History in South Asia: Decoding Visual Worlds Sasanka Perera
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Edited by Sasanka Perera and Dev Nath Pathak
INTERSECTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY ART , ANTHROPOLOGY AND ART HISTORY IN SOUTH ASIA
Decoding Visual Worlds
Intersections of Contemporary Art, Anthropology and Art History in South Asia
“Contemporary art is a complicated terrain. Artists everywhere are motivated by a critical impulse to engage with the ‘here and now,’ and they work like under-cover anthropologists, sociologists, archaeologists, political scientists, etc. In a scenario like this, contemporary art demands to be examined, and engaged with protocols that are beyond art history, art theory and aesthetics. As Sasanka Perera and Dev Nath Pathak convincingly argue here, if the nuanced nature of contemporary works of art is to be mapped and the organizational apparatus that makes it possible in the contemporary world is analyzed, then it must be placed in a wider canvas of critical engagement informed by disciplines such as sociology and cultural anthropology, and further, such an approach will transform contemporary art as a necessary focus of those disciplines. This is a volume that can induce a covert intellectual and political intervention in to the workings of individual eccentricities and curatorial, institutional and community politics that govern the art world today.”
—Jagath Weerasinghe, Artist and Founding Chair, Theertha International Artists’ Collective, Sri Lanka
“This is an unusual and vivid account of art and art history where its parameters are broadened to map its intersections with anthropology, sociology and history. Art and its crossovers are mapped with a view to enhance its horizon and making it more nuanced and complex. One of the first of its kind, the volume of essays by well-known art historians, art practitioners and sociologists, covers the wide arc of South Asian art from countries, apart from India, like Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Sri Lanka and Nepal. The honing of artistic practices to disciplines like anthropology and sociology makes a valuable contribution to the existing framework of art history.”
—Yashodhara Dalmia, Art Historian and Independent Curator, India
“Intersections of Contemporary Art, Anthropology and Art History in South Asia: Decoding Visual Worlds attempts to understand the necessary dialogues between artists and sociologists in the postmodern world. It brings to us contemporary debates, which interlink art history, sociology, social anthropology and the thinking of practitioners. The contributors construct a map of South Asia as one, which beckons towards intellectual liberation.”
—Susan Vishvanathan, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
“This is a unique book that brings together scholars from sociology, anthropology, art history and art practice who critically discuss and debate contemporary art practices in South Asia. The essays in the book are rich, textured and evocative and they point to what the editors refer to as the ‘polyphonic intersections’ between art practice, art history and anthropology/sociology in South Asia. This book will be of tremendous value to not only students and scholars interested in visual culture, but also to anyone interested in contemporary art practices in South Asia.”
—Janaki
Abraham, Delhi University, India
Sasanka Perera • Dev Nath Pathak Editors
Intersections of Contemporary Art, Anthropology and Art
History in South Asia
Decoding Visual Worlds
Editors Sasanka Perera
South Asian University
New Delhi, India
Dev Nath Pathak
South Asian University
New Delhi, India
ISBN 978-3-030-05851-7
ISBN 978-3-030-05852-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05852-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931025
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover painting © Dream 3 (detail) by Anoli Perera (2017; 12in x 12in, acrylic, ink, water color, and printed image on canvas)
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface and acknowledgements
Coming from a formal background in academic sociology and saddled with a personal and scholarly interest in art, we have often wondered why our discipline has been so obviously disinterested in contemporary art. Much of our concerns and the politics of undertaking a book of this kind have been mapped out in detail in our Introduction. This absence and our anxiety over it together constitute the point of departure for this book. It was very clear to us that mainstream sociology in South Asia was unlikely to undertake such a venture given its almost collective and pervasive perception of art as a ‘soft’ resource devoid of value in terms of data or information in narrow sociological terms. In this situation, the question was how to bring into a mutually sensible and intellectually benefitting conversation a group of sociologists, art historians, and artists focused on the broad theme, ‘how art might make sense in sociology in reading society and its politics.’ It appeared to us, in institutional terms, this kind of exercise would only be tolerated in a relatively new academic department such as ours. That is, though this venture was not a departmental activity as such, the Sociology Department’s and South Asian University’s lack of an established conventional approach to knowledge offered the necessary intellectual space for us to ‘dabble’ in the unconventional.
What we have attempted in the book is to locate contemporary art in South Asia in the intersections of sociology, social anthropology, history, biography, and memory in the study of society, politics, and culture. Obviously, this implies an engagement with works of contemporary art informed by various disciplinary sources and approaches. We believe the intersections we have facilitated to emerge in the constituent chapters of
the book provide a more nuanced intellectual forum to discuss art practices, works of art, life-worlds of artists, institutional interventions, curatorial politics, and the ways in which these issues are embedded in the evolving politics of the place we call South Asia. In this conversation, our attempt was not to ‘convert’ our colleagues from diverse disciplines to the mainstream thinking in sociology to talk about contemporary art. Instead, we have brought their own perspectives—both disciplinary and political— to bear upon a broad-based sociological understanding of South Asia.
All this is easier said than done. One of the main hurdles we had to deal with is the variety of approaches to and styles in writing and exploration this exercise has necessarily allowed to flow into its discursive space. The way sociologists or anthropologists would look at the world and write about what they see compared to how an artist or an art historian might do the same thing is significantly different. We have not attempted to impose a singular narrative approach in how to be a scribe of society’s travails and politics. We have instead taken these varieties of seeing and writing as a given, as long as they allow us to travel across the political and social landscape of South Asia in such a way that would provide us the space for an informed gaze upon the region’s politics through contemporary art.
It was not so easy to convince colleagues in the practice of art history of the significance of the polyphonic intersections that this book envisaged unearthing. In the recent past, we had heard many exclamatory remarks from art historians about sociologists’ ‘interest’ in art. This may be due to the sacralized disciplinary silos, which do not allow an art historian and an anthropologist to engage with each other’s objects of enquiry. We would duly thank, in the midst of such challenges, some of the colleagues who allowed a dialogue, irrespective of the existing regimes of boundary policing. We have duly acknowledged our interactions with Iftikhar Dadi and Parul Dave Mukherji in the Introduction as well. And in the same breath, we would express our gratitude to Roma Chatterji, a fellow anthropologist who looks at art with adequate seriousness. Her work has deeply inspired us.
In the difficult task of ensuring the successful completion of this book, we would like to thank all the writers who have readily contributed chapters as well as the artists and other colleagues who have very enthusiastically allowed us to use their works of art and materials from their archival collections. These include Ruby Chishti, Vibha Galhotra, Bandu Manamperi, Pushpamala, N., Ayisha Abraham and the extensive archives
of the Theertha International Artists’ Collective in Colombo. Binit Gurung photographed the artworks referred to in his chapter himself as he traversed through the streets of Kathmandu.
We are thankful to Anoli Perera for giving us permission to reproduce her work, ‘Dream 3’ from her 2017 exhibition, The City, Janus-Face, in New Delhi. Finally, we are grateful to Mary Al-Sayed at Palgrave, New York, for her interest in this book and for ensuring its publication with a very reasonable period of time. We also acknowledge the professional help from Poppy Hull, Kyra Saniewski, and other colleagues at Palgrave at different times in the overall production process.
Finally, let us place on record our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript commissioned by Palgrave. The words of appreciation as well as the critical suggestions of these colleagues helped considerably in tightening the manuscript.
New Delhi, India Sasanka Perera Dev Nath Pathak 1 January 2019
1 Intersections and Implications: When Anthropology, Art Practice, and Art History Converge 1
Sasanka Perera and Dev Nath Pathak Section I Contours of Quest: Ar ts at Crossroad
2 Mimicking Anthropologists: Re-Membering a Photo Archive via Pata Paintings, Per formative Mimesis, and Photo Performance
Parul Dave Mukherji
3 Reframing the Contexts for Pakistani Contemporar y Art 73
Salima Hashmi and Farida Batool
4 ‘Ar t’ of Ethnography: Feminist Ethnography and Women
Pooja Kalita
Section II Political and Aesthetic: Explorations of Intersections
5 Globalisation and Local Anxieties in the Ar t of Bangladesh: The Interface of History and the Contemporary 117 Lala Rukh Selim
6 Between Anthropology and Histor y: The Entangled Lives of Jangarh Singh Shyam and Jagdish Swaminathan
Sandip K. Luis
7 Toward Blurring the Boundaries in Anthropology: Reading Jamini Roy Today
Jyoti
8 Imposed, Interrupted and Other Identities: Rupture as Opportunity in the Art History of Pakistan
Niilofur Farrukh
9 Transcending and Subverting Boundaries: Understanding the Dynamics of Street Art Scene in Nepal
Binit Gur ung
10 Ruptures of Rasheed Araeen in the Politics of Visual Art: Toward a New Art Discourse in Pakistan
Amra Ali
11 Collectivism in the Contemporar y Sri Lankan Art: The History of an Unusual Case of Artists
Anoli
notes on contributors
Amra Ali is an independent art critic and curator based in Karachi, Pakistan. She has been contributing reviews and issue-based writings for newspapers and other publications in Pakistan and internationally since 1990. She was a co-founder and senior editor of NuktaArt, the first international bi-annual art publication from Pakistan. Her publications include Homecoming, Rasheed Araeen (2014, VM Gallery, Karachi), and she curated a retrospective exhibition of Rasheed Araeen’s works by the same name in 2014–2015 at the VM Gallery.
Farida Batool is an independent artist who explores Pakistan’s political upheavals and tumultuous history. Her research interests are new media, masculinity, visual cultural theory, and city and public spaces. She is currently teaching and heading the Department of Cultural Studies at National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan, and is the author of the book Figure: The Popular and the Political in Pakistan (2004, ASR Publications, Lahore). She is an active member of Awami Art Collective, which works in public spaces.
Parul Dave Mukherji is Professor of Visual Studies and Art History at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She holds a PhD from Oxford University and has a parallel research interest in pre-modern Indian aesthetics and modern/contemporary Indian/ Asian Art. Among her recent articles on aesthetics is ‘Who Is Afraid of Mimesis? Contesting the Common Sense of Indian Aesthetics Through the Theory of “Mimesis” or Anukarana Vada’ (in, Arindam Chakrabarti, ed., Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
Niilofur Farrukh is a Karachi-based art interventionist, whose initiatives have expanded the space for art publication, curation, and public art. She co-founded NuktaArt and served as its founder editor for the ten years it was in publication (2004–2014). Her book Pioneering Perspectives (1998) focused on pioneer women artists in Pakistan was aimed at countering the anti-women narrative of the 1980s in her country. She co-curated four ASNA Clay Triennials to reclaim the craft-art continuum. In 2017, along with a group of colleagues, she established the Karachi Biennale to intrumentalize art to connect a fractured city to itself and the world. Her coedited book with John MacCarry and Amin Gulgee The 70s Pakistan’s Radioactive Decade: An Informal Cultural History of Pakistan is scheduled to be published in 2019. At present, she is researching the undocumented art history of Karachi.
Binit Gurung teaches Sociology at Thames International College, Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal. He received his MA degree in Sociology from South Asian University, New Delhi, in 2017.
Salima Hashmi is an artist, curator, and contemporary art historian. She taught at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, for 31 years and was also the Principal of the college for 4 years. She was also the founding Dean of the School of Art and Design at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, and is at present Professor Emeritus. She has written extensively on the arts. Her book Unveiling the Visible: Lives and Works of Women Artists of Pakistan was published in 2002. With Yashodhara Dalmia, he co-authored Memories, Myths, Mutations: Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan (2006, Oxford University Press, New Delhi). She edited The Eye Still Seeks: Contemporary Art of Pakistan (2014, Penguin, New Delhi). The Government of Pakistan awarded her the President’s Medal for Pride of Performance for Art Education in 1999. The Australian Council of Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) nominated her as Inaugural International Fellow for distinguished service to art and design education in 2011. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by her alma mater, Bath Spa University, UK.
Jyoti received her PhD in Sociology from the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and has an interest in visual arts. At present, she is Assistant Professor in Sociology at Bharati College, University of Delhi, India.
Pooja Kalita is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi. She broadly works in the area of feminism in South Asia, politics of visuals in sociology/social anthropology, sociology of food, urban studies, and Assamese modernity.
Sandip K. Luis is an independent researcher and freelance artist based in Delhi and Kochi, India. He recently submitted his PhD in Visual Studies, to School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He has taught Art History and Aesthetics at various institutions in India and has published articles on modern and contemporary art.
Dev Nath Pathak teaches Sociology at South Asian University, New Delhi, and is editor of Society and Culture in South Asia, co-published biannually by Sage India and South Asian University. Among his recent publications are Living and Dying: Meanings in Maithili Folklore (Primus, New Delhi, 2018), Culture and Politics in South Asia: Performative Communication (co-edited with Sasanka Perera, Routledge, 2017), Another South Asia! (Primus, 2018), and Sociology and Social Anthropology in South Asia: Histories and Practices (co-edited with Ravi Kumar and Sasanka Perera, Orient BlackSwan, 2018).
Anoli Perera is an artist, art writer, and curator based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and New Delhi, India. Her work mostly focuses on themes of memory, female identity, and urban space. At present, she concentrates on installations, photo performances, and collage as her preferred means of expression. She is a Founding Director of Theertha International Artists’ Collective, Colombo, Sri Lanka, and is its General Secretary.
Sasanka Perera is Professor of Sociology and Vice President at South Asian University, New Delhi. He is editor in chief of Society and Culture in South Asia, co-published bi-annually by Sage India and South Asian University. Among his recent publications are Artists Remember; Artists Narrate: Memory and Representation in Contemporary Sri Lankan Visual Arts (Colombo Institute, Colombo, 2011), Violence and the Burden of Memory: Remembrance and Erasure in Sinhala Consciousness (Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi, 2015), and Warzone Tourism in Sri Lanka: Tales from Darker Places in Paradise (Sage, New Delhi, 2016).
Lala Rukh Selim is a sculptor and Professor of Sculpture at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She was editor of ‘Art and Crafts’ of the Cultural
Survey of Bangladesh Series (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 2007) and Art: A Quarterly Journal (Dhaka, 1994 to 2004), and a lead partner for the Dhaka University in the seven-year-long (2010–2017) education exchange program between the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, UK, and the Faculty of Fine Art, Dhaka University.
list of figures
Fig. 1.1 Barrel Installation by Chandraguptha Thenuwara, Colombo, Sri Lanka. (Photograph courtesy of Theertha International Artists’ Collective Archives) 20
Fig. 1.2 I Dreamt a Space Without Me by Ruby Chisti, Gadani, Pakistan. (Photograph courtesy of Ruby Chisti) 20
Fig. 1.3 Breath by Breath. Photo-performance by Vibha Galhotra, New Delhi, India. (Photograph courtesy of Vibha Galhotra) 21
Fig. 1.4 Dead Fish. Performance by Bandu Manamperi, Colombo, Sri Lanka. (Photograph courtesy of Theertha International Artists’ Collective Archives) 21
Fig. 2.1 Ayisha Abraham and Pushpamala seeing a scroll on the local goddess Manasa, in the company of Dukhshyam Chitrakar on the left, Naya Village, Midnapore, 1985. (Photo courtesy of Parul Dave Mukherji) 51
Fig. 2.2 Pushpamala and Parul Dave Mukherji sipping coconut water in front of a vegetable shop in Naya Village, Midnapore, 1985. (Photo Courtesy of Ayisha Abraham) 51
Fig. 2.3 Pushpamala and Parul Dave Mukherji seeing a scroll sitting in front of a thatched hut with two children from the patua community, Naya Village, Midnapore, West Bengal, India, 1985. (Photo Courtesy of Ayisha Abraham) 58
Fig. 2.4 Pushpamala and Parul Dave Mukherji sitting in front of a thatched hut with Dukhshyam and his extended family of scroll painters, Naya Village, Midnapore, West Bengal, India, 1985. (Photo Courtesy of Ayisha Abraham) 59
Fig. 2.5 The documentation scroll painted by Dukhshyam in 2015. The opening frame showing Pushpamala holding the camera, Ayisha Abraham, and Parul Dave Mukherji in Gulam Sheikh’s Studio in the Painting Department, Baroda, taking his leave to embark upon the Train Journey to Naya Village, Midnapore, West Bengal, India, 1985. (Photo courtesy of Parul Dave Mukherji)
Fig. 2.6 Dukhshyam Chitrakar, The documentation scroll. Our arrival in Calcutta and our negotiations with the city traffic to catch a bus to visit the Naya Village, Midnapore, West Bengal, India, 1985. (Photo courtesy of Parul Dave Mukherji)
Fig. 2.7 Dukhshyam Chitrakar, The documentation scroll. Our arrival in Calcutta and our negotiations with the city traffic to catch a bus to visit the Naya Village, Midnapore, West Bengal, India, 1985. (Photo courtesy of Parul Dave Mukherji)
Fig. 2.8 Dukhshyam Chitrakar, The documentation scroll. Parul Dave Mukherji taking a class on the story of a painted scroll or Pata Katha at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. (Photo courtesy of Parul Dave Mukherji)
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63
64
65
Fig. 2.9 Dukhshyam Chitrakar, The documentation scroll. The closing frame showing Parul Dave Mukherji, Pushpamala, and Ayisha Abraham, showing the photos of the documentation trip to Gulam Sheikh in his studio in the Painting Department, Baroda, in 1985. (Photo courtesy of Parul Dave Mukherji) 66
Fig. 2.10 N. Pushpamala, The Ethnographic Series, Native Women of South India, Photo-Performance, 2004. (Photo courtesy of N. Pushpamala)
Fig. 2.11 A detail of Pushpamala in front of a thatched hut with Dukhshyam and his extended family of scroll painters, Naya Village, Midnapore, West Bengal, India, 1985. (Photo courtesy of N. Pushpamala)
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Fig. 4.1 Dinner for Six: Inside Out by Anoli Perera. (Photograph courtesy of Anoli Perera) 102
Fig. 4.2 I Let My Hair Loose: Protest Series (2010–2011) by Anoli Perera. (Photo courtesy of Anoli Perera)
Fig. 9.1 Mural by Rupesh Raj Sunuwar. (Photography by Binit Gurung)
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Fig. 9.2 Mural by Dibyeshwor Gurung. (Photography by Binit Gurung) 238
Fig. 9.3 Mural by Julien de Casabianca. (Photography by Binit Gurung) 241
Fig. 9.4 Mural by Artlab. (Photography by Binit Gurung) 243
Fig. 11.1 Dinner Table, 2004. Installation by Sanath Kalubadana, an artist who worked with Theertha. (Photograph courtesy of Theertha Archives)
Fig. 11.2 History of Histories, 2004. Installation by R. Vasanthini, K.S. Kumutha, K. Tamilini, S. Kannan and T. Shanaathanan in collaboration with people from Jaffna at Aham-Puram exhibition sponsored by Theertha in Jaffna, Northern Sri Lanka. (Photograph courtesy of Theertha Archives)
Fig. 11.3 The Barrel Man, 2004. Performance by Theertha artist, Bandu Manamperi. (Photograph courtesy of Theertha Archives)
Fig. 11.4 Snakes and Mikes, 2007. Painting by Theertha artist, Jagath Weerasinghe. (Photograph courtesy of Theertha Archives)
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CHAPTER 1
Intersections and Implications: When Anthropology, Art Practice, and Art
History Converge
Sasanka Perera and Dev Nath Pathak
Many insightful reflections from history and philosophy of art could be stitched together to engender an anxious train of thinking not only about art as a process and cultural product but also about its relevance in reading society and politics. Among numerous articulations on the commonsense of art, we often hear that there cannot be a formulaic vantage point to judge art, that art is essentially about a mode of experiential expression or an expression of blissful imagination and therefore is embedded in a field of subjectivism. Within this popular commonsense, a sociologist might deem these relationships and conditions too messy to decipher in a way that would make sociological sense. Such a pronounced absence of art in sociology and anthropology and anxieties about art’s reliability in reading society and its politics are the foundation of this book.
At times, oscillating between the sublime and the ridiculous, the bones of dead and living ideologies and utopias begin to fall from studio
S. Perera (*) • D. N. Pathak
South Asian University, New Delhi, India e-mail: sasankaperera@soc.sau.ac.in; dev@soc.sau.ac.in
© The Author(s) 2019
S. Perera, D. N. Pathak (eds.), Intersections of Contemporary Art, Anthropology and Art History in South Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05852-4_1
S. PERERA AND D. N. PATHAK
cupboards; regimes of exhibitionism and commerce of culture too join in the list, and the tales of art and art practices, become more telling than one can anticipate. And in this wake, it becomes self-evident how some social science disciplines have successfully and adamantly remained distant from intellectually engaging with art in general and contemporary art in particular. Sociology, social anthropology, political science, international relations, and history stand testimony to this situation globally, barring a handful of exceptions. In this scheme of things, monopolizing disciplinary interest in contemporary art has become the preserve of art history and curatorial practices. As a result of this discursive void, art, and the politics, it generates stand in the gulf between class and mass, art and craft, studio and gallery, street and art fare. And in that gulf, what art can say and what art becomes in social and political terms beyond their aesthetics have become inaudible. It is in this kind of void that the anxious but simple questions posed on art and politics by Das provide an initial signpost towards what direction we should travel in our own thoughts. He wonders, “when we wedge ourselves between politics and aesthetics, bravely imaging that we have an enabling concept in such an art, what indeed do we want art to achieve?” (Das 2010: 11). Indeed, does art end with a sense of aesthetic and satisfaction and commercial success? Or, should it travel to the realms of cultural production and discursive practices such as sociology? Or, as Das further wonders, “if politics is about constraining the choices of others, what is art?” (Ibid.: 11). Indeed, art can be stifling too. But it is also enabling in reading society if one is adequately perceptive to work out how and when to situate contemporary art in reading the politics of contemporary social processes. It is in such a context of engagement with art and politics that Turner and Webb have attempted to make a case for art’s implication in discourses of human rights (Turner and Webb 2016: 15). Their argument is, whether artists opt to directly engage with evolving political crises or maintain a distance from such turmoil, they remain a part of a cultural system, “and in presenting a particular set of images and attitudes, will necessarily reflect something about the lived world” in which they are a part (Turner and Webb 2016: 15).
Contemporary art of the kind we focus on in this book needs to be understood as fundamentally a secular discourse (Zitzewitz 2014: 15). But within discourse, the complexity of artists’ practice acquires different meanings in their dealings with various artistic, religious, and political subjectivities which in turn are also linked to their individual social identities as well as historical experiences (Zitzewitz 2014: 15).
Seen in this sense, art can open up discursive possibilities beyond the delimiting aesthetics and commerce of art, which are of interest to us. Paradoxically, it is in the art world that a perpetual mutuality of class and mass unfolds in spite of curatorial politics of inclusion and exclusion. Then, why most dominant practices of social sciences shy away from the abundance of clues, data, narratives, hypotheses, and research questions that surface in the art world. This stands tall as an intriguing question worth dealing with. It is perhaps of the perceived “‘impurity’ of art” or due to the ‘excesses’ and or the possible ‘false movement’ of images that undervalue their truth and capacity to enhance experience” (Das 2010: 11). When we attempt to address this absence, we would mostly do so within our own disciplinary domains of sociology and social anthropology.
It is a somewhat baffling question why the extended domain of contemporary painting, sculpture, performance art, and installation has not become an area of consistent interest for those who formally practice social anthropology and sociology. This is particularly the case in South Asia even though the situation beyond the region is only marginally different.1 One may wonder whether the reason for this absence is due to methodological or theoretical limitations that are inherent in the dominant approaches of anthropology and sociology.2 But a self-reflective exploration would suggest that any methodological limitation is the result of the self-induced fear of the visual rather than any inherent limitations as such in either sociology or social anthropology.3 With anthropology, the problem historically has been its evolution into what Margaret Mead has called
1 A sense of this divide exists in other parts of the world too. At times one hopes about a possible bridge across this divide that might lead to a hybrid field of art practice. See Schneider and Wright (2013)
2 We dwell upon a collective exploration on the limits and possibilities in sociology and social anthropology in South Asia in Ravi Kumar, Dev Nath Pathak, and Sasanka Perera eds., Sociology and Social Anthropology in South Asia: Histories and Practices (Orient Blackswan, New Delhi, 2018).
