-
Long after ViftMk Ghatak's lonely death, thesignificance of his
work is finally bursting out ofits obscurity. His films
arefextremely difficult
P^see in India, and he is yet unknown !o,;th,e ; '?.'.larger
Indian audience. But the f i lm*; i; ^
themselves, brilliant and abrasive, are gradually
revolutionary achievements in conterftfKOfafy;'!;i:f'.,..,
criticism of Ghatak's work in, English, examinesit within the
modern1 Indian tradition.
Ashish Rajadhyaksha (25) is a journaU^has been a regular
contributor to yatfit>
journal's on the 1 rt)i:'||tt! art see ne.
"*-&:
.*
/
%
**-
-
Ashish Rajadhyaksha
RITWIK GHATAKA RETURN TO THE EPIC
Screen Unit
-
First printed in Bombay, 1982, by Screen Unit H-156 Mohan
Nagar,off Datta Mandir Road, Dahanukar Wadi, Kandivili (W),
Bombay400067
No part of this manuscript may be reproduced or used in
translation,without prior consent of Screen Unit
ALL RIGHTS RESERVEDPrinted by Arun Naik at Akshar Pratiroop Pvt
Ltd 42 Ambekar Marg,Bombay 400 031.Cover: Milon MukherjeeDesign
:Raza ModakLayout: Yeshwant Sawant,
Yeshwant Pandit
Price : Rs 45Overseas : $ 9
For my mother
-
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book could not have been written without the help of Arun
Khopkar.Apart from his encouragement and suggestions which have
been of vital use, Iam particularly grateful for his painstaking
translation of parts of Eisenstein'sNon-Indifferent Nature from the
Russian and French specifically for thepurposes of this study.
I am also grateful to Ceeta Kapur for her extended comments, and
KumarShahani for his help which was curtailed by the fact that he
himself features soprominently in the book. I would like to in fact
use this opportunity toacknowledge a deep personal debt to Kumar
for his encouragement andpatience.
With Chatak's films still so difficult to see, I am grateful to
the National FilmArchive of India for having extended to me their
facilities of seeing films andtaking stills, and to Prakash Yadav
of Kiran Arts for his fine and expeditiouswork.
I would like to thank Shanta Gokhale for her painstaking editing
of mymanuscript, Amrit Cangarof Screen Unit for atl his help, and
HaimantiBannerjee who made available her own analysis of Meghe
Dhaka Tara to me. Imust particularly acknowledge the tremendous
help given to me by my fatherin every possible way.
Ashish Rajadhyaksha
CONTENTS
Introduction 9
The BackdropPartition 13
Chapter 1The Dominant Tradition 16
Chapter 2The Freedom Of The Archetype 33
Chapter 3Towards A Materialism of Cinema 119
Chapter 4After Ghatak 130
Notes 144
-
m
Introductio n
When we return across the barriers of time to the work of an
artist nolonger with us, we have to somewhere acknowledge those
barriersand state the means we have used to overcome them. If we
considerfor instance the historical circumstances under which the
artistworked, we must face the question of how their relevance
mightextend to a changed present. Would the criticism isolate the
artist? orwould it enlarge upon his work ? Where, eventually, would
we placeourselves within such a historical canvas defined around
the subjectof our criticism ?
Established conventions of art-criticism often demand an
objectivi-ty, a mandatory distance from one's subject. I n such a
form of criticismthere is often a sense of passing judgement. But
if there is one thingwe shall not do here, it would be to'judge'
RitwikChatak. I fan artist asenormously relevant to the present as
Ghatak demands an objecti-vity, it is a radical objectivity, a
statement of bias rather than a falseneutrality. The relationship
of the individual to the historical process,never insignificant,
here becomes of overwhelming importancebecause of Chatak's own
historical consciousness. The process ofindividuation through
history, important in his films, here becomes asimportant for us as
we move beyond false glorification and relate theindividual to
history.
Nowhere better than in Chatak's work do we realise that if in
India,thirty years after ourindependence, serious art is still
considered theproperty of the upper classes, the issues go deeper
than the one.susually considered relevant for art and
art-criticism. If the onlyresponse that the cancerous growth of our
mass-arts evokes is theromantic dream of a 'better" art, it is
obviously not enough to merelydisagree or to challenge this dream.
We need to identify and toconfront the people who have sought to
make even this dream into acommodity, the ideology that would
systematically obscure, theissues at stake and concFetise an image
only in its saleability.
