Thursday, May 14, 2009
Artist uses Gandhi as a metaphor for new India
It speaks a lot not just about the state of art in India but also India's democracy that even in an election year, no outcry has been raised about Kolkata artist Debanjan Roy's "India Shining" series. Roy's creations called forth merely an amused smile at their launch at Aicon New York on May 6.
This is in contrast to the furor over the depictions of Chairman Mao by contemporary Chinese artists. In a painting by Yu Youhan recently exhibited at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., Mao's portrait is superimposed on that of Marilyn Monroe. Other indignities are heaped upon the revered image of the founder of the People's Republic.
Comparatively, the Mahatma escapes lightly. In one fiber glass and automotive paint representation, Gandhi is seen using a headphone.
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
This is in contrast to the furor over the depictions of Chairman Mao by contemporary Chinese artists. In a painting by Yu Youhan recently exhibited at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., Mao's portrait is superimposed on that of Marilyn Monroe. Other indignities are heaped upon the revered image of the founder of the People's Republic.
Comparatively, the Mahatma escapes lightly. In one fiber glass and automotive paint representation, Gandhi is seen using a headphone.
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Labels: aicon new york, india, india shinning, kolkata artist debanjan roy, Mahatma Gandhi, paint representation, people republic
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Landmark book profiles 20 Indian women who used art to transform lives
Eighty-one years after the publication of Katherine Mayo's ‘Mother India' comes Stephen P. Huyler's ‘Daughters of India: Art and Identity.' No two books could be more different.
Mayo's book had an enormous influence on the Western colonial view of India, arguably preventing grant of Dominion Status as early as in 1927, and in an indirect manner paving the way for The Partition.
Huyler's ‘Daughters of India' should have an even greater long term influence. It can go a long way towards easing the pain and healing.
Mahatma Gandhi described Mayo's book as ‘a drain inspector's report.'
New Age guru, Deepak Chopra wrote of Huyler's ‘Meeting God': "This is a book that simply glows with light and life. The Hindu world that Stephen Huyler shows us is luminous, suffused with spirituality, and deeply inspiring."
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Mayo's book had an enormous influence on the Western colonial view of India, arguably preventing grant of Dominion Status as early as in 1927, and in an indirect manner paving the way for The Partition.
Huyler's ‘Daughters of India' should have an even greater long term influence. It can go a long way towards easing the pain and healing.
Mahatma Gandhi described Mayo's book as ‘a drain inspector's report.'
New Age guru, Deepak Chopra wrote of Huyler's ‘Meeting God': "This is a book that simply glows with light and life. The Hindu world that Stephen Huyler shows us is luminous, suffused with spirituality, and deeply inspiring."
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Labels: Dominion Status, influence, Katherine Mayo, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother India, Stephen P Huyler
Monday, September 8, 2008
Titan of industry, media baron, educationist Krishna Kumar Birla, 89
Krishna Kumar Birla, Chairman of the Hindusthan Times group of newspapers and Chancellor of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, died at his mansion in Kolkata's leafy and exclusive Old Ballygunge on August 30 morning. He was 89. His wife of 67 years, Manorama, had died a month ago.
A Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament for 18 years, he is survived by three daughters - Nandini Nopany, Sobhana Bhartia and Jyoti Poddar.
Patriarch of one of India's preeminent industrial dynasties, his last rites were performed by his grand nephew, Kumaramangalam Birla, at the Keoratola Crematorium in South Kolkata, in the presence of his brother, B.K. Birla and other members of the Birla clan. The West Bengal Governor, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, drove to Birla Park on receipt of news of the death. The Governor is a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and their two families have been knit together through years of trial during the freedom struggle.
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
A Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament for 18 years, he is survived by three daughters - Nandini Nopany, Sobhana Bhartia and Jyoti Poddar.
Patriarch of one of India's preeminent industrial dynasties, his last rites were performed by his grand nephew, Kumaramangalam Birla, at the Keoratola Crematorium in South Kolkata, in the presence of his brother, B.K. Birla and other members of the Birla clan. The West Bengal Governor, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, drove to Birla Park on receipt of news of the death. The Governor is a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and their two families have been knit together through years of trial during the freedom struggle.
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Labels: Birla Park, BITS, freedom struggle, Ghanshyamdas Birla, K K Birla, Kumaramangalam Birla, Mahatma Gandhi, Manorama, media baron, Patriarch, Titan
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Learning from history, will South Asia move on to EEC-style community?
Sixty-one years after the bloody delivery midwifed by Britain which brought the twins of India and Pakistan howling and blinking into the world, how would have their founders viewed the outcome of all that prenatal suffering?
