Revivalism in Indian Art

The arts of a people have always been regarded as the chief evidence of its culture. The style and excellence of painting, sculpture, music, dancing, the drama and poetry of a people are rightly interpreted as being special qualities of its cultural development. The finer elements of the mind of man very early reacted to his natural surroundings, outward wants, and inward impulses; and out of these reactions of the aesthetic sense grew up the imitative and creative arts of the race. The whole process was originally spontaneous and unconscious, but as man became more and more capable of aesthetic and emotional exaltation, the arts became finer and more conscious. They acted upon and were acted upon by the life of the people and the two grew side by side. But the fact remained that the arts were an evolutionary expression of the civilisation of a people. It is true that the arts have not always followed the line of natural evolution of a people's life. Sometimes some of them have been left behind the others or were forced into new channels by historical and other causes. For example, the set-given by Islam to certain aspects of the art of pictorial representation of Nature is responsible for the wonderful development of the conventional pattern as well as the plant and flower motif of later Persian art. Not even religion seems to have the power altogether to suppress the creative urge of the human mind for self-expression. All the prohibitions of Islam against artistic expressions of life have failed to kill art in Mussulman countries. They have only driven it from one channel into another. Art like the river will make its own bed to flow in.

Anthropologists tell us that religion is the mother of the Arts. We find that all the arts of the Jewish people centred round the Tabernacle of God. We also see how the Greek arts of sculpture, architecture, drama, epic poetry and choric dance, all arose out of their religion. The same is true of Hindu and Buddhistic art.

This is however not to suggest that art cannot live or prosper except in an atmosphere of religion. Art is as vital an expression of our life as religion itself, and whatever its origin, it may be and has been independently developed. But one fact stands. Art is an organic growth and not a decorative embellishment of life. To be true art, art must flow out of the soil of a people's life. It may be possible to transplant an art from one soil to another equally congenial to its growth; but art cultivated in a glass-house or hot-house cannot be any thing more than a beautiful exotic. It may at best satisfy the tastes of a few, but can never be a source of joy, solace, nourishment or inspiration to the people at large.

The connoisseurs of art are sometimes liable to cut themselves off from the living current of thought, art and life, and to be imperceptibly caught in the stagnant pools of cliques and coteries, circles and societies, and so to be practically lost to the world. The so-called Pre-Raphaelites of the 19th century were a set of cultured artists of this type who formed a close society to cultivate their special style of art, but failed to leave much to inspire mankind, and left none to succeed them. The poetry of Rossetti, the paintings of Burne Jones and Millais, and the criticism of Walter Pater appeal to a limited few, because they are poets of poets, artists of artists, and critics of critics–and not of common humanity.

The connoisseurs sometimes drift into the drawing-room atmosphere, where they are first lionised and afterwards patronised by that class of people whom Matthew Arnold has called ‘Philistines’. Art is set up in a shrine as a goddess; but she is unknown to the worshippers, changed by the atmosphere into an idol of cant and artificiality; while the free appreciation of art degenerates into a kind of mysterious cult with its high priests and acolytes. The flowers offered to the deity are changed into painted paper flowers without the worshippers knowing the fact. This is one great pitfall for connoisseurism of art and culture; an it is against this that Tennyson has warned us in his Palace of Art.

If genuine culture is scarce, like a pearl of great price, imitations are not rare. In the artificial lights of the drawing room you cannot often tell the fake paper-orchid from the genuine, and the cheap artificial flower of the market from the rare specimen grown with special care in the aristocratic drawing-room. How can you? for the thing has rarely any fragrance; no flower cultivated in that way has fragrance. The snobbish philistine prizes the exotic, not because it is fine, but because it is rare and costly. The sweetness in Matthew Arnold's famous phrase ‘sweetness and light’ may be, the sweet fragrance of my lady's clothes rather than that of her culture. The drawing-room atmosphere is therefore not a healthy atmosphere, for art or culture. The Victorian Age was imperceptibly gathering the artists and culturists of England into drawing-room societies. And if the great war has brought us anything to be thankful for, it is its effect of scattering the arm-chair philosophers and drawing-room artists of the world. Since the war there has been a perceptible tendency towards naturalness in the men and women of the new generation. Perhaps they are not so refined or reticent as their parents or grand-parents, but there is a great advantage in having a generation to call a spade a spade rather than an agricultural implement. England has had enough of that kind of euphimistic prudery and affected respectability, and not many Englishmen will regret the final exit of this aspect of the Victorian Age. Let us not regret, with all our love of art and culture, to come nearer to the soil of this earth–the common mother of us all and of our civilisation. It is more: we are like the first sons of the Earth–the giants, who picked up strength every time they were thrown upon the ground; and their enemies, according to the old story, could only dispose of them in the mid-air of isolation. The bare human nature will teach us more than all the drawing-room artists and philosophers. Wordsworth wrote: -

"One impulse from the vernal wood.
Can teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can."

The modern thinker is discovering that one act of apprehension of our common humanity, and one act of realisation of our duty to one another as well as to our highest self, will make us far better and more beautiful men and women than all the ‘hot-house’ cultures of the world could do.

But the danger that art is exposed to in India today is different. A large number of authors, critics and artists are busy introducing foreign ideals and standards into Indian literature, art and music. It may be possible for us to assimilate some of these Western principles and ideals, but the bulk of them is bound to remain foreign to the genius of India. What reason is there to suppose that the English or Italian style of painting, the Gothic style of architecture, or the jazz music of America, can be naturalised in India?

