An art historian and writer, Dr. Alka Pande is a Consultant Arts Advisor and Curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Center, New Delhi. Dr. Alka has delved deep into various forms of art and has written with care on issues ranging from art to culinary delights to body – androgyny, sexuality, gender and much more. She is one of the invitees at the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival this year. In a detailed conversation with newsroompost.com, Dr. Alka talks candidly about art, literature, politics and her intimate engagement with each of these concerns.
Newsroompost.com – Thank for this appointment, Dr. Alka. In your passion for curating exhibitions from across the country, you have touched upon so many facets of Indian artistic sensibility. Would you elaborate, what is it that drew you towards this art of curating art?
Newsroompost.com – Thank for this appointment, Dr. Alka. In your passion for curating exhibitions from across the country, you have touched upon so many facets of Indian artistic sensibility. Would you elaborate, what is it that drew you towards this art of curating art?
Dr. Alka Pande – We are all a product of our lived experiences. My mother was a trained singer from the Gwalior Gharana. I learnt dancing from Yamini Krishnamurthy. So, I was exposed to art at a very early age.
Newsroompost.com – You physically learnt various art forms and were exposed to mobile art – dance and music, then went on to study history, specialized in history of art, submitted your research on art; therefore, becoming more niche and more focused. And then, took up this task of curating art. What was it that drew you towards the mobile to the absorbed and felt and then a static representation of these various art forms?
Dr. Alka Pande – Art is all about the theory of colour, of joy, of beauty, isn’t it? All these drive the engine of art. And all these aesthetic experiences are shared. Also, in an inclusive country we live in, these forms are no different from each other. They inform each other and are but multiple representation of the same essence – the same rasas. It is a retelling, reinvestigating of the same themes in different formats and different ways.
Newsroompost.com – It is interesting that you talked about an inclusive country. In the current context, you would agree, won’t you, that the political atmosphere in the country is not very open to this idea of inclusiveness? There are voices that want films banned, sentiments that get hurt at the slightest pretext, and then issues that are far from being discussed in the mainstream discourse. There is same sex love, there is article 377; there is the third gender, there is political discrimination. In such a situation how inclusive do you think India is?
Dr. Alka Pande – You cannot do away with truth and what exists.Ardhanarishvara has always been my favourite concept. And it is an Indian concept. It talks about equality. Shiva which is staya and sundara. What is truth is God and is beautiful. If you look at it, it is life. Similarly, shakti is powerful and feminine and encompasses motherhood. The more I researched, the more I understood the nuances, the more I got exposed into believing that this is the idea of India and this is beauty. And both these forces coexist. However, much you would like to curb this truth, the fact is, it exists and will continue to exist. India is inclusive. Because at the core, it is non-judgemental. It does not prescribe what to do and what not to do. A concept like the Ardhanarishvara can exist only in this country. So, yes, I do believe that we are an inclusive culture.
Newsroompost.com – But do you not think that the kind of appropriation of this idea of Indian culture, which is going on in so many different ways, by so many different groups, makes survival for artists and writers like you difficult? Because, you talk of Indian culture in the most historical and ancient sort of way. You talk of issues that are better not raked up, according to some groups.
Dr. Alka Pande – You see, I am wearing black track pants because it is convenient. But that does not mean I am less Indian and that should not mean I stop living my values. I know of my textiles, my sarees, my brocade but as a woman who has to run and work and manage home and office, I cannot keep managing my pallu all the time. But at the same time, I like touching feet of elders. It is the manner in which you say things that are different.
Newsroompost.com – So, where do you think we went wrong? As a historian, how do you explain the change in this narrative about culture?
Dr. Alka Pande – I think it was the Victorian prudery that took it away – the idea of a cosmopolitan, international Indian which was informed by so many Victorian ideals which changed how things were being said.
Newsroompost.com – You are a curator and not averse to the market forces interacting with art which in some ways makes people in certain camps uncomfortable.
Dr. Alka Pande – How does an artist survive? Why should an artist always be poor? One has to erase stereotypes. Money liberates an artist. It helps him/her create more and better work.
Newsroompost.com – As a historian, when you see the decades gone by, how do you conceptualize development?