3 In our perception, the situation in academic sociology is no different. In fact, we do not find it useful to maintain the spurious division between sociology and social anthropology in the present project as well as in the way we see the world around us. The unison of sociology and social anthropology in postcolonial South Asia appears in some of our other pursuits, such as op cit Kumar et al. We have dealt with the anxieties of the visual in social sciences with a focus on visual, performance, and other cultural expressions more clearly in Pathak and Perera eds., Culture and Politics in South Asia: Performative Communication (Routledge, London, 2017).
S. PERERA AND D. N. PATHAK
a “discipline” or “science of words” (Mead 1995: 3, 5). Even though her ideas were mostly articulated in the context of film, what she outlines in her essay, ‘Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words’ (1995) resonates with the broader context of visuality’s location in anthropology as well. Her critique had to do with what she perceived as the discipline’s resistance to visual approaches because it clung “to verbal descriptions when so many better ways of recording aspects of culture have become available” (Mead 1995: 5). The obvious limitation in Mead’s argument is that she saw visuality, and in her case photography and film, merely in a simple utilitarian manner as technical devices for data gathering, instead of seeing visuality as a possible central focus of research or a broader kind of discourse. Banks notes, though “social researchers encounter images constantly”, it is not an exaggeration that in social sciences in general and sociology and anthropology in particular, “there is no room for pictures, except as supporting characters” (Banks 2001: 1–2). In other words, images have become mere decorative icons or at best supportive secondary signs to what the written text alludes to. This emanates from the reality that visuality, as a matter of method, research, or discourse, has not been contemplated seriously enough in sociology and anthropology. What Mead and Banks have noted with regard to anthropology’s dealings with visuality reflects similarly upon sociology as well though sociology’s encounter with visuality is far more marginal. Anthropology at least had a longer encounter with imagery from the colonial period onwards, particularly with regard to film and photography and the discipline’s interest in ‘primitive’ forms of art in the larger scheme of ethnography. This kind of affinity with imagery or art is much less pronounced when it comes to sociology. Schnettler, writing with particular reference to sociology’s encounter with photography, notes that the discipline did not clearly “develop an intimate relationship with photography” (Schnettler 2013: 42). In the same sense, sociology’s relationship with other forms of visuality more generally is also less pronounced compared to earlier phases of social anthropology. It is in this kind of context that any interests in the visual in both sociology and social anthropology have been expelled to the subdisciplinary domains of visual anthropology and visual sociology. In effect, this expulsion and voluntary exile on the part of those interested in visuality within the two disciplines have kept the mainstreams of both sociology and anthropology ‘cleansed’ of possible pollutants from the ‘subjectivities’ visuality might have engendered in the course of research.
It is in this kind of context, we learn from informal accounts of sociologists and anthropologists in the region about the dismissive gatekeepers ridiculing research proposals on thematic issues on art, cultural politics, performance, folklore, literature, and so on based on the somewhat liminal, reductionist, and unimaginative argument that these are not adequately “sociological” or “anthropological”. Particularly in the conventional academic landscape in South Asia, how many young sociologists and social anthropologists are encouraged to undertake research on cultural expressions, art practices, regimes of visuals, and visuality? In general experience, in the biographies of scholars, there comes a moment of realization of a clear existence of a not-so-discrete hierarchy of research areas and interests and resultant modes of scholarship in the mainstream of anthropology and sociology. Political sociology and studies on social stratification, issues of caste, class, ethnicity, violence, and gender, or for that matter other thematic areas popularized by national-international funding agencies that vary from conflict resolution to conflict transformation, ride roughshod over other areas such as culture in general and visual arts in particular despite a longstanding argument in social sciences on the integral relation of culture and politics.
This predetermined and ill-debated understanding of what sociology and social anthropology ought to be has negatively impacted numerous possibilities for intellectual development in these disciplines in South Asia.4 That is, this inherent intellectual conservatism of the disciplines has stunted many potentially creative avenues of research. It is in this context we can understand why a more robust and a theoretically nuanced sociology of contemporary art and visual culture has not yet emerged in any degree of seriousness within contemporary sociology. And this state of affairs supports the seeming fear of the visual, coupled with a methodological uncertainty—on how to deal with the uncertainty or seeming instability of the visual and visuality in the relatively certainty-obsessed sociology and social anthropology. This is unfortunate since there has also been a realization through heated debates that sociology as well as anthropology entails poetics, particularly in the ways ethnography is crafted. In fact, as the ‘writing culture’ debate in the 1980s and its aftermath have indicated, anthropologists became “more self-conscious than ever before that they are writers” (Marcus 1986: 162). Here, being writers also meant
4 See Kumar et al. (2018).
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carrying a certain self-conscious expression of imagination and creativity in writing within anthropology. In these general circumstances, the ‘literariness’ of what was published in the name of anthropology became much more important than the processes of research itself including fieldwork, which enabled this discursive result. To be more precise, this situation in social anthropology came about due to two interconnected reasons. That is, the clear interest in literary approaches seen generally across human sciences on one hand, and the pronounced interest in literary theory and practice evident in the work of a number of important anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Mary Douglas, and others (Clifford 1986: 3). In their own characteristic ways, they have “blurred the boundary separating art from science” (Clifford 1986: 3). But this sense of creativity, imagination, and ‘art’ with regard to writing clearly did not extend to the realm of visuals in anthropology.
When it comes to South Asia, even this realization of sociological or ethnographic texts as carriers of a sense of imagination and creativity exists only in the margins of the mainstream disciplines. It is in the context of this methodological, thematic, and theoretical conservatism of sociology and anthropology in South Asia Perera had wondered, “can’t we re-visit our overdependence on Marx and Foucault as well as an almost pathological obsession with caste, class and now gender in sociology and social anthropology? Is it impossible to find new objects to interrogate which might allow us to rethink our theory as well as the nature of research and knowledge themselves?” (Perera 2014: xxii–xxiii). This conventional background provides us the reasons for “why visual culture and particularly painting, sculpture and installation in our region have not moved beyond art history into areas such as international relations, political science and sociology” (Perera 2014: xx). But this is not an absence peculiar to South Asia alone. It is also global, and is based on the subjectivities art and cultural products in general are supposed to be infected with. Speaking at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1980, Pierre Bourdieu as an established sociologist noted, “sociology and art do not make good bedfellows” (Bourdieu 1995: 139). His explanation for this apparent lack of cohesion between art and sociology suggests that it was “the fault of art and artists” “because the universe of art is a universe of belief, belief in gifts, in the uniqueness of the uncreated creator, and the intrusion of the sociologist, who seeks to understand, explain, account for what he finds, is a source of scandal” (Bourdieu 1995: 139). In other
words, in the field of apparent subjectivities and plains of imagination within which art supposedly operated, it was not possible for art to be reduced to reliable sociological facts. This was the ‘fault’ of art, which made it unreliable for sociology. This is why, in Bourdieu’s opinion, sociologists were affectively keen on expelling artists from the history of art if they were to deal with art (Bourdieu 1995: 139). That is, to remove the sources of seeming instability in analysis.
But Bourdieu also explains this state of affairs as a lapse on the part of sociology as well. One of the most crucial aspects of his explanations suggests, “sociology and its favored instrument, statistics – belittle and crushes, flattens and trivializes artistic creation” (Bourdieu 1995: 139). Though he was speaking with regard to sociology in particular, the way in which art is viewed by social sciences in general is not that different. Even though that perception may not only come from the reductionist analysis offered by statistics, it does come from a narrow understanding of ‘science’ or what might be called scientism.
