Besides being the festive season, it seems to be Gandhi season. In the capital itself, there were at least five shows based on Gandhiji within a space of a month, not to speak of a fashion show in Kolkata and the rest of the country. So a show on Gandhi, his actions, reactions and philosophy seems to be ab initio a trite idea. An artist
interpreting Gandhi and his life, so what is so new about that? A group show Gandhi: Through the Eyes of the Artists organised by Progressive Art Gallery could have been yet another show in this series. However, the15 artists, including two photographers have attempted to be different insofar as they view Gandhi as a voice from within, as a voice of India, as the voice of conscience.
Everyone including the artists on display imagine Gandhi: not only his image but his thoughts and responses. For most urban-educated Indians, the ‘memory’ of Gandhi is embedded in their consciousness, derived from not only hagiographic school textbooks and but also popular projections on posters and propaganda devices. Almost everybody has a theory on Gandhi or Gandhianism or has at least heard of a theory on Gandhi. Not only the relatively few who have lived through a time Gandhiji was a reality, a living presence but also the majority who have only lived in a world that has imagined, consumed, reinvented, vulgarised Gandhi in myriad ways.
Sarabjit Singh Babra, a young photographer uses the most enduring symbol of Gandhianism – the spinning wheel for his composition Spinning the Truth. The black and white shot of an old gnarled hand holding a whorl with stretched out thread is arresting. It invokes the wisdom of age, of continuity but also of fading ideologies.
The other photograph by Deepak Tandon of a torch repairer carrying a poster of Gandhiji on his handlebars displaying the last vestiges of the iterant vendor and of Gandhian ideology has the same aura of nostalgia for an irretrievable past.The exhibition reiterates the idea that though India is living without Gandhian ideals, we cannot live without the memory of Gandhi, without various roads named after him of October 2, the obligatory posters on walls of government offices and the images of Bapu.
— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic