JPM QUARTERLY Apr - Jun ’19...Chitrasutra of the Vishnu Dharmottara Purana’ JPM Quarterly...

JPM QUARTERLY Apr - Jun ’19

Prof. Arjun Appadurai speaks during ‘The Innovation Trap And Contemporary Capitalism’

Table Of ContentsDirector’s Note .................................................................Aesthetics ........................................................................Indian Aesthetics ............................................................. Forthcoming Programmes in Indian Aesthetics ................ Islamic Aesthetics ............................................................ Forthcoming Programmes in Southeast Asian AestheticsBuddhist Aesthetics .........................................................Criticism and Theory ......................................................... Critical Theory, Aesthetics, and Practice .........................Forthcoming Programmes in Criticism and Theory .........Theoretical Foundations .................................................... Community Engagement .................................................Creative Processes ......................................................... Curatorial Processes .......................................................JPM Supporters .................................................................Announcements .................................................................

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JPM QuarterlyIt is with deep gratification for an extraordinary quarter that I write this note – a quarter

that witnessed the incomparable scholarship of renowned international scholars whoshared their current research with an unstinting generosity of spirit. We began with the5th iteration of Islamic Aesthetics (IslA) 2019 which addressed the contours of 15th-centuryTimurid, Ottoman and Persianate worlds through architecture, manuscripts, calligraphyand décor, as well as modalities of sovereignty, visual identity, eclecticism and trans-regionalism.

The sublime sphere of Chola bronzes came alive through a painstaking and meticulousinter-disciplinary approach that combined academic rigour with eloquent poetry. Therealm of Buddhist Aesthetics was examined through both the stupa of Amaravati, situatingit in the larger Andhra territory, and the majestic monuments and objects of WesternHimalayan Art which illustrated iconographic issues and the reading of monuments as aconceptual whole.

Issues that confront the conservation, restoration and preservation of heritage in war-torn zones, a book that celebrates the work and life of iconic Indian artistGulammohammed Sheikh, a Theoretical Foundations module on The Emergence ofCapitalism, a writing course titled JPM Write-Argument, and a semester-long ongoingcourse on Southeast Asian Art and Architecture, more about which will be carried in thenext Quarterly, are all testimonies to the varied subjects we have engaged with.

What has left us astounded is the audience that not only flies in from Europe, the Eastand parts of India to attend a series of lectures, but makes a day-long bus journey tohear a scholar they study. Forty-five students (numbers had to be vastly trimmed because

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JPM Quarterly Apr-Jun 2019 2

of space constraints) came from Pune to hear Prof. Arjun Appadurai speak on TheInnovation Trap and Contemporary Capitalism, a subject he has been steeped in thispast decade.

We will be wrapping up this academic year by the end of April to prepare afresh for thenew one beginning July 2019, with anticipation, as there is much in store. A big thankyou to all our students who continue to believe in us, our resource scholars for theirunquestioned largesse of thought, and our benefactors, patrons, partners and friends fortheir fullness of support.

With my warmest wishes,

Rashmi Poddar PhD.Director


AestheticsJPM’s Aesthetics offerings include (1) an

academic year-long PostgraduateDiploma/Certificate course in Indian Aesthetics, aswell as ongoing public seminars and lectures in thefield; (2) a quarterly Postgraduate Certificatecourse in Yoga and Tantra, as well as ongoingpublic seminars and lectures in the field; (3) aquarterly Postgraduate Certificate course in

Southeast Asian Art and Architecture as well asongoing public seminars and lectures in the field;(4) a fortnight of public seminars and lectures inIslamic Aesthetics; (5) an ongoing series of publicseminars in Buddhist Aesthetics; and (6)occasional academic conferences and workshopsin these fields.

3

Detail of Scene of a Rāma Darbāra’ in a Sekhavatī, Haveli, Sekhavati, Northern Rajasthan, c. 1850

JPM Quarterly Apr-Jun 2019JPM Quarterly Apr-Jun 2019

Indian Aesthetics

At Jnanapravaha, early January brings theIslamic Aesthetics course, the content of

which greatly extends and expands the Islamicmodule of the Indian Aesthetics course. This yearthe Islamic Aesthetics course drew outarchitectural connections between Timurid Iran,Anatolia, and India in the 15th century. Apart fromthe Persianate world, the architecture and décor inthe 15th-century Delhi Sultanate were discussed byProf. Yves Porter. From the third week of January,the Indian Aesthetics course launched into thepoetics of Indian painting with Roda Ahluwalia’slectures on Mughal, Pahari and Deccani painting.Her richly illustrated lectures offered a feast for theeyes and the mind. Persianate antecedents andinspiration ensured fineness, sensitivity anddelicacy, while indigenous styles added strongcolour and vibrancy to Mughal paintings. Mughalpainting’s finest examples emerged from theateliers of Akbar and Jehangir, both exceptionalpatrons, while the style became more static in theShah Jahani period. The scholar spoke of Pahariand Rajput painting as drawn from the earlierMughal style, not only sharing artists and showingevidence of artistic training in the Mughal court, butalso evolving their own trajectory with time andnew patronage. Using art history, biography, aclose visual analysis, and categories such asportraiture and naturalism, the scholar offered acomprehensive analysis of these skillfully rendered

paintings. The lyrical beauty of the Pahari genrewas juxtaposed with and connected to politicalreality and identity.

Dr. Leela Wood’s lectures on Ajanta paintingconnected the style of the murals tothe Chitrasutra of the Vishnu Dharmottara Purana,a treatise which elaborates on the rules ofpainting. The scholar pointed out that suchmanuals usually emerged from practice and werethus more descriptive of contemporary methodsthan rigidly prescriptive. Dr. Wood’s extraordinary


Dr. Leela Wood speaks during ‘Ajanta Murals andChitrasutra of the Vishnu Dharmottara Purana’


photographs of the exquisite paintings in the Ajantacaves, allied to her deep research andsophisticated analysis helped students understandpictorial conventions, styles and modes ofexpression employed in the murals. The spatiallycomplex visual narratives of Jataka stories atAjanta, especially in Cave 17, have been thesubject of the scholar’s painstaking research. Shedemonstrated with examples that some parts of themurals were rendered carefully and slowly, whileother parts display rapid execution. Loose-leafedJain manuscripts, Deccani manuscripts such asKitab-i-Nauras executed under the patronageof Ibrahim Adil Shah, and painted folios of theChandayana, a Sufi Romance culled from

folklore and codified by Mulla Da’ud in the 14th

century, were used to give students a deeperunderstanding of the tradition of paintedmanuscripts other than Mughal, Pahari andRajput.

Dr. Harsha Dehejia’s exploration of Krishnashringara was underpinned by an explanation ofadvaita philosophy which is the core of theBhagavata Purana, a text that emerged fromseveral streams of devotion which flowed in theIndian subcontinent prior to it. The Bhakti tradition,the turn towards dvaita philosophy inJayadeva’s Gita Govinda and its aesthetics as acomplementary position to the angle of faith andreligious thought, were laid out by the scholar.


Dr. Harsha Dehejia speaks during ‘Krishna Shringara: The Many Manifestations and Meanings of Krishna’s Love’


Dr. Dehejia examined Krishna shringara throughpoetry, paintings and practices, comparing therasika who enjoys Krishna shringara aesthetically,with the devotee or bhakta, who submitscompletely to the deity. He also elaborated on thePushti marga practices initiated by Vallabhacharyaand still seen in Nathadwara, practices inPandharpur which venerate Vitthala, and theworship of Krishna, Balarama and Subhadra atJagganatha Puri. In this way, his lectures engagedwith the philosophy, the ambiguities and the groundreality of the Bhakti tradition before immersingstudents in the poetics of miniature paintings,picchwais, and popular art connected with it.

Dr. Pheroza Godrej discussed printmaking andearly archaeology in the colonial period, in whichFerguson and Curzon played a seminal role bydiscovering, classifying and preserving India’sarchaeological and sculptural heritage. Dr. JayaKanoria introduced students to the aesthetics ofRabindranath Tagore and Aurobindo Ghosh,framing them in the context of nationalism andswaraj. The Indian Aesthetics course thenimmersed students in the architecture of thecolonial and modern period in two sessions by Dr.Himanshu Burte. Here too, colonisation andexposure to the West played an important role inshaping aesthetics. Dr. Burte’s philosophical andanalytical understanding of the architecture thatemerged in the India of the 19th and 20th centuriesilluminated both theoretical and practical aspects,using the ideas of Henri Lefebvre as a framingnarrative. Examples, informed both by emulationand resistance, were used to show the emergenceof colonial modernity, nationalism and the creationand use of everyday space. Tactics such asappropriation created ‘(im)pure modernities’ duringthe ‘self-actualisation’ of India. At this time, thebuilding practices of architects which shaped thenation were informed by the philosophy and ideasof Gandhi and Tagore. Dr. Kurush Dalal broughtMarch 2019 to a close with his discussion ofgadhegals or ass-curse stones which bearinscriptions of land grants. The earthy quality of theimages on these stones indicate that they weremeant to be read by the common man.

This quarter looks ahead to a walk-through ofan auction of the Nandalal Bose archives atPundole’s to be conducted by Rob Dean, a session


Dr. Himanshu Burte speaks during ‘The Spaces ofPostcolonial Modernities’


on Orientalism by Rohit Goel, and a final sessionon the colonial market hall by Dr. Pushkar Sohoni.- J.K.

******Past Programmes:

The Thief Who Stole My Heart: The Material Lifeof Chola Bronzes from South India, c. 855–1280 January 31st, February 1st & 2nd, 2019, 6:30 pmVidya Dehejia (Professor of Indian and SouthAsian Art, Columbia University)

Prof. Vidya Dehejia dwelt on the work ofunnamed artists in Chola India who for over fourcenturies created simultaneously sacred andsensuous bronze masterpieces of Shiva, invokedby poets as the ‘thief who stole my heart’. Sheviewed the images through material, political andsocial lenses, examining them in conjunction withtrade, inscriptions and worship. The artists of Tamilcountry sculpted God in human image, creatinghighly adorned, luminous sculptures. Worship ofthe idealised divine body came from a belief thatGod could be attained through its appreciation.Between 600 and 800 CE, Nayanmar and Alvarsaints composed and sang ecstatic hymns toShiva, giving him a local habitation, and describingportable images carried in procession. Artiststranslated the saints’ rapturous engagement intoperfect form, a sign of spiritual beauty.

In mid-9th century South India, the upstartVijayalaya Chola appropriated the Chola namebelonging to a former dynasty and took the city ofThanjavur by storm, commissioning an image ofthe fierce Durga/Uma, destroyer of the demonNishumbha, of pivotal importance to Indiankingship. By 1225, Vijayalaya’s successors heldsway over South India, the Maldives, northern SriLanka, and made naval forays into Sumatra, wherethe Srivijaya dynasty ruled, in an effort to breaktheir stranglehold on Chinese trade. The denselypopulated Tamil country had numerous modestlysized temples, built early in the Chola reign, withinscription-covered walls. The inscriptions relate toeconomic, religious, civic, local, judicial, politicaland historical subjects, and record gifts to thetemple. Agricultural prosperity enabled temple-

Queen Sembiyan Mahadevi as Uma, Freer Gallery of Art,Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.


building despite continuous warfare.

The Pallavas, who ruled before the Cholas,created large ceremonial images of wood, andsmall bronzes for personal devotion. Around 855CE, copper became common in image creation.The Cholas were cultured, refined and invested inthe worship of Shiva, building temples and

sponsoring unique bronze processional images.Early images reveal a flattened form, reminiscentof wooden sculpture. An alloy with around 90percent copper was used, creating very heavy,solid images that developed a green patina ifexposed to high humidity. Exquisite wax modelswere melted while creating bronze images, whichcould be closely copied but not reproduced.Curiously, there is no substantial local source ofcopper that could have been profitably mined.Large quantities of copper may have come toSouth India from Aden and Sri Lanka.

Between 855 and 955 CE, Aditya Chola and hisson Parantaka built temples on the banks of theRiver Kaveri, in which exclusively portable bronzeprocessional images first emerged. Despitepolitical instability, skilled artists produced statelybronzes of unprecedented originality and rareelegance. Forms of Shiva revealing religiousintensity and artistic intentionality, including thepopular Tripuravijaya (Victor of the three cities), athanksgiving for the wars won by the Cholas, weredepicted. In Tamil India, the emphasis shifted tothese novel images from the immovable sanctumimage of the stone linga, which continued to beworshipped. Portable deities went on festival and‘social’ outings, becoming crucial to worship andplaying a fundamental role in the ritual and sociallife of citizens. Later, texts defined this mode ofworship.

Stylistically distinct traits emerged. A coastalworkshop at Tiruvangadi produced images ofslender and sinuous proportions, tall inappearance, with sloping shoulders and ovalfaces. Some of these solid metal images are

Dancing Shiva, ca. 990, Freer Gallery of Art, SmithsonianInstitution


completely stable but have an exaggeratedtribhanga, showing the artists’ stylistic confidenceand skill in wax modelling and metal casting.Several haunting masterpieces in bronze(including Shiva in the form of Ardhanari, and theascetic Begging Lord) originated in the 11th century.Inscriptions and lists record donations of gifts andtreasures to temples, including sumptuousjewellery in gold, pearls and other preciousmaterials which was considered necessary tofurther adorn the sculpture. Such gifts given made‘in the protection of priests’ who were thecustodians of the bronzes. The capital/centralworkshop produced images with a shorter,compact torso, broader shoulders and squarerfaces.

Patrons were not only kings, but also includedthe king’s intimate circles, and women, includingearly Chola queens. Seven small, well-proportioned temples reveal the involvement ofAditya Chola, with records of gifts made by hisfamily. The earlier poet saints sang of these ancienthallowed shrines which have no foundationalinscriptions, perhaps because they already existedas wooden shrines before they were rebuilt instone. Inscriptions give details of the worship ofbronzes and celebrations related to them.Important Buddhist images reveal close similaritieswith Shiva iconography, proving that artists workedfor diverse patrons, and raise questions about thepossibility of transporting weighty images by shipalong the coast, or over land.