His round-spectacled eyes surveying the India of 2008, at its gated and air-conditioned communities in Faridabad, and the call centers in Bangalore, and the film studios of Mumbai, would Mahatma Gandhi -- had he been around today -- thought this was the India of his ideals?
Or, with Pakistan's thousands of Saudi financed madrassas churning out Talibans and with violence in Karachi claiming on an average six lives a day, would Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah been happy with the result of all his labors?
Although conventional history refers to it as an orderly and peaceful transfer of power, the independence of India came hand in hand with an unprecedented slaughter of brother by brother.
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
His round-spectacled eyes surveying the India of 2008, at its gated and air-conditioned communities in Faridabad, and the call centers in Bangalore, and the film studios of Mumbai, would Mahatma Gandhi -- had he been around today -- thought this was the India of his ideals?
Or, with Pakistan's thousands of Saudi financed madrassas churning out Talibans and with violence in Karachi claiming on an average six lives a day, would Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah been happy with the result of all his labors?
Although conventional history refers to it as an orderly and peaceful transfer of power, the independence of India came hand in hand with an unprecedented slaughter of brother by brother.
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Labels: Britain, EEC, Faridabad, history, Independence Day, india, Lal Qilla, Mahatma Gandhi, pakistan, Talibans, Twins, World War II
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Rare Gandhi recording found in Washington, D.C.
A rare recording of a historic speech by Mahatma Gandhi, one of the only two of him speaking in English, made a few months before his assassination has been found in Washington.
It had been lovingly preserved for 60 years by John Cosgrove, a former president of the National Press Club in the U.S. capital, who discovered the significance of the recording during a chance encounter with Rajmohan Gandhi, Mahatma's grandson and biographer.
Cosgrove's copy came from Alfred Wagg, a journalist who recorded the speech in New Delhi and produced four 78-rpm LPs that included both Gandhi's voice as well as Wagg's own commentary about the man revered as Father of the Indian Nation, the Washington Post reported July 1.
The speech made on April 2, 1947 is one of the only two occasions when he was recorded speaking in English, Rajmohan Gandhi told Cosgrove when he came to the National Press Club last April to promote the Mahatma's new biography. The other speech about religious issues was recorded in the 1930s.
Millions of people around the world think they have heard Mahatma Gandhi speaking in English - although it was actually Gandhi channelled through the voice of actor Ben Kingsley in the famous 1982 movie by Richard Attenborough.
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
It had been lovingly preserved for 60 years by John Cosgrove, a former president of the National Press Club in the U.S. capital, who discovered the significance of the recording during a chance encounter with Rajmohan Gandhi, Mahatma's grandson and biographer.
Cosgrove's copy came from Alfred Wagg, a journalist who recorded the speech in New Delhi and produced four 78-rpm LPs that included both Gandhi's voice as well as Wagg's own commentary about the man revered as Father of the Indian Nation, the Washington Post reported July 1.
The speech made on April 2, 1947 is one of the only two occasions when he was recorded speaking in English, Rajmohan Gandhi told Cosgrove when he came to the National Press Club last April to promote the Mahatma's new biography. The other speech about religious issues was recorded in the 1930s.
Millions of people around the world think they have heard Mahatma Gandhi speaking in English - although it was actually Gandhi channelled through the voice of actor Ben Kingsley in the famous 1982 movie by Richard Attenborough.
To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Labels: assassination, historic speech, John Cosgrove, journalist, Mahatma Gandhi, New Delhi, Rajmohan Gandhi, Washington
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
India's external ‘conquests' of dharma left art monuments in their wake
It may have been just an accident or it may be reflective of the unique character of Indian civilization. But it is a fact that India has never sent out military expeditions to conquer distant lands.
Since the time of Ashoka the Great (304 BC 232 BC), its conquests have been the conquests of dharma. What an image -- almost comic -- that the armies of the dharma presented to the people they set out to ‘conquer‘!.
Think of the Spanish conquistadores in their shining breastplates, plumed helmets, slit visors, gauntlets, rapiers, matchlock guns! Conquerors are expected to strike terror and awe in the breasts of the natives. Instead, the Buddhist monks must have seemed a ridiculous lot to the civilized Achaemenids of Persia, the neo-Hellenes of Gandhara, or the sophisticated Chinese of the Han times.
Mahatma Gandhi was not the first Indian to face the world in a loincloth. In an illuminating review of an exhibition of Chinese art in the New York Times (Nov. 2, 2007) the art critic Holland Cotter wrote: "What an outlandish sight Buddhist monks must have been when they first turned up more than a millennium ago in China, a land where only criminals - the disgraced and the dangerous - had shaved heads, wore patched-together clothes and begged for food.
