The Sacred Feminine

ON A BRIGHT SUNDAY morning in February, Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), on New Delhi’s busy Janpath Road, is teeming with a motley crowd of artists, scholars, stu­dents, and sundry enthusiasts, all gathered for a walkthrough of an exhibition celebrating the many forms of Goddess Kali, as represented in the history of Indian art in the last 300-odd years. The muted light inside the room is in stark contrast to the sunny outdoors, but the effect adds a distinctive flavour to the viewing experience.

True to her name, Kali is the deity of darkness, as well as Time. In popular iconography, she appears as one of the supreme forces of life and death. Kali is the destroyer of evil, ruler of charnel grounds and cremation sites, wild-eyed and naked, except for a garland of human heads and a skirt made of human arms, her hair untied and tongue bloody red. Her four hands bear the scimitar, a severed head, and several other objects—a bowl of fire, a sword, or even a noose—depending on the form she assumes. Kali’s majesty becomes accentuated by shadowy interiors, the sly angle at which her images are lit up in the gallery.

The curator, Gayatri Sinha, has not only put together an extensive collection but also written a catalogue essay rich with infor­mation and insight. As she begins the tour, a silence descends. The next quarter of an hour flies by absorbing the many moods and manifestations of the goddess.

From miniature paintings dating back to the 17th century to the masterworks of the 19th and 20th century by the Bengal School of artists to contemporary inter­pretations by painters like GR Santosh and Madhvi Parekh, Kali: Reverence & Rebellion, provides a spectrum of styles and influences. Crucially, other than giving the viewer a sense of the historical richness of Kali’s iconography, Sinha’s expert curation recovers the goddess from her familiar, received images, most of which are ubiquitous across India, be it in the form of calendar prints, truck art, mass-produced posters, or in the profusion of temples and sati piths.

To fully appreciate the significance of the show, it is important to acknowledge a fundamental challenge involved in bringing a fresh perspective to a figure that has been en­trenched in India’s social and cultural memory for centuries.

In the India of 2024, Kali is a religious icon, a subject of ven­eration for millions, evoking piety. She is, equally, a goddess in a world that runs on science and technology, where it is possible to put up her icon on display inside secular places like art galleries, to be viewed and admired by connoisseurs and non-believers alike.

In contrast, if we were to take a leap back in time to the 18th and 19th centuries, we are confronted with a more widespread veneration of Kali as a cosmic force, who is incarnated as a do­mestic deity. A fearsome mystery to the British, a potent weap­on of resistance in the hands of the nationalists, a symbol of homegrown products co-opted by businesses, and patron saint to criminals and killers, Kali was a living flame for millions across the subcontinent. Be it Hindus or non-Hindus, tribals or the landed gentry, upper, middle, or lower classes and castes, the masses were in thrall of her spell.

The white officials found her omni­presence disconcerting and, as time went by, hugely inconvenient. Sinha cites a confidential official report from 1917 that went as far as accusing Kali (referring to an image where she had been depicted wearing a garland of decapitated heads of Englishmen) as being an instigator of the rebellion that brewed in Bengal at the time. No surprise, perhaps, that in time-honoured patriarchal tradition, the finger was pointed at a woman. Except, in this case, she wasn’t an ordinary mortal— rather, a potent and shape-shifting force in the Hindu pantheon, a symbol of explosive feminine energy before which the male gods cowered in submission.

In a sense, Kali is the ur-feminist rebel. She defies normative feminine behaviour, she is almost always atop her husband, wears a garland made of male heads, keeps a jackal for company. What’s more, she is a social, if not a socialist, revolutionary, a fearless equal-opportunity offender who doesn’t balk at any rule. In Kalika Purana, for instance, when Shiva makes fun of her dark complexion, Kali bristles at her husband and chides him, “One should not be ridiculed for one’s low caste, poverty, bad appear­ance, lack of generosity, and having one limb less….”

CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS Gogi Saroj Pal and Madhvi Parekh, the only two women in the group represented in the DAG show, capture something of the fiery spirit of Kali in their work. Pal’s Kali, like Tyeb Mehta’s famous vision of the goddess, has skin that is the colour of deep-blue ocean, reminiscent of the benign form of Dakshina Kali. Her blue is also a distinctive modernist touch—the blue of Picasso, for instance, with its associations of melancholy. Seen from this perspective, Kali is the Everywoman who must fight her lot in life. Parekh explores the language of tribal art, as her Kali appears as a primeval, totemic force of nature, executed with rough brushstrokes and colours, as though drawn on a mural or on the walls of a cave.

In contrast, the male gaze on Kali appears to be more variegated, historically as well artistically. MF Husain’s Kali, for example, is a corpulent and curvy woman who seems to have stepped out of a portrait by Lucian Freud.

