Sporting jasmine flowers and dressed in a simple black silk saree with an unostentatious zari border, M.S. Subbalakshmi sat cross-legged on the floor, with her accompanying artistes, and became the first ambassador of Indian culture at the United Nations in 1966. Rendering mellifluously Jagadodharana in raga kapi, MS, as she was famously known, received thundering ovation from a packed United Nations General Assembly audience. Her simplicity, her elegance, her voice and the sheer beauty of Purandhara Dasa’s composition placed Indian culture on the global map, just as Pandit Ravi Shankar’s sitar recital at Madison Square Garden did.
Indian culture, high and popular, has much to offer that would stun global audiences. Time was when the Indian state understood how to present the country’s great and diverse culture to a global audience – be it delegates to the United Nations or young people at Madison Square Gardens. Something, however, has gone wrong. The official representation of Indian culture is becoming increasingly crass.
From laser lights stabbing the New Delhi sky out of Bharata Mandapam, the venue of the G20 Summit, to the multi-coloured lighting of the Qutub Minar, kitsch has taken over from culture. Even Humayun’s Tomb has not been spared, with the dome above being used as white space for a G20 logo to be projected on to it.
Also read: In Photos: Life Behind the Curtain, or How Delhi’s Poor See G20 City
Is all this about the lack of aesthetic sensibilities of the bureaucracy or just a lackadaisical approach to power projection? Maybe it has to do with the nouveau riche garish exhibitionism of a new political class. The cinema settings and the band-baja music that delegates to various G20 meetings have been exposed to may embarrass some of us, but many see this as popular culture on display.
Meals to heads of government at Bharata Mandapam will be served on silver and gold platted thaalis, ‘Maharajah Thaali’, a proud businessman informed a news agency this week. The unabashed display of feudal ‘Maharajah’ culture – from ultramodern five-star hotels, with their Maharajah suites, to the national airline, with its iconic Maharajah – has now been extended to the dining table of the President of the Republic of Bharat. Symbols of a feudal past vie for global attention along with lasers and UPI cards.
Thousands of metres of green cloth have been used liberally to cover up the filth and poverty of New Delhi’s slums. A British era practice of lining streets with calcium ash, ostensibly as a public health practice but also used to indicate that a VIP is headed this way, continues. To add to the green cloth and the white ash, yellow police barriers are placed as proof of police activity, even if no one is clear as to the purpose they serve.
Roadside shops in the Coolie Camp have been covered with curtains. Photo: Atul Ashok Howale
The lion in India’s state emblem has become ubiquitous in Modi’s India. From the Make in India symbol to traffic islands in New Delhi, the lion has acquired a new status, displacing the tiger and the elephant, two other animals associated with India and state power. Perhaps it has something to do with a Gujarati’s longing for the Gir forest. It is not clear, however, what message the Indian government wishes to give the G20 delegates placing so many lions all over the city. Is India King of Jungle? Is India Roaring, after Shining? That the Make in India lion has not roared is an embarrassment best forgotten.
Between lions, fountains, lasers and silver plates, it is not clear what cultural representation of New India is being given by the Modi government. For a summit dubbed as a ‘People’s Festival’, people have been kept far away. From Delhi’s Outer Ring Road till Red Fort in one corner, Rajghat at another and Humayun’s Tomb as well, central Delhi has been turned into a fortress. The People’s Festival will be behind green cloth curtains.
There is an issue larger than the mindless projection of power and pageantry by an unimaginative bureaucracy and a backward looking political class. How exactly do we wish to present India to the world and what is our understanding of Indian culture today? It is not a subject that many in power have been giving much attention to. The quality of political and bureaucratic leadership within the Ministry of Culture in Delhi and its counterparts in states says it all.
But why blame the government alone? India’s newly rich, the new billionaires from real estate and public infrastructure to finance and start-ups, are all redefining Indian culture. It is increasingly pop, filmi and pseudo-religious. Art counts if it is valued in crores. Artists count if they have secured invitations for themselves from galleries in Paris and New York. It’s the reign of the nouveau riche. From India’s newly built airports to the newly built Parliament, garishness is on display.
Also read: ‘They Really Descend on Journalism They Don’t Like’: Press Freedom in India, on the Eve of the G20
The icons of classical and modern Indian culture are rarely consulted or associated with planning how the state should project national culture globally. When in doubt, governments display either folk culture – from tribal dances to garbha and bhangra – or Bollywood music. In 2023, the great symbol of Indian culture is ‘Naatu Naatu’. It is no longer the Secretary-General of the United Nations, hosting MS, but the Oscars jury who will decide for the world how India will be represented. Even friendly heads of government humour Indian political leadership now with a Naatu Naatu twist.
Many years ago I accompanied Marxist economist and then finance minister of West Bengal, the late Ashok Mitra, for dinner at the home of a successful and powerful businessman and media baron. There were four of us around the table but the food on display could have fed a couple of dozen. “No Kolkata Marwari businessman would have had the gumption to place so much food in front of a communist like me,” said Mitra as we drove out of the business man’s home. The old elite were circumspect. The new are in your face.
Sanjaya Baru is a writer and policy analyst.
