Weaving his Principles | The Indian Express

Weaving his Principles | The Indian Express

Weaving his Principles

The work is on display at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in her retrospective “Revisiting Gandhi: The Art of Shelly Jyoti (2009-18)”.

Written by Pallavi Chattopadhyay | New Delhi | Updated: October 18, 2018 12:05:42 am

Shelly Jyoti (above)

IN 2009, while discussing the role of indigo in India’s freedom struggle in her exhibition “Indigo Narratives”, textile designer and artist Shelly Jyoti found inspiration in Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent agitation against the forced cultivation of indigo by the British in the Champaran district of Bihar in 1917. During her research, she stumbled upon Nil Darpan — a 19th century Bengali play written by Dinabandhu Mitra. It spoke about the exploitation and plight of indigo workers in Bengal, arguably the world’s largest producer of indigo then. She attempted to narrate its story in Neel Coolie, a coolie jacket painted in blue, to denote the colour of oppression at that time.

Shelly Jyoti’s works from the exhibition

The work is on display at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in her retrospective “Revisiting Gandhi: The Art of Shelly Jyoti (2009-18)”. “These farmers were almost like coolies,” she says. Referencing the Champaran movement, The Ballad of Woeful Tales: Ryots of Champaran 1917-18 — using indigo dyed cotton ropes twisted on wire structures — has tiny farmers, visibly dismayed, lying on the ground, while a few hang from wires.

Jyoti’s site-specific installation of a boat made using a newspaper from 2008, splashed with the colour red, brings to life a famous quote by an Englishman that reads, “not a chest of indigo reached England without the blood of Indian farmers”. A staunch follower of Gandhi’s khadi movement, Jyoti’s visit to Bhuj in Gujarat a decade ago resulted in 15 artworks that are now on display. This includes the body of an indigo plant in An Allusion to Ajrakh: An Indigo Plant (2009) and Gandhi’s spinning wheel in An Allusion to Ajrakh: A Spinning Wheel, made using the ajrakh printing technique on khadi.

Shelly Jyoti’s works from the exhibition

“The term ajrakh is obtained from the word ‘azrak’, that means blue in Arabic,” says Jyoti, pointing out how blue is a dominant colour used in ajrakh printing. “When World War I broke out and indigo became profitable again, the British realised that east India was very good for producing indigo. The farmers there were then forced to grow indigo. They did not let them grow food or cash crops. They kept giving them loans and putting taxes. I am actually questioning people how farmers then are different from farmers in the 21st century, who are constantly in debt,” says Jyoti.

Jyoti also explored the Gandhian philosophy of swadharma and swaraj in her previous shows, including “Salt: The Great March” in 2013 and “The Khadi March: Just Five Meters” in 2016. In the ongoing exhibition, she also delves into the idea of self-duty. “Swaraj meant self-duty to Gandhi. Self-duty is nothing but swadharma — my dharma. When we can control ourselves and know how to handle our emotions, then the idea of self-control is swaraj. Swaraj is not what Gandhi used to talk about, it is a very timeless concept. Even Bal Gangadhar Tilak said ‘swaraj is my birth right’ and so did Swami Vivekananda,” she says.

The same idea led to the birth of her installation Lunar Swell: Waxing and Waning, that shows how the moon waxes and wanes, with the help of ajrakh printing and needle work on khadi. “This is swaraj,” says Jyoti. Lunar Swell: A Dusk Moment and Terminator finds inspiration in the dusk moment, between light and dark hemispheres. The artist ponders over how society has arrived at the dusk moment in the 21st century with the advent and impact of technology and the many temptations that modern civilisation offers. “Look at the young people in urban cities today. Every day we are running to offices or elsewhere. We are all working like slaves and have no time to think. We need to understand how much modernism we are consuming. This is what Gandhi believed, that everyone will become a slave if we take the industrial path. We need to stop and pause and see how to strike a balance,” she says.

As part of The Khadi March: Just Five Meters, by dipping the Gandhi caps in varying colours, replete with ajrakh prints, Jyoti suggests that headgears were important to the British and the wearing of the cap was a salutation to hierarchy. She says, “Anybody who is bareheaded was an Indian and Gandhi didn’t like that. He said we could figure out a cap for the Indians and proposed the idea of a white cap.”

The exhibition is on till October 21 at IGNCA