Indian…Art?

The history of India is not an unknown one, to both Indians and and non-Indians alike. India has always been rich in many aspects that make it what it is - vegetation, climate, minerals, spices, colour, food, culture, people. Its location on the planet allows for some of the best weather conditions; and being a subcontinent, it ensured a variety that is not normally seen or experienced in one country. Spanning across 3.3 million square-kilometres, and giving home to 1.29 billion people, it is not a country that can be taken lightly. Our people have made our presence well-felt across the globe, and our history has left a deep impact.

If we look at this said history, it is usually divided into two main halves - pre-colonial India, and post-colonial India. We were colonised for over a 200 years, and its safe to say that that is a sufficient amount of time to change the very grain of the people in just about every aspect of life! So let’s look at the arts. Or is it art? By definition, the word art stands for “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” Typically in a visual form. But if we were to take second half of that definition - “works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power” - this could in fact encompass a lot more than just visual art. For example, music and its innate way of transporting a human being to a single point in their memory causing it to be so real, they can relive that moment through every sense in their body. Or the quiet aura that exists in the hallowed hallways of a Buddhist monastery, with the sound of the soft chanting, and the prayer wheels. Or the temple bells that ring out as dawn breaks. Or the clackity-clack of the loom as a weaver turns cotton yarn to five yards of the sari, intricate in its borders and pallu. We’ve had the arts broken down into subdivisions in order to categorise them better - folk arts, textile art, visual art, plastic arts, architectural arts, photography, film and cinema, new media arts, to name a few. But then, why is it that when we talk of the art movement in India, or when we refer to Contemporary Indian art, we address only visual art? In referring to Indian art, do we also include our architecture, our dance forms, our pottery and metalwork, our fabric and our carvings, too?