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Hindustan Times
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Art on his sleeve: As Krishen Khanna turns 100, an exclusive Wknd interview
On July 5, the legendary painter Krishen Khanna turned 100. (HT Photo) The last surviving member of the Progressive Artists' Group (PAG) — a motley crew of Modernists formed around the time of India's independence, which included MF Husain, SH Raza, FN Souza, Akbar Padamsee, KH Ara, Bhanu Athaiya, VS Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta and Ram Kumar — Khanna's life stands testament to the journey of modern India, and Modern art. As a young man living through momentous times, he witnessed both the horrors of Partition, when he and his family were forced to leave their home in Lahore and move to Shimla, and the joyous beginnings of a newly independent country that found its moral and ethical core in a unique blend of secularism, welfare and tradition. Khanna was born in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad, in Pakistan), to Kahan Chand Khanna, a teacher at an intermediate college, and Shiela Khanna, a homemaker. At 13, he received the Rudyard Kipling Scholarship to study in England. His study there was interrupted by World War 2, however, and he returned by sea to India. News of Gandhiji's Death (1948), arguably Khanna's most recognisable work. Note the multiple vantage points of the anxious-shocked readers. (Image courtesy Asia Society India) He eventually earned his degree from Government College, Lahore, and began to work at an art press. He kept training in art alongside, a subject he had studied in school and college. He was 22 when, two days before Pakistan was born, the Khannas moved to Shimla, leaving almost everything behind. Though deeply interested in art — by 1946, a work of his had already been exhibited by the Punjab Art Society, and he had bought his first work of art — financial stability was a necessity. The year 1948 would prove to be a critical one for him. He began working at Grindlays Bank in Bombay. He bought a painting by Souza, an artist he would later befriend. A work of Khanna's, News of Gandhiji's Death (1948), was included in the Golden Jubilee exhibition of the Bombay Art Society. The following year, Khanna was made part of PAG. Though he held his post at the bank for the next 14 years, his star as a Modernist was rising. Over the long arc of a century, Khanna's prolificity as an artist would be accompanied by significant output in his role as art administrator (he was appointed co-commissioner of the first edition of the Indian Triennale, in 1968, for instance) and art collector. Khanna's work itself spans styles. Starting with abstracts, he moved to the figurative early on, telling a journalist he 'wanted to emphasise the human caught up in their particular condition'. He made murals, such as on the domed ceiling of the Maurya Sheraton hotel in Delhi, the Chola Sheraton hotel in Chennai and the Mahim Nature Park in Mumbai, that last one dedicated to the famed ornithologist Salim Ali. A view of the mural at the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi. In 1962, Khanna became the first Indian artist to be granted the John D Rockefeller III Fund Fellowship; no longer working with Grindlays by this time, he began to travel the world with his wife, the educationist Renuka Khanna. In the 1970s, he began work on some of his most celebrated pieces: Bandwalla, Untitled (Dhaba) and the Christ and the Apostles series. The recognition, at least outside India, was immediate. He showed his work at venues that included the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Even today, Khanna says, to paint is to enter a cathedral of solitude. Musicians (1956) and Untitled (Bandwallas in the city; 2019). Excerpts from an interview. * You have been on the decision-making committees of some of the most significant cultural institutes in the country, such as the Lalit Kala Akademi and National Gallery of Modern Art. As an artist, how did you navigate these institutions? Various bodies have various rules and regulations. When you are entering them, you are supposed to be cognisant of everything, and act in a certain way. (If you) just follow your own path, then do what you must, but the results must vindicate your approach. What happens in the art world, like in other industries, is that there are people who run it and who feel that they must tell you what to do and what not to do. My approach now is that if someone comes and says you should have done it this way and not the way you did, I say, I will keep that in mind the next time. You take a, what I call, soft approach to get things done. * You are well-known as an art collector. Tell us about the first painting you bought. It was a painting by MF Husain, which I saw in a gallery exhibition. There was some connection that I felt with the work. I bought the small work, and I still have it. It related to the small community where he lived, and depicted a lady pounding spices. It is beautiful and it is a microcosm of the many things he has done since, in methodology. This was in the early '40s, I think. * We have heard a painting your father showed you had a huge impact on you as a child. Can you tell us about it? My father, KC Khanna, the first Indian principal of the Delhi Public School at Mathura Road in Delhi, bought a reproduction of a painting from Italy when I was about 10 years old. It was a depiction of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. I was so taken by it. The drama of the painting is very moving. The painting does not shout, it is quiet and this makes a statement. Daddy was an extraordinary man who knew the Bible and many other scriptures. He patiently sat me down and told me about this remarkable painting. I tried to draw it; he then drew it for me on a small piece of paper, but with only the positions of the Apostles. The construction of the painting was so well-thought-out; Judas was somewhere in the back. * How did you meet your wife, Renuka Chatterjee? Well, I saw her when she was very young; she was always a lady. We were friends and then eventually became something more. Our fathers worked together, they knew each other and were close. All the siblings knew each other. Our story grew in the natural course of things. * Tell us about an event, an incident in your interactions with other painters of your time, that still stands out for you today. There have been so many, but there is one involving Raza that I recall well. I was staying with