-
In bourgeois society one constantly faces a divide between
apeople's material level of existence and the dreams and
aspirationsthat preoccupy them. One comes to a strange
fragmentation of thehuman sensibility as their daily existence
turns increasingly unrealand the only sensuous reality they feel is
that of the dream-worldwhich is provided by the mass-arts. The
complete absence of anidentity to people outside of the one
conferred upon them by thedominant social tradition leaves them
without an alternative but thefew offered by the bourgeoisie, the
few limited options that providethe system with a facade of
democracy.
It is a part of our fragmentation that the struggle of the
artist forsignificant expression is often not seen as part of the
larger struggle fora cultural unity. We repeatedly see how, despite
an overall accep-tance of a correct ideology, many of those who
enter the struggle viewthe role of the artist as that of a mere
propagandist Such a position,taken by those who mean well but who
have yet to digest the lessonsof socialist-realism, at times goes
dangerously close to the position ofthe dominant class itself.
Central to the present study on Ritwik Chatak is the concept
ofmyth. At various points in the book differing shades of the
concepthave been used, with the idea that, hopefully over its
length adefinition of the term would emerge. One could begin with a
simpleidea of the myth as an encrustment of a particular
configuration ofideas never challenged, a particular set of images
that have come toachieve total acceptability within a
culture-specific society. How ismyth to be confronted ? It can only
be broken if it is displaced, shownto be false in a context
different from the one it brings with itself. Sucha displacement,
and the consequent openingout of the myth, we mayterm
signification.
The process of signification begins with, to use
Brecht's-phrase, the'showing up (of) the dominant viewpoint as the
viewpoint of thedominators'. Since the very basis of a myth is its
unchallengeability, italso carries within it the ideology of the
dominant class, the'dominantviewpoint'. And since myth communicates
predominantly on thesensuous, all significant form also has to work
sensuously if it is todispalce its basic content into conscious
cognition.
Mythic belief gets perpetuated in society through the
dominantmass-media. And here in India one comes to the enormously
vital roleof the commercial film industry as the most potent
carrier of myths.Nowhere else does the cinema appear to play the
role it does in India drawing at once from the ancient epics and
the modern pop
10
A Return to the Epic
culture, creating a culture for the urban lumpen while mounting
anattack on all other cultural traditions. Cinema is at once the
maincause, and the most obvious of reflection, of the kind of
changes thathave taken place in our society in the last thirty
years. It's forms ofsubjugation themselves reflect the history of
colonialism in ourcountry and the various ways in which it
manifests itself today.
We can see how the process of taking on myths becomes a larger
andlarger battle as the antagonistic forces become stronger. If the
processbegins here, as subterranean forms of exploitation are
dragged intothe light of consciousness, it culminates intheepic.
Onemightdefinethe epic in slightly wider context than the Brechtian
and see the formhistorically as the rallying point of a class or,
as it has been in the past,of even civilisation. Both myth and
epic, forms which are in constanttension with the one closed, the
other open-ended, are directlyrelated to history. Both forms are
comprehensible in terms of thetradition which they evoke. The
difference is that myth seals off aconfiguration of images
from-their material base, while the epicachieves a synthesis of
form, a unity of perception that is the first steptowards the
overcoming of the fragmentation of our social sensibility.
The attempt here has been to extend class-struggle to its
wider,more all-encompassing form of a conflict of tradition. The
width ofcanvas that will be obvious with the first chapter itself
has been aninevitable consequence, as has been the attempt to
extend theChatak tradition to other filmmakers in stating a larger
positionoutside of the dominant one. The emphasis on tradition
becomesinevitable with Ghatak not only because his films work in a
tradition,but also because of the man himself. We can recall the
final scene in juktiTakko Ar Gappo where Neelkantha encounters the
Naxalite youths.The way traditions move on over generations, the
inevitable destruc-tion of the past while building upon it, the
violence of the dialecticalposition itself, all this somehow comes
out in the last scene ofGhatak's own final film. Chatak's own
terrible, and in a way almostheroic, end and his insistence that
that too be expressed in his work, isa violent denial of the neat
segregation of private and public seen inthe lifestyle of most of
our artists.
It therefore becomes as important to recognise the context
toGhatak's work as to analyse its inner structures. As we recognise
thesignificance of his form, we have to also see the way it
emerged,against the barriers that our conformist intelligentsia
force upon theindependent-minded, as part of the struggle for
freedom thatGhatakwaged all his life.