Dr. Alka Pande – Educate the women. The rest will follow. Women are born leaders. Enlightened women educate a nation. Sensitize them.
Look at the country today. Look at all the major NGOs and other slow beat sectors. Who heads them? They are all women. You may create lot of money and exclude lot many from your narrative. These are the people women work for. Women are basically nurturers. They have an inclusive world view. So, educate them. The rest will follow. And when I say this, I am being gender inclusive and not feminist.
Newsroompost.com – With the women question, I was going to ask you, are you a feminist but you answered that already. So, let me ask you this. Why is it that the feminist voice in our country today is so preoccupied with body and sexuality? It is liberating to talk about it, but in one sense, also limiting and is increasingly becoming repetitive and therefore, likely to be taken less seriously – by even women.
Dr. Alka Pande – And how is it about the body?
Newsroompost.com – For example, in the name of sexual liberation, pouting for a facebook or an instagram or a twitter picture, putting up the body for display on an exploding social media platforms where invariably, you have a male gaze judging you and appreciating you with all the nuances of patriarchal parameters.
Dr. Alka Pande – Look, there are three basic needs to life – food, sex, shit. Why should we blame only men? And am sure, you understand what i am saying, without myself being misunderstood. At 20 to 30 years of age, it is all about body. And it should be, unless you are a saint. Body is an integral part.
Newsroompost.com – Well, then to go back to my question, why can’t women writers accept it as a part and parcel and/or as you say an ‘integral’ part of life and move on to talk of things other than just that? I say this, because as a nobody, when I pick up women’s writing in India especially, I find the ‘canon’ bursting with almost everyone talking of an assertion of sexual freedom, as if all battles end there.
Dr. Alka Pande – Well, what else do you talk about when day in and day out this is what you face? Your tits and pussy are stared at the first thing, when you move out in the open space. Despite donning western outfits, why is it that you and I are covering ourselves with scarves and carefully blending the attire to suit as a dupatta. You might not be talking about it verbally, but we all are doing the same. Fighting it out. Women are wired differently. They are more vulnerable because of their bodies. They can be raped. Even men can be. But men don’t have to bear children. Therefore, for women, their bodies are associated with shame. That is how it’s revealed to them. Also, youth today, especially women, are talking not much about the body as they are talking about sexuality when they seek freedom. Look at what Meena Kandasamy is writing about.
Newsroompost.com – Glad that you brought her up. I was going to mention her works primarily among others. Also, with respect to the recent revelation of her traumatic relationship and divorce.
Dr. Alka Pande – Yes, she is a dalit woman writing of her lived experiences. I was glad I was born and brought up in times I lived in. It is very difficult for women like you these days.
Newsroompost.com – Do you really think so?
Dr. Alka Pande – Yes. We had less stress, less choices. Men, we married to, were more responsible. Today, men have far less commitment. Men are too busy screwing women and asserting the demands for working wives – all in the name of feminism. And women are busy talking about other women tagging them as sluts and whores and bitches. So, there are these dual lives and dual struggles that inform a woman’s life today. We had much simpler times.
Newsroompost.com – You are articulating it so well. But, I did not have to fight for going to school or college or working or living alone as perhaps your generation did.
Dr. Alka Pande – But we had a different life then. Today, everything is market driven. An investment banker girl with a pay check of a lakh a month will any day be more desirable for a guy than a freelance writer and artist with no fixed salary. This shift is important to be understood. Earlier, it was believed that only women made these calculative choices. But today, men do this too. Also, a rich, successful, alpha male today will always have women lined up for him according to his choices because not all women are as free and empowered as the others are and are happily ready fall in the traditional trap. So, women like you, today, have to fight these dual battles – day in and day out.
Newsroompost.com – So, what do you think of relationships today, then?
Dr. Alka Pande – It is about education and economic empowerment. Love is all crap. Ultimately, it’s about power and money. If you bring in money at home, your husband, parents – all will respect you. Also, neither the rich nor the poor women are bound by morals encoded in love. The poor have no option but to succumb to pressures and survive and the rich women can buy whatever they want. It’s the middle class, which is lost and confused and struggling in this grand narrative of love and its morality.
Newsroompost.com – Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Alka.
Dr. Alka Pande- I enjoyed the conversation too.
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