Remembering Indiaâs First Modern Sculptor, Ramkinkar Baij
He broke free from the stultifying conformism of colonial and pre-modern studio sculpturing to encompass in his work the lives and struggles of plain, unremarkable human beings.
Ramkinkar Baij: (May 25, 1906 â August 2, 1980) Credit: Twitter
My memories of Ramkinkar Baij, such as they are, are interlaced with two things that one rarely associates with an artist. The first, curiously, is kerosene. And the second, somewhat less oddly, is summer, or rather, a hot summer day.
One afternoon in the middle of April, in 1973, my friend and I were walking around Santiniketanâs quiet Ratan Pally on some errand, when my friend nudged me and pointed at someone who was coming from the opposite direction. He was a bare-bodied, bare-footed man in a short dhoti and a wide straw topi, and slung from his right arm by a piece of rope was a green bottle that smelt strongly of kerosene as he passed by us.
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‘Black Spartacus’: A biography of the man who may have been the first great anti-colonialist leader
Sudhir Hazareesingh’s book examines the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, who brought revolution to Haiti and inspired the world. Two portraits of Toussaint L’ouverture | Public domain / Wikimedia commons
“The name of Toussaint L’Ouverture is all but unknown in India,” remarked Ramananda Chatterjee, the editor of the Calcutta-based
Modern Review, in April 1908. “Lives such as his,” nevertheless, “may inspire us with self-confidence.” Chatterjee, whose
Modern Review was a fearless critic of imperialism and racism, printed for his readers a biographical sketch of this intrepid Haitian revolutionary leader. It ended with a poignant question: was he “the greatest man that has ever lived?”