11
-
Ritwik Ghatak
The Backdrop : Partitio n
What the fil m reall y demand s is externa l actio n and not
introspectiv epsychology . Capitalis m operate s in thi s way by
takin g given needs on amassiv e scale , exorcisin g them ,
organisin g them and mechanisin gthem so as to revolutionis e
everything . Great areas of ideolog y aredestroye d when capitalis
m concentrate s on externa l action , dissolve severythin g int o
processes , abandon s the hero as the vehicl e foreverythin g and
mankin d as the measure , and thereb y smashe s theintrospectiv e
psycholog y of the bourgeoi s novel . The externa lviewpoin t suit
s the fil m and gives it importance.Berfo/ f Brecht (TheFilm, The
Novel and The Epic Theatre)
J
In 1947, the long-drawn nationalist movement finally won for
itself thefreedom of the country. For millions of Indians however,
the climax ofan essentially controversial movement was not the
"Tryst WithDestiny" that 15 August 1947 claimed to be, but the
ensuingfragmentation of the country into three parts the tragedy
ofPartition and its terrible aftermath.
Partition, and the communal warfare that accompanied it,
wereclearly a consequence of the disruptive forces inherent in
thenationalist movement now gone out of hand. That it was
essentially aresult of the factionalism within the Indian
ruling-class over thedistribution of power, as it was transferred
from British to Indian hands,seems obvious today. But for those who
actually experienced therapid escalation of petty political
infighting into the splintering ofsocio-cultural bindings hundreds
of years old, this appears far toosimplistic an explanation of its
causes. For the historian, the questionof whether Partition was an
expression of contradictions deep withinthe Indian social fabric,
or whether it was forced upon an unwillingpeople by the nationalist
movement and if the latter, how it couldbe done with such ease has
to be faced. The sole event of Partitionthus questions the very
nature of modern Indian society, the complextensions that tend to
bind and to splinter it.
The aftermath of the split saw the Terrifying spectacle of
millions ofrefugees on either side of the new border uprooted
overnight fromtheir land of birth. One of these refugees was Ritwik
Ghatak. Withthousands of others from the East, he too made his way
to Calcutta toseek his future. The raw experience of the event,
particularly theoverwhelming sense of loss on seeing his motherland
suddenly turnpolitically alien, was etched deeply into his
emotions; it is anobsession expressed repeatedly in his films as
for instance byBhrigu in Komal Gandhar: "I refuse to accept that
land across
12
-
Ritwik Chatak
the river as a foreign country. I was born there, it's my land,
I will gohac k there."
The e x perie nee more orless shaped his entire oeuvre. It
became forhim so significant an event that he pla> ed ail his
themes in itsbackdrop. Chatak remained convinced that Partition had
not beenhistorically inevitable but forced upon the people by the
nationalistbourgeoisie. In this he believed that they found active
support fromamidst the Bengali lower-middle classes, who in
factacted as catalystsof the split. This class, which had been the
one to suffer the brunt ofthe war and later the ravages of the
freedom struggle had, within itsnarrow enconomism and
petty-bourgeois value-system, developed avicious instinct for
survival. In all his films except Ajantrik, Chatak'scharacters are
drawn from this class economically deprived, butwith definite
bourgeois aspirations. He shows how this class sufferedas much as
any other in the trauma of Partition, but how even after thisthey
refused to abandon their earlier values and aspirations.
Asympathetic portrayal does not prevent a searing indictment of
thisclass in his films.
Partition was clear evidence of the extent to which
the-dominanttradition held the country together. This tradition,
now in nationalistcolours, represented the ideology of the new
classes coming to thefore in the wake of industrialisation and
urbanisation. The nationalistideology was turning increasingly
vocal, not only in politics, but in thearts and, more importantly,
in the evolution of the new swadeshiculture that was rapidly
replacing the old colonial one. The fact thateven the division of
the country failed to shake the hold of thistradition really
indicates the nature and extent of its dominance.
In Ghatak's films, the all-consuming bourgeois aspirations of
eventhe economically deprived class achieve major significance
whenplayed out to the grim backdrop of Partition and its memories.
Theseare Chatak's refugees, the men who truly lack homes. The state
ofrefugeehood was for him no different from the alienation of a
classfrom its own traditions.
For Chatak therefore, cultural rootlessness took on, not its
usualethnic or regionalist .character, but a class-character. The
initialquestion of the split of Bengal was to become for him a
larger quest an attempt at portraying the relationships between the
new classesformed by the process of urbanisation and the
machine-revolution,and their old traditions. It led him to take a
look at the whole issue of
14
A Return to the [pic
Refugees : Jukti Takko Ar Cappo
rootlessness afresh the search of the refugee for a new
identity. Forhim this identity had links directly with the past,
the centuries-oldcultural heritage of our ancient societies wherein
lay the unifyingforces of the present. What within the present was
a recognition of thematerial level of struggle, extended into the
past to a recognition ofthe material traditions that once held the
people together, traditionsthat had been destroyed over the
centuries. These traditions wereinitially strongly Bengali as he
wrote, " Bengal for the past seven oreight-hundred years has
produced something that was essentially-Bengal" and elsewhere, "As
I tried to master the tradition of the wholeof Bengal, I felt sure
that the union of the two Bengals is inevitable. Iam not here to
judge the political implications of this, but the culturalimpact of
this is of great value to me."