"Traveling the Silk Road alone or in pairs, monks had neither homes nor families. This too must have disturbed a Confucian culture that was based on the idea that where you came from was who you were, and that the meaning of life lay in family, in placating ancestors and in producing heirs.
To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Since the time of Ashoka the Great (304 BC 232 BC), its conquests have been the conquests of dharma. What an image -- almost comic -- that the armies of the dharma presented to the people they set out to ‘conquer‘!.
Think of the Spanish conquistadores in their shining breastplates, plumed helmets, slit visors, gauntlets, rapiers, matchlock guns! Conquerors are expected to strike terror and awe in the breasts of the natives. Instead, the Buddhist monks must have seemed a ridiculous lot to the civilized Achaemenids of Persia, the neo-Hellenes of Gandhara, or the sophisticated Chinese of the Han times.
Mahatma Gandhi was not the first Indian to face the world in a loincloth. In an illuminating review of an exhibition of Chinese art in the New York Times (Nov. 2, 2007) the art critic Holland Cotter wrote: "What an outlandish sight Buddhist monks must have been when they first turned up more than a millennium ago in China, a land where only criminals - the disgraced and the dangerous - had shaved heads, wore patched-together clothes and begged for food.
"Traveling the Silk Road alone or in pairs, monks had neither homes nor families. This too must have disturbed a Confucian culture that was based on the idea that where you came from was who you were, and that the meaning of life lay in family, in placating ancestors and in producing heirs.
To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Labels: China, Chinese art, dharma, Han Times, india, Indian civilization, Mahatma Gandhi, monuments, New York Times, Persia, Silk Road, Spanish
Monday, May 12, 2008
A little treasury of quotations and anecdotes about Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore was born on Vaisakh 25, BS 1168, that is early May, 1861. The fortnight after Vaisakh 25 is celebrated in Bengal as kavipaksha,'or the poet's fortnight. On this occasion, Tagore is remembered not only with song, dance, drama, but stories about his patriotism, courage, as also for his love for Mahatma Gandhi and differences Tagore had with him.
Today, instead of abating, violence engulfs the globe. Wars exact their toll of innocent victims without any noble voice rising in protest. Forests are cleared for mining, rivers dammed, carbon emissions rise to such levels that Mother Nature can bear no more. We need Gandhi and King, Tolstoy and Tagore, now more than ever.
For the kavipaksha,'we present for our readers a little treasury of Tagore's poems and memorabilia.
First, a prayer for his beloved land. He prays not for great wealth or power, but for knowledge and reason and freedom.
Gitanjali, poem 35
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.
Where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depths of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
To read the full article, click here....
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Today, instead of abating, violence engulfs the globe. Wars exact their toll of innocent victims without any noble voice rising in protest. Forests are cleared for mining, rivers dammed, carbon emissions rise to such levels that Mother Nature can bear no more. We need Gandhi and King, Tolstoy and Tagore, now more than ever.
For the kavipaksha,'we present for our readers a little treasury of Tagore's poems and memorabilia.
First, a prayer for his beloved land. He prays not for great wealth or power, but for knowledge and reason and freedom.
Gitanjali, poem 35
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.
Where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depths of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
To read the full article, click here....
To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Labels: Bengal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kavipaksha, Mahatma Gandhi, patriotism, Rabindranath Tagore, Tagore's poems
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed
This is the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the 40th of that of Martin Luther King.. But their spirit was visiting New York last week in many forms, strong enough to give us, puny individuals, heart.
(A list of the Gandhi-Satyagraha-King linked events appears on the below.)
In the face of global warming, a shrinking polar ice-cap and a widening ozone hole over the South Pole, the individual human may feel as lost as the polar bear looking for a way out of a maze ice floes in the disturbing yet beautiful photo by Subhankar Bannerjee.
In ‘The Way We Live Now' section of the New York Times Magazine last Sunday (April 20), Michael Pollan poses the question which we all must have asked ourselves: "Why Bother?"
There is no question that the direction of ‘civilization' is taking is towards changing this once green planet (really more blue than green, as three-fourths of it is ocean) into one-fourth yellow desert and three-quarters fishless sea, enveloped in gray smog.
To read the full article, click here...To read the ePaper, visit: http://www.newsindia-times.com
Labels: 60th anniversary, climate change, Earth, global warming, heart, life, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Michael Pollan, New York, ozone hole, Satyagraha, shrinking, South pole, survival
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