Curatorial Note

Young Subcontinent: An emotional community

Although the South Asian subcontinent constitutes just four percent of the world’s surface area, its landmass is home to one fourth of the entire world’s population. People have lived here since several millennia; life has accumulated over time by waves of inward and outward migrations, not necessarily peaceful. The “here” we are referring to, as seen today, is an aggregation of eight nation/states - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Maldives whose geographical as well as historical destinies were once forged by natural forces of the mountains and waters. To be sure, such forces have led to the pollination of several cultural commonalities amongst the entire subcontinent, however its recent political history has brought its nations into difficult equations with each other. The colonial encounter with South Asia has left the subcontinent scattered over political boundaries. Yet, the ancestral bonds embedded in the civilizational memory of these 1.6 billion people of diverse nationalities have not been completely ruffled. The contemporary cultural landscape of the South Asian subcontinent thus remains restive within the tension between its political and civilizational history.

In the predicament of cultural reconciliation after the colonial encounter, several shades of suspicion, insecurity, competition and essentialism have unfortunately crept into the young subcontinent. For example, the tyranny of maps have kept people guarded of each other, every contestation of official history is read as seditious dissent, the diversity of language, ethnicity, faith, food, lifestyle instead of being celebrated, has become a cause for conflict. On the other hand, with two of the nation states – India and Pakistan - armed with nuclear weapons, there is a constant shadow of a mushroom cloud looming over its landscape. The Empire collapsed in 1947, but its imaginaries continue to dominate the mindscape of South Asia. One such imaginaries – that sought to imagine the entire subcontinent as a monoculture essentially as strategy to exploit and rule, has deeply affected the contemporary understanding of the subcontinent’s culture. Such notions that hold back people from appreciating synthesized diversity of the subcontinent need to be challenged. After all, the idea of Asia itself is an imported notion, which explains why few languages in this continent have a native term for it. That’s one of the many inescapable contradictions that Asians, South Asians in particular, have to live with because of the contested nature of much of what was once a shared vocabulary. History has invested new meanings in words and terms, none of which appear neutral of politics in our times. With such contradictions, there is an urgent need to imagine a collective future independent of nation states and its borders.

The youth already makes a large proportion of the subcontinent’s population. It is the ‘young’ Subcontinent that holds the key to the destiny of South Asia. Most regions here are rapidly urbanizing, pulling and reformulating young minds within the logics of the city. A city brings together diverse cultures and grows through the politics of friction and tension. Socio-cultural differences get accentuated or negotiated within the work-life dynamics of cities. Apart from the urban centers, much of the youth along the multiple borders is born into the tumultuous landscape that still finds itself struggling with several issues of security and survival. In addition, insufficient access to infrastructures of education, livelihood and identity in these regions has failed the youth in patience, promise and productivity. So much of South Asia sits in a geography of conflict. A lot of young energy is spent in migration towards claiming opportunity and optimism. Such anxieties often play out unexpectedly even when young minds from different parts of South Asia confront each other. Unaware of their common pasts, the lingering separatist colonial imagination frequently brings them in ideological opposition to each other. A constant underlying pressure operates thus, through the young subcontinent into its present construct.

What methods can we strategize to bring the youth of South Asia into a productive dialogue? What are the ways of inducing confidence and warmth within the hegemonic politics of polarization? In order to counter these currents, Young Subcontinent need not invent another South Asia, but perhaps retrieve shared pasts that lie under the debris of contemporary political events. This seems quite possible in the large canvas of time, where seven decades is not even a blink. Artistic practice has the potential to challenge the pervading notion that holds the present in thrall and inhibits human imagination from transcending the limits imposed by the political present. Through its inherent abstractions, an art object invites perspectives, gently opening up avenues of communication. In this realm, what conversations must the artists of young subcontinent initiate? How should its publics be brought together to talk to each other, and on what conceptual grounds? Young Subcontinent aims to build a platform, a framework for such discussion to take place, redirecting cultural differences into investigative thought streams of relearning the subcontinent.

South Asia, certainly, is an artificial construct, a convenient umbrella term to describe the numerous ethnic, linguistic communities and collectives that habit this landmass. The sacred geography of the subcontinent with its complex faith and pilgrimage systems reveals a spiritual brotherhood that has immense capacity to reconcile contradictions. Throughout history, the entire subcontinent has remained a fluid cultural zone sharing languages, scripts and systems that allowed transfer of knowledge and ideas. The subcontinent is also home to the displaced nation of Tibet, which exists as a communal, cultural and political idea in the imagination of the large refugee population. The national liberation movements of the last century were interconnected in terms of ideas and imaginaries. Mahatma Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Rabindranath Tagore, Iqbal, Bharathi etc. transcended national landscapes. In any case, cultural expressions tend to resist control and refuse to be policed. There are multiple counter-narratives and imaginations possible against the present oppressive narrative of nation states.

If art is the method that one must harness to produce these counter-narratives, one may be compelled to ask - what is the representational future of South Asia? Does it lie for instance in the numerous oral, textual and performative traditions linked to the two epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, that have shaped the imagination of communities across the continent? Does it lie in its common colonial past, but in ideologically divorcing from the narrative of western modernity? Does it lie in (re)claiming or (re)defining an Oriental world-view? Such questions have begun to push intellectuals in the subcontinent to not only move away from its colonial past, but also find their own narrative in which they can describe their experience of the world. Yet, these discourses may not remain so binary. Technology and globalization have interwoven multiple futures of several cultures together, that have fundamentally altered the way in which the youth of south Asia views the world. Still, their appropriation of such media presents a whole new arena of inquiries. One can not deny however, a looming anticipation to hear a new narrative in which South Asia and the East, so to say, begins telling its own story.

Within the contemporary geopolitics, there is a fair chance for such questions to find unexpected answers. It is the need of the hour to invest in the project of cultural futures at large. In the present, capitalist tendencies of securing power often overlook long term issues of cultural importance. The rise of an ambitious China shall inevitably leave its imprint on the subcontinent. Trade hungry, it is exploring new means to export its economic surplus. Initiatives like ‘One Belt, One Road’ that aims to connect the entire Eurasian continent territorially may result in profound changes in the way people in the subcontinent identify to their communities. India’s attempt to Act East and its plans for the Indian Ocean region may also, on the other hand, reshape the subcontinent’s destiny. This may, for instance, revive Myanmar’s historic links with the subcontinent. Simply put, the political, economic and cultural issues that the next generation are likely to engage with may be of entirely different kind.

Young Subcontinent aims to bring artists from its countries together with the hope of reconciliatory confrontation. It ought to build itself as a community willing to engage with challenges of reclaiming its difficult history. Through a framework of workshops, residencies and exhibition, the project aims to foster dialogue while bringing up questions about the subcontinent’s cultural future. As a cultural project, it aims to observe and extend patronage to artists/cultural activists who have the potential to cogently represent the flux of their times. It believes in establishing a mechanism of patronage that can inculcate confidence within a community of artists and intellectuals who are serious about issues and challenges that the present beholds, yet whose artistic futures are uncertain. From excavations to archiving and exhibiting, our times call for a new phase of intense thought and action. Young Subcontinent ought to be that platform which will nurture and nourish the new expression.

Riyas Komu
Curator






artwork credits: Saju Kunhan, 2016
History Always Repeats - Series
Mixed Medium on Wood
9ft x 5ft (6 panels)