The Naga in Contemporary South Asian Art: A Glimpse

By

Kurchi Dasgupta

(artist/art critic/curator)

The snake or naga has been a symbol bearing many layers of meaning,
both benevolent and malevolent, in South Asian cultures from the beginning
of recorded time. Its presence in Nepali myths is overwhelming. The symbol
continues to be revered and feared in rituals and worship even today. I
would like to explore how the symbol is interpreted and stretched in the
works of contemporary Nepali artists; I would also like to contextualise and
contrast these explorations against the larger backdrop of South Asia.

In Nepal, as in most South Asian countries, the traditional arts coexist

happily with contemporary modes of art production. Also, since the country
was never colonised per se, the modernising, Anglo-European influence in art
filtered in only through royal visits to foreign lands, or through the art schools
of Varanasi and Kolkata, where most senior artists were trained during the
20th century. Traditional motifs and themes have therefore survived here with
more relevance and immediacy than you would perhaps find in India, Sri
Lanka, Bangladesh or Pakistan.

When I leafed through volumes on modern or contemporary Indian art, I soon

realised that the visual arts even in a snake-infested state like West Bengal
has no space for the species or related myths. It is almost as if a strong
traditional motif like the naga, even though the Hindu and Buddhist myths
and epics are full of them, has been erased from Indias contemporary visual
discourse. This of course is understandable since snakes were not exactly the
favourite form of fauna for the British colonisers -- snake claimed lives often.
And the image of the snake charmer was often called up to represent all that
was incomprehensible, opaque and other about India. Was it because of this
that art taught in art schools founded by the British that taught the European
academic tradition had little space for the naga motif? And though the
resurgence of a classical or Mughal miniaturist tradition in Santiniketans
Kala Bhavan, did help create and alternative to the European academic
tradition during Indias struggle for and post-Independence, it did not salvage
the motif or the myths from the realm of the folk arts. It remained restricted
to the little traditions imaginary, through pata chitra scrolls, ritual figurines
and accessories, (Slide 2) and mangal kavya-s, which are rhymed
narratives. In vernacular literature however, the reality of species, as well as
the surrounding myths, continue to surface with steady regularity even
today. Expectedly so, since literature in the bangla language was never a
point of easy access or successful containment for the British. The visual arts
obviously were.

(Slide 3)

In Nepal, the naga continues to be worshipped, especially during the annual

Naga Panchami festival. Kathmandu, which is Nepals capital city, remains
directly connected to the myths as the Kathmandu Valley was, as legends
have it, a snake infested lake that was emptied of water and settlements
established on its fertile soil, that later grew into the Kathmandu city. Water
and the snake, therefore, have a natural association in the minds of the
locals and the naga is worshipped to bring on the rains of monsoon. It was
this connection, between life giving water and the snake, that initially
inspired artist Ashmina Ranjits work. The associations later took on strong
nuances of the feminine, as well as spiritual enlightenment and the
collective unconscious. In fact she has been drawing a pair of intertwined
naga-s from the tip of her nose to the point between her eyebrows for
decades now, day in and day out. It started as a hand drawn, elongated
bindi on her forehead that grew longer and longer with the years, and in a
way represent her growing attachment to the symbol. (Slide 4)

Her wall pieces and installations have explored these associations and
connections consistently over the years. The point has significance given the
fact that she drives the contemporary art scene to a certain extent. (Slide 5)

The next work I bring to you is arguably Nepals first instance of installation
art done by Jyoti Duwadi. That an a-symptomatic conceptual installation, the
countrys very first in 1993, should hinge itself on pressing ecological
concerns is of significance, as is the fact that it was based completely around
the naga myths. Let me quote Jyoti here: The nagas ruled the lake before it
was drained to establish human settlements and were angered by this
intervention. Symbols of fertility and guardians of the waters, the serpents
threatened to leave the valley and render it barren. This crisis was averted
by giving the nagas dominion over certain sites along the river and declaring
them places of pilgrimage. In this way, the power of nature was recognized
and the serpents revered. They are worshipped each year on a special day
called Nag Panchami. Recognizing the fragile ecosystem of the valley, early
settlers believed that nagas breathed polluted air and released fresh air so
that all life could exist.

(Slide 6 & 7)

Duwadi and his wife, the curator Barbara Matilsky, proposed that, since this
artwork provides a framework for ecological restoration, we believe that its
success will depend upon the activism of Nepali people. To insure their
participation, we developed an educational component that would
communicate the relevancy of our ideas by drawing upon Nepal's unique
cultural language. Turning to Hindu and Buddhist mythology and art, we
reinterpreted an indigenous environmental ethic and created art works that
synthesized these ancient ideas with contemporary approaches to both art
and nature. We appropriated the image and symbolism of the Nagas, ancient
serpent deities, who represent fertility and clean air and water. Thus
broadened the foundation of environmental art by specifically addressing the
revival of an eroding Nepali cultural identity and environmental ethic while
concentrating on the restoration of an ecosystem. By using native myths and
traditions along with new ideas to achieve sustainable human development,
can be viewed a prototype for nations facing similar environmental and
cultural problems.

The Myth of the Nagas, as was the work called, was developed to revitalize
the riverine ecology of the Kathmandu Valley and was quite a huge success
as an artwork. It involved the creation of mandala-s, photographs, texts,
videos, tree-planting and cleaning of the Bagmati river etc. More importantly,
current efforts to save the Bagmati river seem to be following the plan of
action they had charted out decades ago.

