India: Where lies her Genius ? (2002)

I
Underlying Dissensions
Where is the Indian genius rooted? In what form can human creativity mould this genius? How can this creativity be continually nurtured to build a great civilization? For it must be upon the strength & weaknesses of this genius that a nation becomes virtuous and an inspiration to humanity. Any other spring of energy will only take it so far. Only with an intrinsic creative strength at the root is there a chance to stay true to one’s ever-evolving destiny.
For any individual, as with the nation, genius is rooted in the search of knowing oneself, in sustaining this knowledge and experience to new breaking points, until the search becomes an inbuilt discipline; a discipline rooted on an uncompromising wish to be true to the process, beyond the specific, thus creating key facets of one’s character and nature, which change and evolve at any moment but do not bend on principle to any worldly pressure.
Yet, upon every new cycle, both individual & nation must re-personalize the search, totally immersing oneself in the process, if only to grasp the elusive detachment inbuilt into every process. Through the ages India has seemingly honed this virtue, but today the principle seems to be bending. Economic injustice & a re-assertive religious identity are applying unsustainable pressures. However, this is now being felt the world over. Economic developmental models are revealing a stagnancy and bankruptcy of vision to simultaneously tackle the financial inequity, emotional superficiality, environmental degradation, aesthetic vulgarity and spiritual barrenness of daily life. Further, as religious identification comes into conflict with concepts of nationalism and citizenship, many preconceptions of peaceful co-existence are being splintered wide open. More than most, India is vulnerable to these changes.
Of course, these tensions may indeed open new doors for grasping the ingredients of our universal glue. Yet, equally they will cause fear and paranoia as each tries to defend and barricade their preconceived boundaries. Having emotionally tolerated more uncertainty than most, without building the reinforcing material institutions, India is naturally most susceptible as the temper begins to rise within her human pressure-cooker.
The flip side of this steamy background is that India also has the greatest potential to lead and inspire the world in finding new developmental processes and options. More than ever, she needs to clarify and evolve a bold new vision for her civilization building process.
One aspect of this vision demands that she becomes confident and secure about her heritage, allowing it to melt with a deep awareness into the present, serving the future direction with a joy, rather than to be treated like some albatross, desperate to be distorted, denied or censored at every vexing junction. In this context it is imperative to grasp a philosophical perspective regarding history. My recent focus on various kinds of histories has forced me to open out my thinking on the matter.
At times I have thought that, as death is inbuilt into life so is history into the present. Living life (the present) to the full with fearlessness comes from joyously grasping the nature of death (history), its honesty, inherent function and need. Sooner or later this realization dawns upon the individual or nation. Thereafter a surge of activity digs deep into the past, eking out relevance and lessons to mould the future, recognizing no discontinuity with any age or period of time, though clearly aware of the disruptions, continual change and a hopeful evolution. In this process, one needs to bring an instinctive daily grasp of the vast flow of time, revealing how death, timelessness, history and the individual are entwined. In absorbing these forces one must be able to transform the heaviness of heritage into a positive motivating force for daily life, rather than leading to fatalistic retreat or inaction as the past norm has been. This is a very difficult task, but for a spiritually rooted country such as India, it is all the more imperative we seek out various paths to bring tangible relief to the individual, without artificially simplifying or ritualizing some of the most complex questions of daily life.
For example, I had always scoffed at this idea of continuity of the human spirit after death, that is, reincarnation and the like. Yet upon the death of a close loved one most of us instinctively recognize how implicitly we imbibe the best qualities of that person, how we try to be true to at least some part of their dreams and wishes, and how suddenly an essential characteristic of their personality is part of us, becomes us, and we are living some part of the day for them, carrying on what must not be discontinued, tolerating what once our nature may not have accepted. Hence, the human spirit, without premeditation, without any necessary belief in gods or outer-world experiences, suddenly feels eternal, to have at least sustained an extra generation.
I mention this point, because today many recognize that a most superficial dialogue and rapport exists between most humans, especially the youth and the elderly, and yet within the immediate family a great love still abides. This duality of parallel worlds, where the local and specific so overwhelms the universal and abstract, is a dangerous and narrow path. In a way these double standards reflect the lack of understanding and respect the individual has with regard to grasping their role in society, their responsibility to their common heritage, and the very nature and role of love in bridging the specific and abstract, the local and the universal.