However, without concerning ourselves too much about the vexed margin and the overestimated strength of the core, we operate with the conviction of exploring manifold intersections in this book, in order to develop an understanding in the intellectual twilight where sources do not become sacred or taboo. In short, we do not ask about the sources of an understanding vis-à-vis disciplinary orthodoxy. Instead, we ask how various disciplines come together to aid in developing an understanding. It is in this contesting backdrop that this book attempts to stitch together discussions from scholars in sociology, anthropology, art history, and art practice to explore the politics and poetics, structures of interpretative possibilities, and discursive implications of contemporary art in South Asia. By doing so, the book locates artworks and art practices in the intersections of sociology, anthropology, history, biography, and memory in the study of society, politics, and culture. This implies an engagement with works of contemporary art and the multiple contexts of their production, consumption, and their embedded memories informed by various disciplinary sources. The book envisages these intersections to provide a more nuanced premise for discussions on art practices, works of art, life worlds of artists, institutional interventions, curatorial politics and so on. In the scheme of these intersections, as it were, each chapter in the book emphasizes, while deliberating specifics (cases, mediums, artworks, artists, and interpretative messages), the imperative of conversations beyond disciplinary boundaries. Each chapter, in this scheme, is thus in tangential yet
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vivid dialogue with others, enriching the understanding of contemporary art as well as the politics of the social formations within which they emerge. The relevance of this endeavor arises from manifold issues. One, as briefly mentioned above, is about a critical revisiting and reformulating of the disciplinary framework of sociology and social anthropology. This is a much-felt intellectual necessity of our times, but has so far manifested only in terms of exceptions, which are few and far between.5 Though there is acknowledgement of the imperatives for pushing disciplinary boundaries to engage with art, artists, art-networks, and artistic practices, there is little evidence of this being executed in any concrete sense in the sociology and anthropology of South Asia.
Triggers on The Terrain of ThoughT
A clear realization of the need to make conscious efforts in this direction arose via two occasions of intersecting intellectual interests, crisscrossing disciplines at South Asian University. The first trigger was a talk at the South Asian University in 2013 on ‘Art and the Visual Public Sphere in Pakistan’6 by art historian and artist, Iftikhar Dadi. Dadi took the audience and interlocutors on a fascinating visual tour of Pakistan’s public visual landscape via the on-site street paintings by artist Naiza Khan7 in Karachi, and the proliferation of popular works in the form of posters and postcards carrying the image of deposed Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.8 The theme and the talk stimulated the anthropologists in the audience to formulate
5 In the present scenario, Christopher Pinney and Roma Chatterji are among the exceptional few approaching visuals of aesthetic significance within an anthropological sensibility, among others, who have shown the relevance of arts as areas of investigation transgressing the works of art themselves and venturing into domains of social sciences. These others include Tapati Guha Thakurta, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Geeta Kapoor, Jagath Weerasinghe, Iftikhar Dadi, and Salima Hashmi. Interestingly, prior to ‘filed work’ becoming an anthropological fetish, one of the pioneers of Indian sociology/anthropology, Radhakamal Mukherjee wrote the interesting text, The Culture and Art of India (Mushiram Manoharlal Publisher) in the broader South Asian context. But Mukherjee’s interests have not been followed-up in the practices of post-independent anthropology and sociology in South Asia.
6 Lecture organized by the Department of Sociology, South Asian University as part of the ‘Reading South Asia Lecture Series 2013’ on 26 August 2013.
7 For more information on the work of Naiza Khan, please visit http://naizakhan.com/ (accessed 19 August 2018).
8 For more information on the discussion on Naiza Khan’s artwork in public space and the Sadam Hussein poster phenomenon, see Dadi (2009).
some questions bridging what appeared to be disciplinary gaps between art history and anthropology. These questions were: why Naiza Khan had opted to venture into the turbulent streets of Karachi away from the safety and comfort of her studio, and how a figure such as Saddam Hussein, historically relatively unknown in Pakistan, had suddenly become so popular, and why his image was at times depicted in a religious context when Hussein was not known to be religiously oriented within the stream of politics he engendered as part of the political agenda of the Ba’ath Party, which he headed? Dadi had pushed open the windows on these questions for which the anthropologists in the audience sought comprehensive answers. In our mind, this seemed to offer the possibilities for a more complete, engaged and nuanced narrative about these artworks, the processes that enabled them as well as the broader contexts of their production and consumption and finally their narrative potential in terms of evolving local politics. The question that emerged in our mind sought to see art more clearly in conjunction with politics, culture, and other social complexities, to say the least, expecting a series of disciplinary departures. Prior to this encounter, in the context of the exhibition titled, Lines of Control, Dadi and Nasar (2012) has reflected on the intersecting biography of the artist, in this case Dadi himself and his works of art. With reference to his two works9 in the exhibition, which Dadi co-curated with Hammad Nasar, he underlines the ‘tangled legacies’ of the artists’, “undisciplined practice that refuse to be contained by institutional or disciplinary protocols and therefore able to provide new insights into our predicaments” (Dadi and Nasar 2012: 20). Some of these issues figure prominently in the discussions in the chapters in this book.
What Dadi and Nasar has described as a thematic in Lines of Control (2012) is evident in reflections on contemporary visual arts in Sri Lanka too. The complex interplay of personal biographies and social and political history, individual and collective memories, cultural and political stimulus comes to the surface in discussions on contemporary visual art in Sri Lanka.10 It is in this context that Weerasinghe, with reference to ‘the art of the 90s’
9 The works are titled Muslims are meat-eaters, they prefer food containing salt. Hindus on the other hand prefer a sweet taste and I at least, have never seen or heard of such wonderful people. For more details, see the essay by Iftikhar Dadi and Hammad Nasar, in the catalog, Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space. New York: Cornell University Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 2012.
10 For more details on this, see Weerasinghe (2005) and Perera (2016).
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identifies two important thematic preoccupations. These are, “works that investigates the self, and the sense of being of individuals who have been victimized and frustrated as a consequence of organized violence” on one hand and “works that investigates the allure as well as the frustrations of the city as an artistic expression” on the other (Weerasinghe 2005: 15–40). One can argue, both these trends are biographical because these themes visually express personal experiences of artists as individuals in society as well as their more general collective experiences as a particular generation (Perera 2016: 212). Art of the 1990s are impregnated with politics, which goes much beyond their aesthetics and materiality with regard to meaning-making. Besides, most of these artists considered themselves ‘political artists’ due to the somewhat obvious political and interventionist agenda of their work (Weerasinghe 2005; Perera 2016). It is this self-conscious engagement with politics that offer a specific identity to the artists of this period, which also marks this genre of art from earlier forms of art-making (Perera 2016: 212). Weerasinghe perceives these individuals as a “new generation of artists equipped with a range of new ideas and concepts of art, themes for artistic investigation and, especially, with an understanding of the idea of the artist as a political individual” (Weerasinghe 2005: 183).
In a somewhat different way, the biographies as well as the artworks of women artists in Pakistan as described by Salima Hashmi (2002) further elaborate the narrative possibilities in the broader reading of politics in Pakistan. The history of women who received a training in art in the 1940s would indicate that this training was expected to “enhance the natural proclivities of women” that would make them better ‘home decorators’ and “nurture the finer sensibilities expected of mothers, wives and daughters” (Hashmi 2002: 7). It was in this context that the Department of Fine Arts at Punjab University was exclusively reserved for women. They were not expected to be independent and professional artists in this situation, but art teachers at best. And it took a considerable time for what was begun as safe educational conduit for women to transform into a “vehicle for communication and expression in the public domain, and paved the way for personal and cultural insurrections” (Hashmi 2002: 7). In other words, a biographical exploration of women in art in the 1940s and 1950s would clearly place in context the realities of gender relations in Pakistan as well as women’s position in these relationships. But between the late 1970s and late 1980s, women had not only become fully-fledged artists, but their work also creatively took on the challenges put up by martial law as evident in their personal biographies and work produced (Hashmi 2002: 91–144).
The focus on biography of artists as well as art’s relationships with the broader world is crucial if art is to inform sociology. But it is also necessary to broaden this focus as well. As Bourdieu has noted, “the sociology of cultural products must take as its object the whole set of relationships (objective ones and also those effected in the form of interaction) between the artist and other artists, and beyond them, the whole set of agents engaged in the production of work, or, at least, of the social value of the work (critics, gallery directors, patrons etc)”11 (Bourdieu 1995: 141). For him, sociology of works of art needs to take the entire field of cultural production into account as well as the relationship between this field and the field of consumers. In other words, art would make sense in sociology if it can weave a narrative that would span beyond the limited frame of an artwork and embrace larger political and social situations within which they are created. This is what he means when he notes, “the social determinism of which the work of art bears the traces, are exerted partly through the producer’s habitus” (Bourdieu 1995: 141). Habitus, in this sense, extends from the artists’ personal circumstances to their location in society at a specific temporal moment. So despite Bourdieu’s suspicion of art as sociological facts in the way they are generally considered, what he outlines as ‘sociology of works of art’ (as outlined above) is an invitation to ensure that art becomes more legible and more reliable in sociological terms. That is, instead of looking at art and sociology in the conventional sense, which does not allow for a dialogue, he hints at a path, which might usher in art to the centrality of sociological readings of society, politics, and culture.