him in Paris at the time. One day, we visited a gallery whose name I now forget. When we arrived there, he told me to close my eyes and he took me inside holding my hand. Finally, we came to a small room where he asked me to open my eyes. There was a very small painting of Jesus on the wall. I was stunned by it, and so was Raza. It was by an artist from northern Italy and was of Mother Mary holding the dying Christ (a common devotional image, the Pieta, painted by many European artists). One had to view this in silence for it to enter one's soul. Seeing a painting is like entering a cathedral, there can be no noise or chatter around it. Raza was a remarkable artist and a very great friend. On another occasion, I was staying at the university quarters in Paris and he had stepped out to meet his fiancé. He had started a painting which he asked me to finish while he was gone. I did so, and finished it in my style. A great aficionado of the arts bought this painting and it hangs in his house still. Another great artist was Tyeb Mehta, who was very self-effacing and didn't know how to sell his art. His paintings went on to sell for record-breaking prices (in auctions after his death). I remember meeting some gallery owners I had introduced him to. They told me that I was better than him. I responded saying that art was not a race. A painting is a construction of many facets of your personality, and cannot be judged as better or worse than another. (With inputs from Rasika Khanna)
The National
15-06-2025
- Politics
- The National
A Scottish writer looks to James Joyce for answers on how to free
The text of Ulysses redefined Irish national identity and is the text of Ireland's national liberation, a book preoccupied with, even obsessed with, Irishness, the problems of raising national consciousness and the forging of a better Ireland. This might surprise readers unaware that Joyce was a nationalist. The theme of politics and Anglo-Irish relations has not been central to readings of the novel and this might be, as many critics claim, because the work was hijacked at an early stage by leading Modernists, who assumed that its Irishness was secondary to its Modernist aims. Later, post-Modernists redefined the novel as a 'guerilla text' attacking the discourses and regimes of colonial power. No coincidence, they said, that the gestation of the book between 1914 and 1921, parallels the gestation of the Irish Free State, and that it was launched the day after the signing of the Irish Treaty. READ MORE: 'Naked and Unashamed' cements Nan Shepherd's place in Scotland's literary canon On the same day, Joyce wrote a letter to Arthur Griffith congratulating him on the Treaty. This proves that Ulysses was always meant to have a political as well as cultural impact. Famously of course he was to spend most of his life abroad. He left Ireland but it never left him. We in Scotland urgently need to frame our national narrative in the context of our long march towards sovereignty. We need to redefine our national identity in this much more diverse 21st century and bring a new perspective of cultural change to the journey. Many are becoming aware of it, not least Believe in Scotland and a plethora of podcasters, culture groups and social media channels within the independence movement. Scotland needs to personify – to see itself in purposeful motion, as people, individuals, characters doing, achieving, empowering ourselves and our nation on its journey. And Joyce can help us, or at least, excellent examples found in his work can show the way. In Ivy Day In The Committee Rooms from his Dubliners collection, Joyce found a method of combining the personal and the political, the individual and the national. It's a telling little story and the only one in the collection overtly 'about' grassroots politics at the beginning of the 20th century. The story is set in Dublin, the committee room being of course a metaphor for Ireland itself with six characters, albeit all male, standing in to represent the nation as Joyce saw it – contentious, disunited, dissolute, over-sentimental, self-deluded and out for what they can get. It is satiric, a little jaundiced even in the wake of the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the great leader who was surely and steadily building the foundations of an independent Ireland. Since Parnell's death, the nationalist cause had been stuck in a lethargy which has allowed the British to continue to rule and the status quo to be maintained. In my teens, I was a student friend of Alex Salmond and can't help seeing Salmond as our Parnell. There are definite parallels. In the committee room, we meet Old Jack the caretaker of the hall or hired room, subservient, self-effacing, careful not to extrude a personal view that might offend his employers, then enters the political agent, O'Connor, who we soon realise is doing nothing at all to promote his candidate, the publican Tierney who is paying him to promote his campaign to be elected to the local authority. Overtly concerned with when his money is coming – and constantly suspecting that he will not be paid – he impugns the character of Tierney, 'Tricky Dicky' and does not show much, if any support for him. READ MORE: Val McDermid to premiere new play exploring Christopher Marlowe's death His colleague Henchy seems to be worse that O'Connor in that as a paid agent, he does not support Tierney. He is a man who changes his mind at the drop of a hat, has no fixed views. The third character, Hynes, is clearly some sort of spy, possible for Tierney's rival Colgan. He is a shiftless character, desperate for money, yet it is his sentimental poem for Parnell which, read out to the company temporarily unites all. Father Leon, a priest or actor, is manifestly not religious, a poor deluded soul, who does not quite join the company or even enter the room, hovering in the doorway, apologetically, as if he is the soul of the dead killed in the various uprisings. The candidate himself, Tierney, does not appear though is referred to by all. O'Connor and Henchy suppose he is a nationalist but suspect that he will vote for the Address to King Edward on the King's visit despite that. The story mocks the heroic romantic nationalism of the past by portraying the shabby compromises and venality of activists who are anything but idealistic. There is agreement for the idea that previous times were better, '… them times. There was some life in it then', implying of course that there is no life now. This is another of Joyce's tropes of the living dead, or