It will be in the manner by which we harness love to inspire the participation of others into a coherent movement which will decide whether the Indian arts can indeed build a world class infrastructure and support system. It will be with this institutionalized love that the existing educational framework will sooner or later dissolve to be absorbed by that which a deeper joy of learning, experimentation and participation demands. It is also this love, which will help India find peace with her history, irrespective of the losses or victories. This peace is a precondition of progress. This in turn implies that the possibility of manipulating the histories needs to be minimized, which requires the creation of new and wiser formats and methodologies for the grasping and dissemination of the subject. Creating new formats by which we integrate as much as is feasible and desirable, with coherence and relevance, is a key task of infrastructure building. This catalogue (and the attached processes it carries along) introduces the possibility of one such format.
In a way, to express some of these ideas so briefly will cause natural misunderstandings, and maybe this platform is inappropriate, but that itself becomes a reason for writing herein. Obviously I am convinced that the auction-exhibition catalogue can become a format for much else, and soon even become the basis of a textbook. For at every level of infrastructure-building one is looking to cut away preconceptions which have limited the mind in grasping the nature of artistic creativity, and its inbuilt potential of building its own home, on its own terms, and in that process reaching out to all facets of society, with a new value-system which forces the individual to re-examine deeper today than they would yesterday.




II
Artistic Creativity as a Developmental Force
On the wider civilization-building processes, simple economic growth amid a welfare, semi-socialist system, directed by established concepts of profit-maximization subject to constraints, needs to be deeply re-examined and made more effective to serve wealth generation and its implied redistribution. Restructuring the corporate ethos and mechanisms, at least in the realm of allocating resources towards semi-public goods such as art, becomes a key objective. Simultaneously, the spiritual dimension of organized religion needs to be brought to the fore, transforming blind faith and superstitious superficiality with a new introspective, philosophical & speculative attitude. A process of internalizing our gods will sooner or later become inevitable.
Yet how?
Between these two dominant forces of economics and godliness, lies the fragile and unprepared world of artistic creativity and scholarship. It is the duty of this third force to transform and discipline the other two, and in the process reveal its own potential for generating values by which civilization can proudly progress. However, for such a possibility to even become credible in the eyes of our people, let alone succeed in daily practice, a vast material infrastructure for the arts needs to be created on new terms of reference and idealism.
One key aspect of this process being that the arts must not be dependent on either government patronage, corporate sponsorship nor private philanthrophy as the main sources for achieving their financial self-sufficiency. A new internally self-generating system of wealth generation and redistribution needs to be developed by the arts. The success of this infrastructure building process will to a large extent determine the chances of India emerging with a developmental vision, uniquely rooted in her artistic and philosophical genius and heritage. Merging from inception the Auction House with the Archive, Documentation & Research Centre reflects this principle in practice. Can the Indian intelligentsia and creative community, who have famously shied away from fulfilling any wealth generating responsibilities, so forcing others to implement their idealism, be restructured and re-galvanized into fulfilling this duty? It is a question and process worth pursuing. Taking up this challenge will demand a major restructuring of the traditional role expected of the artist-activist-scholar. Hand in hand, the institutional framework, which will carry and nurture the individual, while being malleable to the madness of great individuality, must also be given a firm platform upon which it can leap out from its traditional support systems and pillars of patronage and constraint.
This demands a new sustainable model, first to complement and then to absorb the existing system. One is occupied in trying to define and create the basis and reach of this framework and its processes. Whether Osian’s and myself or others who follow succeed, will depend on the integration of many forces, which normally would never be magnetized into a sustainable coherence. It is now that the ability of the artistic creative process to absorb contradictory forces, on a scale, which India demands, will be truly tested. Whether artistic creativity has within it the material and spiritual glue, will be best demonstrated if it can create its own infrastructure, on its own terms, reflecting all the introspective, experimental and passionately-detached values which make it uniquely capable of visualizing, let alone implementing such ambitions.




III
She Challenges All
In my mind the creation of such a model and framework demands very few established rules to be followed, yet an unswerving obedience to certain axioms (for lack of a better term) is critical for success. Pivotal in this regard is that each project must possess a certain vast scale if it is to play an infrastructure-building role in India. At least there must be inbuilt the evolutionary logic of scale, perceived by enough to give it the chance and time to grow to the level India respects and demands. One has tried to be true to this rule, in all projects, despite knowing how vulnerable and stretched this requirement would make oneself and the infant institution. Yet one knew this was not an issue open to compromise, irrespective of cost. It is not ambition or a sense of energetic grandeur alone, but a simple need, which dictates scale. This idea demands deeper explanation.
Before returning to India, the ability to absorb all contradictions seemed the nature of the intellect, ever restless and rejoicing in the continual self-criticisms of change. Eventually, this instinct to absorb everything found new relevance & unity of voice as one came to grasp the nature and flow of India. My balance and direction instinctively changed when I decided to fully re-introduce myself to her. After more than twenty-five years of benign western hospitality it was time to discover what was deepest within me. Not a flicker of adjustment was required.
