Ananda Coomaraswamy and

Indian Cultural Resurgence

Dr. SHANTI SWARUP

When the present century had opened Indian art in its own land and amongst its own people was hardly reckoned as art. It was regarded as something worthless, primitive, decadent and grotesque. Scholars of Indian art who were at this time invariably European and mostly British saw it peopled by hideous-looking many-armed and many-headed gods and goddesses, with the little that possessed any merit in it, such as the Buddha image, imported from Hellenistic sources. And the English-educated Indian, who for everything that he did or thought looked to the west for guidance, had neither the capacity nor the inclination to comprehend and appreciate the aesthetical and technical qualities of his own art. This resulted in a very wrong standard of judgment based on what was understood to be the Western authority, and the conventional Indian art continued to be mis-represented and misinterpreted, and our sincere and sublime achievements of thousands of years suffered at the tender mercies of the unintelligent Philistines.

At this juncture a small band of scholars and artists headed by Fergusson and Griffith, and a little later by Havel, Abanindranath Tagore and Ananda Coomaraswamy entered upon a study of Indian arts and crafts and pointed out a new world of aesthetic thought, in no way inferior to the highest artistic ideals of any other country. Of all these persons Coomaraswamy’s work in the field of historical investigation and academic criticism is unique. With a remarkably creative genius he saw things which no critic or artist had seen before, and with patience, scholarship and selfless devotion to the cause of Indian art he gently led the Indians to a better and fuller understanding of their own art and cultural heritage. In less than 300 pages he wrote in his classic work “History of Indian and Indonesian Art”, one of the finest introductions to the history and aesthetics of Indian and South East Asian art ever done before. With profound learning and deep insight he analysed the spiritual quality and this deeply philosophical ideology of the Indian sculpture and architecture. Working almost single-handed and with very meagre material at his disposal he became the first man who successfully defined the various schools of Indian Painting. Before him even the best of art connoisseurs had muddled hopelessly in distinguishing between the Rajput and Mughal paintings. They had no clear idea of the details of dress, ornamentation grouping, facial type, colour scheme and composition. But by indicating the prominent features, significant forms, motifs and technical treatment in them. Coomaraswamy gave our art a basis of classification which remains the ideal today. His book on Rajput Painting is the standard work on the subject. It was Coomaraswamy again who first drew our attention to that aspect in Rajput painting wherein the artist has so beautifully interpreted abstract emotions in line and colour. In his another great work, the Dance of Shiva, he tried to show the power of the Indian soul and all riches that it holds stored up. Thus, Coomaraswamy till the last days of his life strove to establish not only the high merit of Indian art but its identity as a manifestation of a superior civilisation. His striving soon began to bear fruits. His writings captured the imagination of the scholars and laymen alike all over the world, so much so that it would perhaps be correct to say that no single man has contributed to the understanding of Indian art and culture more than Ananda Coomaraswamy.

Social Philosopher

But Coomaraswamy was not merely an art historian and critic confined to the world of scholarship. He was also a social philosopher who saw art as an integral part of human strivings for the betterment of life. He did not believe in art for art’s sake. His view of art was utilitarian. He believed that art could not be separated from the functions of society. It was on the other hand, vitally necessary in life and culture. He used to say that art contained in itself the deepest principles of life, the truest guide to the greatest art, the art of living. His mission therefore was to explain the relationship between the beauty of art and the basic essentials of cultured living. The artist according to Coomaraswamy is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist, or else, is something less than a man.

Ethnically he was a Ceylonese born of a Sinhalese father and British mother; for his education he went to England and took his Doctorate degree in Science; and for 30 years out of his 70 be lived in America. But India was his spiritual home and its art the only means through which he could realise his spiritual inheritance. And indeed so deeply concerned was he with India’s past glories and present realities that there never came any contradiction between him and the land of art which he loved. He always felt powerfully drawn to all that is best and noblest in Indian culture. He was however not a chauvinist. Speaking at the celebration of India’s independence in August 1947 in Boston he said: “Indian culture is of value to us not so much because it is Indian as because it is culture.”

Yet, he was intensely Indian in his cultural outlook. He understood the futility of super-imposing western cultural modes and western industrialisation on Indian life He asserted that such an infliction destroys the people’s love of their own literature, their delight in their own arts, their confidence in their own traditional values. It therefore made him very sad to see the rapid deterioration that had befallen the great cultural heritage of India. With biting irony he spoke of the shape of the ideal house in the modern Indian mind which was but an echo of the English suburban villa; he ridiculed the westernised Indians who disfigured the walls of their houses with cheap oleograph and pretended to enjoy shrill records of European music; he couldn’t bear the buying of Brussels carpets by Indians in preference to the production of their own looms; and to him nothing could be more stupid than to blindly imitate English dress and manners without consideration, or to insist that a man shall be considered to be an educated person only when he could express his knowledge in English. Coomaraswamy felt that the art of life in India was ruled less by principles and more by impulse.

The Swadeshi impulse at this time was unfortunately too purely a commercial one, too unimaginative and very heavily based on an ideal of dull prosperity. It was establishing factories for making soap, matches, nibs, biscuits, pottery and the like. But they were not bringing beauty and reverence for what Indians already possessed. Such efforts were not helping the cause of the hereditary skill of the Indian craftsman who could still weave, still build, still work in gold and silver, copper, wood and stones as beautifully and perfectly as had been done for hundreds of years. Speaking of the all-round excellence of the arts and crafts which once reflected India’s soul he said, ‘Where are the filmy muslins or the flower-woven silks with which we used to worship the beauty of Indian women, the brazen vessels from which we ate and drank, the carpets on which we trod with bare feet, or the pictures that revealed to us the love of Radha and the soul of the eternal snows.” Coomaraswamy invoked the Indians to wake up and realise that they can fulfil themselves, only by retaining their Indianness. He said that if a reawakening is to come at all it will be with fruits of India’s recognition of her national self, her national ideals, her traditional culture, specially her arts. Very vehemently he said, “I do not believe in any regeneration of the Indian people which cannot find expression in art, any re-awakening worth the name must so express itself.”

In this manner Ananda Coomaraswamy championed the cause of Indian culture throughout his life. With wisdom and understanding he helped to reestablish the glory of Indian arts. With ability and courage he successfully advocated the aesthetic view of life and thought. And as a social philosopher Coomaraswamy provided a leadership in the cultural resurgence of India which was fast losing respect for her traditions. He did not live long enough to see the growth of modern India after she achieved freedom. But he would not have been happy to see all that is happening in India today. He would probably have said, as he had said when he was alive, that it will matter much whether the great ideals of Indian culture have been carried forward or allowed to die, because it is with these that Indian nationalism is vitally concerned, and upon these that India s destiny as a nation depends.

Back