Elegant and probably idealised representationsof the beloved, culturally influential QueenSembiyan commemorate the personage who was

responsible for introducing the Dancing Shiva intothe repertoire of Chola bronzes, perhaps becauseher husband gave up his kingship and abandonedher to go in search of Shiva, his beautiful ‘dancinglord’. This unique queen functioned successfully ina male-dominated society. Sembiyan rebuilt instone several older brick temples, recording all giftsformerly made, and inserting a Dancing Shivaimage in the southern niche. Modelled onrepresentations of Uma, Sembiyan’s image wascarried in procession with bronzes of deities andsaints in acknowledgement of many generous actssuch as sponsoring a bronze workshop, whichgave rise to bronzes with distinctive characteristics.

From the time of Queen Sembiyan, thevictorious Goddess Durga appeared in temples.Before Shiva worship received royal impetus, Kaliwas popular in the Kaveri delta. Older goddesstemples did not receive royal support though theywere exempted from land grants made by Cholakings for Shiva temples. The concept of ‘theSacred Fortress of Love’ resulted in new templesbeing built as a separate shrine dedicated to Uma.Older temples constructed a bedroom adjacent tothe Shiva shrine where rituals were conducted,especially the final late-night puja. Images of Umaas bhogashakti (pleasure-force) were placed onthe thresholds of Shiva sanctums.

The Gulf of Mannar and the South China Seahave pearl oyster beds. The Chola obsession withSri Lanka and access to the South China Seamight have stemmed from their desire for pearljewellery and coral. Additionally, Sri Lankan portswere stops on the trade route between Aden andChina. The resultant taxes and high prices


JPM Quarterly Newsletter Oct-Dec 2014JPM Quarterly Apr-Jun 2019

commanded by goods were a lucrative prize worthfighting for. The Cholas attacked Sri Lankarepeatedly. There are records, images and ruins oftemples, including Shiva temples, in Pollonaruwain North-Central Sri Lanka. The bronzes here areintriguing and stylistically different, pointing tosuccessful and not-so-successful borrowing andadaptation from Hindu iconography.

The Cholas developed an often hostile andcomplex power relationship with the powerfulSrivijaya kings. While they fought over trade rights,

they also appeased each other with gifts. TheSrivijaya monarch was able to build a BuddhistVihara at Nagapattinam, though the Cholasrepeatedly raided Srivijaya territory without lastingsuccess. Striking bronze tableaux of eight heroicforms of Shiva (only two of which can be locatedtoday) may have been created because the Cholaswished to commission exemplary dynasticprototypes in the hope of victory.

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images continued to be made in a changed style.Contemporary taste demanded a regal, precise,less intimate and more sharply defined style.Inscriptions document patronage that came fromlay people and merchants. By 1275, the Cholascould no longer support temples. Inscriptionsrecord a gift of land to support a festival from thePandya king of Madurai. In 1310, general MalikKafur of the Delhi Sultanate marched southwards.His raid to fill the Sultan’s coffers explains theenigma of buried and missing bronzes as well asjewellery. Fearing desecration, temples buriedsacred bronzes. Malik Kafur’s armies sifted thejewellery and carried away immense wealth,ignoring the bronzes, some of which may havesuffered incidental damage. A second armyfollowed Malik Kafur’s, and the Delhi Sultanateestablished its own governor in Madurai, who soondeclared himself its Sultan. The buried bronzescould not be retrieved.

In the 15th century, the Hindu rulers ofVijayanagar took over the Chola temple lands andcommissioned new bronzes, which, howevermajestic, lack the panache of their Cholacounterparts. Some Chola bronzes were restoredto temples and re-consecrated. Tiruvangadibronzes were discovered as four buried hoards inthe mid-20th century. Coveted by collectors today,Chola bronzes continue to lead a chequeredexistence. Many have been relegated to sealedsafehouses and are no longer seen in temples orcelebrations, depriving devotees and art lovers ofthe opportunity to admire Shiva’s beauty. - J.K.

Forthcoming Programmes:

Master, Mentor, and Disciple: The Painter inMughal South Asia April 4th & 5th, 2019, 6:30 pmYael Rice (Assistant Professor of the History of Artand Asian Languages and Civilizations, AmherstCollege)

This seminar will consider the complex roles ofthe painter at the Mughal court from the sixteenthinto the seventeenth centuries. It will begin with thevery notion of the painter as it was articulated inpre-Mughal textual and visual sources, and thenwill shift course to examine the nature of the

Detail from a Gulshan Album folio, c. 1600,Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, Libri picturati A 117, JahangirAlbum, f. 21r.


Mughal painter as a mentor, a collaborator, and,finally, a master of esoteric insight in themanuscript workshops of Akbar and his sonJahangir.

Day 1Chains of Tradition: The Idea of the Artist in the•Islamicate WorldCommunities of Practice: The Mughal•Workshop as a Whole

Day 2Agents of Insight: Portraiture and the Limners•of FormMasters of the Unseen World: Depicting the•Emperor’s Dreams

Connected Worlds: The Rashtrakutas and theirCoinageApril 16th, 2019, 6:30 pmShailendra Bhandare (Assistant Keeper, SouthAsian and Far-eastern Numismatics and PaperMoney Collections, Ashmolean Museum)

The Rashtrakutas emerged as the pre-eminentpower in 8th – 10th centuries and dominated theso-called “Age of the Three Empires” in EarlyMedieval India. They influenced the political scene,were patrons to great temples like Ellora andfacilitated a new wave of trade and commerce withthe World of Islam which now commanded theregions across the Arabian Sea.

Given historical wisdom dictates there were noRashtrakuta coins! This view was articulated byMarxist historians like R.S.Sharma. However, inrecent times this widely held belief has come under

very close scrutiny. Coins that can be attributed tothe Rashtrakutas have come to light - they throw avery different and welcome light not only onprevalent theories of how the Early Medievalperiod in India should be viewed and studied, butalso provide an interesting and textured context ofIndia’s connections with the wider world throughmaritime and commercial links. The lecture willunravel some such closely held notions with thehelp of data which has not been publishedelsewhere in its appropriate context.


JPM Quarterly Newsletter Oct-Dec 2014

Past Programmes:

In the Triangle of Samarkand, Constantinople,and the Deccan: Modalities of Sovereignty inthe 15th CenturyJanuary 4th & 5th, 2019, 6:15 pmIlker Evrim Binbaş (Institute of Oriental and AsianStudies, University of Bonn)

Over the course of four lectures, this seminarseries addressed the notion of how political ideasand events coalesce and interact when there is nocommonly agreed upon constitutional paradigm toglue a society together. Prof. Ilker Evrim Binbaşexamined these notions of politics and sovereignty– along with their varied structures and limitations– within the context of the Timurid, Turkman andOttoman empires of the 15th century. In doing so,his analysis combined a rhetoric on kingship, andideas of governance in specific political contexts,as he discussed the wide range of political andconstitutional paradigms that emerged.

Binbaş listed two issues which were central tohis lectures, and which were in tandem with hiscurrent research. The first was his concernregarding the ‘peculiarities of history’, where henoted the tendency of historiographical study toview the 15th century as a transitional periodbetween the two imperial periods that came beforeand after it. Namely, the Mongols, and the greatempires of the early modern period: the Ottomans,Safavids and Mughals. This has resulted in the 15th

century being viewed as either pre or postsomething, an occurrence the prof. hopes tosuspend through his own study of the period as anindependent entity rather than a continuity of otherempires. The second issue is that of sovereignty,for the study of which he went beyond his specialtyin Central Asia and Iran, to include the Mughals,

Islamic Aesthetics



Ottomans and the Deccan Plateau, for thisseminar.

Binbaş began with a background of Timur, thelast of the Chinggisids (descendants of GenghisKhan), and the founder of the Timurid Empire,which lasted until 1857, and stretched acrossmodern-day Uzbekistan, Armenia, Kurdistan, andeven northern Iran. (In fact, the Mughal dynasty innorthern India was founded by one of Timur’sdescendants, Babar.)

He explicated how the dominant political

paradigm of the 15th century prescribed legitimacy,which Timur secured through a fictionalgenealogical tree that purported an overlap withthe descendants of Genghis Khan, the founder ofthe Mongol empire. This genealogy claimed Timurwas a distant cousin of the conqueror, making hima Chinggisid, and allowing him the legitimatelineage he required to fit the profile of a ruler. Theinscription on his tombstone in the Gur-e-Amirmausoleum, which is part of the necropolis foundin the heart of Samarkand, is evidence of this.

Timur further concretised his legitimacy by citinghis Chinggis sovereign name before his own on hiscoins and seal. However, although Timur was theruler, neither he nor his Chinggis nominalsovereign held sole power. It was the Timuridfamily who collectively held sovereignty.Interestingly, although the status of male familymembers was equal, their legitimacy wasdetermined by the lineage of their mothers andwives. For instance, of Timur’s four principal sons,he favoured his son Jehangir, as this son’s mother(Timur’s wife) was a free woman rather than anenslaved concubine. Another example of lineage-based hierarchy is Timur’s favourite grandsonMohammed Sultan, who was the son of Jehangir,and also had a Chinggis wife.

From the problematic questions this period’slegitimacy and sovereignty poses, Binbaş turnedattention to the art and politics of the Timurids.Using the horoscope of Timur’s grandson IskandarMirza, who was titled the Lord of AuspiciousConjunctions, he illustrated how the stars wereperfectly aligned in this ruler’s astrological birthchart. Binbaş also drew parallels between the

Prof. Ilker Evrim Binbaş speaks during ‘In the Triangle ofSamarkand, Constantinople, and the Deccan: Modalities ofSovereignty in the 15th Century’



symbols of stars and planets, and the models ofsovereignty and absolute power, with their positiveand negative attributes.

It is believed that after Timur’s death, a meetingtook place to decide the structural future of politics.Three options were listed: the first, to adopt theCaliph i.e. nominal sovereignty; the second, toreassert Chinggisid rule; and third, to preserve theTimurid structure. The last option was chosen, andShah Rukh (Iskandar’s uncle) acceded the post.

It was against his uncle Shah Rukh thatIskandar lost battle and his life. However, hiswritings still exist and have been immensely helpfulin reconstructing his politics. Iskandar was aunique figure in the Timurid family, and was deeplyinvolved in intellectual debates aimed atarticulating a new constitutional paradigm. Hemodelled himself as the new sovereign, with bothpolitical and spiritual power. He viewed himself asthe source of politics and law because he was bornat a time when the planets were most favourable.He could also interpret the letters of the Quran andtherefore, Iskandar extrapolated, could solve theproblems of the world. Both these factorstranslated to spiritual power. Iskandar died in battlesoon after he formulated this idea of spiritual andpolitical leader.

During Shah Rukh’s reign, the coins he mintedused the term ‘Caliphate’, which may soundstandard in the Islamic context, but is anuncommon occurrence. The term refers to apolitical model where the Caliph embodies justice,and his community must adhere to his rule.

Using the examples of several political treatises,Binbaş went on to illustrate the varied models of

the Caliphate, as interpreted by various Muslimsects. Interestingly, the theoretical method forchoosing a Caliph was through election byreligious scholars of a community, as they werebelieved to know what is best. However, inpractice, often a singular scholar’s vote wasconsidered sufficient to secure election.

Binbaş also raised the question of Shah Rukh’simprobable victory in the battle that followedTimur’s death. Earlier explanations suggest he wasable to capture the throne while his rivals foughteach other. But a more recent theory suggests hedrew contracts with Timur’s military commanders,who then led him to victory with their support inbattle. Binbaş believes these commanders agreedto contracts as they may have outlined an equalshare of power between Shah Rukh and them.

Through these and other historical details,Binbaş brought the political scene of the 15th-century Timurid period to life. In fact, each of thepolitically-charged lectures culminated in aquestion-and-answer session that further addednew facets to the subject. The last lectureconcluded the seminar series with overarchingtheories, summations and illuminating anecdotesfrom Binbaş’s research, leaving the audiencebrimming with new insights to take forward withthem in their Islamic Aesthetics course. - S.P.M.



From International Timurid to Ottoman:Aesthetics of Architectural Landscapesextending between Central Asia and Anatolia inthe 15th-16th CenturiesJanuary 7th, 8th and 9th, 2019, 6:15 pmGülru Necipoğlu (Aga Khan Professor andDirector, Harvard University)

Prof. Necipoğlu traced the emergence of theTimurid-Turkmen architectural idiom in 15th centuryIran and Central Asia by contextualising iconicmonuments in their urban, aesthetic, socio-cultural,and political settings, describing transregionalexchanges with India, Mamluk Egypt and Europe,as well as indigenous architectural traditions,materiality, and ornamental aesthetics. Her multi-layered approach seemed reminiscent of the “thickdescription” endorsed by Geertz.

The Mongol conquest of Anatolia followingTimur’s invasion of India caused the breakdown of15th-century empires and polities, uniting areasfrom China, Central Asia and India, thoughconquered regions did not merely mimic CentralAsian and Iranian models. They were integratedinto local building traditions, creating divergent anddistinctive architectural cultures. Iran and CentralAsia’s brick and tilework traditions were translatedinto stone in Anatolia and India, creating a hybridaesthetic form. Interactions between the arts of thebook and architectural ornament are apparent inmonuments, plan-types, patterns and ornamentaldesigns on paper, revealing overlooked parallelsand offering insights into architecture andornament; for instance, muqarnas are three-dimensional representations of stellate designs.

The international Timurid mode circulated via

architectural workshops, designers and designscrolls. Its staple products were architecturalornaments, ceramic tilework and calligraphicinscriptions in painted and carved plaster.Important precursors are domed building-typeswhich developed in Central Asia and Iran in the lateSeljuq period, a time of influential artistic andarchitectural efflorescence. The Seljuq ruler SultanSanjar’s monumental tomb – in tilework-accentuated brick, square in plan with a cross inthe middle, a double shell dome and four cornerunits – became a major plan-type in mausoleumsand pavilions. Carved stucco work, stellate designsand teardrop motifs are a sign of Mongol style alsoseen in India. The Ilkhanid ruler Oljaitu’s tombshows awareness of earlier models such as SultanSanjar’s tomb. Ilkhanid interiors had stucco workpainted in designs reminiscent of a manuscriptpage, with blue, gold and white tiles and painting.The Ottomans were aware of Iranian brickmonuments highlighted by blue and white tilework.Iranian and Central Asian monuments displaycursive calligraphy superimposed with a minusculeKufic script, also seen in Ottoman examples.Mongol architecture shows an increase in tile-covered brick structures; a Yazd monumentredecorated in the Timurid-Turkmen period revealsmore tilework and complex designs, whichstemmed from the availability of paper that enableddesign transfer to huge geographies.