Yet there is no rest for any individual who honestly surrenders to serve her fully. Working for her demands completeness, an integration of spirit, mind and heart so tortuous in daily implementation that most have indeed shied away from taking on her challenge. Today, most do not even dare to work on the quality, scale and pace India demands. To maintain and nurture her integrity and idealism is beyond the endurance of most individuals and institutions. Hence the gradual growth of divisions within our country, where the local and regional emphasis seems not to complement the national ethos but rival it, leading to a daily weakening of the Indian, in its purest sense.
The task of genuinely taking her fully on board, into one’s embrace, has virtually been given up by most. We are now barely holding on with god’s energy, as our whispers wishing to be heard keeps up the motivation and bravado: that all of you will be carried forward, whatever is your nature, with every seeming contradiction which you have tried to fuse into our mass of humanity, with every value you have tried to let live freely within our traditions and anarchic spirit, with all this baggage, I shall fearlessly carry and nurture you; to evolve deeper once again, to try and be true to your heritage, while revealing those great eternal and universal values which you have always kept at your core, which has allowed you to be yourself at all junctures, so allowing the innocence of inner endurance to be instinctively absorbed which few civilisations can claim to still possess let alone harness. Yet the timeless fearlessness, which was at the heart of your day has now been barnacled over with every minor distraction. They have lost their context. Each local, specific, regional, communal, individual, institutional request can no longer find their due place and recognition in your timeless fearlessness which should have become this great ground within which
our children would be playing and rejoicing. Yet no, and so it is time to re-create this fearless ground, giving new space and context to all the little barnacles of life, through a system of merit and dedication; through building the infrastructure by which each knows their accountability is now only to grow, reaching a peak of public interaction whereby standards will have to continually progress.
Yet this can be no ordinary infrastructure. The demands upon her are indeed unnatural. No world civilisation has the daily pressures of so much contradictory power pressing into each fused corner of the day. In a way, that is why many still shout that India has created no great civilisation to inspire humanity, for she is unable to fully feed and cloth herself, she is unable to truly educate and fill pride in her own people, she is unable to give justice and the motivation to excel to her people, so where then is her freedom? Where is the basic ground of timeless fearlessness upon which she is to come out to the world and say: come to me, learn from me, rejoice at this civilisation being itself, come share that great energy which has been in this land for centuries, come and share from my limitless bounty of the finest minds and human creativity; we have preserved it all, we have nurtured it all so that it abounds in every daily act, it is manifest at each corner, that great beam of creative energy, reflecting the greatest ideas and experiences of the intellect and heart.
However, today we cannot really ask anyone to come with great confidence, we cannot give or share, forget giving and sharing with outsiders, we ourselves as a nation do not even know our heritage and its continuum: what we are, who have we been, how is the past to be fused into the present so that it can daily serve every future moment. None of this we are today able to grasp and implement. Instead of our integrity being maintained in its entirety, with that vast idealism motivating each act of national direction, we instead have all the little barnacles eating their parasitic way into the day. We are too close in reaching a fever of anger. This anger we must now transform into a positive momentum and a creative outburst. In less than ten years India can once again become the greatest inspiration for humanity, and it requires nothing but going to our genius. A new confidence is imminent.
Returning to the concept of scale. If seen purely from the commercial or practical perspective, no project of significant Indian scale would be undertaken by a reasonable individual. Hence the government has always had the responsibility and burden of infrastructure building. Yet it is time to share their load and slowly give new energy and freedom to this process. Increasingly one’s work has already forced the art world to re-examine the standards and pace by which they engage with activity. The force of change is slowly becoming irreversible. The essential lower layers of infrastructure building - the ‘dirty work’ of awareness building, documentation and preservation, financial benchmarking, systemizing the interlinking of processes between disciplines, enpowering marginalised players, fulfilling the due diligence procedures against fraud, strengthening the domestic market so as to lead international trends, and the like- which few individuals take on, as rewards are less than zero, are being laid open amid a diversity of thought processes, power groups and platforms.

Further, the work of many, so far gone unrecognized will be further revealed in the years to come. Herein lies an essential cause for the previous lack of growth. Most in the art world have felt neglected and have not been given their just rewards. Even basic courtesy for the years of dedication has not been shown to most. Naturally there is a sadness and frustration. This has led to an insecurity of spirit which in turn leads to a defensive attitude, hence the infamous crab-like behaviour by many, so making a process of nurturing each other so difficult. Yet I feel a significant change is very near. Overnight the insecurity will dissolve once a belief establishes that fairness will enter the system, rewarding merit and integrity. Very shortly, the creative community and intelligentsia will indeed move as a united force before our people, of that I am convinced, revealing the vast potential that artistic creativity possesses as a means for developing society.