But contemporary art everywhere, and as evident in South Asia as well, throws up a number of hurdles in communication and representation, which can be challenging to the discourse of meaning they are supposed to generate. As Ali has noted with regard to contemporary Pakistani art, visiting a gallery itself could be intimidating to a normal person, while “new media art forms like assemblage, performance, video and installation” could add to the complexity of viewing and comprehending (Ali 2011). Unlike much of pre-abstract modernist art or even pre-modern forms of art in South Asia like religious art, contemporary works such as installations can be “ephemeral, site-specific arrangements of objects that you can walk around, into and through to experience their message” Ali 2011: 7). But precisely due to the complexity of arrangement and their
11 Emphasis in the original.
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vast deviation from what is considered art generally, the meanings embedded in these could easily be lost. This becomes a significant issue if this kind of art is meant to go beyond aesthetics and the market into the realms of politics and social transformation. In other words, they can alienate viewers (Ali 2011: 7). Though Ali has described this seeming disconnect between contemporary art and ordinary people with regard to Pakistan, the situation is much the same in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka with regard to the same kind of work. How does one deal with this rupture in representation when art at one level is not only supposed to make meaning but also transmit such meanings?
If contemporary art is to inform the craft of sociology, then, in addition to taking into consideration the broader contexts of its production and consumption as suggested by Bourdieu, it will also be necessary to take into account the meanings embedded in a given artwork. And these meanings must be able to create a discourse; they cannot be imprisoned within an artwork, which would always need the mediation of its creator to decipher its meanings. This is why the biography and the habitus of an artist as well as the larger context in which it is located are of significant importance. Such a broad canvass would allow much more nuanced space for these meanings to manifest. Of course, one can argue, this is what art history already does to some extent. But if sociology or anthropology looks at art in this manner, the canvass that might unfold becomes much larger, and its analytic possibilities get further entrenched as social and political analysis inherent in these disciplines naturally flows into art. This kind of privileging of art and their creators however is not a matter of equalizing the agency of artists with regard to their work and their location in society and within discourse. It is in such a context that Preziosi and Farago argue for the re-consideration of the transformative power of artists when they suggest, “the agency assigned to the artist could vary according to who is speaking, to whom and to what purpose” (2012: 28). That is, the political power available to the artists considered in the reflections by Dadi, Weerasinghe, and Hashmi in Pakistan and Sri Lanka would be very different to yet others whose voices are less audible and their work less visible. However, it is conceivable that art as well as other forms of culture and forms of formal knowledge “has a crucial role to play in the realm of politics, in the domain of discourse and within the vistas of our conscience” (Perera 2014: xx). If so, they also can have a legitimate presence in the discourses of social sciences beyond art history. In this sense, what Dadi and Hashmi have described for Pakistan and Weerasinghe for
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this morning. What were you doing?"
"Reading, aunt."
"Then the first trouble came from your disobeying my direct commands. Could you not help that?"
"Yes, aunt, I suppose so."
"And could you not have got up when Eleanor called you?"
"Yes, aunt."
"Then here were two troubles which certainly could have been helped, and which being helped would have prevented most of the others. I will pass over your conduct at the breakfast-table and at your lessons; but could you not have dressed yourself as I told you instead of following your own perverse fancy?"
"I did not want to wear that dress," murmured Etty.
"That was no reason at all, Etty. When you are commanded to do a thing by those who stand in the place of your parents, your liking or not liking is no excuse for disobeying. Now, to go on to the great trouble of all. Did you not hear your uncle tell you not to go upon the rocks?"
"Yes, aunt."
"And could you not have helped going where you were told not to go?"
Etty was ashamed to excuse herself by saying that she wanted the flowers, so she said nothing. She was beginning to see that her troubles had been of her own making.
"In every one of these cases you could have 'helped it,' as you say, by merely doing your duty," continued Mrs. Grey. "If you had risen in time, you would not have been hurried and fretted in getting ready for breakfast. You would not have broken your bottle, and spoiled my table, and lost your own temper, and put yourself out of tune for the whole day. If you had trusted your uncle as you ought, you would not have made yourself ridiculous on the wharf as you did. If you had not been so perverse and unreasonable you would not have spoiled your best dress and your own temper as well as that of every one else. To conclude, if you had obeyed your uncle to-day, you would not have run heedlessly into danger, and thus have sacrificed perhaps the life of your poor little sister."
"Do you think Stella will die, aunt?" asked Etty.
"I cannot tell. She is very dangerously hurt, and even if she should live, it may be months before she can walk. Now tell me, Etty, could you not have helped all these things?"
"Well, I cannot help crying when anything troubles me," said Etty. "I have so much feeling."
"Feeling for yourself, Etty, not for other people. Selfish feeling, which makes you hard-hearted and unkind even to your poor little sister, who would do anything in the world for you. Selfish feeling, which shows that you have never learned to love God or your neighbors, but only to love and please yourself—which will and does make you a torment to yourself and all about you."
"I shall say no more now, Etty, only to recommend you to ask God for the light of His Holy Spirit to teach you to see yourself as you really are. There is no use in trying to cure people unless they can be convinced that they are sick, and
there is no use in talking of amendment to one who cannot see that she is to blame. I shall pray for you, my child, and I shall continue to take care of you as well as I can, but I do not know what is to become of you unless you learn to be a better girl."
"Please don't go away, aunt," sobbed Etty: "don't leave me alone. Indeed I will try to be a good girl, if you will forgive me."
"I forgive you, my dear Etty, but there is One whom you have offended more than you have me, whose pardon you ought to ask."
"Please ask Him for me, aunt!" whispered Etty. "And ask Him to make Stella well."
Mrs. Grey knelt by Etty's bedside, and prayed, and for the first time in her life Etty really joined in a prayer.
She wanted very much to see Stella, but her aunt said no, and for once Etty minded without a word.
When Mrs. Grey left her, Etty slipped out of bed, and kneeling down, she prayed herself, with many tears, that her Father in Heaven would spare her dear sister; and that she herself might have grace to be a good girl. That prayer was the beginning of a new life to Etty.
Then feeling a little comforted she rose from her knees. As she did so she felt a sharp pain in her foot, so sharp that she almost screamed. She had felt a pain in the foot a good many times during the afternoon, but her pride would not let her speak of it, lest her aunt should say something about her thin boots.
"O dear, what a wicked little fool I have been!" said she to herself. "Now I have hurt my foot and I dare say I shall have to sit still and be waited on, instead of waiting on Stella."
So it turned out. The next day Etty's foot was found to be so bruised and inflamed that she could not put it to the floor. Here was an end to all her hopes of helping her aunt and waiting upon Stella. Instead of that, she had to be carried up and down-stairs for a month, like a baby, and all she could do for any one was to give as little trouble as possible. She had taken a severe cold which settled in her eyes, already weakened by reading at night, and she could hardly use them at all.
This confinement was one of the best things that ever happened to Etty. She learned for the first time to appreciate the kindness of those who took care of her. She learned to be thoroughly weary of idleness, and to find it a privilege to be employed. She found out too that much as she might try, she could not be a good girl without help from above, and she learned to pray earnestly for the help of God's Holy Spirit. Her "bad days" became fewer and farther between, and at last ceased entirely.
Stella, was ill for a long time, and has never been as well as she was before her fall: but she is happier than ever before, for Etty is now always kind and affectionate to her.
Dear girls, be careful how you excuse your faults by saying you "can't help it!" Remember that you can always have God's help by asking for it in faith and humility, and with Him on your side, you have no right to say that you "cannot help" doing what is wrong.
MARTHA, OR, "CHARITY THINKETH NO EVIL." Frontispiece.
MARTHA, OR,
"CHARITY THINKETH NO EVIL."
"I HAVE just been to see Betty Allis," said Emily Dunbar to her cousin Martha. "She is a great deal better, but she is not able to go to school."
"Then she has really been sick!" said Martha.
Emily looked at her in surprise.
