The Wealth of a Nation

THIS SUMMER, there have been two exhibitions in Bloomsbury about India, one which deals with ancient Indian religion and the other concerning the Indian Constitution. Both exhibitions aim to widen the context of their topics to show their contemporary relevance. The former connects ancient Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism with practices in the UK today, while the other examines the origins of the Indian Constitution and its contemporary significance.

The British Museum exhibition, ‘Ancient India, Living Traditions’, curated by Sushma Jansari, is shaped by wider cultural projects of decolonisation, and draws on collaboration with the Indian community in order to be “spiritually sensitive”. I was fascinated by the notes on each item on display which not only tell the viewer what the object was, where it came from and its date, but also explained its provenance. These notes contextualise the history of the objects on display as they disprove the trite proposition that everything in the British Museum is stolen, but rather draw attention to ways in which the objects were valued beyond their origins and shows that the museum has acquired its collection not only through forms of looting and cultural vandalism (though these must be understood through the prism of the time in which they were acquired and subsequent history) but also through recent auction house purchases. All these items are burdened to a greater or lesser degree by a complex and not so pleasant history. I found this one of the most engaging aspects of the exhibition as the history of the objects themselves tells us much about the present and its links with the past.

Along with the individual history of each object, further close-up studies of each item can sometimes be more rewarding than a wideangle broad sweep. Many of the pieces in this exhibition are from the British Museum’s own collection. I remembered (now Professor) Naman Ahuja taking a group of my firstyear undergraduate civilisation students on a gallery tour. They were utterly transfixed and fascinated on what for many of them was their first visit to a museum. Professor Ahuja gave a general introduction and then elaborated on individual objects and what they meant in their own time, and subsequently.

The catalogue frames the objects in a history of these religions, setting out the connection between ancient and modern India. There are also videos produced in the UK elaborating on them, albeit presented in the context of an idea of eternal, unchanging India.

The exhibition begins with images of nature cults, then moves to look at Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, including the spread of the first two to East and Southeast Asia, including the greatest Buddhist structure, Borobudur, in Java, Indonesia, and the largest Hindu temple, namely Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

The sheer beauty of the objects which are carefully lit and displayed makes this a rich experience. The sculptures from the stupa of Amaravati are among the most wonderful works. The long disused stupa was discovered in the 1790s by men working for a local landlord. They reused the materials for local building work, but in 1816, the British began to excavate further. The largest number of objects from Amaravati is in the Government Museum in Chennai, but there are also many items in the British Museum.

For example, there is a beautiful image of a Nagaraja from a Buddhist stupa in Amaravati. This has a fascinating history. Excavated in 1845 by Sir Walter Elliot, the panel went to the Old College at Fort St George in Madras and then to the Government Museum. From there, in 1859, it went to the East India Company’s India Museum in London, and finally, to the British Museum in 1880.

There is a striking image of the Varaha Avatara of Vishnu, the boar who saved the Earth from the ocean. It again has a fascinating lineage, dating from the fifth century, in what is now Madhya Pradesh, acquired by the British Museum in 1969 and purchased from the dealers, Spink & Son Ltd, although no mention is made of its history in between these dates.

The second exhibition, much smaller, occupying just one room and focusing on just one topic in detail presented a new narrative and raised many questions that were new to me. ‘After the Assembly: Constituting India’ marking 75 years of the Indian Constitution was a public exhibition at SOAS University, London. As expected in the context, it was an educative and rewarding experience.

The team for the exhibition was led by Professor Rochana Bajpai (SOAS) (who is a personal friend), Oroon Das (designer), Dr Nilanjan Sarkar (LSE) and Dr Chaitanya Sambrani (ANU). It comes out of ‘Pluralist Agreement and Constitutional Transformation ’ (PACT), a three-year research project funded by UKRI-AHRC.

The exhibition traces the history of the Constitution, beginning with the Indian Constituent Assembly in 1946, chaired by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, to create a Constitution for the new Republic, that came into force on January 26, 1950. There is a new digital research platform of the debates in the Assembly between 1946-49, examining the making of the Constitution against the backdrop of Independence and Partition. Although there was much violence and distrust between the communities seeking to influence the drafting of the Constitution, they were thankfully able to agree on the text. The Constitution has now survived 75 years, making it one of the longest lasting in the Global South.

One of the many fascinating elements of the exhibition was its demonstration of the role of the ordinary person in forming the Constitution. There are petitions to the Constituent Assembly, resolutions of civil society organisations, alongside pamphlets and letters from readers to the newspapers. Nor is it just about elites. The views of tribal, religious, and other minorities were taken into consideration. Others made appeals to sacred texts—for example, on the topic of temple entry. The exhibition shows that the Constitution is not just a historical document but it also presents contemporary expressions of its remaking today in India by artists, students and other citizens. There are short films, photographs, artworks by artists, including Riyas Komu, Shilpa Gupta, Shantibai and Vikrant Bhise.

There is a copy of the Constitution itself, the document itself seeming almost a sacred text, though clearly it has a political rather than a religious context. It is a very beautiful object, with the artwork of Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) and his team, drawing on a range of Indian artistic styles.

It has been a great delight to have these exhibitions in London so soon after the Barbican’s ‘The Idea of India’ last winter, ‘The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence’ at the V&A, and Arpita Singh’s ‘Remembering’ at the Serpentine Galleries this summer, and before the Royal Academy’s ‘A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle’, a presentation of the work of ‘Dillu’. It is as if an unnamed Festival of India is underway in London.