But as Ghatak's work grew, the traditions it reflected grew too.
As hesought the roots of the present in those traditions, he went
directlycounter to the ethnicity that many other artists, seemingly
closer tothe Indian 'essence', attempted to capture. Ghatak moved
from theparticular, using the significant in it, to a complex
general, a near-international sensibility in his search. This is
the dialectic that extendsto make his work at once extremely rooted
to his time and milieu andyet reflect a true internationalism of
sensibility.
15
-
CHAPTER ONE
The Dominan t Traditio n
A Return to the Epic
"Whateve r the accidents , the compromises , the concession sand
the politica l adventures , whateve r the technical , economi cor
even socia l change s whic h histor y bring s us, our societ y is
stil la bourgeoi s society.. . Several types of bourgeoisi e have
suc-ceeded one anothe r in power ; but the same statu s a certai
nregim e of ownership , a certai n order , a certai n ideolog y
remain s a4 a deeper level . As an economi c fact , the bourgeoisi
e isnamed without difficulty ; capitalis m is openl y professed.. .
As anideologica l fact it completel y disappears ; the bourgeoisi e
hasobliterate d its name in passin g fro m realit y to
representation ,fro m economi c man to menta l man. It comes to an
agreemen twit h the facts , but does not compromis e abou t values
: the bour -geoisi e is define d as the social class that does not
want to benamed." Roland Bartbes.
With the coming of independence to India, one of the most
typicalnationalist movements of this century reached its goal as
power wastransferred from a colonial to a national ruling-class. At
the time whenChatak came to cinema, the ideology that prevailed was
predomi-nantly nationalist, devoted to the process of'de-naming of
the socialclass', and to the establishment of the naturalness and
inevitability ofnationalist rule. By the early fifties, the
definition of progressivism thatthe movement had brought with it
had pretty well been accepted atall levels.
This was the heyday of the Mixed Economy, when the.pressure was
to'fit India into the nuclear age and do it quickly (but)... while
learningfrom other countries, we should also remember that our
country isconditioned by its past. All the factors that have
conditioned Indiahave to be remembered".1 Conservatism here
constituted a refusal torecognise what in Nehru's words was the
fact that "We are on theeve of something at least as great as the
Industrial Revolution,perhaps something bigger" The ambition that
dominated the newprogressives was that, following the success of
Gandhism during themovement, India might introduce to the world its
most advancedmode of production yet
16
*
The visualisation of selective absorption of the best of
capitalismand socialism which is usually seen as the essence of the
MixedEconomy was not an attempt at a synthesis in the dialectical
sense,but one towards peaceful co-existence in the traditions of
demo-cracy. These traditions of truly participatory democracy were
presentin the very essence of India, the nationalists believed, and
wouldsurface as soon as alien repression on all that was.truly
Indian wouldbe removed. They hoped that the modern present, with
its materialadvancement, would be integrated into the uniquely
Indian characterof its ancient social systems to show the way to
the future. At theeconomic level thus, the programme was for an
indigenous economybased on simplicity and austerity key virtues of
those ancientmodes of production, today symbolised by the charkha
and thebullock-cart.complemented by a simultaneous drive for
the'nuclearage'.
What was this ambitious dream based on ? It was in fact the
onlypossible manner in which the pre-lndependence nationalist
pro-mises, and the historical role that the nationalists believed
them-selves to be playing, could be integrated into a developmental
progra-mme for the country. Nationalism had come to India at a time
whencapitalist relations between colonies and imperialist powers
wasundergoing a major change the time when, in Lenin's words,
the"old colonial power becomes the 'rentier' state or usurer state"
and"cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of
economiclife"2. Colonial exploitation had escalated to the more
sophisticatedfinance-capitalist exploitation with the entry of the
non-colonialistsuperpowers like Germany and Japan into the world
market; now inthe colonies, the local bourgeoisie could be
entrusted with the keycapitalist function of expanding the vast,
as-yet-untapped semi-urbanand rural markets. Since there was on
this score little ideologicaldisagreement between the earlier and
later ruling classes, it washeightened with often the help of
imaginary issues.
The basic need of the nationalist movement was one of evolving
aunifying identity to the present distinct from the one given to it
by theBritish. This led, in its earlier stages, to a significant
rise in revivalistthinking. Historian Bipan Chandra, writing about
the glorification ofIndia's past by the nationalists, says,3
"Obviously its mainspring was aneed for national identity and
pride. What was unfortunate from thenational point-of-view was that
the past chosen for glorification was
17
-
Ritwik Chatak
the ancient past This was partially true because of the fact
that theperiod of Mughal rule was still fresh in the memory of the
people andcould not therefore be easily glamourised. On the other
hand, theancient past was remote, and known only through official
or near-official texts..."
