A new documentary on the sacred art of South Asia gives a message of hope in those times of division.
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“Art is life and life is art,” says Lok Chitrakar, a Nepalese folk artist and instructor whose smile lights up his face as he speaks to the camera. What Chitrakar seeks to put into words, I imagine, is the subconscious act of “getting lost” in artistic and non-secular joy, the mystical state of “bhakti” or selfless devotion through which all ritual art is expressed and experienced.
This perception is in the center of Darshan, a new film through journalist Vikram Zutshi and art historian Debashish Banerji who vibrates with a physically powerful tribe of artists such as Lok, painters, stone carvers, carpenters, magicians, acrobats and musicians, all of whom gather in sacred places to offer their art to burning gods and non-secular goddesses.
The production took the filmmakers on a nearly three-month pilgrimage through the Indian subcontinent from the Hindu temples of southern Tamil Nadu, western Rajasthan and Orissa to the north to the Himalayan Buddhist monasteries in Kathmandu. Effort and attention to detail are obvious; Darshan is an exciting cinematic experience, a brightly colored vortex, an opera exhibition and a vaudeville performance.
Ironically, I watch the film on my computer at my home in the remote city of Mumbai, a city that was once disgustingly rich and is now paralyzed by the blockade induced by a pandemic. Here, the nation’s two highest family sounds, the music from Bollywood videos and the performing of a massive prayer song, have been silent (cinemas and places of worship have been closed since March). A scene in Darshan of a sea of other sun-drenched people dancing feverishly in the open air, Puri’s famous Jagannath Temple gives a bright contrast to the darkness around me.
The term darshan literally means “see”, but “see”, in this case, goes far beyond mere observation. Darshan refers to a state in which the author or viewer of a work of art is so fascinated that it mixes into a single entity. This feeling is also called moksha (blessed enlightenment) through ancient Vedic texts and in the Yoga Sutras of patanjali, compiled more than 5000 years ago.
Yoga, one of the six schools of Indian philosophical thought, describes moksha as the realization of the self, or the birth of the non-dualistic natural self, a size in which the human ego surrenders to the unknown, completely and without attachment to the world. , expectation or judgment. This is what the act of darshan is intended to induce: transcendental enchantment.
Most of the bureaucracy of fashion and postmodern art requires intellectual debate and critical awareness of its audience. At the other end of the spectrum, far from Darshan’s immersive and mystical quality, is the “remote effect” of the playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht experimented with a strategy known as “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” which involved the actors in the level “breaking” the character who was addressing directly to the audience.
The purpose of breaking the magical charm of passivity and absorption that art creates and brings the public back to truth and rationality. This separation between art and spectator in Brecht style is the antithesis of what darshan symbolizes: the fluid fusion of theme and object in an area beyond reason, a boundless, contextless, indescribable domain.
And yet the state of darshan cannot be explained through esoteric theory. Its appeal lies in its populist character, rustic and available, and the fact that its raw strength can only be felt live. This is what encouraged the making of the film, the concept that took shape after an exhibition of Indian art and classic items at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 2016. The film’s and film manufacturer Debashish Banerji, who teaches Asian art at the California Institute of Integrative Studies, says:
“The two worlds of art, one in which art items are displayed, bought and sold as collectibles, investment and emotion and one in which good-looking items are part of a network of quotes lived with spirituality, have been separated by being fashionable and prefashionable, the fashion being the norm of our time and the prefashionable a decretion “popular art” or a “religion” belonging to illiterate populations condemned to subordination or obsolescence”.
However, even though the Darshan develops as an aggregate of sacred mythology, cabaret-style fantasy and epic images, it is also inherently subversive, as they tend to be the ultimate original arts. Its simple, earthly roots exhale an outward tendency as branches of tolerance, inclusion, and pluralism. The collective spirit of the film affects a secular and inclusive deity, and the rejection of department policy that has come to profile the fashionable institutional religion.
An example of concord between the networks is evident in Noya, a small village in West Bengal. Here, Muslim artisans produce patachitra, encouraged paintings through puranas or Hindu scriptures. These village-to-town artists such as street bards, parade paintings and tell their stories to extremely cheerful spectators. One of the main actors of the network, a Muslim who has practiced his art for generations, cheerfully says: “We are all young men of the same mother.”
Director Vikram Zutshi adds to this and describes filming in Noya as a moving experience. As he told me in a recent phone conversation:
“There is a beautiful syncretism, a kind of popular and multi-religious syncretism, which we have observed in many places and which is disappearing.
Zutshi’s observation is clever about the rise of devout fundamentalism throughout India. Led since 2014 through a right-wing nationalist party, India is slowly and regularly witnessing the appropriation of secular and multicultural Hinduism into The Hindutva’s narrow monolithic ideology.
In the winter of 2019, the Indian Parliament passed the debatable “Citizen Amendment Act,” which paved the way for Indian citizenship for all illegal minorities in the country, unless they are Muslims. This is the first time in India’s fashion history that a law can discriminate against others on the basis of religion, and has been widely questioned through protests from the country’s citizens.
Since then, and with India mired in a pandemic and strict blockade, the government has used its brute force more to pursue and silence the voices of dissent.
With the rise of dogmatism and regressive nationalism around the world, a scenario that is now further fueled through the economic crisis and expanded infrastructure, the call for institutional and social reform is even more urgent around the world, as evidenced by recent black lives. Materials protests.
India’s struggle is no less complex and is amid widening gaps between wealth and poverty, privilege and helplessness. Less than 2% of the national budget is spent on public fitness services. Meanwhile, ignorant prejudices around castes and religion persist, and sexual violence against women and young people reaches a record level. The country has never been more mature for what many think it wants: a local, active and evolving movement for economic reform, social justice and ideological transformation.
Darshan offers answers to these dilemmas, but in his own way he tells a layered and timely story of the revolutionary perspective of art and spirit; human unity and conscious dignity; veneration for female earthly power or shakti; pragmatic wisdom inherent in earth and ancestry; and finally, progress and realization as a result of love for all mankind.
At least this hope is found in the act of darshan.
Darshan: The Living Art of India airs on the NYIFF virtual platform from July 24 to August 2.
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