"What do you mean, Martha? Of course she has been sick. She would not be very likely to stay out of school just now, unless she was obliged to do so."
"I don't know that!" returned Martha.
"If a girl has been working for a prize, and finds out that she is not likely to get it after all, it may be very convenient to stay out of school a week or two, and then say, at last: 'Oh, of course, I had no chance. I lost so much time by being sick.'"
"Martha, you have no business to say such things," said Emily. "Betty is not that sort of girl at ell."
"I think she is exactly that sort of girl!" interrupted Martha.
"And besides," continued Emily, smiling, "I think it as likely as not that Betty will gain the prize, after all. She was ever so far before the rest of us, and she has only been out of school a week, you know."
"Very likely she will. She is a rich man's daughter, and I am a poor man's child; though I dare say she is not so rich as she pretends."
"I don't see that Betty makes any pretence at all," said Emily. "She seems to me as quiet and unpretending as any girl in school, and I don't think you have any right to accuse Miss Lyman of partiality. The fact is, Martha, you have taken such a dislike to Betty Allis, that it makes no difference what she does."
"Well, I have a right to dislike her," replied Martha. "She has treated me shamefully, and she is just as proud, and artful, and hateful, as she can be."
"Who is so proud, and artful, and hateful, Martha?" asked Miss Margaret, who had been sitting all the time behind the blinds of the window which opened on the verandah where the girls were now talking. "Those are hard words to apply to any one."
Martha did not answer, but Emily said:
"We were talking about Betty Allis, Aunt Margaret."
"I am surprised at that," replied Aunt Margaret. "I have always thought her a very nice girl."
"And so does almost every one," said Emily; "but Martha does not like her."
"Well, I do not, and I have good reasons for not liking her," said Martha. "She never loses a chance of provoking and spiting me."
"How does she provoke you?" asked Aunt Margaret. Martha did not reply.
"Come, Martha, if Betty has done so many bad things, you can surely tell of some of them."
"Well, she puts on such airs, for one thing," said Martha. "You would think she owned a whole gold mine, to hear her. The other day, several of the girls were talking about examination dresses. Miss Lyman wants all our class to wear white with black ribbons, on account of Annie Grey's death, you know. Some one asked Betty who was going to make her dress. 'Oh, I am not going to have a new dress made,' she answered, with such an air. 'Mamma likes me to wear white, and I have plenty of white dresses.'"
"I did not see that she put on any airs at all," remarked Emily. "She just said it as a matter-of-course, and she does wear white a great deal."
"Well, what else, Martha?" asked Aunt Margaret.
"Well, last March, when there was snow on the ground, I went over to carry auntie something. I was in a hurry and did not stop to dress myself, but just put on mother's plaid shawl, and tied my old worsted scarf round my neck. I was hurrying along, for I did not want to meet anybody, when I heard some one call me. I turned round, and there was Miss Betty, dressed up in her blue plush frock, and her cape
trimmed with sable fur, holding up my old scarf as if it burned her fingers. 'Why, Martha, is it you?' said she, in a tone of affected surprise. 'I did not know you. I found this scarf lying on the snow, and hurried to come up with you, thinking it might be yours.' I could have boxed her ears with a good will."
"But why? I do not see anything wrong in that."
"She did it just to mortify me!" said Martha. "She knew I should be ashamed of such a dirty old thing."
"And so you ought to be," said Aunt Margaret. "I tell you, you will meet with a great mortification some day if you are not more neat in your dress and habits. But I do not see that Betty was to blame. From what you say, it seems that she had not recognized you when she spoke. I dare say she thought you were some poor body, to whom the scarf would be a serious loss."
"I don't see what business she had in the lane," said Martha.
"Probably the same business that you had," replied Emily. "She goes over to the Home two or three times a week to read to Mrs. Grimes, the blind woman, and I suppose she has a right to take the shortest road, if she pleases."
"That going over to the Home is just another specimen of her," said Martha. "She likes to have the old ladies make a fuss over her, and to have all the managers say what a charitable, amiable girl Betty Allis is. You would not catch her doing any such thing unless she were sure that people would hear of it."
"Martha, how can you say so?" interrupted Emily. "You know how she helped poor Julia Curtis with her lessons, all the time her eyes were weak, so that she might not lose her place in school. The girls all wondered how Julia could keep up so well; but nobody would have known it if little Fanny had not let out the secret: for Betty made Julia promise not to tell."
"She knew it would come out somehow, or she would not have taken all that trouble," said Martha. "Then her name sounds so silly for a girl fifteen years old Belly Allis! Why does she not call herself Elizabeth?"
"Perhaps for the reason, amongst others, that it is not her name," replied Aunt Margaret, drily. "She was christened Betty at her grandmother's special request."
"She likes the name, though, for she says so," persisted Martha. "Then she makes such a parade of goodness. Miss Lyman said one day, last Lent, that she wished the girls to use their prayer-books in church; and the very next morning, Betty, instead of putting her head down, as she had done before, kneeled down and kept her head up and her book open before her all through the prayers and the Litany. Then she got up with such an air, as if to say, 'Just see how good I am!'"
"I fancy the air was in your imagination," said Emily. "I sat by Betty all through Lent and saw none of those airs that you speak of. Betty is a great deal more serious than she used to be, and I think she is trying hard to be a good Christian girl; but I am sure she makes no parade of it."
"Pray, Martha, what were you doing all through the prayers that you had so much time to observe Betty?" asked Aunt Margaret.
Martha blushed, but made no answer.
"I think you are cherishing a very wrong spirit," continued Aunt Margaret, seriously; "a spirit which makes you see wrong in everything which Betty does or leaves undone."
"That is just so, Aunt Margaret," said Emily. "I don't want to hurt Martha's feelings, but I am sure she is wrong in that. One Sunday Betty puts fifty cents into the collection and Martha thinks she does it to make a display. Another day she puts in a five-cent piece, and Martha thinks she might have saved something more than that out of all her pocket-money. And that is just the way all the time."
"Such a spirit is a very dangerous one for anybody to cherish," continued Aunt Margaret. "It shows a great want of that charity, without which all our doings are nothing worth:"
"I don't think it is fair to accuse me of want of charity, Aunt Margaret, considering how I saved—"
"How you saved all your pocket-money to give away," said Aunt Margaret, as Martha checked herself. "I am aware that you used a great deal of self-denial in that matter, my dear. I was very glad to see it. But, Martha, St. Paul says, 'though I give all my goods to feed the poor, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.' So you see that it is possible to be very liberal without being charitable at all."
"Charity means LOVE, does it not, Aunt Margaret?" asked Emily.
"Yes, my dear. St. Paul, in that beautiful thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, gives us a description of this greatest of graces. He tells us both what it is, and what it is
not, and assures us that unless we have it, our greatest gifts and graces are as nothing—
"'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, though I have faith so that I could remove mountains, though I bestow all my goods to food the poor, or give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.'"
"I advise you to examine your feelings toward Betty by the aid of this chapter, and see if it does not throw some light upon them."
"If she had not served me such a mean trick, I should not care so much!" said Martha. "But it was so shameful in her to go and tell Miss Lyman and get me into disgrace. I don't believe there is another girl in the school who would have done such a thing."
"What did she do?"
"She went and told Miss Lyman of something I did, and got me into disgrace," said Martha.
"You don't know that it was Betty," said Emily.
"I do know!" returned Martha, angrily. "There was not another person who could have seen me."
"You do not know for certain that any one told," persisted Emily. "Miss Lyman never said so, and you have no proof against Betty except your own fancy."
"Of course you will take her part against me," said Martha. "All I have to say is that I can't bear her, and never shall."
"You are wrong, Martha, and you must know that you are wrong," said Aunt Margaret, gravely. "If you examine your own conscience you will see that it is so."
Martha did not reply. She was not without religious principle, and lately she had been feeling very anxious to become a true Christian. She had tried to give herself to her Saviour, but something seemed to hold back. She had no comfort in prayer, she did not feel as if God heard her, and all her efforts to do good and to love Him seemed hard, uphill work. Now, as she thought over what her aunt had said to her, she began to wonder whether she had not found out her real hindrance, in the spirit which she had allowed herself to cherish toward Betty Allis.