According to Chandra, there were three main myths that
themovement perpetuated:
First of these myths is the belief that Indian society and
culture Indian civilisation reached a high watermark, the
GoldenAge, in ancient India, from which high watermark it
graduallyslided downwards during the medieval period branded
theperiod of decay and 'foreign rule' and continued to slidedown
till the revivalist movement made partial recovery butthat the real
task of reviving the past glory and civilisation
stillremains..."
"The second mvtti arose out of the necessity to Drove thatIndia
of the ancient past the Golden Age had made thehighest achievement
in human civilisation. But this was obvi-ously not true in material
civilisation... Therefore the myth thatIndian genius lay in
spiritualism, in which respect it was superiorto the
'materialistic' West..
The third was the Aryan myth, which was a copy of the
Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic myths, andwhich was the Indian responseto
the White racialist doctrines. This was the myth that theIndian
people were'Aryans' and that the'pure' Indian cultureand society
were those of the Aryan, Vedic period.
Many of these myths had in fact been brought into direct
political useby the British to demonstrate the unfitness of the
Indians to managethe more mundane affairs of statecraft It had
fitted very well withtheir earlier liberalism in trade, and that
which accompanied theirsubsequent colonial takeover. By the time of
the nationalist move-ment itself, in tune with the transition that
took place within Britishcapital, their liberalism also underwent a
transformation. In the newposition, justification for large capital
investment revolved around theissues of poverty and overpopulation.
And these myths, since theywere directly instrumental in affecting
the large Indian markets,found, as they still do, a synonymity of
view with the Indian bourgeois
18
A Return to the Epic
class, that has ever since continued to make inroads into the
ruralareas on the grounds of redressing natural resource
imbalances.
It must be mentioned here that a myth seldom answers to
thequestion of whether it is basically true or not It's main
quality is that itfunctions as a closed system of belief; as it
relates in ever-decliningmeasure to history its content itself gets
blurred, it begins to losemeaning.
By the end of the War, the new classes within the country
thatsought to replace the old colonial domination of the vast
Indianmarkets with their own produce, were increasingly influencing
nationa-list programmes. This local class had tasted huge profits
during thewar and the years of Depression; now, with Independence
in sight,militant nationalism was giving way to a more moderate
phase, andthe old myths were also being given a more practicable
re-inter-pretation. Capital investment had to be de-linked from its
Westernstigma since that had earlier come under much criticism from
thenationalists themselves; overall, there was a need among the new
classesfora tradition that was in some way'lndian'. This was to a
large extentthe origin of the last of the nationalist myths the
glorified Indianvillage. The village suddenly came to symbolise an
independent unitthat had somehow retained all the great traditions
of India's past rightthrough the colonial experience. Suddenly
everything with 'folk'origins became a key towards a rediscovery of
our nationalroots. The very primitivity of its production modes was
linked to the
.non-materialist alternative that India was supposed to offer
thespirkually impoverished West. The very poverty of these villages
wasglorified as an essential ingredient of asceticism.
As with the earlier myths, this one too had been introduced
intopolitical rhetoric by the British before the Indians took it
over; tnepicture of an Indian village where, for the poverty-ridden
peasant" lifewas too near the edge of death, and his main concern
was with thestruggle to stay alive"4 had been created by the
British to denigratethe predominantly urban-based nationalist
movement Now it servedthe new rulers, who were able to use this
myth, with a fewembellishments, to congeal the urban-rurai
imbalance of colonialtimes behind a welter of distorted values
while simultaneouslypushing their.way into the rural markets.
19
-
Ritwik Chjtak
We can now get a perspective to Partition, and the
terriblecommunal war that accompanied it Bipan Chandra points out
how the19th century social reformist movement was accompanied by
asignificant increase in popular literature of the adventures of
the greatregionalist heroes of the past Shivaji, Rana Pratapand
Guru CobindSingh. This possibly gives us our first insight into the
nature of heroiccharacterisation in popular art, in which myth is
imposed uponcharacter to create the larger-than-life 'heroic'
figures that lead tofascist domination of sensibility of the
audience. The nationalistconflict was often characterised as an epk
battle, and politicalleaders as possessing many of the archetypal
qualities of leadershipand heroism of popular mythology.
Consequently when the politicalschism occurred over the division of
the country, it was possible togive it a communalist overtone by
recourse to the same myths, withnow the Muslims included along with
the British as having jointlybeen responsible for the country's
downfall from its Golden Age. Thiswas countered by a Muslim
revivalism as well, and with these falsepositions linked to the
middle-class value-system, a communal war waseasily whipped up.