Timur brought artisans, architects, and ideasfrom conquered lands to his capitals. His interestin gigantism created an additive, sometimes ill-proportioned architecture which did not last. Outerdomes were placed on tall drums at a great



distance from inner domes, also seen in theMamluk stone architecture of Cairo. Timuridmonuments displayed huge calligraphy andwallpaper-like ornament in tile, with painter-calligraphers closely involved in architecture,creating an aesthetic in which all media wereintegrated. The translation, transformation andselective dissemination of the international Timurid-Turkmen architectural idiom involved more achange in surface decoration than of building styleor plan-type and is apparent in the Ottomancapitals of Bursa, Edirne and Istanbul.

In the early Ottoman period at Bursa,indigenous building techniques alternating stoneand brick with hemispherical domes were similarto Byzantine architecture and used the sameworkshops. Bayezid I’s mosque has additivemultiple domed squares with heavy piers and an

oculus in the highest dome with a fountain below,the memory of a courtyard condensed into aclosed space. Mehmet I’s ‘green mosque’, anadditive Ottoman T-type convent-style, funerarymosque complex is an example of the internationalTimurid-Turkmen mode in its decorations and yetthe great size of the tomb has inscriptions whichspeak against the Timurid oppressor. Murad II, whoabdicated and then returned to the throne bydeposing his son Mehmet II, has an unusual tomb,which testifies to his Sufi tendencies, originallyopen to the sky and rainwater and lacking inornamentation. Persian poetic inscriptions gaveway to Arabic Koranic inscriptions as the statebecame more powerful, centralised and orthodox.

T-shaped multifunctional complexes expandedthe cities of Bursa and Edirne linearly. Suchkhanqah or zawiya, popular especially in Anatolia,



with a section for travellers and Sufi orders, werenot mosques, for each had its own function.Hierarchy ensured that after the early 16th century,T-type buildings were built by governors andviziers, and not by sultans. The Ottomansexpanded towards Europe from Edirne, a city withlow red brick house roofs, minarets and leaddomes. The additive mosque built by Murad II, thefirst with a single, large, lead-covered dome, hada triple gallery, four minarets, heavy piers, Timurid-type multi-layered calligraphy and a courtyard,combining Ottoman, Timurid, Damascene andMamluk models, moving away from the multi-domed models of Bursa. Behind it is the old nine-dome mosque, inviting comparison. Monumentswith stone walls and brick domes in Edirne displaycolossal calligraphy – like that of an album page –on heavy piers and tilework in blue, white andturquoise, unlike Bursa.

Constantinople, the conquest of which unitedthe territory, lay between the older coexistentcapitals of Bursa and Edirne. Timurid-Turkmen,Roman-Byzantine and contemporary Italianrenaissance references came together in OttomanIstanbul’s palaces and royal mosque complexes,since Mehmet II, who conquered and thenrepopulated the city, aspired to conquer Rome andwas interested in creating a new aesthetic.Following Ottoman tradition, he converted, withminimal changes, the Hagia Sophia (the biggestchurch) into a Friday mosque. The hippodromewas used by the Ottomans, but the Byzantinepalace was used as a quarry for the Topkapipalace. This abandonment is common, as palacesrelate to dynasties.

Contemporary Italian maps show the pyramidalstructure of the horizontally-oriented Topkapipalace, with the main buildings on the hilltop, manytent-like shore pavilions and a surrounding gardenwith multiple pavilions. One of these, the well-preserved, relatively monumental Cinili Kosk (tiledkiosk), is in Timurid style with gilded lapis lazulitiles, blue and white mosaic and tile work, andmulti-layered calligraphy. Textual sources describethree garden palaces built by Mehmet II. Cinili

Prof. Gülru Necipoğlu speaks during ‘From InternationalTimurid to Ottoman: Aesthetics of Architectural Landscapesextending between Central Asia and Anatolia in the 15th-16th Centuries’



Kosk, a hasht bihisht building-type also seen inTabriz and transformed in Moghul tombs, wasjuxtaposed with two vanished palaces made in thePersian and Ottoman manner, evidence of a globalarchitecture. The spectacular treasury-library withattached bath, an Italianate building with roundarches and inbuilt niches has a panoramic view ofthe landscape, emphasising Mehmet II as the rulerof two continents and two seas. His tiny audiencehall is very unlike Timurid examples.

Mehmet II’s was a more secluded image ofkingship which the scholar attributed to theembarrassment of being deposed by his fatherearly in his reign. His symmetrical mosquecomplex attempted to surpass his father’s byemulating the plan of a courtyard with threeentrances but expanding the space by adding ahalf-dome and two smaller domes. Supported bycolossal columns used for the first time, the muchhigher dome with a zone of half domes below it anda tympanum with windows, is modelled on theHagia Sophia. A separate imaret was built to housetravellers and Sufis. From this time, each sultanand his queen were buried in tombs attached tomosque complexes built on hills, dominating thecityscape and creating the unique silhouette ofIstanbul. The radical Mehmet II confiscated landswhich had been given to dervishes, which werelater returned by his son Bayezid II, who builtlinear, T-shaped mosques at Amasya, Edirne andIstanbul, fulfilling his obligation to Halveti Sufis whosupported his royal aspirations.

The Iznik tile-decorated Suleymaniye mosquewith four minarets built by the state architect Sinan,in ashlar stone masonry, a reinterpretation of the

Hagia Sophia on a smaller scale, was planned inlayers to preserve its view from the opposite shore.Political and social changes determined thedistinctive cosmopolitan aesthetic that emerged inIstanbul in the late 15th century and culminated inthe age of Sinan in the 16th century. - J.K.

Architecture & Decor in 15th century DelhiSultanateJanuary 10th & 11th, 2019, 6:15 pmYves Porter (Teaches Islamic Art, Aix MarseilleUniversité)

In this lecture, Prof. Porter dealt with keyaspects pertaining to the period of the Sayyid andLodi dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate:

Methodological constraints in historiography,•Political consolidation and fragmentation, •Contextualising the forts, palaces, mosques•and tombs within the political narrative, and, Architectural typologies of monumental tomb•complexes, and decorative elements ofarchitecture, especially tiles.

Speaking of the historiographical constraints in



methodology, Prof. Porter underlined the scarcityof surviving documentary sources – only onefirman of Mohd. Tughlak survives. The primarysources, therefore, have been Ahmed Sirhindi(Tarikh I Mubarak Shahi), Ferishta (the Tarikh),Tarikh-i-Daudi, Malfuzat-i-Timuri and Baburnama.The Catalan Atlas of 1375 was also cited as asource of how the Indian subcontinent was viewedby a European cartographer.

The other important historical sources listedwere coins and architecture. The architecture ofthe period is a significant contributor, and requiresstudy in co-relation with political narratives and artforms, including those found in books.

Most of these sources are elite, while theeconomic life of lower classes is unknown, thoughit has been indicated that taxation, trade andagriculture were sound.

Prof. Porter also outlined the politicalfragmentation that occurred through successivegenerations after Firuz Shah’s death, whenmultiple princes simultaneously contested inparallel centres of royal power in Delhi. It was afterTimur’s invasion that political equations were resetwithin and with the Sultanate, leading to KhizrKhan Sayyid taking control of the throne a fewyears later. However, the ‘khutba’ was still read inthe name of ‘Noble Tartarian’.

During these times of political strife, multiplecities – Lal Kot, Siri, Jahanpanah (connecting LalKot and Siri), Firuzabad – and Jahannuma (anunidentified palace conjectured to be on northernridge) served as simultaneous political basesunder the sultans or their contenders.

Despite this political activity, there is no clear

evidence of palatial buildings originating in theSayyid and Lodi periods, indicating the likely useof older buildings, wooden structures or tents. Thewooden pillars of Hazar Satoon, (at Bijai Mandal)are indicative of this. The palace area shared thesame wall connecting the Begumpur Masjidindicating their pre-determined alignment as partof an integrated complex comprising ofmonumental architecture of a royal palace areaand the mosque.

Although Firuzabad had extensive palace areas,these have now been lost to modern-day‘development’. The larger city originally extendedfrom Wazirbad to Suraj Kund. Khizrabad andMubarakabad are lost in entirety. Alam ShahSayyid built a few buildings in Badaun, where helived after being permanently exiled. Overall, thephysical remnants of this phase are meagrecompared to contemporary sultanates in Bengal orMandu where palatial architecture is significant.

There were frequent wars against Gujarat,Malwa, Bengal, Jaunpur and Kashmir, which hadgained independence during this time. Despite thepolitical turmoil, coins from the reign of MohammedShah increased in weight, indicating prosperity.

The rise of powerful nobility cliques saw anundermining of the sultans’ authority during thistime as well. Several monumental tombs ofunidentified nobility survive – and of these, onlyfour tombs are of kings belonging to the twodynasties in question.

Although evidence of 14th-century chinawaremarked for the ‘special kitchen’ was discovered inFiruzabad, the actual layout and functionalbuildings that constituted the palace have not been



identified.Interestingly, most famous mosques were built

by nobility, not royalty. In fact, mosques weresignificantly outnumbered by tombs. Of the royaltombs that survive, some house several membersof the deceased’s family, as Ghiyasuddin Tughlak’stomb in Tughlakabad, and Feroz Shah Tughlak’stomb in Hauz Khas. Tombs of Mubarak Shah,Mohammed Shah, Bahlul Lodi and Sikandar Lodialso survive, allowing a detailed study of theirtypology. Of these, Mubarak Shah’s tomb complexis the largest surviving one belonging to the Sayyiddynasty.

Tombs had multifarious functions – many werecomplexes with madrasas, gardens, baolis andwall-mosques. Octagonal-type tombs were basedon the 3 x 3 principle, which is more Indian thanTimurid, and a likely derivation from the mandalaor navratana concept in India. The first octagonaltomb was Khan-i-Jahan-Tilangani’s, in 1369.Mubarak Shah and Mohammed Shah’s tombs areelegant octagonal domed structures in gardencomplexes.

Bahlul Lodi’s tomb is inside a basti and of a verydifferent type – a baradari type of nine squares,with five domes decorated with stucco. Other suchsquare or rectangular tombs are those for DariyaKhan, Chaurasi Gumbad and Bibi Zarina.

Tohfewala Gumbad was likely the Khalji Fridaymosque. Bagh-i-Alam-ka-Gumbad has a walledmosque. Moth-ki-Masjid was built by MiyanBhuwa, and Nili Masjid by Fateh Khan’s wet nurse.The nine-domed structural type of BegumpuriMasjid is of indigenous origin. Tinburj Masjid wasthe biggest Lodi mosque, though its minarets are

incomplete.

After examining the architectural typography ofthe period, Prof. Porter turned attention to itsdecorative elements. Several buildings usedglazed tiles as ornamentation, the oldest one beingthe Idgah at Rapri (UP) dated 1312 CE. The oldeststructure in Delhi, Begumpuri Masjid, usesmoulded turquoise tiles with a lotus motif.

Nili Masjid is an exquisite blue-tiled building, thetiles being of unusual technique because there is

Prof. Yves Porter speaks during ‘Architecture & Décor in15th century Delhi Sultanate’



no trace of slip. Moth-ki-Masjid has monochromeblue tiles. Chote Khan-ka-Gumbad uses blue andgreen tiles, while Sikandar Lodi’s tomb uses tilesof green, blue, and yellow for its chhatris. It has apainted ceiling, with calligraphy that requiresfurther study. Shishe-Gumbad is decorated incobalt, white, and turquoise glazed tilesemblazoned with vegetal motifs. Jamali-Kamalihas blue and white tiles, while its interiorsrepresent the stylistic transition to Mughal style.

The lotus flower motif and the shamsa motifwere often used during this period, the motifdrawing inspiration from art in books, as calligraphydoes in architecture, extensively in the latter partof this period. However, the six-point star motifused in Feroz Shah’s tomb was not a Mughalintroduction.

It has been found that these tiles wereindigenous and not Persian, as glazed ceramicshad pre-Islamic existence in India in several states.Excavations near Qutb Minar have even yieldedruins of green glazed tiles. Tiles made in Punjabwere different from those used in Delhi, solidifyingthe fact that glazed ceramics were wellestablished.

At the lecture’s conclusion, Prof. Porter statedthat art is not a medium of cultural domination buthas its independent development, though relatedto its political and cultural context; he urged thatthere is a need to establish more dialogue on art.He cited the example of Mohd. Bin Sam’s ring,inscribed in Sanskrit text as an example of an artform placed in its socio-political context yet beingatypical.

The series ended with the speaker urging that

the remaining material evidence enablingreconstruction of the past needs to be preserved.

- R.V.

After Timur: Calligraphy and the Arts of theBook in the Persianate World between 1400and 1550January 12th & 14th, 2019, 6:15 pmSimon Rettig (Assistant Curator of the Arts of theIslamic World, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M.Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

Simon Rettig’s seminar series focused onPersian manuscripts from the 15th century, theGolden Age of their production in Iran and beyond.Rettig’s lectures offered a broad understanding oftheir production, patronage, and circulation

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throughout the Persian-speaking sphere thatextended from present-day Istanbul to Delhi. Hisseminars outlined the general characteristics ofmanuscripts produced in Iran, followed byconsiderations of specific issues surroundingcalligraphic scripts, illuminations, and illustrations.By drawing connections between formal andaesthetic qualities and functions of the manuscriptto the overarching cultural and political climate ofthe time, Rettig offered a sensitive approachtowards studying Islamic art.

In the early 15th century, the main centres forbook production in Greater Iran were Isfahan andShiraz. Rettig explained how Timurid princeBaysunghur transformed Herat into a centre forbook production. When he invaded Tabriz in the1410s, Baysunghur emulated the regnant SultanAhmed Jalayir’s model of the ketabkhane orcentralised atelier for the production of books.Baysunghur brought master craftsmen from Tabrizto Herat and consolidated the idea of the prince asa patron and commissioner of art, which becamethe norm for Timurid rulers.

