Making a cultural investment

Everyone was ecstatic when the Canadian premier danced Bhangra. Then everyone was touched with his humanistic approach towards migrants. Now he thoroughly wins hearts with his concern for the arts by way of the promised allotment of a generous budget for art promotion.

This major public reinvestment is surely going to impact the quality of creation, recognition and projection. I cannot agree more with the Canadian finance minister when he referred to culture as a “collective wealth that goes beyond economic benefits and statistics”. How nicely put!

Each and every day I see around me in India, symbols of art and culture that are inviolable, unalterable. They surround you in the little things that are imperceptible. They shine in the larger mosaic and simply overwhelm you sometimes. Embroidery, fabric, colour, archeology, sculpture, music, dance. My list is endless. Why do I feel each and every time that this vastness and richness is so overpowering and unparalleled Because it is so. Why do I also feel a sense of despondency sometimes It is when I see the struggle, the lack of recognition, the battle and the challenge to make a living out of something so profound, so abundant and inexhaustible. When a patachitra artist takes months to make his astounding painting and spends hours trying to convince the buyer why he needs to charge what he does, it hurts. When music and dance take a beating it hurts.

The engagement with arts is long, strenuous, meaningful. It can never really feature consistently in the income progress indicators of a nation. We need to relook it in terms of skills, capabilities as Amartya Sen advocated and take heritage indicators more seriously than we are. Creating a niche spot for artists and craftsmen, putting it on the forefront would be an enviable agenda. This cannot be fulfilled without sustained investment and engagement from the state. Till as long as I see many of our heritage structures lying abandoned or usurped by vandals, people saying in a deprecating way ‘oh, classical music’, we still have work to do. Let us not forget that the world would not flock to see the Taj if those craftsmen were not endowed with a supreme sense of aesthetics. Or the astounding temples that baffle imagination. Not to forget the amazing poetry and music that have nourished us over ages. When we have such refinement in our culture, why do I see monstrous structures randomly dotting our traffic islands, with no sense of taste or aesthetics in the least A country that can produce Hampi can certainly do better in urban beautification but that’s another story.

One of the reasons for this is also because learning rarely addresses this in the institutional educational set-up. Sophisticated laboratories are more valued than a school of art. We are in a country where education in scientific fields still hold hegemony over the humanities. But like Dr Raghavan, the late music buff and mathematician once shared with me that “a mathematical equation is like a musical notation. It has grace and flow.” Such splendid words that arise from knowledge of the arts, of creation, of aesthetics! This dimension cries for more attention in India. Investing in the arts will provide impetus to creation and growth in a multi-dimensional way. Bhatrihari’s metaphor likened a person without arts to a beast. If we do not want it that way we need to work on it. The Canadians have scored over us on this. Time for some lessons

Dr Vasumathi Badrinathan is an eminent Carnatic vocalist based in Mumbai. She can be contacted on vasu@vasumathi.net