What makes Chittara murals a hidden gem

India Today

23-06-2025

The Madhubani paintings of Bihar's Maithili-speaking Mithila region were unknown to the larger world until a Britisher gave it a platform in the late 1970s by doing a book on it. Then the culturatti of Delhi and the sarkari patronage systems and the badshahs of Bollywood took over, and every drawing room, airline interior or powder-rooms in big hotels boasted of it. This was some 40 years ago.Warli happened next, in the 1980s—Warli wall art, a lesser-known tribal art confined to a part of Maharashtra until the same design jet set of Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Baroda and Delhi put it on a pedestal. Now, one hopes it will be the turn of Karnataka's Chittara, a higher-grade version in both form and design; ritually and socially indigenous art at its best.advertisementThe Western Ghats are rich in wildlife, waterfalls, hills and forests, in which dwell the most sophisticated artists and graphic designers. Using brushes made of the simplest of straw or natural fibre (pundi naaru) and colours extracted from seeds, fruits and other parts of plants, ordinary farm hands, for whom art is life is art, make patterns so geometrically intricate that perhaps even AI can't replicate them. Without modern technology, even a proper brush, they paint the most complex of designs and motifs that city slickers dub as art, but for them it's a way of life in an agrarian setting.It is habitual to call them variously: Jogi, Hasalaru or Deevaru, Budubudake, Maley or plain shikari. Among them, the Deevaru and their art Chittara is waiting to go national. Chittara is an embodiment of the Deevaru community's intrinsic socio-cultural framework. As the only indigenous mural folk art of Karnataka, Chittara deserves to be recognised as Karnataka's pride and India's heritage, say Geetha Bhat and Smitha Tumuluru in their 200-plus-page lavish tome titled Deevara Chittara.advertisement
The beauty of folk art lies in the ability of artists to interpret and reinterpret it. This is also key to its preservation and evolution, aver the authors.Geetha is the catalyst, with her Centre for Revival of Indigenous Arts (CFRIA) in her hometown Bengaluru. She was mad and possessed about Chittara long before the word entered the lexicon of Unesco or the jargon of the Delhi sarkari culturatti. Her interface with the art form started 25 years ago and she has done yeoman service ever since in helping reach it as far as Japan and France, besides parts of India that still don't know where the Western ghats are!Geetha has done something practical for a dying art form of a region of Karnataka, and of India. She is doing for Chittara what Vallathol did for Kerala's theatre arts in the 1940s, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay did for the crafts in the 1950s, Pupul Jayakar did for weavers in the 1970s, Mohan Khokar did for dance in the 1980s, ITC and India Today did for music in the 1990s, and Sachchidanand Joshi of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), created by Kapila Vatsyayan, did for multi-disciplinary institutionalised discourse.Geetha's right hand in this madness is Smitha, whose photography is a form of art. Here is a documenter with depth and substance. Namrata Cavale has given the overall design and branding tinge. Together the trio—call them the teen devian—has documented this lesser-known art form, the people and their culture in Deevara Chittara, published by Prism, whose Pranesh Sirivara is another low-key, high-quality Bangalorean.advertisementHaving lived and worked in all the Indian metros over the past 40 years, and some internationally too, I have found no other metro in India with such highly accomplished people as Bangalore, with the least attitude or arrogance. They don't need to show off or pretend, as they are secure in themselves. These are solid do-gooders like Geetha and Smitha whose role models were Vimala Rangachar, an educationist and art conservationist who passed away on February 25, or Chiranjiv Singh, the former Ambassador of India to Unesco in Paris.Kannada authors had got the most Jnanpith awards among all languages until 2005, when Hindi surpassed it. Need more be said of the literary or cultural quotient of this state? Among all Indian cities, Bengaluru has the most bookshops. It has been the science capital of India much before the IT and biotech boom, but it is also home to a rich cultural palette. All forms of classical, folk and modern dance exist here, not just one or two, as in the other metros. Theatre, both regional and national, films and architecture, the latest and maximum museums and libraries, cultural spaces and aquariums and theme parks. No wonder the traffic is a mess! The administration has not kept pace with the tremendous growth in the past decade alone. Still, it is a metro in a hill station!advertisementChittara is a symbol of the Malenadu region's rich culture and when a builder of the city—Aslam Zackria Sait, chairman of Rocklines—supports indigenous art, then it shows the high social and cultural index of the city. Add Redington Foundation and the Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC).The government of Karnataka should make Deevara Chittara available to every library in the country and in every embassy abroad in order to take cultural pride in a process unique to it. That the state's top folklorist, Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith awardee Chandrashekhar Kambara, was at hand to do the honours of unveiling the book on a cool Saturday morning (in May which other metro can boast of 3o degrees at noon?) in one of the oldest cultural halls of Bengaluru—the Indian Institute of World Cultures—showed the strength and pull of this team supported by many more artivists, artists and artocrats. Textile-lover Pavithra Muddaya opened the exhibition, which was first-rate in detailing, mounting and display. One has rarely seen a better exhibition aesthetically done with academic content in Bengaluru in the past decade.advertisementThat the main artist, Shirvala Gowramma, had taken the first flight of in her life to reach the function showed the organisers' large heartedness and respect for an indigenous artist. A state award and a national award ought to follow for Geetha, if the government is at all serious about tribal cultures. Joining her were Gademane Padmavathy, Hecche Vishwanatha G. and Radha Sullur. All those senseless seminars and symposiums in Delhi and Mumbai are of no use if they don't help the real artists on ground.A dynamic three-term Prime Minister Narendra Modi has everything going for the country—all his government now needs is a cultural policy to help those who truly brand India. Not Bollywood or cricket but real, indigenous artists. That's when we would have truly arrived on the world stage.advertisement—The writer is India's ace cultural historian, critic, arts policy expert and editor, attenDanceSubscribe to India Today Magazine- End