It is also under the Timurids that commercialproduction of books expanded, promptingadvancements in codicological characteristics,scripts, types of illumination, and paintings.Techniques ranging from dyeing paper, usinglacquer in binding, and experimenting with gold,lapis lazuli, and cobalt, were explored to constructbooks as beautifully as possible. Workscommissioned by princes could be identified bytheir use of expensive material and sophisticateddesigns. Books also contained colophons thatdetailed their patronage. Although painters did not

typically sign their work as a gesture of humility,there was a rise in discrete signatures as seen inBehzad’s illustration of Yusuf and Zuleikha,enabling artists to be identified.

Rettig further highlighted how the ketabkhanemaintained records of their activities in albums,which also contained samples of paintings,illuminations, and calligraphic script that could beimitated to maintain and further techniques andimagery through the decades. These albumstravelled, following conquests, through gifts, or byforeign patronage, and became foundational in thedevelopment of art forms across the OttomanEmpire as well as in Mughal India. Effectively, royaland commercial production of the books in Iraniancentres led to the dissemination of Persian poetry,illustration, and iconography throughout Centraland South Asia.

In his second seminar, Rettig delved into the“development, diffusion, and reception of Nastaʿliqcalligraphy used in Persian manuscripts. In Iran, anew calligraphic script emerged at the end of the14th century, when Mir Ali Tabrizi invented theNastaʿliq, which became synonymous with thesophistication of Persian art. By 1450, the scripthad spread across the Persianate world.

Particularly in the 16th century, Rettig describedhow the political and religious antagonism betweenthe Safavids and Ottomans reflected in the shift inperception of the visual quality of the scripts in thetwo regions. Through the comparison of two majorworks from the 16th century, Gulestan-e-hunar orthe Rose Garden of Art composed by the SafavidQuazi Ahmed, and the Epic Deeds of Artists by theOttoman Mustafa Ali, Rettig elaborated how



distinctly the Safavids and Ottomans consideredthe genealogy of the script with regard to mastercalligraphers, Mir Ali Tabrizi and the Khwarazmibrothers.

Rettig further discussed how the calligrapherShah Mahmud Nishapuri’s copy of the Qur’an inNastaʿliq was gifted to the Ottoman ruler, Murad IIIin 1574 by the Safavids. This was a bold gesture,considering that Nastaʿliq was not a codifiedQur’anic script, and furthermore, because this Shiaversion of the Qur’an had been gifted to a Sunniruler. While the copy was hidden away in thetreasury of the Topkapi Palace, the Ottoman

response was to inscribe large vases with Sunniverses written in Nastaʿliq, depriving the script ofits primary function which was to copy Persianpoetry. Thus, Rettig argued that while the diffusionof the script portrayed, ostensibly, a sense of unitywithin the region, its reception and usage pointedtowards rising ideological tensions.

Rettig’s third seminar considered the ‘animated’illumination in Persian Belleteristic manuscripts.Most illuminations, particularly in the Qur’an, wereused as verse markers or marginal devices,featuring geometric or vegetal patterns,understood as non-figurative. That being said,


Dr. Simon Rettig speaks during ‘After Timur: Calligraphy and the Arts of the Book in the Persianate World between 1400and 1550’


Rettig listed a number of works during the Timuridperiod, where figures were inserted into theilluminations in Persian manuscripts. Theseincluded human or animal-headed terminalsknown as the waq-waq, as well as supernaturalcreatures and angels.

Where geometric patterns remained within therealm of the ordinary, Rettig stressed that “therepresentation of something that is real butapprehended and transformed in such a way thatit appears imaginary” conjured the marvellous andotherworldly. These anthropomorphic and fantasticfigures served to inspire imaginative and mysticalideas that went beyond the material world. Thesefigures, however, did not replace illustration. Rettigestablished how animated imagery within theilluminations simultaneously retained a decorativefunction, while conjuring the higher reality ofspiritual imagination to complement the contentwithin the manuscript.

In his final seminar, Rettig discussed the crucialrelationship between illustration and text in Persianmanuscripts. He focused on the early 15th-centurymanuscript, Khosrow-e-Shirin by Nizami, from thecollection of the Freer Gallery of Art, to explorevarious layers of meaning generated by theorganisation of images and text zonally, throughthe use of headings or literal descriptions, and alsothrough a consideration of imaginative ormetaphorical verses of text. Rettig emphasisedhow it is imperative to consider the text andillustration in conjunction to each other rather thanindependently, to understand the contents of themanuscript. Through the 16th century, with the risein regional sectarianism, several existing images

or texts in manuscripts were obliterated or editedbased on Islamic affiliations, transforming themeanings constructed by the pages.

Taking into consideration the large volume ofarchived manuscripts that have not yet beencarefully studied, Rettig concluded that amagnitude of research is yet to be conducted tounderstand the contents of manuscripts, as well astheir afterlives. - P.S.

The Global Muṣḥaf: Visual Identity, Trans-Regionalism, and Eclecticism in Manuscriptsof the Qur’an after 1400January 15th, 2019, 6:15 pmSimon Rettig (Assistant Curator of the Arts of theIslamic World, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M.Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

In this lecture, organised by the DeccanHeritage Foundation, Simon Rettig proposed acodicological investigation as a means to highlightgeneral characteristics of the Qur’an, to discussregional specificities in the production of Qur’anicmanuscripts, and to deliberate the appearance ofsyncretism within them as a result of trans-regionalexchange, particularly in the 15th century. Rettig’slecture tackled questions concerning technicaladvancement, collecting practices, andidiosyncrasies with regard to the Qur’an to alsoconsider India’s place within the pre-modernIslamic world.

Qur’anic texts were decorated with illuminatedheadings or verse markers that enabled readers tolocate their place within the text. Calligraphydeveloped as a visual embodiment of the word of



god, and six different scripts were codified forQur’anic purposes. Through examples of amonumental Qur’an commissioned by Timur, anda smaller copy by his nephew, Baysunghur, Rettigdemonstrated how the size and decoration of thebook varied depending on its ownership andintended usage. Rettig contended that the 15th

century was the first time we see a sense ofglobalism in the Islamic world through exchangesbetween the Mediterranean and India, andQur’anic manuscripts perfectly embody suchinteractions.

Centres for Qur’anic production within theTimurid, Mamluk, and Ottoman regions had theirown decorative particularities, while retainingformal aspects of the text. The regions influencedeach other throughout the 15th century, and anincrease in international trade and diplomacy alsoprompted intercultural and technical exchange.This is evidenced, for instance, in Qur’anicmanuscripts from Timurid Iran that used mulberrybark paper, gifted by the Ming dynasty in China.

To consider where India stood in the context ofQur’anic production in relation to the Timurids,Mamluks, and Ottomans, Rettig highlighted the1398 Gwalior Qur’an, the region’s oldest-datedQur’anic manuscript. This extensively illuminatedcopy amalgamates Iranian, Mamluk Egyptian, aswell as purely Indian motifs. Rettig explained howBihari script as well as Indian motifs wereincorporated deliberately to cater to the taste of thelocal clientele. The manuscript contains a seal ofSultan Bayazid II, which also establishes aconnection with Ottoman society. This connectionis reinforced by the Ottoman-style binding used for

this script that seems to have been done inIstanbul. Rettig further elaborated upon howmembers of the Akkoyunlu Dynasty from WesternIran also travelled to India, influencing theilluminations in the local productions of the Qur’an.While Indian Sultans and patrons wanted Qur’ansthat appealed to their own tastes, they alsocommissioned manuscripts that were stylisticallyon the same level as productions for Ottoman,Mamluk, and Timurid Sultans. Consequently, itcould be concluded that India was not on theperipheries of the Islamic world but an integral partof it through its global exchanges and localproductions.

Rettig finally highlighted the need for furtherresearch surrounding the production of Qur’ansand other Islamic manuscripts in India, to learnmore about local centres, styles, patronage, aswell as cultural exchange in order to situate theregion’s relation to the rest of the Islamic worldmore comprehensively. - P.S.


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Forthcoming Programmes:

Khmer Temple: Architecture and Icons April 9th, 10th, 11th & 12th, 2019, 6:00 pmOlivier Cunin (Associate Researcher of theResearch Center in Architecture and Engineeringof the National Architecture School of Nancy(ENSAN))

The set of four lectures is an overview andanalysis of art, architecture, and iconography ofsome of Cambodia’s most important temples. Theseries begins with a lecture focused on thedevelopment of the Khmer temple from the 8th tothe 13th centuries, which incorporated Indianarchitectural treatises, but created originalcompositions such as 'Mountain temple' or MountMeru in Khmer architecture.The second lecture

discusses Prasat Thom and Banteay Srei, the twoemblematic Shaiva temples of the 10th century.The lecture highlights the salient features thatKhmer architects excelled in, differing from theIndic models. The third lecture explores the role ofBayon-style Mahayana Buddhist temples (builtduring the end of the 12th and 13th centuries) inAngkorian history. Based on recent scientificresearch, it highlights the major features and therelative chronology of Bayon-style temples. Thefinal lecture moves to the early 13th-centuryMahayana Buddhist state temple, the Bayon, builtby Jayavarman VII, and analyses its uniquearchitecture of face towers, the divine populationof the temple as well as the later Shaiva andTheravada adaptations of the temple as evident inits decoration and architecture.

Southeast Asian Aesthetics


Interpreting Premodern Javanese Art andIconography in the Light of Texts April 18th & 19th, 2019, 6:00 pmAndrea Acri (Assistant Professor of Tantric StudiesEcole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL University)

The series will discuss the issue of matching theextant archaeological and art historical vestiges ofCentral and East Java with Old Javanese texts.The first talk will focus on the problem of thesystem of directional deities depicted at CandiShiva, Prambanan, and its textual prototypes; the

second talk will present visual evidence frompremodern Central and East Javanese art as wellas the modern Balinese art of the horrific anddemonic elements that may be linked to thecremation-ground culture characterising sometantric traditions in both India and Southeast Asia.

Prambanan Shiva Temple relief


The Art and Archaeology of Hindu andBuddhist Southeast Asia April 23rd, 24th, 25th & 26th, 2019, 6:00 pmStephen Murphy (Senior Curator for SoutheastAsia, Asian Civilisations Museum)This series is an exploration of the art, architecture,archaeology and history of some of SoutheastAsia’s most prominent cultures. It begins with twolectures specifically focusing on Thailand and itsreception of early Buddhist and Hindu concepts. Indoing so, these lectures provide two case studiesof how Southeast Asian cultures of the firstmillennium CE adopted and adapted Hindu andBuddhist concepts to suit their own needs andpractices. At the same time, they will illustrate how

the arrival of these Indic religions acted ascatalysts that transformed the societies theyencountered. The third lecture explores the crucialrole of maritime trade and connectivity in thetransmission of Hindu and Buddhist conceptsthroughout the region. It does so by discussingsome of the major ports and maritime kingdoms ofSoutheast Asia and their pivotal roles in the historyof Buddhism in particular. The final lecture movesforward in time to discuss the Buddhist kingdomsthat arose in the second millennium CE inMainland Southeast Asia. Building on the culturesthat came before them, they developed into someof the region’s most powerful and effervescentsocieties.

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Buddhist Aesthetics

Past Programmes:

Buddhism in Southern Andhra: The Evidenceof AmaravatiFebruary 11th and 12th, 2019, 6:30 - 8:30 pmRichard Blurton (Retired Curator, British Museum)

On the first day of the seminar, Amaravati wasstudied as a major site of Indian Buddhism, whilethe second day saw the focus widen, viewingAmaravati through a more international lens,across its chronology. Many of the sculptures usedto illustrate the presentation were based on theBritish Museum’s collection of Amaravatisculptures.

The ancient site of Amaravati — the firstBuddhist monument to be investigated in any detailby the Europeans in the 18th century — is situatedon the banks of the River Krishna, in today’sGuntur district of Andhra Pradesh. There was amajor fortified settlement near the Amaravati stupaknown as Dharanikota, whose rulers were thepatrons of the stupa. However, inscriptions at thestupa refer to it as a Mahachaitya or Great Shrineand not as a stupa.

Though Amaravati is considered one of thegreatest monuments of antiquity, little is knownabout it today. In historical times, Amaravati wasaccessible from the sea, through the River Krishna,and remnants of ancient wooden wharves alongthe river edge suggest the importance of the town

and its openness to trade. It is this trade whichcreated the wealth to build and sustain the stupaand the community of monks who would have livedonsite.

The shrine at Amaravati was at least 60 metresin diameter, with its solid dome set on a circulardrum or platform. The stupa was topped with aharmika or a square rail feature. A railing ranaround the base of the stupa, enclosing apradakshina or circumambulatory path. Entry to


Dr. Richard Blurton speaks during ‘Buddhism in SouthernAndhra: The Evidence of Amaravati’


this path was through four gateways, one at eachof the cardinal points, and each gateway wastopped by four lion figures and were considered theguardians of the gateways.

The stupa exterior could have been decoratedwith stucco figures or even painted, but that is allspeculative, as the upper portion of the stupa hasnot survived. What survives in museums today isalmost exclusively the lower part of the dome, thedrum below, the railing and gateways. Blurton usedthe sculptures from the British Museum’s collectionto reconstruct the lower part of the stupa and showus what pilgrims would have seen when theyvisited Amaravati Mahachaitya.

The outer part of the fence or railing might havebeen the first thing that the pilgrims saw onapproaching the Mahachaitya. Auspicious imageryon the outer side of the railing, in the form of lotusblossoms as well as dwarves playing music ordancing, would welcome the pilgrims. They wouldenter the stupa through any of the four gatewaysand come across five pillars placed on an ayanakaplatform. The pilgrims would then proceed in aclockwise direction to do a pradakshina of thestupa. The pradakshina path was such that therelic (which has not survived today), even thoughit is not visible, was kept on the auspicious right.