This is one danger for Indian art and culture–the alien danger. But there is another. There is a revivalistic tendency in modern Indian art and culture, outwardly as reaction against, but essentially in subtle imitation of, the West. It has shown itself most conspicuously in the Indian school of painting; it is showing itself also in the Indian classic dance as interpreted and practised by Uday Shankar. Besides there is a growing encouragement shown to the ancient folk-arts in the different parts of the country.

This revivalistic tendency is natural, and to a limited extent a healthy tendency of the national mind in an age of all-round awakening and progress. The revival of Hindu classical music is altogether a healthy process and deserves every encouragement, even though it cannot be allowed to replace the romantic development of popular music in recent times. But there seems to be a lurking danger in most revivalistic movements beyond a certain point. They tend, consciously or unconsciously, to put the hand of the clock of evolution. I recognise that the course of evolution may sometimes take us ward in order to sweep us

forward again, for the line of evolution is not necessarily a straight line. At the same time we may not tamper with it and sport with its tendency without retarding, if not altogether stopping, its progress.

The evolution of Indian culture had passed through and superseded any phases of the national art in its upward progress. Not that the artistic expressions of some of these epochs might not have been preserved and harmonised with the life of the people under changed conditions. For we must remember that the natural evolution is repeatedly interrupted by historical, i.e., accidental causes, and a particular art which was at one time welling up from the heart of the people may be inhibited or altogether suppressed by historical coercion or violence. It may not therefore be against the law of evolution to revive that art at a later stage of the life of the people. But it is dangerous for the people of one age to revive wholesale the manners and arts of a long past epoch of its history. Who would want to revive polyandry in his admiration of the age of the Mahabharata?

Such thoughtless revival of an old or seemingly lost art of a people may be an act of ‘atavism,’ however charming atavism it may seem to be, rather than being progress. In these times we are becoming enamoured of the dress, manners and arts of the Buddhistic age on account of the discovery of their pictorial relics in the fresco paintings of the rock-cut temples of Ajanta, Ellora and other places. The Indian school of painting is over head and ears in love with the ancient fashions of dress, especially female clothing, which it faithfully copies in its own paintings. The theatres and cinemas have taken the hint, and we can see Ajanta male and female figures in action and motion on the, stage and the screen in these times.

It is all very well to do this so far as historical fidelity to the modes and manners of a particular age requires it. But in practice there is a good deal more than mere chronological exactitude. Most of the commercial art has begun to follow the Indian school of painting, as some of that art in the West follows the ancient Greek models. But the craze does not stop there. The Greco-Buddhist fashion of female dress is gradually passing from the art-studios to the dressing rooms of cultured Indian society. Tile ‘Kanchuli’ and the other seductively beautiful items of meagre female costume threaten to become the Indian counterpart of the low-cut gown and other innovations of the West. This is not independent artistic self-expression; it is slavish imitation of a refined type.

The amateur classical Indian dance has already become professional, and is showing signs of penetration into cultured Indian families. It is time to consider if it is safe to take to our bosoms an art which our society had practised, perhaps for hundreds of years, and ultimately thought fit to leave to the Natas and Natis, i.e., the professional actors and actresses, when it was found to be out of harmony with the higher and more spiritual ideals of our national life. The research scholars of the age of Kalidasa know that the age that produced all the refinements of Meghaduta was not far removed from the age in which Vatsayana wrote his Kamasutra, that amazing encyclopedia of refinement and filth. Let us not flatter ourselves that we have left behind us that curiously mixed-up stage of social evolution. We can see the deep shadow of the 20th century light–the clay feet of the golden image of progress–in the horrible sexual literature that threatens to inundate the world today in the name of Knowledge and Science.

Let cultural revivalists pause and think. The art of dancing was scientifically cultivated in India like music and the drama. It is undoubtedly a beautiful form of self-expression–a natural accompaniment to music. But it has long ceased to be India's national art. It is very important that we should study the causes of the degradation of the art, and not blindly proceed upon the preconceived idea that the art is a jewel whose value the people have forgotten on account of the decay of national culture. There may be a deeper cause than that; possibly the art ran its full course and died a natural death. In other words, it was played out. We should think many times before we proceed to revive on a national scale an art so full of display of the beauty of the flesh, and therefore so full of danger for the higher spiritual life. Music is a much finer art and even when decayed it cannot corrupt us so easily. We may not be able to raise the Nati of the market-place to the position of the lady of society; but we may easily degrade the lady to the position of the Nati. Everything has its natural line of evolution, to go against which is dangerous. It is an idle wish to combine the wisdom of old age and the innocence of childhood. We can only produce imbecility and give it the name of ‘second childhood,’ but it is devoid of wisdom. How can we expect to enjoy the smell of the mango blossom of March while eating the ripe fruit in July? On the contrary we find from experience that it is necessary to check the excessive flowering of the tree if we want to have a good crop of fruits. Who shall say that the fine fruits of the spiritual culture of India are not directly owing to the sacrifice of certain forms of artistic expression of the people's life? If, as Freud says, art, religion and the higher impulses of man are different expressions of the repressed sexual instinct, is it improbable that a Mirabai, a Kabir or a Tulsidas, is the result of the suppression of some of the visible and palpable forms of artistic self-expression of the Indian man and woman? We can perceive the same rhythmic beauty and symmetry of form in the spiritual life and aspirations and thoughts of these persons as we might see in the artistic performance of a world-famous dancer like Anna Pavlowa or Maud Alan.