It is no secret that Syed Haider Raza (who lived between India and France) had great admiration for Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings and beliefs. He, in fact, first saw Mahatma Gandhi in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh when he was barely 8 years old, and the image of the Mahatma with his laathi and half-naked faquir body remained deeply etched in his mind. In the aftermath of India’s Partition in 1947 when his entire family moved to Pakistan, Raza chose to stay back as he felt doing otherwise “would be betraying the Mahatma”. When he earned himself the recognition of being an iconic Modernist painter, along with his signature binducame other concepts significantly, the Gandhian concept of shanti being one of them.
In 2013, Raza executed a series of seven paintings as a tribute to Gandhi which are now being unveiled as a set for the first time by Akar Prakar gallery, in collaboration with the Raza Foundation, in a solo show titled Gandhi in Raza. Created using subdued hues and motifs that are somewhat a departure from what one usually sees in a Raza painting, each of these seven acrylics on canvas are unique in their content and execution.
Hindi poet and a close friend of Raza, Ashok Vajpeyi writes in the book, “Raza used to visit Sewagram or Sabarmati or Rajghat whenever he came to India on his frequent sojourns to his native country from France, where he spent nearly six decades of his life. For him visiting a Gandhi place was like visiting a temple or a mosque or any holy place. Even when he was well above 85 years of age, some of us have watched him kneel down and touch the earth with his forehead in salutation to the Mahatma. He, of course, had read the Mahatma’s autobiography My Experiments with Truth and would delve through the Mahatma’s treatise on the great metaphysical poem ‘Geeta›. His constant engagement with the spiritual and philosophical vision of Gandhiji also led him to discover and study the Mahatma’s spiritual heir, Acharya Vinoba Bhave. He became particularly fond of the concept of swadharma propounded by Vinobaji. One of the few books he brought from Paris when he shifted to Delhi to spend his last five-and-a-half years was Vinobaji›s book Geeta Pravachan in Hindi.”
The show also marks the 95th birth anniversary of the master-artist, and will be first inaugurated on 22 February at Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. It will be accompanied by the launch of an 80-page book by the same name by the chief guest, H.E. Alexandre Ziegler, the ambassador of France to India. The book contains essays by Nandalal Bose on Bapuji and his bent towards fine art and aesthetics, Gopal Krishna Gandhi on Mahatma Gandhi and his truth and aesthetics, and Ashok Vajpeyi on the tribute of the paintings by Raza, along with illustrations of the works.
The show will move to Akar Prakar gallery in New Delhi from 1 March and will be on till 31 March.
Another work titled Satya is totally abstract, though its many layers suggest that truth can be reached or felt only after passing through many layers of struggle; in Shanti, Raza returns to his favourite theme of peace – the heart of being as he perceives it, and he strongly believes that energy, centralized as it was for him in the Bindu flows from and towards peace.
Another canvas titled Peed Parai is inspired by the famous Narsi Mehta verse, a favourite of the Mahatma, defining the true men of God as those who understand the pain of others. InSabko Sammati De Bhagwan, Raza returns to his spiritual geometry by creating a vibrant image to embody a bold idea taken from Gandhi’s bhajan.