Visible on the left side of the pilgrim’s view wouldthen be the inner side of the stone railing. This wasfilled with narratives from the Jataka tales as wellas scenes from the life of the Buddha. From thesculptures that survive in Amaravati, it is clear thatthe narrative element was of paramountimportance in reminding the devotee of the pastlives of the Buddha through various rebirths. On

the right side of the pradakshina path would be thebase of the drum, with its surface covered in largeslabs of stone depicting the stupa. The depictionsof the stupa, many of which were donations withinscriptions, vary in style from early non-elaborateand unadorned versions to later elaborate ones.Similarly, the Buddha is shown in an aniconic formin early representations while later representationsshow the iconic form. This change inrepresentation of the Buddha at a site likeAmaravati, which has existed for centuries and hasseen many changes, helps us document thechange in how the Buddha was understood,experienced and represented.

The chronology of the stupa at Amaravati isunclear and uncertain, though its scale and sizesuggest it took several centuries to be built. Thestupa was also constantly repaired with new slabsand sculptures. At one end of the timeline aresculptures that date to the 2nd century BCE and atthe other end are sculptures from around 8th

century CE, indicating at least a 1,000 years ofhistory. Between the 3rd and 4th centuries CE waswhen the site saw peak activity and was also whenit was at its richest and most vibrant, after which itwent into gradual decline.

The chronology that is accepted today is basedon the work of Akiro Shimata, who looked at theonly architectural element to have survived — therailings or the vedika, and identified four differentiterations of the railings that includes theundecorated granite of the 3rd century BCE and thedensely sculpted narrative railings of the 3rd

century CE which show the Buddha in corporealform.



Though the Amaravati stupa has ceased to bea place of worship for over a millennium, it is stillreferred to in other places. The name Amaravatiitself is not mentioned – what is mentioned isDharanikota. Amaravati also survives in Tibetantradition as the place where the Buddha revealedthe Kalachakra tantra. Amaravati also findsmention in written texts and illustrations inmanuscripts from Eastern India, where twoBuddhist sites in Southern India are mentioned —Amaravati and Kanchipuram. The Thai tradition toomakes a reference to Amaravati at Sukhotai, wherea 15thcentury-CE inscription mentions a local monkwho travelled to Amaravati seeking information onthe imagery of Jataka tales.

Modern day examples come from a groupof forest monks living in the forestsof Buckinghamshire in England, who followthe Thai tradition, which has been influenced bythe Amaravati tradition. Closer home, the name

‘Amaravati’ has taken on new dimension, with thebifurcation of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, andbeing declared the new capital of the latter state.

There is a lot of speculation around AmaravatiMahachaitya, including regarding onsite religiouspractices. At one of the smaller mounds of the site,it was found that there was an older Iron Age burialsite underneath. A stupa is a monument to death,with an innate connection to burial and deathrituals. And yet, there are no records of pilgrims atAmaravati Mahachaitya or of what they did there.A stupa of this size and importance would havehad a substantial liturgical calendar, all of which islost today.

It is hoped that findings of the studies on theBuddhist site of Kanaganahalli in neighbouringKarnataka, which are being conducted by theArchaeological Society of India, will be able to shedlight on the Amaravati Mahachaitya as well. - S.G.



Western Himalayan Art and Its KeyMonumentsMarch 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th,and 29th, 2018, 3:30- 6:00 pmChristian Luczanits (David L. Snellgrove SeniorLecturer, London University)

The detailed write up about this seminar serieswill be featured in our next Quarterly (Jul - Sep2019).

Deities of the Vajradhātu Mandala in the Apse of the Assembly Hall of Sumda Chung, Ladakh;ca. 1200 CE; photo C. Luczanits 2009


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Criticism & TheoryJPM’s Criticism and Theory offerings include (1)

an academic year-long PostgraduateDiploma/Certificate course in Critical Theory,Aesthetics, and Practice, as well as ongoing publicseminars and lectures in the field; (2) an academicyear-long Postgraduate/Certificate course inTheoretical Foundations; (3) an ongoing series of

public seminars and lectures in Indian IntellectualTraditions; and (4) occasional academicconferences and workshop in these fields.

Installation view: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2014. Photo: David M. Heald


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Critical Theory, Aesthetics, & Practice

After a break in November, during whichstudents produced their first essays, CTAP

resumed in December with a lecture by AcademicDirector Rohit Goel, on structuralism, semioticsand linguistics. Through a discussion ofMythologies, a seminal text by Roland Barthes,Goel explained not only the significance ofSaussure’s transhistorical theory of language butalso how ‘myth’ as a form becomes historicallyspecific. If every aspect of modern life can bemythologised in capitalist societies, Barthesprovides an effective system of demythologising byunpacking the first and second order significationin a series of vignettes on popular myths. By theend of the lecture, students were able to point toeveryday examples from their own environmentand explain the signifier, signified and significationof each.

For the session on poststructuralism, Prof. Iyer,from IIT Bombay, returned to teach MichelFoucault’s rarely discussed theses on theimportance of artists such as Edouard Manet, PaulKlee, Wassily Kandinsky and Rene Magritte, whoruptured and transformed our understanding ofWestern art. This exceptional lecture began withan introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge,before delving deep into Manet and the Object ofPainting and This is Not a Pipe, simultaneouslyproviding the students a graph of how early andmiddle Foucault differs from the later.

Before the close of 2018, CTAP had theprivilege of welcoming Sandhini Poddar, Prof.Robert Meister (UC Santa Cruz) and Prof. FaisalDevji (University of Oxford) for a series of publicseminars. Poddar, an eminent curator, spokeintimately about the life and work of Zarina Hashmi,while Prof. Meister, author of the groundbreakingtext After Evil and the soon-to-be releasedHistorical Justice in the Age of Finance, lecturedon both of these timely tomes. His two-day seminarwas followed by two days with Prof. Devji, whoaddressed the subject ‘Liberalism and its IndianAfterlife’ in four parts: ‘Intimacy and Interest inIndian Political Thought’, ‘Gandhi Against theHuman Race’, ‘Godless Secularism: Europe, Indiaand Religion’ and ‘Ambedkar’s Politics: DemocracyWithout Nationalism’.

Rethinking the Anthropocene, a lecture by RohitGoel that dealt with Jason Moore’s Capitalocene Iand II, followed these challenging seminars.Moore’s two articles on the nature and origins ofthe ecological crisis we face today provide analternative to the history of the ‘anthropocene’popular in our current discourse. As Moore writes:“Against the Anthropocene’s shallowhistoricisation, I argue for the Capitalocene,understood as a system of power, profit andre/production in the web of life.”

Practitioners actively working in the field ofcontemporary art delivered the final suite of


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lectures for CTAP. In January, Nida Ghouse –curator and writer – joined us for four lectures. Thefirst class, titled ‘From Museum Objects to ForensicEvidence’, dealt with the work of ForensicArchitecture and took students through key textsby Michael Taussig, Thomas Keenan and EyalWeizman, which introduced the judicial history offorensics, and raised questions about therelationship between death, museums and art.Ghouse followed this with a riveting public talk onher most recent curatorial engagement at the HausDer Kulteren Der Welt in Berlin, the exhibition‘Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War’co-curated with Anselm Franke, Paz Guevara andAntonia Majaca (a detailed report on this can alsobe found in this section). Ghouse also generouslyshared her own ongoing research and projects:‘Audio Matters’ addressed not only the early historyof sound production in India but also her excitingcollaboration with Umashankar and theEarchaeologists, which continues the work thatpioneering acoustician Umashankar Manthravadibegan in the 1990s, into the “acoustic properties ofHindu theatres/temples and Kerala”; ‘From theClouds to the Resistance’ introduced us to thefilmmakers Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub,and gave us a brief visual catalogue of shotspanning to the sky that Ghouse has been collectingin order to argue for a particular relationship thatthese moments in filmmaking have to ourunderstanding of resistance.

Along with Ghouse, CTAP was also fortunate towelcome back Ranjit Hoskote for a four-hour talk on ‘The Art World and its Institutions’, whichmapped out the relationships between artists,

studios, galleries, museums, auction houses,residency spaces, scholars, and a range of otherhistorical and modern models through which artistsand artwork circulate. An interactive class with thearchitect and scholar Himanshu Burte on ‘TheChallenge of Critical Practice’ provided a much-needed moment for introspection and reflection onhow to embody or live with ‘criticality’ in our dailylives, and the self-reflexive ways in which theoryand practice can merge. Shilpa Gupta, one of

Ranjit Hoskote speaks during ‘The Art World and itsInstitutions I + II’


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India’s most prominent contemporary artists,provided students with an intimate view of herprocess in a moving presentation. Taking them intoher experience at the JJ School of Art, and movingsystematically through her oeuvre, she engagedthe students in lengthy discussions about theinspiration, making and distribution of her art.

In the final two weeks of the course, before thebreak for second essays and dissertation writing,Alisha Sett presented an overview of thetransdisciplinary exhibition ‘The Boat is Leaking.The Captain Lied’ that brought together AlexanderKluge, Thomas Demand and Anna Viebrock underthe curatorial oversight of Udo Kittelman at thePrada Fondazione during La Biennale de Veneziain 2017. She also shared her own research in ‘AShort History of Indian Photography: Before andAfter Raghubir Singh’, speaking not only about the

evolution of documentary photography in thesubcontinent but also situating Singh as a keyfigure working with myth and icon.

Our closing classes with Padmini Chettur, therenowned contemporary dancer, provided a trulyfitting end to the year. Her exemplary pedagogyintegrated critical thinking about the evolution ofher own relationship with dance, the reasons andpathways for moving from a decade withChandralekha into an independent practice, withthe space to think back to many of the keyquestions raised by the course in the past year.The retrospective lectures titled ‘The RigourousPractice of Freedom’ took students carefullythrough her career with punctuating remarks aboutthe ways in which critics have (mis)understood hercomplex practice.

It has been an extraordinarily fulfilling year forCTAP, with a highly participative group of studentsengaging with an eclectic and energising group ofscholars, artists and curators, allowing us to covera difficult range of theoretical, art historical andcontemporary frameworks in aesthetics, criticaltheory and contemporary practice. As the studentsmove into the next phase of independent writingand research, the lecture schedule comes to anend. We anticipate an equally dynamic programmefor the coming year. - A.S.

Shilpa Gupta speaks during ‘Walking on/off the Line’


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Past Programmes:

Historical Justice in the Age of FinanceDecember 14th & 15th, 2018, 6:30 - 8:30 pmRobert Meister (Professor of Social and PoliticalThought, University of California)

Traditional Marxist analyses address capitalistindustrialisation based on who owns the means ofproduction, but the financialisation of capital posesan intractable problem for Marxist theory.Capitalism’s turn to modern finance (and its self-imposed constraints) meant that it was no longerpossible to directly seize, nationalise, or collectivisethe cumulative benefits of past injustice held infinancial form, as such a seizure would make thecapital markets themselves ‘illiquid’. In otherwords, reduce the value of wealth accumulated infinancial assets to zero, technically leaving nowealth to seize, and thereby making a revolutionagainst it inconceivable. The root of this problemis that a financial asset differs from a machinewhich has a ‘use value’ apart from its ‘exchangevalue’, and so you can seize a machine and use itfor production. Financial assets are neither cashnor fixed capital (such as producer goods or rawmaterial), as their only use value is to beconvertible into cash i.e. to be ‘liquid’. A financialasset is thus something that is (potentially) cashwithout being cash, and its use value is the degreeof its liquidity, i.e. how easily it can be convertedinto cash.

Prof. Meister’s seminars were based on hisforthcoming book Historical Justice in the Age ofFinance, which repurposes the hegemonic

language of global finance, which most of us findinaccessible, for the democratic pursuit of‘historical justice’. Meister sees historical justice asthe elimination of the benefits of past injustice thatpersist and compound, especially undercapitalism’s mechanisms of valourising itself.Further, he argues that reducing the continuingeffects of past evil is not something that societycan’t afford but what it does afford whenever itpays the price of preserving liquidity of capitalassets, and it is precisely at these moments thatbeneficiaries of cumulative injustice try to arguethat historical justice is no longer affordable andmust be set aside in favour of austerity politics.

Meister analyses capitalist financialisationfocusing on who controls the means of valuepreservation and accumulation, and claims thatfinancial capitalism’s inability to conceive ofhistorical justice except as something that lies

Prof. Robert Meister speaks during ‘Historical Justice in theAge of Finance’


beyond it functions as an implicit as well as explicitlink between capital markets and state power. Hethen responds to the unanswereddemocratic/political question of who pays this price(or premium) and who gets paid, by suggestingthat beneficiaries are the financial and securityindustries, which protect capitalist markets fromanti-capitalist hacks, for a premium. When capitalmarkets wish to quell justice, they threaten us witha lack of confidence in their own future liquidity, asthey did in the financial crisis of 2008-9.

The historical question of justice is reflected asa liquidity premium that attaches to the fear that acertain financial asset (or the capital markets as awhole) will become illiquid. Therefore, capitalmarket illiquidity can wipe out the present benefitsof past injustice and thus would be an event, notof distributive justice as discussed by liberalphilosophers, but of historical justice. At the time ofthe economic crisis of 2008-9, the American GDPwas 13 trillion dollars, while the total credit marketdebt (what could be pledged as collateral for otherfinancial securities) was 76 trillion. Economistsbooked the value of the liability that thegovernment assumed — when it pledged to bailout the financial market — at 9 trillion dollars. Anamount, which in the US, is enough to provide freeeducation through university, free healthcare, anda guaranteed basic universal income. In otherwords, an amount approximately 80% of the GDPthat could have been nationalised. The importantpoint is that a revolutionary event of capital dis-accumulation would have been unthinkable in theabsence of a revolution, and a revolution in thename of historical justice would have been

unthinkable because there would have been nowealth to seize, as threatening to seize it wouldhave made it illiquid and thus disappear. If thetriumph of finance makes revolutionary justiceinconceivable, then in effect historical justiceceases to be an option; its present value is zero.

Meister turns this argument on its head to claimthat historical justice as capital market illiquidity isa ‘real’ option that distinguishes meaningfuldemocracy from being merely a technology formanufacturing consent to present inequality andaccumulation of past injustice. For him, historicaljustice is an option that can be valued veryprecisely using the very theory of options thatallows us to price claims that cannot yet beexercised (in both the colloquial and the financialsense). An alternative to austerity, options theoryis about how something unknowable can be pricedby making it equivalent to something knowable.The premium for maintaining the liquidity ofaccumulated worth is identical to the premium in ademocracy for rolling over the option ofrevolutionary justice. And so, the liquidity premiumis exactly the value that can be extracted in ademocracy for preserving a revolutionary optionthat can’t be exercised and which, to capitalmarkets, looks simply an event of illiquidity.Capitalism calculates and extracts the value of theliquidity premium all the time, and this value canbe increased by political action in just the way, inthe mid-20th century, the welfare state in Europeand the US extracted from country to country, 30to 50 percent of GDP, because the fear of generalstrike was perceived to be possible even thoughno actual events increased its probability. The


welfare state was the premium extracted by rollingover the option of a general strike.