IV
Before amber, and still late
Next to scale, the concept of time or pace assumed by the project and vision must be such that it incessantly knocks away at India’s deeply embedded preconception of timelessness and her complacency of allowing things to find their own time, or to fit into the pace of the daily traffic, pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Grasping the flow of traffic and its substratum has always been one of the most genuine and unbiased indicators of the pace and mood of India. For example, in every big town each car is ready to speed off before amber shines, with such hurry, yet few are capable of reaching a meeting on time. At every corner a random bottleneck awaits, one day some lazy cow may decide to sit in the middle of the road, and within two gyrations we transform her squat her into a roundabout, re-disciplining the traffic anew. In some small town a joyously deluded sod erects a marriage tent with municipal connivance, forcing the traffic to accept the road as a dead end, as will the newly wed couple deny their delusions. The scooter driver avoids hitting a pothole with greater dedication and care than hitting a pedestrian. A rickshaw cyclist carries the full body of a broken jeep up a steep incline as the foot of a passing scooter-wallah pushes him from behind. Over the years these stray and seemingly trivial moments have been absorbed with radically different reactions and consequences by passing observers and participants.
Today tolerance has sunk to an all-time low. The slightest excuse triggers rage, forcing any accelerator to run down every stray dog if sure of escaping detection. The value of courtesy has never been grasped let alone its selfless quality appreciated, but today tiredness may ironically invite the possibility.
Whether legal lethargy or human overabundance, the fact remains that in India pace is compromised at every junction, and at times just a simple legally painted yellow-box junction can solve most traffic problems. They must be a handful of countries left in the world, such as India, who have not taken to the systematic use of yellow-box junctions at a crossroads. The time, energy, anger and waste that could be avoided by institutionalizing this no zone box into our roads is astounding and yet it is as if such geometric forms go against Indian modernism. On another tangent, one can barely think of a handful of artists who had any clue or inclination of using the straight line and its geometric potential in their artistic journeys. After all, the concept and demands of Indian space has forced the zigzag to become our instinctive straight line, as with Husain’s line which once cut through space, intuitively reflecting the Indian ethos and its time-space relationship.
I raise these images because today the uniform highways are still far and few between, hence the pace at which any work can proceed is littered with minefields. One is forced to fight too many irrelevant battles, especially if one pioneers or initiates change. The burden to pioneer is very large, to the extent of becoming a significant deterrent. Hence the risk-taking spirit is minimal. This needs to be fundamentally changed. Yet only by showing the way can change be inspired. Today for every criticism the duty must be to create the viable alternative.
Along with scale and pace, it is the unqualified dedication towards the pursuit of excellence, that spirit of resolve towards a sense of detail, an aspiration for perfection in all processes, which cannot be compromised. It is a cliché easily abused today, upon the lips of every mediocrity, but nonetheless an ethos embedded in quality and merit can still become the norm. It is a myth to say the populace will not appreciate a certain refinement, or that economics does not allow them the luxury of subtlety, or that the forces pandering to the lowest common denominator will overwhelm all else… these I am convinced are minor myths, easily destroyed within a few years. The work will speak for itself on this front. The respect for knowledge and aesthetic delights will only increase, our people will indeed once again fall in love with the arts and the world they open up, and through this process of falling in love, will re-energize attitudes and markets, generating wealth on a scale few could have imagined.
In this context my responsibility can extend only so far, and maybe prudence is demanded of me, as I have maintained in the past. Yet, now the process feels credible enough, hence I openly state, that within less than five years, all the areas associated with the arts, will grow exponentially, and just to put a figure amid the hounds, wealth in excess of Rs. 800 – 900 crore will be generated and redistributed, from a base less than one tenth that amount today. For now economics will overwhelm all, until comes its day to be disciplined. Inevitably, from the value systems of artistic creativity will also emerge that counter-discipline to economic abuse. Therein lies the beauty of opening out the pandora’s box of India’s cultural heritage and its aesthetic energy and pride. Success will be judged on how effectively those hundreds of crores will be redistributed so as to build a world-class integrated infrastructure for the Indian arts, culture and her education. The onus, more than ever, is upon the individual creative mind to maintain the integrity of the infrastructure building process. If this rare opportunity is not grasped now, it may become too late for the present generation of Indians to truly inspire the rest of humanity through her arts and culture.