Book on Indian art seeks to pique interest among Asians
AUTHOR RICHARD BLURTON SAYS HIS WORK IS ESPECIALLY RELEVANT TO THE NEW GENERATION
RICHARD BLURTON, who worked for the British Museum for 32 years and retired in 2018 at the age of 66 as head of its South and Southeast Asia section, hopes his new book on the history of Indian art and culture going back 1.5 million years will be especially relevant to a new generation of British Asians.
Now 70, Blurton has spent the last four years writing his 320-page book with 479 illustrations, India: A History in Objects, which is being published this week jointly by Thames & Hudson and the British Museum. Ahead of publication, the author spoke exclusively to Eastern Eye and said: “The book is aimed very wide, but one of the audiences I hope to reach are people of south Asian origin living here to give some understanding of the cultural history from which they come.”
“The book is a terrific canter through Indian cultural history and a resource for everyone,” he said. “But it’s particularly relevant to those groups who may be growing up in this country – second or third generation – who may be quite divorced from those cultures.”
He suggests that the new generation of British Asians, once they learn of their rich civilisation, “can be proud of their heritage with good reason”.
Having initially trained as an archaeologist, in 1986 he joined the British Museum working on the Indian collections. He has presented many exhibitions and, in 2017, was lead curator for the re-installation of the south Asian displays in the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery.
Blurton, who has been to India probably 50 times since his first trip in 1970, called his book “an offering of love. It has been a sort of love affair, for sure. But I feel, in an extremely modest way, pleased to be part of a long tradition of people who’ve been seduced by India. It’s a quite recognisable trope in British society that through long periods of interaction with India, there are a good number of people who have felt it was irresistible. I started writing the book after retirement. But it’s like 32 years have gone into the book.”
India has been a big part of his life. “When I was a student, I couldn’t afford to go every year, but at the BM, I would go at least once a year, and, and there was one year, soon before I retired, when I went five times.”
He admitted: “I have to own up to the fact that there was something like 20 years after I first went to India that I first visited the Taj. But, of course, it is magnificent. I have a spread on the Taj. A book on Indian culture can’t avoid this building.”
In November he hopes to be back in India, where India: A History in Objects is being published by Roli Books.
Though retired he still goes into the British Museum unpaid, once a week, to put his old files into some sort of order.
The British Museum “had a wonderful benefactor, Sir Joseph Hotung,” said Blurton. “And on two occasions he gave large amounts of money to refurbish that huge (South Asian) gallery (named after him). One was in 1992. Then the next one was in 2017, when the refurbishment was very different from the previous one, in that it was much more overtly historical. So the book, in a sense, grew out of the refurbishment of the gallery and the re-presentation of the collections.”
The book is split into six chapters, each with a timeline and a two-page introduction.
The publisher’s synopsis says “this superb new overview connects today’s India with its past. Early chapters uncover prehistoric objects from 1.5 million years ago, examine artefacts from the Indus Civilisation, and follow the emergence and transmission of Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and Sikhism, as well as the incoming religions of Zoroastrianism, Islam and Christianity. During the medieval era, skills related to templebuilding and sculpture-production in stone and bronze developed.
“With the rise of the Mughals, the last Muslim dynasty, India once more became a leading economic power. The development of a distinct Mughal style can be traced in paintings, hardstone carving and metalwork. Following the advent of Europeans in India in the early Mughal period, trade in spices, textiles and other luxury goods increased. Later, in the 19th century, under British rule, much of south Asia became part of a national and international trade complex that saw Indian goods exported throughout the world.
“Modernism and political independence in the 20th century saw the fresh assertion of Indian culture through cinema, dance and music. An extraordinary range of history and culture is presented here, from the splendour of dynastic empires to the rural and tribal life of the subcontinent.”
Blurton told Eastern Eye he had covered Emperor Ashoka’s rock inscriptions over a wide area; the triumph of Buddhism and the development of Hinduism with all its cultural manifestations; the Amaravathi sculptures in Andhra Pradesh, showing narrative scenes from the life of the Buddha, and the marbles in the British Museum (“I have quite a bit about Amaravathi in the book”); and “the great epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the incredible impact they’ve had on south Asian culture”.
He added: “I have a section on this element in Indian culture of the presentation of narrative. This is so incredibly important in the subcontinent, the huge interest you can see from very earliest sculptures right through to Indian cinema.”
Blurton had dealt with the “development of devotional life in India”, and the great Buddhist sites such as Bodh Gaya.
He has also written about textiles, “a very important and impressive element of Indian civilisation.” He quipped: “I’m sure your mother and your grandmother passed down saris through the generations. In the 17th and 18th centuries, we have the trade in chintz.”
He had “quite a bit here on the Deccan sultans”, and how Islam arrived ahead of the Mughals. He explained: “The very earliest Muslim presence in India is through local traders. That’s how Islam first came to India, not through Mahmud of Ghazni sweeping down and destroying the Rajput kingdoms. That comes much later. People assume that the arrival of Islam is all concerned with battle and destruction and slaughter and mass conversion. Of course, later, that is part of the story. But it’s not the earliest story and it’s not the only story. As historians, we have to be incredibly careful.”
From the British period, he has picked out examples of artists. For example, “Winifred Nicholson, Ben Nicholson’s wife, is on record as saying that when she visited India with her father, a senior politician in the Liberal government, in the 1920s, her experience of the colours of India dramatically influenced her paintings in the future.”
Blurton said he had written about Gandhi in some detail but “I’ve highlighted (Bhimrao Ramji) Ambedkar because he is an unsung or less sung hero”.
India: A History in Objects by T Richard Blurton is published by Thames & Hudson and the British Museum. £30