Illiquidity is possible (while it may not be veryprobable) and we can make it seem more possible– more imaginable, easier to ‘pre-visualise’ — eventhough it may not lead to the actual occurrence ofan illiquidity event. À la the exaggerated fear of thegeneral strike, exaggerated fears of illiquidity canbe harvested as a macroeconomic derivativewhose premium would rise in value exponentiallyas political turbulence increases. The value(liquidity premium) can be extracted to enrich thestate for purposes of historical justice or can beextracted by alternatives to the state to directlyseize the premium of capital markets that have tosell themselves short in times of political andeconomic turbulence. Meister’s book argues thatby treating historical justice as an option, it haspresent value in financialised capitalism, and thatits value can be increased and partly appropriatedto now fund movements by ‘justice-seekingsubjects’ at the expense of beneficiaries of pastinjustice.

To follow through Meister’s argument in actualpolitical praxis, we need to think counterintuitivelyabout how finance changes our understanding ofcapitalism. A conceptual shift is needed to think offinance as an engine for generating liquidityalongside production that generates value. We areno longer talking about production in a market, butthe discipline of payments within markets. Infinance, you frequently get money by sellingsomething you don’t own (short selling), or youborrow something to get money from it, or you canbuy something by borrowing money that you don’t

have (leverage). That said, under capitalism,participation in financial markets is not democratic,you still need capital — the market mode ofproduction underlies the financial system — butyou can collateralise a future commodity to borrowmoney you don’t have (i.e. the commodity iscollateral before it is capital), therefore the capitalistcan borrow money to eventually acquire the meansof production in a system where he didn’t alreadyhave it. The definitive feature of capitalism is thatyou cannot collateralise or pledge your futurelabour to get money now; this is the distinctionbetween ‘free labour’ from indentured or slavelabour. The role of capital is to quantify and legalisethe distinction between those who can get moneyby shorting or leveraging and those who must workto earn it.

Then, the goal is to create a space again forthinking about historical justice by reconnecting itto the problem of making capital accumulationacceptable as a social fact. The point of Meister’sprevious book, After Evil, is that cumulative gainsof past injustice continue in the present, but withoutbeing seen to perpetuate that past evil (or badhistory) and thus without having to be justified. Hepositions Historical Justice in the Age of Financeas a sequel, and says that his ‘wild talk’ aboutrevolution, subversion, and sabotage is ‘a way toopen up the question of access to the structuredcharacter of vehicles of wealth preservation andwhat makes them liquid or not, and how topoliticise and harvest the premium extracted bycapital markets for keeping them liquid’. We needto find devices to make past injustices liquid andthus give them a present value; an alternative to


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the post-Cold War humanitarian consensus thatattempted to take the option of historical justice offthe table by imposing a moral agreement that thepast is evil.

Today, liquidity is the choke point of the financialsystem, in the way that, during industrialcapitalism, it was shutting down coal production ortransport, the real point of which was dis-accumulation of wealth held in form of producergoods. Capitalism’s ability to think its own end asan event of illiquidity can be instrumentalised toprice the present value of not dis-accumulating thecumulative benefits of past injustice. Financialmarkets exist to manufacture alternatives toilliquidity in much the way democratic politics existsto manufacture alternatives to roll over the optionof revolution, that is, the former price the option ofilliquidity and the latter set a value on alternativesto revolution. And both of them make capitalmarket illiquidity and political instability seemimpossible, even though both are matters of apolicy that is historically contingent and unnatural.The financial asset pricing formula is a measure ofthe intrinsic uncertainty of how long and to whatdegree capital markets can be assured ofcontinuing, while democratic politics is a way ofcreating the political risk that capital markets pricein order to assume them away. The truth thatunderlies both is that illiquidity and revolution arenot impossible and the uncertainty about both isthe political unconscious of capitalism and thus its‘real’ according to its own theory. Uncertainty,about liquidity and revolution, is the source ofcumulative financial value, as well as ofvulnerability to its underlying, original injustice.

As Meister puts it, “Today, the macroeconomicliquidity premium that preserves the value ofwealth accumulated in financial form is identical tothe political premium that democracy can extractat the same moment for rolling over, for renewinghistorical justice as the option for dis-accumulatingthe benefits of past injustice that are held infinancial form without destroying their value.” - R.N.

Liberalism and its Indian AfterlifeDecember 19th & 20th, 2018, 6:30 - 8:30 pmFaisal Devji (Professor of Indian History, OxfordUniversity)

Prof. Faisal Devji structured his two-day seminaron ‘Liberalism and its Indian Afterlife’ around fourfundamental concepts of liberal thought: politicalinterest, humanism, secularism, and democracy.

Beginning with the term ‘interest’ itself, whichhas a complex genealogy with no easy or directtranslation in Indian vernacular languages, Devji



reminded us of key questions asked by colonialthinkers: Can someone bound to the interests oftheir caste or community adequately represent thepolitical interests of society at large or rise abovetheir own material interests? If Indians were willingto die (or kill) for their religion, caste or others formsof identity, how could they ever rule their ownsociety? If they could not rise above theirexcessive attachments, how could they turnthemselves into a nation? How does a society notbased upon class relations (one too recessive fora social contract) – since these are the relationsthat allow for the emergence of contractualrelations upon which democracy is built – vote?

The answers were used to justify the colonistscontinuing control. The political leaders of Indiawere faced with these questions as well, both inphilosophy and practice, as the prospect forentering a new postcolonial world order loomedlarge. Linking them on the basis of their argumentswith regards to interest, Devji revealed theintellectual affinity between none other than Jinnahand Savarkar on the one hand, and Gandhi andIqbal on the other.

Devji explicated passages from The Essentialsof Hindutva to reveal Savarkar’s core conundrum– the deep familiarity between religiouscommunities in India, especially Hindus andMuslims, who have been historically intertwined fortoo long for Hindus to ever be able to make anyclaims at purity. How could Hindus then be madeinto an interest group? Jinnah’s solution was tothink of the Hindu-Muslim divide in terms of aclassical property dispute between brothers: onlywith ‘fair’ arbitration by the courts, could brothers

at the brink of enmity find amity when faced with apotent inheritance. Without the creation of a socialcontract, the basis of which was private property,and in which political majorities and minorities werenot fixed, Jinnah believed that India – and later,post-partition Pakistan – could not stabilise.

Gandhi saw this as Jinnah’s naïve idealism.Without a deeply rooted sense of self-interest,Gandhi believed that we could not have beencolonised, and for him, political interest in themanner in which we understand it in India,emerges precisely because of the colonial state’sability to set itself up as a neutral third party. Bybecoming the only unbiased body for adjudication,the colonisers force everyone else to function asinterest groups. Gandhi and Iqbal’s views echoeach other as they are focused on the millions ofIndian peasants, a majority that was almost entirelyalienated from the money economy, and for whomthe notion of universal private property wasunimaginable. They are concerned with how thesemasses will be represented in the new state andsee that it is only the educated urban Indian whodemands democracy. Therefore, Iqbal’s desire tofocus on the visible and invisible points of contactbetween communities pitches against itself thecolonial ideal of dictating or demanding rights onthe basis of interest.

Devji opened the section on humanism bytracing its birth in the Christian sanctity of life,following its secular conception through the workof Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt, into thepostcolonial rise of humanitarianism and thedevelopment industry in the so-called Third World.This was his preface to a discussion of Gandhi’s



unique criticism of the hubris of universalitycontained within this Western history of humanism,and Gandhi’s complex understanding of violenceand non-violence in relationship to anunderstanding of humanity.

The following day Prof. Devji began his thirdsection by challenging the popular notion ofNehruvian India as the most secular period ofIndian nationalism. He argued that the making ofa national culture took place through a fulsomeengagement with religion, and that secularism inthe newly independent nation did not seem torequire the kind of separation or disengagementwith religion that liberal society seems to demandtoday. Neither legal nor vernacular secularismrequired that the relationship with religion be overlycircumscribed or for a laxman rekha betweenreligion and the state. While in the legal sphere, thestate was to keep a principled distance from allreligions, allowing for equal treatment (Bhargava),the common spectacle of politicians visiting bothtemples and churches, or mosques, showed thatengagement with religion has always been anaccepted phenomenon in India.

This set us up for the crux of Devji’s seminar,which revealed how the discourse around the‘return of religion and the crisis of secularism’ hasbeen falsely pictured by most of the media andsociety today. The crisis of secularism, Devjiargued, is truly about the loss of religion’stheological essence. The rise of Islam, upon whichthe ‘return of religion’ is predicated, is a symptomof this desire. It is because secularism isunderstood as the separation between what canbe called religion and what is usually referred to as

the state, embedding the necessity for a strictdividing line, that it is put into crisis by the vanishingof religion as it has been classically understood.

Devji returned to Iqbal to show us how this wasalready something that he was attempting tounderstand in the 1920s. For Iqbal, if the world ofthe spirit was made private and the material worldmade public, then there would be no room for non-instrumental behavior, ethics or ideals, in civilsociety. Iqbal in fact argued that India had neverbeen structured in this manner, with a cleancompartmentalising of the private and the public.According to Devji, Iqbal therefore suggests atemporal division as a thought experiment anduses Shia and Sunni Islam to argue that if we arewaiting for perfection as we wait for the imam, thenthe present state of imperfection can be

Prof. Faisal Devji speaks during ‘Liberalism and its IndianAfterlife’



understood as a site of freedom. Devji rounded out this section with several

contemporary examples from France and otherparts of Western Europe where the collapse of the‘empire of faith’ has led to a desire for a moremuscular Catholicism, ironically modelled on anunderstanding of Islam as a religion of strength.Regardless of Islam’s global rise, it too faces astructural crisis with no central control over itsevolution. Ultimately, therefore it is the attenuationof the metaphysical that defines the crisis ofsecularism today.

For his final section, Devji turned to Ambedkarand to his understanding of interest – the veryplace we began, and showed us how, over thecourse of decades of thinking on the subject,Ambedkar went back and forth on the issue ofwhether or not Dalits must be structured as aninterest group. Because they lacked ownership ofproperty, education, or self-consciousness as acoherent interest group, he argued in 1919 thattheir interests were in fact the greatest of all – if thevery persona of Dalits has been confiscated thentheir interests are the interests of humanity.However, by the time the constitution has beenwritten, Amebdkar is at the vanguard of ensuringreservations and Devji argued that it was this legalinstantiation, more than any preceding event,which made Dalits into an enduring interest group.Ambedkar was well aware that this important andnecessary step was also a precarious momentbecause it meant that the Dalit identity had to beformed around something temporary –marginalisation, discrimination, backwardness.Thus, Devji said, Ambedkar eventually embraced

Buddhism as the religion that could be owned byDalits, which would give them the sense ofcohesion and ownership over the longue duréethat other interest groups in India such asChristians and Muslims had always had. Devjiproved this by taking us step by step throughAmbedkar’s re-reading of ancient Indian history,his re-structuring of the Buddhist narrative ascompetitively set against both Hinduism and Islam,and why he eventually also had to argue againstcommunism (as the only other true challenge to theuniversality offered by Buddhism). - A.S.

Two Sides of the same Coin: Thoughts onDestruction and Preservation of ‘CulturalHeritage’ in the Middle EastFebruary 8th, 2019, 6:30 - 8:30 pmMirjam Brusius (Research Fellow in Colonial andGlobal History, German Historical Institute London)

What is cultural heritage? What has beenhistorically deemed of value, why and for whom?What counts as preservation? What objects shouldbe preserved, and how? Who decides?

These questions beg attention in the context ofa burgeoning decolonisation process that seeks tochallenge the hitherto preserved status quo of thearchaeological discipline and the museum –themselves imperial institutions – as chiefarbitrator, source of knowledge, and rightful ownerof tangible heritage deemed of global value.

In so doing, they also raise questions about theidea of progress, and the continuing valorisation ofsecurity (and restoration) of ‘shared heritage’against perceived threat in the non-West or a site


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outside the metropole museum, thus also feedinginto a linear and continuous progression of thecivilising mantra of knowledge as power, as well asits mission of salvation of that which is under threatfrom itself.

Moreover, the selection of sites of destruction,as well as the prioritisation of preservation ofcertain sites to the neglect of others, is often aresult of politics in the processes of empire - ornation building, identity formation, and regimevalidation. Thus, recent events in the Middle East– of ISIS targeting specific sites which often tendto be recognised as valuable by Europe – can be

read as a response to Western imperialism. In thiscontext, questions posed by Dr. Mirjam Brusiustake on an immediate importance, and enable arethinking of the possibilities of theorising, claiming,and participating in cultural heritage.

Brusius’s primary argument is that preservationand destruction are historical phenomena that arenot mutually exclusive but connected in crucialways. In particular, destruction itself is a double-edged sword in that the perception of endangeredtangible heritage – for example, the loss of abuilding – can enhance its cultural significance.Thus, the process by which heritage becomes

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heritage is open to debate, often premised as it ison the desire to save from threat elsewhere, rathersimilar in an uncanny way to the currenthumanitarian discourse of the right to protect.

Through five steps from museum narrativesthrough art and politics, storage, and looting,Brusius forces a questioning of the dominantnarrative that ‘heritage’ is always original orauthentic; refers to tangible objects and artefacts;and must always be excavated, saved, anddisplayed. For instance, she looks at variouspractices such as burial in the ground as a way ofboth storage and safety, and pushes its limits toask whether we must stop digging altogether sincethe unseen object may be safest then, thus alsochallenging the idea of progress.