Martha was a truthful girl. She was very much in earnest, and disposed to be honest in her self-examination. As she read over the description of Charity, she paused at every verse, and compared herself with the words.
"Charity suffereth long and is kind." Kind she certainly had not been. She had never lost an opportunity of saying and doing unkind things where Betty was concerned.
"Charity envieth not." It was rather hard for the naturally proud girl to admit to herself that she had envied her rich school-mate, that a great part of her dislike to Betty arose from the expensive furs, from those same fine white dresses, and the carriage, and the man-servant
that called for Betty on rainy days; but One was dealing with Martha who would not let her deceive herself. Yes, it was even so.
"Charity thinketh no evil." She had thought of nothing else. She had put an evil construction on every act of Betty's, however simple, and she was always looking out for bad motives in all she said or did.
"Rejoiceth not in iniquity." Had she not been secretly glad that unlucky day when Betty was surprised into laughing aloud in church, and was afterwards reproved by the clergyman? Had she not rejoiced openly whenever Betty gained a bad mark, or had an imperfect lesson?
There is no use in our going over the whole chapter, though Martha did so to the very end. Then she closed the book and knelt down. She shed many tears as she prayed, but when she rose, her face was full of quiet peace. She had overcome her hindrance for that time. She had acknowledged her sins, and prayed for forgiveness, and for grace to resist her besetting sin, and something in her heart told her that her prayer was granted.
"You were right about Betty Allis and me, Aunt Margaret, and I see I have been wrong all through!" said Martha, after breakfast, when they were alone together in the dining-room.
Martha was washing the breakfast things, which was a part of her regular duty.
"I am very glad you do," replied Aunt Margaret. "To see when you are wrong is more than half the battle. But, Martha, had you never known before that you were wrong in cherishing such a spirit? Had not your conscience told you so?"
"Yes, Aunt Margaret, but I would not listen. But I cannot think it was right in Betty to tell Miss Lyman of me. It was none of her business what I did."
"Perhaps not. Nevertheless, Martha, you must forgive, if you would be forgiven."
"I hope I have done so, aunt. I could not help it," added Martha, in a low tone; "when I thought how He forgave me. I would like to be friends with Betty if I could, but I don't know how to set about it."
"Pray for guidance, and keep your eyes open," said Aunt Margaret. "Depend upon it, your way will be made plain."
"Martha," said her mother, opening the door, "suppose you run over to auntie's and carry her these fresh ducks' eggs. She likes them very much, and they will just come in time for her breakfast, if you do not stop to change your dress. You can go through the lane."
"Auntie," was a great-aunt of Martha's, a very old lady. She breakfasted very late, and Martha often ran over to her house with a plate of warm biscuits, a dish of freshly gathered berries, or some other dainty which it was thought the old lady might fancy. She hastily throw on her sunbonnet, and without even taking off her white apron she went to carry the eggs. She staid nearly an hour, doing various little services for auntie, and sharing her morning cup of coffee. As she was returning, she overtook Betty Allis, who was walking slowly in the same direction.
"Just like her!" was Martha's first hasty thought. "Sure to meet me if I look like a fright!"
But she checked herself the next moment and gave Betty a cordial greeting. "Why, Betty, I did not expect to see you out this morning."
"And I am not sure that I ought to be out," replied Betty: "but the morning seemed so pleasant that I could not bear to stay in the house, so I went round to the Home for a little while. Have you been to see your aunt?"
Martha explained her errand.
"It must be nice to have an old lady of one's own to go and see!" said Betty. "I wish you would take me to visit your aunt some day, Martha. Do you think she would like to see me?"
The old feeling of jealousy rose in Martha's heart, but she put it down by a brave effort, and answered cheerfully:
"I am sure she would like it very much. She is always fond of young people. I think you must be fond of old people, Betty, you go to the Home so much."
"I am," replied Betty. "I do love to hear the old ladies talk. One learns so much from them. It must be strange," she added, thoughtfully, "to look back upon such a long life."
"We shall know how it seems some time," observed Martha, "that is, if we live."
"I shall not," said Betty, abruptly. "I shall never live to be old."
"How do you know?" asked Martha.
"I heard the doctor say so," answered Betty. "He told mother that I had consumption, and that though, with good care, I might last on for a year or two, I should never be well, and I might be taken worse at any time."
"Why, Betty!" exclaimed Martha. "Do you believe it? Didn't it make you feel dreadfully?"
"It did, just at first," said Betty; "but I don't mind it so much now, only for mother's sake."
"I don't think the doctor ought to have said so!" said Martha. "He cannot know for certain."
"I believe he feels quite sure," replied Betty. "You know they have ways of finding out those things. He did not tell me, either. I only heard it by accident; but after all I am glad I know the truth. Come into our garden and let me give you some roses."
"I am not fit to be seen!" said Martha, glancing at her dress.
"I am sure you look very nice in that pretty calico dress and white apron. Besides there is no one to see you. Do come in!"
Martha yielded, and Betty led her from walk to walk, culling roses and other flowers with an unsparing hand. As Martha was going away, Betty detained her.
"Martha, there is one thing I wish to say to you now, because—because—something might happen that I should never see you again." She paused a moment, and went on in a firmer voice: "Martha, I know that you have never liked
me, and that you think I do things to spite and mortify you; but, indeed, indeed it is not so. I have always wanted to be friends with you, for I liked you from the first, but if I have ever done or said anything to hurt your feelings, I am sorry, and I beg your pardon. I cannot afford to have any quarrels now, you know," she added, with a sad smile. "I must be in charity with all men."
"You never did, Betty—never but once," said Martha, as soon as she could speak. "I mean when you told Miss Lyman about my walking in the lane with my cousin instead of coming to school. I did wrong, I know, but it did not seem fair that you should tell of me."
"But, Martha, I did not tell of you," said Bettie, earnestly. "What made you think I did?"
"I thought you were the only one who could have seen me," replied Martha, blushing. "There is no other house which overlooks the lane but yours."
"Miss Lyman could have seen you herself from the recitation room when the leaves were off the trees," said Betty. "At any rate, Martha, it was not I who told. I never knew a word of the matter till I heard it in school. Is there anything else?"
"Nothing!" replied Martha. "You have never done me an injury, that I know of. The truth is," she added, coloring and looking down, "that I have always been envious and jealous of you, Betty, and I have tried to justify myself by making out that you were the one to blame. I have been thinking over the matter, and I see how mean and wicked I have been. It is I who ought to beg your pardon, and so I do."
"Don't say any more about it, but let us be friends, and love one another!" said Betty, kissing her. "Come and see
me, won't you? You know I cannot go out a great deal now."
"Don't you mean to come to school any more?" asked Martha.
"No, I have done with school," replied Betty, sadly. "You will have the prize after all, Martha, and without any trouble, for there is no one else near you."
Martha burst into tears. "I don't care for the prize!" she sobbed. "I would rather not have it."
"Oh, but you will not feel so by-and-by," replied Betty. "But, Martha, just let me say one thing. Dear Martha, do try to be a true Christian. Try to love God with all your heart, to please Him and to work for Him. That is worth all the prizes in the world. Think how I should feel now if I were not sure that He loved me and had forgiven all my sins for His dear Son's sake!"
"Then you are not afraid to die?" said Martha.
"I cannot say that," honestly replied Betty. "When I think of dying, I do feel afraid; but I try not to dwell upon that. I think about what is beyond—about seeing my Saviour and all the saints in glory. Doctor Courtland told me that was the best way, and I find it so. But I must not stay out any longer. Do come and see me as soon as you can!"
Martha promised, and went slowly homeward, her heart very full of prayers and resolutions.
"What kept you so long?" asked Aunt Margaret.
Martha told her the story of her meeting with Betty.
"I never was so ashamed in my life!" she concluded. "There, I have been nursing that grudge against her for these two years, and then made up my mind so grandly to forgive what never happened. I feel like a fool, Aunt Margaret."
"Feeling like a fool is often the first step to wisdom, Martha."
Before another spring came round, Betty Allis was laid to sleep in the grave, in the sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection. Her fears of death all passed away before the time of her summons came, and she died in the utmost peace.
Martha spent much time with her during her last illness, and when at last Betty was taken away, she looked back with wonder and shame to the days when she could see nothing but evil in one so gentle and kindhearted.