We’ve grown up learning that it was the revolts, the marches and protests which were an integral part of the India’s freedom struggle. However, a large amount of resistance and revolution began with the creative productions of music, dance, and paintings. Art has been a powerful tool of dissent and revolution. Many musicians, painters and dancers used their art to vocalize colonial India and its struggles, injustices and despairs.
We bring many of these hidden and unknown artists of colonial India and their patriotic art, which spoke loudly of the patriotic and nationalist sentiments, uniting everyone.
Singing The Country’s Blues: Musicians of Colonial India
During the 19th century, Indians wanted to identify the symbols of cultural identity in the face of a rising culture consciousness. This is where ‘Hindustani Music’ ventured in. Musician Vishnu Digambar Paluskar along with V.N. Bhatkhande founded the Akhil Bharatiya Gandharva Mahavidyalaya in 1901, which was the turning point in the modern era of Hindustani Classical music. Atul Prasad Sen was a Bengali musician and a composer who contributed immensely to the field of Bengali music. He took part in the work of ‘Harijan Uddhav’ promoted by Gandhi. His patriotic pieces, ‘hao dharmete dhir, hao karmete bir’ (be a hero of religion, be a hero of action), and ‘utha go bharat laksmi’ (Wake up, India), are worth mentioning. Dwijendra Lal Roy, another musician and a poet, envisioned a new India which was strong in values, culture, and economy. He wrote songs along with the same ideas, which harnessed the patriotic spirit of Bengal. Rajanikanta Sen was another musician who contributed to Bengali music. During the partition of Bengal, when the Bengali leaders boycotted British goods and products and only buy/sell the clothes manufactured by Indians, he penned the following lines: “My brothers, please accept the coarse clothing offered by your mother. As this is all your poor mother(nation) can afford.” The song became popular across the state of Bengal and boosted the Swadeshi movement.
Kavi Pradip is most famously known for his patriotic song, ‘Ae Mere Watan Ke Logo.’ Another of his most loved patriotic songs was, ‘Ek Naya Sansar Basalen,’ which was also included in the 1941 movie, ‘Naya Sansar.’ The song became the ringing calls for an independent India. Dilip Kumar’s soulful rendition of Vande Mataram with Bharat Ratna M.S. Subbulakshmi in the 1930s captivated the masses and freedom fighters alike. Some of his other compositions include Bharat Amar Bharat Amar, Amar Moloyo Batashe and Banga Amar Janani Amar, which were important inspirational pieces of India’s freedom struggle.
The Canvas and The Sculptors of India’s Freedom Struggle
Ramkinkar Baij, often when he used to return home, drew paintings of the freedom fighters he saw there. Devi Prasad Roy Choudhary was an Indian sculptor from Bengal, remembered for his sculptures inspired by the Indian freedom struggle. He has frozen and immortalised some of the core moments of Indian history. At the Shahid Samarak (Martyrs Memorial) in Patna, one can find Roy Chowdhury’s sculpture of the students who lost their life during the Indian freedom struggle. The ‘Gyarah Murti’ in Delhi is a tribute to Gandhi and his ideals of nonviolence.
Prodosh Das Gupta formed the Calcutta Group which believed in an art that was universal in character and free from older values. The authenticity of Indian culture and Indian philosophy deeply inspired him, and along with the Calcutta group, he incorporated this very fabric of India into his sculptors and other artistic creations. Gopal Ghose, under the leadership of Prodosh Gupta, also created art, inspired and rooted in Indian aesthetics and philosophy. During the 1940s, the artist transformed his style of art a little and produced sketches of the infamous man-made famine of 1943 in Bengal.
Nirode Mazumdar led the modernist art movement during the 1940s. He created a series of paintings inspired by the widespread famine, one of which was titled ‘Anath’ (1944), which depicted homeless and starving children. Paritosh Sen found his creative energies inspired by recollections of a past world and the attempts to comprehend the present. Apart from paintings, his caricatures reflected strong underlying socio-political shades. Somnath Hore was a sculptor and printmaker, born in 1921. The subject of his art was dominated by the sufferings of the man. He extensively covered the horrific consequences of the 1943 famine, World War II, and the Japanese bombings on Bengal. The weeping mothers, starved children, dead animals, isolated village streets, etc., were spotlighted in his socially realistic paintings of pre-partition India. Chittaprosod Bhattacharya’s best work was his visual reportages on the Bengal famine in 1943–1944. He documented the British imposed famine through sketches, texts and linocuts. This Revolutionary popular art was a means to mobilise the masses.
