need them for my inspiration.” Yet his life and his work have been inspiration to countless artists of independent India.
In 1948, when the news that Gandhi had Presse, Münchner Illustrierte Indien kämpft!, been shot dead reached Pandit Ravi Shankar, he was about to do a recording in All India Radio. He created — reportedly, on the spot — the Mohan Kauns raga, a variation on the raga Malkauns with elements of the raga Jog. Twenty years later, Pandit Kumar Gandharva was asked to compose a tribute to Gandhi and he composed the raga Gandhi Malhar. Gandharva’s daughter, Kalapini Komkali, wrote that he wanted to create something that would “do justice to the memory of the Mahatma and the values of truth and fearlessness that he espoused”. In the 1990s, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan would compose raga Bapu Kauns and chitraveena maestro, N Ravikiran, would create raga Mohini as tributes to Gandhi.
It may seem odd that four ragas were composed for a man who listened to just a handful of bhajans, but rather than the reality of Gandhi, what has been inspirational for artists are the ideas that he embodied. The man who dismissed paintings as an indulgence was immortalised by Nandalal Bose, whose black and white linocut print of Gandhi — grimfaced, strong-limbed, stick in hand — on the Dandi march was one of the first iconic images of the leader. Bose’s bold and precise lines highlighted Gandhi’s simplicity, steadfastness and strength. These same qualities The Times of India, “Do rupiya ek bar”,
Gandhi: The Years That Changed The World. Gandhi used the medium strategically to benefit India’s freedom struggle such that all non violent movements, marches, political and public meetings were constantly in public memory via the publication and personal circulation of his images. While still being rigorously photographed like perhaps no other figure of that time, Gandhi had consciously stepped out of the photo studio and into the public imagination.
When the celebrated French photographer Henri Cartier-bresson met Gandhi barely half an hour before Gandhi’s assassination, they spoke about photography. “Death, death, death” is what Gandhi last said to Cartier-bresson upon seeing his image of the poet Paul Claudel walking past a hearse. In his book Temperaments: Memoirs of Henri Cartier-bresson and Other Artists, Dan Hofstadter recalls Cartier-bresson speaking about the encounter.
Ironically, the most reminisced image of Gandhi by Cartier-bresson was one without the leader in it. It was of Nehru’s address to the nation mourning Gandhi’s death as he spoke, “The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.” Just like a photograph before it is made. would characterise practically every sculpture of Gandhi, whether it’s the famous Gyarah Murti by Devi Prasad Roychowdhury that stands at the intersection of Sardar Patel Marg and Mother Teresa Crescent in New Delhi; or the highly conceptual Monumental Gandhi sculptures by A Ramachandran, which show Gandhi’s head rising above a smooth bronze sheath; or any of the cheap Gandhi-themed souvenirs on sale at tourist spots. They all play upon the contrast between the frailty of Gandhi’s visible form and the strength of the man who stood up to and outwitted India’s colonial rulers.
It’s ironic that a man who was so steadfastly against consumerism has today become a brand, with elements like his glasses or the neat curve of his bald head being used as logos, but this has also made Gandhi a constant presence in our everyday world. In contemporary art, Gandhi being reduced to a symbol has been used cleverly by several artists, often to articulate a sense of despair. In a painting titled Mirror by Nityan Unnikrishnan, a key detail is the portrait of Gandhi hanging on the wall. His smiling face is recognisable but disfigured by a dark patch. The people in the room have turned their backs on him. News and images of religious violence fill the room.
The most striking artistic explorations of Gandhi and his relevance in contemporary times have been by Atul Dodiya. From painting portraits to imagining Gandhi in surreal scenarios and including kitschy busts of Gandhi in his installations, Dodiya has been sifting through what the leader symbolised in our changing society since the 1990s. Whether as a laughing face that appears like a brand on the rolling shutter that indicates that this shop is not open for business or as a wisp of watercolour, the Gandhi of Dodiya’s art is the conscience keeper surrounded by the chaos of the past and present.
Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and Rajkumar Hirani’s Munnabhai films may be the most famous on-screen avatars of the Mahatma, but Gandhi was a favourite of filmmakers long before Ben Kingsley made him a household name. In 1921, Kanjibhai Rathod made Bhakta Vidur, a film that was ostensibly about the character from the Mahabharat, but featured a Vidur who wore a Gandhi cap (which Gandhi himself wore only for a short spell despite the literal hat-tip in the name), had a charkha and urged peasants to not pay taxes. The British banned the film.
Gandhi may not have had much time for the arts in his life, but 71 years after his death, his ideas are remembered not by politicians, but by those who practice the arts. Immortalised in sculpture, re-imagined in paintings, invoked in music, Gandhi is alive.