Since the myths themselves were never challenged, linked as
theywere to firmly entrenched middle-class values, communalism
wasitself explained away by yet newer myths, in which it was seen
ashaving a centuries-old history, or by each community recognising
atradition of barbarism in the opposite one. The communal war
wasthus obscured behind a myriad of ethnic and regionalist issues,
andPartition given an air of historical inevitability.
The dominant tradition is thus evident as fundamentally based
onahistoricism, and embedded within a class-position. Myth piles
uponalready existing myth as historical events are dislocated from
theirhistorical perspective. The entire economic and state
machinery ofthe present can thus b~e obscured from its actual
function.
It is possible to see how an event such as Partition can
seeminsurmountable, take on the shape of the major neurosis of an
entireera As the events of May 1 968 in Paris and the Vietnam War
obessedJean-Luc Godard, so Partition obsessed Ghatak.
We see in Ghatak's work how, when just one event such as
Partitionis sought to be explained, it yields a mythic complex as
undefinedlaws of' nature' open out to the historical process. Often
the myths areso large that they rival the epic itself in scale.
Opening out such mythsis often so far-reaching an act that to open
them out is to.put humancivilisation itself to the test
20
A Return to the Epic
II
A major obstacle to the statement of a tradition outside of
thedominant one is the weakness of our conservative tradition
itself. It isa measure of its weakness that to overcome this
tradition one has tofirst define it.
Moving from dominant mythic belief to the traditions of mythic
portra-yal, it is important to identify its fundamentally romantic
character.Whether it be the instinctivism that is used to explain
away theacquisitive urge for commodities, or the particular
regionalism thathas been the usual expression of a return to one's
roots, or morespecifically the total dissociation, the
schizophrenic rift often seenbetween the livingand working
conditions of people, and the dreamsand aspirations that dominate
their value-system, such romanticismhas been the means of
explaining away the 'covert' materialism ofhuman activity. This is
romantic ahistoricism taken to its final extreme. Butas Arnold
Hauser points out, it is part of the romantic position itself:
The characteristic feature of the romantic movement was notthat
it stood for a revolutionary or anti-revolutionary, a pro-gressive
or a reactionary ideology, but that it reached bothpositions by a
fanciful, irrational and undialectical route. It's -evolutionary
enthusiasm was based just as much on ignoranceof the ways of the
world as its conservatism... just as remote fromthe appreciation of
the real motives behind historical issues, as itsfrenzied devotion
to the Church and the Crown, to Chivalryand feudalism.5
Such a wide view of romanticism becomes necessary for us
becausethe most significant artists of even the dominant romantic
tradition inthe country echo its associations beyond its
specifically Indiancontext If this tradition, in which the dominant
mythic system findsits clearest expression, were to be split into
two streamsthe firstbeing the actual portrayal of ancient myth, the
second the morerecent realist tradition taken from the West we see
in Ananda Cooma-raswamy and, in cinema, in Satyajit Ray the
tradition in all its widerramifications. If we were to examine
their work in slightly greaterdetail, we might also see the reason
why romanticism was soimportant a phenomenon in the way It affected
Ghatak's work.
The influence of Ananda Coomaraswamy on the specifically
21
-
Ritwik Chatak
Indian traditions of portrayal is hard to exaggerate; but it is
alsodeceptive. This is possibly because, coming to the scene when
thenational situation was in complete flux, Coomaraswamy's two
majortargetsthe Western academic system, and to a lesser extent
ourown brahminical tradition that had encrusted the past
into-meaning-less ritualwere both ripe for a larger attack.
Whatever the reason,Coomaraswamy has since been almost completely
absorbed into theideology that has sought to detach our mythic
tradition from thematerial conditions that first gave it
expression. Coomaraswamy,perhaps unaware of its repercussions, was
the first major theoreticianof a position that has grown today to
beinga major problematic for anyIndian artist who would attempt to
draw forms from the past
Coomaraswamy's work comes as an attempt to rescue the
magni-ficence of oriental art, and its entire mythic system, from
those whowould render it mystical or criticise it for its
non-realism. Westernacademic art-criticism, which has always missed
the significance of atradition by concentrating on its conventions,
is entirely representa-tive of the capitalist milieu from which it
emerges where the'worth' ofa work of art defines its innate
qualities. Both come under scathing cri-ticism from him.