Husain’s contemporary, Nirode Mazumdar, explodes into a firework of straggly lines in his depiction of Chhinnamasta, the macabre headless incarnation of the goddess, where she decapi­tates herself, drinks her own blood, and looms over the copulat­ing figures of Kama, the lord of desire, and Rati, who is his consort.

The goddess’ energetic aspect pulsates through the work of artist GR Santosh as well, her tantric yantra captured in fiercely abstract forms. In Nirode Mazumdar’s stylised and elegant approach, the same idea comes alive in a muted glow.

Kali’s association with Eros has a long and storied prove­nance. The figurines of the goddess made of German porcelain, which were collectors’ items in Bengal, shows her resplendent in three-dimensional physicality. Yet, Kali is equally a Mother Goddess, worshipped by Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Bamakhepa, and other spiritual gurus, who presented them­selves as her doting children.

In this tradition of the adoration of Kali, the devotee addressed the goddess with an everyday familiarity, as a child would its biological mother, demanding affection and attention, from her. The Bengali songs by Ramprasad Sen, Kazi Nazrul Islam, among others, celebrate her matronly appeal. Kali becomes desexu­alised, as the focus of the male gaze shifts from her body to her qualities of caritas, grace, and protectiveness.

It is no coincidence therefore that Kali was reincarnated in the secular realm as a force of victory and protector of the nation in the early years of the 20th century, as the nationalist move­ment simmered across India. In 1905, as Bengal was riven by Partition, the great master from Santiniketan, Abanindranath Tagore, painted his immortal image of Bharat Mata. A woman in a saffron habit, she floats above a lotus, holding a sheaf of paddy, a book, a piece of white cloth and a rudraksha in her four hands. It is feminine energy at its most pensive and regal.

In sharp contrast to this vision of gentle harmony, the figure of the Bharat Mata would gain a militaristic character in the subse­quent years, inspired by Devi Durga, who is scripturally believed to be a doppelganger of Kali, decked in her battle arms. Often accompanied by a lion, Bharat Mata appeared as a figure of courage to fight the British Raj and liberate her children from foreign rule.

And so, in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, as Bharat Mata became the symbol of justice and collective struggle, the figure of Kali also saw a nationwide resurgence. As the clarion call to boycott foreign goods in favour of swadeshi, or homegrown products, became louder, a range of businesses invoked her figure to pro­mote a variety of merchandise, from matchboxes to bidis. But it was in the 1940s that one of the most dramatic ‘uses’ of the icon of Kali appeared in the public domain.

It was a stunning poster issued by the Congress, depicting Subhas Chandra Bose, the leader of INA, as Chhinnamasta. Netaji, as he was called by the public at large, is seen standing on a cluster of decapitated heads, holding his own severed head in his hand, with blood dripping off it.

A striking visual counterpart to his famous speech, “Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom,” the image evoked Kali as an intrepid warrior leader, who is willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of the nation. It also gave men a reference point to look at women as comrades, mothers, and co-soldiers, not just objects of desire.

Kali’s links to life, death, sex and violence—especially in her Chhinnamasta form—have spawned a vast scholarly canon. But her appeal transcends historical theories. Worshipped by the thugs of the 18th and 19th centuries, she was believed to be an equally influential goddess for both Hindus as well as Muslims. Women prayed to her for protection of their family, men looked up to her for valour and inspiration. Commoners and criminals alike sought her benediction.

The thuggies of yore, who were a band of highwaymen, were some of the most notorious devotees of Kali. They stran­gulated and looted their victims, justifying their actions as their offering to the goddess. Santhal artists from Majramura in the Purulia district of West Bengal painted Kali on patachitra, or scrolls, reclaiming her from the stronghold of the Brahminical sphere. A whole sub-genre of young-adult adventure stories was written in Bengal around dacoits and bandits, who made a living by robbing mostly the landed gentry, fuelled by protection of goddess Kali.

The depth of Sinha’s curation not only covers the less conspicuous depictions of Kali, but also surveys the pan-Indian appeal of the goddess’ cult. While the iconography of the Dasha Mahavidya present to us the Mother Goddess in ten different moods, like a panorama in the stages of a woman’s life, regional performance cultures (like Theyyam, Padayani and Kathakali from Kerala) put an altogether different spin on Kali worship.

Performed by men with heavily made-up faces, and wearing metal breastplates, Kali acts as a vehicle of catharsis here, a spirit that possesses the performer temporarily, and helps him purge pent-up emotions and energies from within. In a world brimming over with toxic masculinity, these are rare moments of subversion, when the status quo is shaken up and forced into humble submission before the might of femininity.

(Kali: Reverence & Rebellion, curated by Gayatri Sinha, runs at DAG, New Delhi, till March 22)

art exhibitionsDAGGayatri SinhaGogi Saroj PalKali: Reverence & RebellionMadhvi ParekhNew DelhiNirode Mazumdar