And, through a narration of the recreation of a

statue destroyed by ISIS in Iraq, made by an IraqiAmerican artist who used 10,500 empty date syrupcans, and which was unveiled in Trafalgar Square,Brusius asks whether cultural heritage can bereplaced and whether it should be. Moresignificantly, she highlights that while the heritagecommunity mourn the loss of cultural heritage andcan perhaps even recreate it through 3D printing,neither was the loss of people mourned and nor isit possible to 3D print the people who lost theirlives. She argues in favour of a notion of a heritageconstituting not only buildings but also memoriesand connections to a place. It is important,therefore, as part of theorising and understandingthe notion of heritage, to turn towards personal andindividual as well as communitarian engagementswith heritage, and confront the uncomfortableaspects of Europe’s histories in order to decolonisethe process of understanding heritage, as well asits preservation and destruction. - R.S.

The Innovation Trap and ContemporaryCapitalismMarch 18th, 2019, 6:30 pmArjun Appadurai (Paulette Goddard Professor ofMedia, Culture and Communication, New YorkUniversity and Professor of Anthropology andGlobalization at The Hertie School of Governance(Berlin))

Prof. Appadurai started his talk with someframing remarks on the direction of his own career,which, over the past 30 to 40 years, has largelydealt with cultural issues of meaning, language,and signification, drawing him to anthropology. But

Dr. Mirjam Brusius speaks during ‘Two Sides of the sameCoin: Thoughts on Destruction and Preservation of‘Cultural Heritage’ in the Middle East’


at the same time, he has always had a broadinterest in the economy i.e. issues of wealth,inequality, technology, resource allocation, etc.Appadurai thus situates himself (and the presenttalk based on his upcoming book, Failure) at theborders of the fields of anthropology andeconomics, to emphasise that modernisation,development, and urbanisation cannot simply bediscussed as cultural phenomena but involvemassive economic implications and suppositions.

Also crucial to the talk was the finalisation ofcapitalism, its paradigmatic and most recent shockbeing the mega-event of the 2007-8 collapse of theUS (as well as the UK and European) economy.Basically, financial capitalism is not simply aboutmaking money from money but rather themonetisation of risk. For instance, with a mortgageone pays interest in lieu of the principal, but afinancial instrument can be created to monetise therisk of failure of the mortgage itself. And thismonetisation of risk can continue endlessly —which is precisely the logic of the derivative, and ofthe derivatives market, which uses suchinstruments of infinite complexity, with more beinginvented every day.

Appadurai identifies derivatives to be structuredlike promissory contracts, basically, linguisticphenomena such as: ‘If this happens, I will do this;if that happens, you will do that’. In addition, thecontract is wrapped around ‘a bet about futurevalue in the present’. And although every derivativecontract has a ‘time term’, nobody waits for it toend, and instead, derivatives are constantly resold,bundled and aggregated on a massive scale.Appadurai characterised derivatives “as heavy

load-bearing promises, which form chains that arerepeatedly sold, finally accumulating into ‘amountain resting on a very obscure base”. This‘mountain’ in the case of the US collapse was thereal value of the housing market, i.e. “the mountainthat collapsed was a chain of promises predicatedon the indefinite rise of value in the housingmarket, which became the foundation of countlessderivative risks”. Therefore, ‘risk’ becomes theprivileged commodity in financialised capitalism.

Appadurai’s upcoming book (co-authored withNeta Alexander) addresses failure with a specificfocus on the economies of Wall Street (finance)and Silicon Valley (digital). The book argues that“new digital platforms, tools, and affordance intechnologies have sped-up obsolescence andupgrading, and thus created a new relationshipbetween risk, innovation, failure – and futurity”.While this relationship appears to expand possiblesocial futures, in reality, it threatens to shrink them.The paradox is that although entrepreneurialdisruptions in the digital era seem to profit from thevirtues of new modes of sociality – their popularityand success – they actually appear to rely on thefailure or induced obsolescence of prior modes ofsociality. The process of the gig economy signalsa new chapter in the “commodification of sociality”,and its earlier history can be found in advertising,technology and related modernist modes of massconsumption. Within the new economy of apps anddigital platforms, failure plays a crucial role inisolating us from one another, creating feelings ofself-blame and animosity, which paradoxically,make users ever more desperate to find and adoptservices or apps that promise to make their lives


more convenient or to recreate a new sense ofcollective identity.

Appadurai consistently refers to JosephSchumpeter, a 20th-century economist whotouched on the most important issues of corporatecapitalism, and who, like Max Weber, believed thatcapitalism is as much a cultural form as it is thearrangement of technology and production. LikeMarx, Schumpeter argued that capitalism waspowered by its own ceaseless compulsion for itsself-reinvention, and predicted its collapse by theend of the 20th century, resulting from the logic of‘creative destruction’ corrupted by corporatemanagerialism; a prediction which wasspectacularly wrong’, but Schumpeter’s insightsabout the logic of industrial capitalism, forAppadurai, remain ‘highly relevant’.

The most important Schumpeterian idea of‘creative destruction’ is essentially that the raceamong competitive capitalist firms for greaterprofits leads them to seek new technologies, whichleads to the ‘creative destruction’ of old technology— a general abandonment of earlier methods oflabour utilisation, production, marketing, pricingand distribution – by the new. And when theinnovation is sufficiently radical, it results in“wholesale destruction of previous forms of work,society, and control”. Today, creative destructiontypically comes from entrepreneurial innovationsfinanced by canny investors, which, if they succeedas profit-making strategies, lead a certain firm to atemporary market monopoly, forcing all others toimitate or replicate their innovation.

At this stage, Appadurai turned to Silicon Valleyto generally explore the validity of Schumpeterianpessimism about capitalism. The Valley has gaineda justifiable reputation for monopolising the bestminds, technologies, and assets to push theenvelope in regards to digital innovation; butinterestingly, for Appadurai, its giants (Google,Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc.) play nodirect part in one of its “biggest, most dissociativeand wealth producing” revolutions in the past threedecades. Namely in the domain of mobileapplications (apps) which allow users to purchasea wide range of goods and services from theirsmartphones, with a high degree of speed,reliability and convenience. In the US alone, theapp economy can be measured in the combinedvalorisation of more than 100 start-ups and morethan a billion dollars in revenues, which areprojected to rise up to 850 billion by 2020.


Prof. Arjun Appadurai speaks during ‘The Innovation TrapAnd Contemporary Capitalism’

Leading publications (Forbes, The New YorkTimes) tout gig economy apps such as Uber,Airbnb and TaskRabbit as a possible solution tounemployment. But many authors havedemonstrated that this could not be further from thetruth. Since 2013, there has been extensive presscoverage of class-action suits against Uber andLyft, with a resultant backlash against the gigeconomy which has been described as atechnological intensification of inequality to createmonopolies that aggregate and co-opt the effortsand resources of many users who are pittedagainst one another within the platforms.

Within the gig economy, the consumer pays fora service rather than for a particular employee,producing a growing sense of depersonalisationand randomness. Instead of making millions ofpeople part-time entrepreneurs overnight, mobileapps offer transitory, impersonal encounters thatare almost immediately quantified by theconsumer: ‘Thanks for using Uber. How many starswill you give XYZ?’ Further, the apps depend onconstant surveillance (close monitoring of Uberdrivers) and exploitation of temporary workers,called ‘partners’ or ‘suppliers’, in order to avoidproviding them social benefits such as healthinsurance or job security.

As opposed to websites, apps offer a uniqueexperience and ontology, being personalised,password protected and easy to access. That theyshape users’ daily habits on an unprecedentedlevel, is apparent from the presence oforganisational apps that promise to increaseproductivity and those that block other distractingapps (social media, games, etc.), while tracking

device-usage for those who wish to control theirsmartphone addiction.

The truly radical aspect of this economy is thatit makes the consumer a tester-in contradistinctionto traditional market research or big data analyses— wherein constant user feedback is used to refinethe app on an almost continuous basis. Anddespite the fact that these endless apps will quicklybecome obsolete, there is no such thing as anabsolute failure; instead, each failure simply drivesthe next improvement. There is always a rapidneed to ‘upgrade’ and to be sure, not just on thelevel of the app but also the user who has to learnsomething new and become a better source offeedback that will drive the app’s next iteration.

A large part of the app economy is involved withself-monitoring, with a lot of behaviour that isreminiscent of machine gambling — a severe,serious and highly-profitable form of addiction.There are a lot of interesting and complex socialfeatures to what Natasha Schüll calls the ‘MachineZone’, an endlessly repetitive sphere where time,space and social identity are suspended — and adeep addiction sets in. - R.N.

Forthcomming Programmes:

Modernity and South Asia July 18h, 19th, & 20th, 6:30 - 8:30 pmNatasha Easton (Lecturer in History of Art,University College London)

Details to follow


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Past Programmes:

Module III. The Emergence of Capitalism inEarly Modern Europe March 5th, 6th, 12th, 13th, 19th, 20th, April 2nd,3rd, 8th, and 9th, 2019, 6:30 - 8:30 pmRohit Goel (Academic Director, Jnanapravaha)

The detailed report about this module will befeatured in our next Quarterly (Jul - Sep 2019).

Theoretical Foundations


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Community EngagementJPM’s Community Engagement offerings

include (1) JPM Write, a six-week Certificatecourse in writing style and (2) occasional publiclectures and performances in Creative Processes,Curatorial Processes, and Iconic Images as well

as book launches, concerts, film screenings, andpanel discussions on topics of interest to Mumbai’sand India’s general public.



Past Programmes:

JPM Write: ArgumentJanuary 19th, 21st, 28th, February 4th, 9th, 16th,18th, 23rd, 25th and March 2nd, 2019, 6:30 - 8:30pmRohit Goel (Academic Director, Jnanapravaha)

The detailed write-up about this module will befeatured in our next Quarterly (Jul - Sep 2019).

At Home in the World : The Art and Life ofGULAMMOHAMMED SHEIKHBook Release by Gieve Patel and SudhirPatwardhanTranslating the World into BeingIllustrated lecture by Chaitanya SambraniMarch 30th, 2019, 6:30 pm

The detailed write-up about this book launchand lecture will be featured in our next Quarterly(Jul - Sep 2019).

Gulammohammed Sheikh, Gandhi and Gama, 2014, triptych, acrylic on canvas, H: 288 x W: 624 cm.Coll: Christiane Leister, Switzerland



Creative ProcessesPast Programmes:

Zarina: Floating on the Dark SeaDecember 18th, 2018, 6:30 pmSandhini Poddar (London-based Art Historian)

“Memory is the only lasting possession we have.I have made my life the subject of my work usingthe images of home, the places I have visited andthe stars I have looked up to. I just want a reminderthat I didn’t imagine my experiences.”

- Zarina Hashmi

The praxis of Zarina Hashmi, printmaker andsculptor, seems as bound to paper as our bodiesare bound to skin. After a series of majorexhibitions over the last decade – retrospectivesthat brought together five decades of her art – she

has secured her place in the pantheon of modernartists, having pushed the boundaries of thismedium far beyond the delicate drawings andsketches with which it is normally associated. Theintimate, often painful themes within her oeuvre –exile, partition, home – have revealed themselvesthrough minute pin pricks, the gouging ofwoodblocks, the piercing of needles, the sewing ofwhite thread on white page, the curlicues ofnastaliq, and of course the ink-black borderlinesmarking the edges of old homes, new countries,and bombed cities. The unique textual andsculptural terrain that Zarina has traversed,between 1961 and the present, was revealed inSandhini’s Poddar’s expansive lecture on theevolution of her practice.

Before Zarina embarked on her globaladventure – Bangkok, Tokyo, Paris, finally settlingin New York – she was a student of mathematicsat Aligarh Muslim University where her father wasa prof. of medieval history. Playing in the fragrantgardens of the zenana and between the hallowedshelves of her father’s personal library at AligarhHouse, Zarina’s childhood was spent amongstthose who revered language, whether scholarly orpoetic. It was also during this time, between 1935and 1957, that journeys to Fatehpur Sikri, Mughalgardens and tombs were undertaken, from whencewas born a love of geometry and patterns.

Zarina has commented that she left India not asa child, but as an adult, with a strong sense of the

Photo Credit: David Heald, Solomon R. GuggenheimFoundation



country and the culture to which she belonged. Thearchitectonics of war – that reappear in her oeuvre,especially in works such as Home is a ForeignPlace and These Cities Blotted into the Wilderness(Ghalib After Adrienne Rich) – had been imbibedalready through the echoes of partition thatresounded across India. As she travelled with herhusband (a diplomat) and became an ardentstudent of printmaking, she discovered feminism inParis, and slowly entered its vanguard in New York,her practice imbibing and reflecting the ‘politics ofplace’. Speaking at length about artistic influenceson Zarina’s life (and thus her work) – influences asvaried as Krishna Reddy, Ana Mendieta,Constantin Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp –Poddar rounded out the narrative by giving us aglimpse of the artist’s way forward in The TenThousand Things (2011-2014), a ‘la boite-en-valise’-inspired archive that puts the many Zarinaswe have seen under glass together.

Poddar brought the artist’s persona alive as shetook us into Zarina’s New York studio – a spacethat the artist has inhabited for over three decades– and spoke not only of Zarina’s museum showsbut of the long journey she herself has undertakenas a curator for major Western institutions, like theGuggenheim, to have non-Western artists,particularly South Asian artists, canonised.Discussing the rarely-revealed dynamics ofmuseum acquisitions, retrospectives and thedifficult battle for gallery representation that evensomeone as profound as Zarina has faced, Poddarprovided deep insight into her own path assomeone working consistently to give their artiststheir due, not only in the present but changingforever past and future understandings of modernart history. - A.S.

The Rigorous Practice of FreedomFebruary 26th & 27th, 2019, 6:30 - 8:30 pmPadmini Chettur (Contemporary Dancer, India)

“Any real body must have extension in fourdirections: it must have Length, Breadth,Thickness, and – Duration. There are really fourdimensions, three which we call the three planesof Space, and a fourth, Time.”

- H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (pg. 3)

This dimension of time becomes a crucial keyto enter the liminal world of contemporary artistPadmini Chettur, whose approach to danceremains unparalleled – her unique montage ofscience, rigour, and precision continues to expandS

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the discourse of what a body can become. And inthis performative act of ceaseless becoming, youmay trace a rare idea of freedom contrived by theartist. She deconstructs the limits that define whatdance is to ultimately distill this experience to itsskeletal core. Chettur almost turns into anarchaeologist, unearthing her practice during thisseminar that traces the roots of her journey to theterrain it occupies today. As she negotiates withtime, the crux of each work is revealed in theprocess of its making; the infinite deliberate detailsthat propel every microscopic movement in space.