In a series of devastating essays, he is capable of showing
upEuropean developmentalism for what it was in the coloniesin
itseducational policies, its attempts to 'civilise' a backward but
notnecessarily uncultured peoples by imposing upon them a
foreignliteracy and cultureand the destruction of all ideals of a
once-dignified civilisation by a 'murderous machine with no
conscienceand no ideals' that is contemporary Western
civilisation.
The destruction of a people's art is the destruction of thei r
life ,by which they are reduced to the proletarian status of hewers
ofwood and drawers of water, in the interests of the foreign
traderwhose is the profit,..We are irresponsible, in a way that
theOrientals are not yet, for the most part, irresponsible.6
This context becomes important in the light of Coomaraswamy's
realattempt to outline as an alternative to capitalism a way of
life he drawsfrom the ancient oriental past In its concept of
responsibility, of 'th ecosmic pattern of good form unanimously
accepted' and mainl y in itsrecognition of attainment in the work
of the anonymous artisan , theseancient oriental systems offered
the most significant alternative , hefelt, to the present
22
A Return to the Epic
At the very centre of Coomaraswamy's vision of the oriental
societyis the anonymous artisan. It is through him, through the art
he createsin his anonymity, that we see the fusion of what forms an
almostunbridgeable gap in capitalism: that of labour with art. Part
of thisvision comes through his recognition of the distance between
use andbeauty in modern, machine-produced goods. But in main his
advo-cacy of the return to the artisanal mode of production is
because it isonly in that, in a skill born out of a function higher
than paid labour,that the truth in art is perceivedthe achievement
and truth in the'well and truly made object'.
The substantiative strength that Coormaraswamy draws from
th(ancient traditions to make these statements comes from its
myths.Along with his recognition of their sensuous power, both
symbols andritual-patterns in his work move beyond their
brahminical context,and achieve a strength that parallels that of
the myths themselves. Atypically forceful interpretation of a
powerful myth is as follows:
Shjva is a destroyerand loves the burning ground But what doesHe
destroy? Not merely the heavens and earth at the close of
aworld-cycle, but the fetters that bind each separate soul.
Whereand what is the burning ground? It is not the place where
ourearthl y bodies are cremated, but the hearts of His lovers,
laidwaste and desolate. The place where the ego is
destroyedsignifie s the state where illusion and deeds are burnt
away: thatis the crematorium, the burning ground where Shri
Natarajadances , and whence he is named... Dancer of the
Burning-Ground . In thi s simile we recognise the historical
connectionbetwee n Shiva' s gracious dance as Nataraja, and His
wild danceas the demon of the cemetery.7
It is through such insights and descriptions that
Coomaraswamyrevalidate s the form s of the ancient myths , rescuing
them from boththe Wester n skeptics and the brahminical class. As
earlier, here too hearrives at what seems an almost materialist
recognition of their vitalitythroug h his interpretation of the
symbols of creation and destructionexpresse d there.
But again the last step is never taken; the very expression
of.suchpowerful symbols becomes pure creation as Coomaraswamy
wondersat the kin d of artisans that must have given birth to such
images:
-
Ritwik Chatak
How amazing the range of such thought and sympathy of
thoserishi-artists who first conceived such a type as this,
affording animage of reality, a key to the complex tissue of life,
a theory ofnature, not merely satisfactory to a single clique or
race, noracceptable to the thinkers of one cen'tury only, but
universalappeal to the philosopher, the lover and the artist of all
agesand all countries.8
History for Coomaraswamy was contemplation of the past
detachedfrom its specifically historical perspective. He always
accepted theprivileged position of the present in observing the
past, but did notconsider the present as different in any way from
the mythic past.One sees this in the way he never sought
substantiation fromspecifically historical sources. Myth became the
absolute centre ofhis universe, for if to him opening it outinto
history was to miss out onits true significance as myth, likewise
extending its inner structuresinto a programme for the present was
something that would naturallyoccur, but only when the myth was
comprehended.
The job of leading to such comprehension is specifically thatof
art Art is "both an aid to, and a means for spiritual progress",
andconsequently all art that does not reduce itself before larger
attain-ment, upon which intrudes the artisf s personality, is
suspect, faultyart
Such a world-view is one very close to a large number of
Indianscholars and thinkers. Many of these represent the very best
of theIndian critical tradition in the arts, for Coomaraswamy's
tremendousconcern for the manner in which the myths and symbols of
India'spast were losing their vitality to mere ritualism, has later
led to othersin his tradition breaking away from the decadent
classicism of many ofour art-forms into a recognition of its folk
origins.
It is in fact a very simple job to be critical of Coomaraswamy
for hehimself offers us the toolshis justification of the caste
system, of sati,his advocation of a return to feudalism; or the
other orientalist E. B.Havell glorifying the poverty-ridden Indian
peasant in iust the tonesthat bourgeois nostalgia has used since
Independence are positions easilycondemned. But that would beto
criticise the individual by lettingthetradition go. We have to see
the consequences of this tradition uponmythic portrayal itself.