I now come to two more recent works by two of Nepals most well known
artists today. Ragini Upadhyay Grela, who is the first woman to become
Chancellor of the Nepal Academy of Fine Art; and Sunil Sigdel, who only
recently was mentioned in the New York Times for his political critique in his
mesmerizing wall pieces.

(Image 8 & 9)

Sigdels Spine is created from a position of resistance to the global

exploitation of Nepali migrant labour and visually references the naga
imagery, possibly to map out routes to the collective unconscious. He says,
For this installation "Spine" I have collected around 300 pairs of workers
used gloves from India where millions of Nepali laborers work. The gloves are
not colored as they were genuine from the real field.The medium is the
message. The result is an
ambiguous object that has a life of its own; the hand gloves remind us of the
plight of the laborers. The reference to the working class and their struggles
is obvious here.

In Hindu mythology, the naga Shesha is entrusted by the Creator, Brahma to

carry the weight of the globe on his head. Shesha enters into a hole in the
Earth and slithers all the way to the bottom, where he then places the load of
the Earth on his head. I feel the workers, whose voice I represent in the
Spine are mirror images of the Shesha because they carry the load of their
countrys economy on their heads. If we neglect the naga-s, the world ends.
If we neglect our migrant workers, the country ends.

(Slide 10, 11 & 12)

For Ragini Upadhyay Grela, on the other hand, the snake is an ever-present
symbol of healthy desire that has the negative potential to descend into
corruption or poison. She of course has mined the popular epics, myths and
folk traditions to arrive at these associations.

She has always worked with symbols, and her drawings and etchings are
steeped in virulent critique of Nepals politics. The ease with which she
handles the symbol in sharp and edgy works that point out the many
drawbacks of democracy in the country, reinforces my thesis that the naga
myths continue to flourish in Nepal, as opposed to India or Bangladesh or Sri
Lanka even though these countries have large Hindu and Buddhist
populace.

(Slide 13)

For example, in Sri Lankan Pala Pothupitiyes Pride and Power series that
was unveiled in 2016, just after Sri Lanka had elected a new President. Pala
comes from a lineage of traditional craft artists and has risen to the position
of perhaps the most sought after artist of the country. His work continues to
challenge the boundary between fine art and the crafts, between modernity
and tradition. The lion, a symbol on the Sri Lankan national flag, holds pride
of place in his work he frequently uses it as a symbol of the Simhalese
people as a whole that are often locked in cultural and political dispute with
the countrys marginalised Tamils. But the snake is negative presence in his
works. In some works the lions head is hybridized with snakes. Venomous
ferocity is intensified by stains of saffron and yellow on the blades...Pala has
created abstractions that draw their inspiration from Non-European Sri
Lankan art forms, says Lalith Manage, another Sri Lankan artist and a
colleague of Pala. Though Pala has definitely succeeded in re-energizing
traditional motifs like the lion, I cannot but note that his interpretation of the
naga or snake remains deeply influenced by the European tradition
perhaps?

When I asked my artist friends in Bangladesh whether they worked with the
motif, or the theme, I was not surprised to be told no, they did not. Despite
the fact that Manosha, the goddess of serpents, is a Bengali deity, as says
Shahman Moishani and Although snake worship is widely prevalent in
northern, southern and western India, it is only in eastern India (Bengal) that
the goddess is herself not a snake... The name Manasha has been derived
from Manosh, i.e. desire, willQuite a few performances in Bangladesh are
based on a body of texts commonly known as the Padma-puran or the
Manosha-mangol, a narrative in rhymed metrical verse eulogizing the
goddess ManoshaEach of these are by a separate poet and was composed
mostly in the medieval period from the 15th to the 18th centuries. In
addition, there are a number of unpublished oral versions current among the
performers. So Bangladesh evidently has a living tradition that embraces
the naga myths and motifs, which are equally popular in West Bengal in
India. I therefore reiterate that the visual arts were more drastically affected
during South Asias encounter with Anglo-European colonizers, than its
literature or oral traditions.

In the light of this, when we find a senior Madhavi Parekh or a young Amritah
Sen, both women artists practicing in different parts of India today and have
used the naga motif in their works, we need to recognize that the motif is
not central to their oeuvre as it is to that of the Nepali artists.

(Slide14)

About her works The other side of reptile house, or The dark picture,
Amritah Sen clearly states: This was the time when I shifted from
autobiographical works with my self image and went more anthropomorphic.
Many animals came in my world, mainly crocs, tigers and these two major
ones were of snakes. For her, it is a conscious choice of moving away from
the empiricist/rationalist worldview that feeds the English-educated South
Asian unconscious and an embracing of the irrational, anthropomorphic that
allows the snake or naga to enter her visual domain.
Lastly, I would like also to point out that Islamic art has understandably
stayed away from the naga imagery because it has little connection to the
motif in its myths. Islam originated in the dry deserts of Central Asia, where
the snake and its nurturing element, water, were scarce. And so the art of
Pakistan (or Afghanistan) has little to offer here, apart from stray references,
and occasional images on trucks.

In this paper, I reinstate that the colonial influence has suppressed certain
indigenous myths that act as vital life force for a culture. Wherever cultural
imperialism has been show to take root, such myths live on with a vibrant
immediacy and relevance, even in conceptual, contemporary art. At others,
it has died an unfortunate death and perhaps needs a revival. It is time we
took note of the fact that a regeneration of multiple worldviews, a
regeneration that will allow overlaps between the rationalist/empiricist and
the so-called irrational/supra-real perspectives that can possibly allow this
planet to perhaps extend its life expectancy.
i Detecting the loci of an indigenous rite, Depart, 9th Issue