Asit Kumar Haldar was the grandnephew of Rabindranath Tagore. He belonged to the first generation of painters and sculptors from the Neo-Bengal School of Art. He brought the rich cultural heritage of India into his paintings. Haldar painted a whole series of 32 paintings based on the Buddha. A collection of episodes from Indian history on thirty canvases, illustrations of Omar Khayyam’s verses, interpretations of the stories in the Mahabharata, etc. all became a subject of his paintings.
Benode Behari Mukherjee‘s popular creation was the mural called Mediaeval Saints, which he made on the walls of Hindi Bhavana in Shantiniketan around the eve of India’s Independence from colonial rule. The mural charted the history of medieval India through the lives of Tulsi Das, Kabir and others, and emphasized on their humane teachings. N.S. Bendre covered landscapes and figurative paintings but along with that also explored multiple ways of combining cubist, expressionist, and abstract genres from Western Modernism into his own work which stemmed from Indian formalism. One of his paintings of the Quit India Movement maidan captured the intensity of the freedom struggle and the unity of India.
Sunayani Devi was unfairly removed from the history of Indian painters. She was the younger sister of Abanindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore. She was a self-taught artist, often found spying on her brothers and tutored herself by watching them. Her subject of art surrounded women at their toilet, dolls, players, actors and themes from the mythic Radha-Krishna cycle. She was an important member of the Swadeshi movement art who brought Indian painting styles like Mughal miniatures and ancient Jain paintings into the limelight.
Mukul Dey is the pioneer of Drypoint Etching. He travelled around in the West to study art and printmaking techniques. Upon returning to India, Dey had a bulk of new western techniques at his hand. With this knowledge, Dey modernised Indian art and its rich artistic heritage in favour of the rising Swadeshi movement in the country. He dedicated his life to the artistic revival of Indian art. Kalipada Ghoshal was also one of the Swedish painters. He was the last successor of Abanindranath Tagore. As a well-regarded student of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Kalipada Ghosh produced some of the finest and intricate paintings of his time. Some of his prominent artworks are Shakuntala, Persian night, Hara Parvati, Budha and Rahul, Series on Krishna, Series on Buddha etc.
The Swadeshi painters rejected the western art forms, and by reviving the mythological and pre-colonial tales of India through art, they aimed at decolonizing India from the grasp of the British Raj.
Dancing The Rhythm For a Free India
Dancer Yog Sunder’s self-effacing dance productions made him very popular. During the pre-independence period, Yog was a regular participant in the nationalist movements. He produced and directed many well reputed dance productions. Collaborating and partnering with other dancers and actresses, he started the Indian Progressive Ballet Group in Calcutta in 1947. The Group had everyone in awe with the production of their well reputed programmes. Prominent among them are Birth of Freedom, Freedom Festival, Mahabharata, Voice from Beyond, Dances of India, Rhythms of India, Kiratarjun, Chandalika, Call of the Country, Rhythms and Melody, Ramlila, The Lore of India, etc.
Y.G. Srimati was not only a dancer, but along with that, a musician and a painter. She was born in the year 1926, and from a young age, she had started her classical training in music, dance and paintings. Post 1847, Srimati was invited to a number of independence rallies where she sang devotional songs. She had also sung bhajans next to Gandhi at many of his rallies. This she did in different languages to highlight the cultural and patriotic unity amongst the citizens of India, a value that Mahatma Gandhi deeply preached. Her paintings are a result of the influence of the heated independence struggle. She had explored major themes surrounding Indian religious epic literature and rural culture as a conscious expression of nationalist sentiments. Her paintings were also displayed at the MET.
Art and its expressions played a huge role in pushing the patriotic sentiments during India’s freedom struggle. The pre-independent Indian painters, musicians, and dancers added more density to the movement, and were equal participants in the fight against the colonial rule.