Chettur’s beginnings in dance are grounded intraditional Bharatnatyam, which she trained in forten years. The discipline of this form to be enacted“precisely in time” was deeply internalised byChettur and persists in her later works. She thenretreated from this pedagogy into the newrevolutionary ideas of Chandralekha, an icon whosought to rediscover Bharatnatyam as a form thatcould respond to a contemporary existence. Thepiece Sharira (2003) became Chettur’s lastperformance under the choreography ofChandralekha, with whom she worked for almosta decade. In Sharira, as the title suggests, the bodyitself becomes the vehicle of meaning –dramatically subverting the ‘pure’ classical idiom ofa dancer’s fluid movements and facial expressionsaimed to entice and entertain a viewer. This maskis removed, the ornaments are now absent. Whatremains are raw movements on stage, brimmingwith power.

The body morphed into the anchor of Chettur’sprobe when she left Chandralekha to investigateher own identity; a process that involved an almost

scientific un-learning of the manner in which herbody was conditioned over the years. Each detailwas dismantled, from the curve of her spine to thetip of her finger. Chettur’s rigour compelled thispersistant deconstruction of her body as a form, tounlayer a visual lexicon of her own. This processmanifests in her work, 3 solos (2003), where thetension within a body that is rooted but tries tomove, almost echoes a temporal conflict betweenthe past and present. As the body resists itself, thesurrounding space is no longer external, but entersinto the dynamic of each gesture.

Chettur further explores the physicality of spacein her next work, Paper Doll (2005), comprised offive connected dancers that resemble a chain oforigami paper dolls. In this hypnotic web, it is thepulsating interstitial space between the dancers



that enraptures a viewer. The bond holding eachdancer is fragile, paper-like. It could tear apart atany moment, and connect again; creating atangible tension constantly negotiated by thedancers – if one pulls, then the other must giveway.

In PUSHED (2006), Chettur’s dancers enter andexit the stage seamlessly, in constrast to PaperDoll, wherein each dancer stays within the squarespace until the end. The space thus shifts registers,charged with the sound by composer MaartenVisser. His acoustic exudes a distinct texture, acryptic physicality weaving into tense moments thatfold and unfold in the dance. Chettur seeks to pushboundaries that hold emotions in this piece, aprocess that took her almost a year of practice.Every month, the artist and her dancers wouldanalyse a particular emotion, through their ownwritings or texts they liked to read – to find aphysical description of it. This evolved into a seriesof specific movements for each emotion, but thedistinctions between the emotions slowly started tomelt, the borders dissolved. Chettur thus astutelythreads an in-between emotive space in transition.

This space mutates futher with Chettur’sBeautiful Thing 1 (2009), which focused on rupturein the structure of time. This surreal yet minimalwork emerges with four dancers, two on each sideof the stage. The dancers on the left begin theirmovements at a tempo of 220, whilesimultaneously the dancers on the right performprecisely the same sequence but at a slowertempo of 30. The dancers on the left gradually slowdown, unnoticed, until they arrive at the exactmovement and speed of the dancers on the right,

who remain at their initial tempo of 30. Chetturdescribes the dancers as “discreet segments of aunique mathematical equation”. This meticulouslycrafted moment wherein two streams of speedintersect shifts the sensation of time as Chetturstretches its limit through an algorithm. Theruptures in repetition hold the tension that drivesthe force of the work.

On the other hand, Chettur’s next work,Beautiful Thing 2 (2011) is a solo she performsherself, forming a distilled experience – she revisitsher core, that is, her body. The body is defined byChettur as the “only real archivist” in the history ofdance, as the archive in dance is ultimately ahistory of the body. It thus morphs into a repositoryof time; the learned gestures of history are retainedin a search for points of departure. These parallelscome to mind whilst viewing Chettur’s BeautifulThing 2, as her body bends the space around it,and in certains parts, dissolves itself completelyinto this space. Here she creates an interstice,exploring “the ability to be open within the bound”,for her meaning of freedom is rooted in theprecarious but relentless human body. - S.B.

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’JPM Quarterly Apr-Jun 2019 56


Curatorial ProcessesPast Programmes:

Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the ColdWarJanuary 24th, 2019, 6:30 - 8:30 pmNida Ghouse (Curator and Writer, India)

Nida Ghouse contrives a colossal labyrinthnavigating the entangled webs of artistic discourseand autonomy in modernity through Parapolitics:Cultural Freedom and the Cold War, an exhibitionshe curated with Anselm Franke, Paz Guevara andAntonia Majaca at Haus der Kulturen der Welt,Berlin in 2017. This show comprised works bycontemporary artists that dismantle the logic ofbinaries, historical artworks that negotiated thisterrain in their time, and archival material thatconnect art to a hierarchy of conflicted institutional

structures. It explored the many meanings ofmodernism deployed during the struggle forcultural hegemony, dissolving boundaries builtbetween realism and the abstract to ultimatelyprobe the idea of freedom claimed by the latter.Because if you look close enough, freedom – in theway you imagine it – doesn’t exist.

This story begins during the Cold War – the firsttime in all of history when humanity possessed thetechnological capability to exterminate itself in anuclear arms race. When the stakes of conflictthreaten survival, perhaps all means could bejustified. After the Second World War, capitalistAmerica battled the socialist Soviet Union –Ghouse carefully dissects these ideologies armedwith their cultural mechanisms, unearthing asemantic combat that was covert yet deeplyinsidious. She conjures this history of power thatnot only parallels but erodes the history of art usingthe prototype of Congress for Cultural Freedom(CCF). This was an organisation founded in WestBerlin in 1950, which subsidised and fundedcountless cultural programmes from Latin Americato Africa and Southeast Asia, advancing a lexiconof modernism (abstract expressionism) as the‘universal’ individualistic language for literature, artand music. This intellectual community definedthemselves as ‘anti-totalitarian’; their manifestowas to protect the autonomy and individualfreedom of artists all over the world. This protectionautomatically implied an offensive on liberty from

Doug Ashford, Bunker 2, 2017



the Soviet Union, which was dubbed a tyrannicalreign with representational and realistic art thatserved only state propaganda.

The avant-garde of the CCF embraced abstractexpressionism to break free from the burden ofrepresentation, simultaneously enforcing the ideaof art distilled from reality. Capitalist Americaproclaimed these notions towards a liberal society,market, and art; whilst the socialist Soviet Unionbecame authoritarian, and thus, a threat to the ideaof freedom. However, by 1967, it was revealed thatthe CCF was bankrolled by the Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA), America’s espionage arm; a scandalthat confirmed the CCF was enlisted in shoring upan anti-Communist consensus in the service ofU.S. hegemony during the cultural Cold War. Aninstitution that protected autonomy in art wasintrinsically fuelled by propaganda. This disclosuredestroyed the CCF’s reputation by exposing itsfundamental contradiction: the moral ambiguity toadvocate freedom through means that are nottransparent. Intellectuals and artists became astrategic target, and modernism was a weapon inthe rapidly developing arsenal of ‘peacefultechniques’ to win the Cold War. Ghouse thenbrings this historical moment to the present with anunnerving question: “Can the canon of Westernmodernism be ‘globalised’ retroactively, withoutconfronting the ideological structures andinstitutional narratives that supported and exportedit?”

Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the ColdWar profoundly shatters the pervasive illusion ofart isolated from ideology. Ghouse traces thissemantic battle enforced during the Cold War into

a longer history of the freedom discourse. Sheillustrates this convoluted phenomenon throughThe Four Freedoms, a series of oil paintings byAmerican artist Norman Rockwell made in 1943,which refer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’siconic address declaring freedom as a fundamentalright that must be defended by the military. Thesepaintings were a part of a sponsored touringexhibition that raised over 130 million dollars – thiscry for freedom thus essentially financed a war.But the crux of Ghouse’s endeavour is not toexpose these contradictions; rather, she employsthem to comprehend larger questions – what doesit mean for art to be free? And if freedom is aconstruct, then who gets to decide what it will looklike?

In order to dismantle the aesthetic form ofliberty, Ghouse further ruptures this discourse byjuxtaposing Escaping Liberty: Western Hegemony,Black Fugitivity, an essay by Barnor Hesse alongwith Free, White and 21, a video work by artistHowardena Pindell, to unravel the provenance ofwhat constitutes cultural freedom, and who mayobtain it. In her video, Pindell speaks of the racialdiscrimination she endured at each stage of herlife; experiences that don’t exist in the lives of thedominant white society; experiences which arethen consequently trivialised or erased. Pindelldons the mask and identity of an old white woman,and then tells her African-American self: “You won’texist until we validate you”. In a similar vein, Hessewrites on the necessity of a colonial-racialforeclosure – an ‘unspeakability’ that must bemaintained – for the dominant theory of liberty tooperate. Simply put, to imagine the current



hegemonic idea of freedom, you need to erasecertain instrumental histories of the periphery.Because if you don’t forget them, they willcontradict the core that defines liberty.

Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the ColdWar doesn’t aim to make a historical judgement onthese phenomena, as a conviction would shift thisstructure into the past, and the story would reachan end. This unsettling terrain must be constantlynegotiated by the present to possibly imagine anantidote to hegemonic existence. For Ghouse, thekey is to “recover the conflict lines that haveanimated artistic choices and that implicitly hauntthe field of contemporary art until today”. She thusastutely exposes a making of meaning that echoesthe mechanics of a regime, navigating a labyrinthto uncover these conflicted worlds built by words.- S.B.

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******Contributors to the Quarterly:AS – Alisha SettJK – Jaya KanoriaPS – Pooja SavansukhaRN – Rutwij NakhwaRS – Radhika SarafRV – Ramachandran VenkateshSB – Sonali Bhagchandani SG – Sudha GanapathiSPM – Suchita Parikh-Mundul

Text Editor:Suchita Parikh-Mundul

Design and Layout:Sharon Rodrigues

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Jnanapravaha Mumbai is deeply indebted to the following fortheir support:

BENEFACTORS

Jamnalal Bajaj FoundationVineeta & Arvind KanoriaSaroj Poddar, Adventz Group Of CompaniesMadan & Usha SethiSohni & Dipak Tanna

PATRONS

Dipak & Rohitashwa Poddar

PARTNERS

Shekhar Bajaj, Bajaj Electricals Ltd.Minakshi & Shishir BajajVinod Doshi, Echjay Industries (CSR)FoundationDeccan Heritage FoundationPoddar FoundationJai & Sugandha Hiremath, Hikal LtdPriyam & Gayatri JhaveriAjay & Vandana Kanoria, Asiatic Oxygen Ltd.Anurag KanoriaDhruv Khaitan, Trustee, Kumudini Devi Khaitan

Samvedna TrustDeepak & Smita Parekh, HDFC Ltd.Maithili Parekh & Shashank SinghDilip Piramal, VIP Industries Ltd.Aditya RuiaShamina TalyarkhanBahram & Arti Vakil

FRIENDS

Lolita ShivdasaniDayanita Singh

If you are interested in supporting JPM, please write to us at [email protected]. Jnanapravaha is aregistered trust eligible for CSR contributions and has been awarded FCRA clearance by theGovernment of India. Contributions qualify for 80g benefits.


Announcements

Portrait of Raja Budh Singh of Bundi on Horseback.Jodhpur, c.1820. Opaque watercolour on paper. Jnana-Pravaha, Varanasi.


POSTGRADUATE COURSE IN INDIANAESTHETICSJuly 2019 – April 2020 Typically Saturdays, 1:30 – 5:30 pm

Introduced in 1999, Jnanapravaha Mumbai’sacademic year-long Postgraduate Diploma/Certificate Course in Indian Aesthetics (IA)examines the development of visual forms inhistorical and discursive context. Crossing thedisciplines of art history, archaeology, architecture,anthropology, literature and philosophy, the coursetreats roughly 5,000 years of Indian visual art andaesthetics, encompassing premodern, modern andcontemporary forms, as well as popular traditions.IA scholars comprise internationally renownedacademics who ensure that the visual materialpresented is broad-based geographically,historically, culturally, and materially. Over theyears, in keeping with JPM’s mission, theprogramme has evolved to include subjects ofcurrent research.

For admission, you are required to submit:A copy of your last degree certificate and twopassport-sized photographs.

Fee structure:Diploma (writing and attendance) – Rs. 35,000Certificate (attendance) – Rs. 25,000

POSTGRADUATE COURSE IN YOGA ANDTANTRAAugust 1 – October 4, 2019 Typically Thursdays and Fridays, 5:30 – 8:00 pm*

Ambitious in scope and interdisciplinary, Yogaand Tantra (Y&T), an introductory course, offers acritical inquiry into the field of yoga and tantra. Theprogramme aims to trace historical antecedents tomodern-day practice, exploring the relationbetween yoga and tantra, and offering a broadunderstanding of the development of yogic andagamic/tantric traditions in the Hindu, Buddhist,and Jain worldviews, as well as syncreticinteractions with vernacular Bhakti traditions frompremodern to modern times.

The course is at once a meditation on life andan encounter between the philosophical and theexperiential, situated in the socio-religious order ofthe historical world even as it adduces thetranscendental, esoteric, and mystical dimensionsof an array of yogic and tantric traditions.

Emphasizing current research and publishing inthe field, Y&T brings national and internationalscholars leading innovative research projects todeliver lectures and seminars that trace thehistorical development of yoga and tantra.

Y&T uses both academic and praxis-basedapproaches; presenting views from Sanskritstudies and philology, philosophy, literature,aesthetics, art history, religion, archaeology, andanthropology.

Fee: Rs. 18,000

*Timing for week one: 5:00 - 8:00 pm

For admission, you are required to submit a copyof your last degree certificate and two passport-sized photographs.

Four Mandalas of the Vajravali and Tantra-Samuccaya.Ngor monastery or affiliate, Tsang, Tibet. c.1460-1500.Opaque watercolour on cotton. Jnana-Pravaha, Varanasi


Rohit Goel with the students of JPM Write: Argument 2019

We know we have made a difference. Our endeavour to encourage and facilitate pedagogy meaningfullycontinues with the firm belief that the humanities are indispensable to the well-being of the community

and the individual.

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