In her study of Coomaraswamy,9 Geeta Kapur introduces theanalogy
of Thomas Mann. Mann, an almost exact contemporary of
24
A Return to the Epic
Coomaraswamy, is one of the few modern artists the latter refers
to,when he quotes him at the conclusion of his essay'A Figure Of
Speechor a Figure of Thought: "I like to thinkyes, I feel surethat
a future iscoming in which we shall condemn as black magic, as the
brainless,irresponsible product of instinct, all art which is not
controlled byintellect"
She points out that Mann in fact achieved the very thing
Cooma-raswamy soughtan integration of the mythic past into the
modernsensibility.
Assimilating Freud, Mann follows up in a succession of hisworks,
the relationship between disease and creativity andthereon, tier
upon tier, he discloses the wizardry of the uncon-scious; the
contrivings of the soul in its attempt to seize theworld; the
irony, comedy and transcendence drawn from theroots of the soulits
mythic past And this passage to mythologydoes not in any way deny
the psychological.
Such a passage to mythology led Mann not to orthodoxy or to
anyspecific tradition, but towards being a 'visionary
modernist'whichCoomaraswamy cannot be said to be.
One may extend the analogy by seeing how an artist from
therealist tradition, the tradition that Coomaraswamy rejected in
hisdiscovery of a new oriental aesthetic, used the myths and
archetypesof the past towards a portrayal of the present In a sense
the crisis ofthe bourgeoisie, Mann's'search for bourgeois man' in
Lukacs' words,is the same as that of Coomaraswamythat is if we
extend thedistance between use and beauty to also express the
ever-wideninggap between a people's existence and the images of
modern societythat dominate modern consciousness. This, for Mann,
is the frag-mented sensibility, against which he soughta unified
vision. In DoctorFaustus, to begin with, the attempt is to develop
this purely throughthe narrative structure. Then, as the character
grows, this too extendsto the man-nature relationshipthe growth of
the rationalist and hisstruggle against the 'daemonic'. If the
struggle to express a collectiveunconscious does come, it begins as
an entirely individual attempt toreconcile the idealism of the
pre-war German tradition with theincreasing crisis it faced after
the war.
To see how Coomaraswamy was unable to universatise, we wouldneed
to determine the terms of this universal isation. And here it is
that
25
-
Ritwik Chatak A Return to the Epic
Mann's solution is extraordinarily revealing. The attempt to
relate theprotagonist as an individual in an environment gives way
in his laterwork to the reader directly experiencing the vital
relationship withnature. But even this is not allhis
universalisation comes when hisnarrative develops realist and
mythic counterpoints, as in The BlackSwan, or moves to mythology
proper as in The Transposed Heads orThe Holy Sinner. In the latter,
with Freudian knowledge of the truesignificance of myth, pure
narration is itself enough to open out themyth.
As we counter Coomaraswamy's use of mythic forms to creafe
aclosed system with Mann's attempts to open them out, we are at
thepoint of actually defining the means by which archetypal
formsachieve freedom from their ritualistic bindings. Such a
freeing ofarchetypal energy we might describe as the process of
politicisation,or to use Mann's word 'secularisation' of the
archetype. One could,perhaps somewhat simplistically, outline
it.thus: there is, to beginwith the crisis that challenges the
dominant illusion thatall communi-cation takes places purely on the
conscious level. Coomaraswamy'scrisis would be the distance between
the religious icon and the usefulobject; Mann's the one following
the Freudian onslaught upon theconscious.
As the dominant sensibility suffers fragmentation, the new
sensibi-lity seeks to bring forth its own synthesis with the past,
and to createnew images of the archetype. It is here that the
term'secularisation' isimportant, for in many ways these new images
have been attempts totake the archetypes out of their feudal
context. Perhaps it wasCoomaraswamy's basically feudalist position
that prevented himfrom doing what Mann, or in our own context
Ghatak, did.
And finally, as the new images seek to intervene in the
materialprocess of social functioning, as people discover in them
an expres-sion of their own struggle, it is then that they take on
a revolutionaryquality.
Coomaraswamy's own idealism, his propagation of the
nationalistcause in his rejection of the modern and his own
response to thecrisis that dominated his timeof a rejection of
capitalism withoutseeing a significant alternative to it all
possibly explain his obsessionwith myth as myth. While such an
aberration might appear to havebeen caused by his overstatement of
his case, it is in fact not that. It isfundamental to his
ideological content, as it is to that of the dominantclasses of his
time in the country.
It is almost solely a consequence of such a position that a
neo-