deadness-in-life, or political stasis, of all the stories in the collection. And Scotland is in exactly the same situation. Stuck. Unable to find a route forward to independence. Narrative is the key I have been engaged with our cause since my teens as an activist in city centre street meetings with the sound of Scotland Is Waking filling my ears from car speakers. I recall the camaraderie and my own zeal of canvassing and leafletting in early by-elections and the sense of a nation on the move, the heady thought of independence being winnable – and close. I've been an activist for more than 50 years including 10 as paid party media man, and a stint as local councillor, alongside my own literary career and its 20 book titles. I have always known that engaging in political struggle provides positive benefits for individuals. Humans need to engage with something deeper than the day-to-day details of existence, focus on something bigger than themselves to give their lives some sense of achievement. As Alasdair Gray said, we need to see ourselves in the pages of a novel to be able to live better lives. We need a story arc, from beginnings to a resolution that takes us to a better place. Narrative is the key and we need to know how to form it and refine it so that it parallels the common thinking and expressions of our people – embodies it and leads it, so that all willingly share in it. And from that early time, my thoughts as a young writer were engaged with the idea of what that narrative might look like, how to put the cause down on paper in fiction, to magnify it, personify it, explain it, make more of it, so that others would be inspired to take up our cause. READ MORE: Scots group becomes first multi-venue firm to gain prestigious B Corp certification The book that summed up for me then what I wanted to achieve was a Scottish novel, AJ Cronin's 1937 bestseller The Citadel. This highly readable and exciting character novel about a young Scotsman and his early career as a young married doctor successfully promoted a political campaigning aim – in Cronin's case creating widespread support for a national health service that led to early legislation. But writers write and publishers publish. Quite soon I began to realise how difficult the struggle had been for the writers of the 'Scottish Renaissance' in the early 1930s led by Hugh MacDiarmid and others, and how quickly the movement had been snuffed out in a variety of ways although of course, not before providing a head of steam for the early national movement, in particular the NPS and then the SNP. But the political movement in Scotland, unlike in Wales, swiftly dropped the wild-haired poets, and looked askance too at the bearded folkies of the 1960s, in favour of hard-headed politics and businessmen. Early leaders broke the essential connection between the artists and writers and the politicians. The movement became obsessed with economics, business, income, taxes and wealth. Important yes, but not as important as story. Story and narrative are the backbone of life and without it, life is mere existence. But writers need to make a living which is why so many of our writers are forced to use any political references in codified, oblique ways in their writing. Like others, I wrote novels that publishers would accept and didn't write the ones I wanted to write, because I needed to get published. The numerous organisations that support our cultural community, Creative Scotland, the Scottish Book Trust, Live Literature, etc are publicly funded bodies and keen not to rock the boat, or to vote themselves out of existence. One leading Scottish literary agent responded to my pitch of a political novel a few years back with an astonishing reply: 'No-one would want to read …' she said, 'brings back all the divisiveness of 2014 …' So, it was the biggest event in our history since 1707 and we writers are not supposed to write about it in case someone is offended? Despite this, for the last few years, I have been drafting and redrafting short and long-form fiction that combines the personal and the political, focusing especially on the diversity of our movement and the variety of issues individuals might have in daily lives that include some level of commitment to the cause. Some of the stories have been published in literary magazines. My story, We Are An Island appeared in Causeway/Cabhsair, the journal of Irish and Scottish writing. It focused on an elderly English couple and their dog moving to live on a remote island to remind us how much we have benefitted from inward migration and how it is possible for incomers to assimilate even in a Gaelic-speaking community if the will and the tolerance is there. The Galway Review published Greater Love Hath No Man in which the loss of Scots lives in British foreign wars is made apparent, when an intelligent young man, a YSI member, is seduced into the army and death at 19 in Afghanistan, like his great-grandfather before him. My story of the lost potential of Scotland's working class through addiction is the subject of Last Refuge published in Literally Stories. A series of four stories has now started to appear in the SNP's Independence magazine. In Hinterlands, published in March/April's issue, a veteran activist tries to convey to his son during a by-election the importance of remembering and recording even the tiniest details of the struggle. Everything must be remembered so that those who were not there cannot rewrite our story. In the May/June issue, TheWummin Inside, an 80-year-old woman takes a stand against moaners, regretting the missed opportunities of her generation, some of whom could have 'run a small country like Nicola'. More of the stories, some narrated by me, are set to appear on indy podcasts and websites and I hope the collection, Speaking For Ourselves/Unspeakable Things when published might prove something of an outlier that brings together a wider readership. Not every writer wants to get involved in a movement or a national group. Writers write for themselves, express individual concerns and everybody is different. But to me at least, under the influence of Joyce and others, creating and deploying characters that live and breathe within our movement can help to heal the divisiveness and discord of our attritional politics and let us look to bluer skies of opportunity and the potential to create better, fairer and more balanced lives for all in life, and on the page. Andrew Murray Scott is a writer and novelist: He writes a monthly culture column in the Scots Independent.
