Art and identity: The rise of a new Buddhist imagery

·期刊原文

Art and identity: The rise of a new Buddhist imagery

by G.M. Tartakov

Art Journal

Vol. 49 No. 4 Winter 1990

Pp. 409-416

Copyright by Art Journal

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If you want to gain self-respect, change your religion.

If you want to create a cooperating society, change your religion.

If you want power, change your religion.

If you want equality, change your religion.

--B. R Ambedkar

While Buddhism arose in India and was an important religion in the history

of the subcontinent, its adherents at the time of Indian Independence in

1947 were few. Indeed, the faith at that time was practiced by only a small

group of Tibetans located in the Himalayas. Yet by the efforts of an

extraordinary individual, B. R. Ambedkar, the religion has experienced a

remarkable upsurge in the last thirty-five years. The architecture and

pictorial imagery adopted by this new Buddhist movement reveal a process by

which ancient symbols have been reinterpreted and given meaning in a new

and a different social context.[1]

The faith's success at the time of the historical Buddha (ca. 560-480

B.C.E.) and its resurgence in the twentieth century have hinged in part

upon its heterodox approach to the Indian problems of caste and rebirth.

Unlike brahmanical Hinduism, it rejects caste distinctions and the karma

theory of a soul that is reborn and predestined to live out a life

determined by its previous actions. A person's value is measured by current

actions and not by the caste into which she or he is born. In ancient

India, Buddhism was common among the lowest socioeconomic groups that

experienced discrimination by high-caste Hindus.

Buddhism virtually vanished within India following the twelfth century, by

which time it had taken root in Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, and

Southeast Asia.[2] During the period of British colonization, India's

largely disused and ruined Buddhist monuments were explored. By the middle

of the twentieth century a good many Buddhist shrines had been uncovered,

restored, and placed under the natural protection of the Archaeological

Survey. Among these are a number of India's most world-renowned monuments,

such as the great stupa memorial at Sanchi and the painted monastic halls

of Ajanta, visited by pilgrims from around the world and treated in the

standard survey texts of world art.

B. R. Ambedkar was born on April 14, 1891, in Maharashtra in western India.

By the time of his death on December 6, 1956, Maitreya Ambedkar--as he has

come to be known by some--succeeded in bringing Buddhism back to the land

of its origins. Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism was largely a response to

his birth into an untouchable family of the Mahar community in Maharashtra.

In the nineteenth century Mahars were "village servants," mostly landless

laborers, outside the castes acceptable to Hindus. Ambedkar was thus among

the one-seventh to one-fifth of India's population condemned to a life of

social ostracism, which he later likened to the situation of

African-Americans in the United States.[3] His conversion to Buddhism,

which disclaimed caste, was a carefully planned remedy for the social

distinctions so basic to Hinduism.

Rising through the schools the colonial British made available to a limited

number of untouchables, Ambedkar gained recognition in Bombay,

Maharashtra's great urban trade center, as a leader in the Mahar

community's civil rights struggles. The first in the community to gain a

college education, he eventually traveled to the United States where he

took a doctorate in economics at Columbia University. Later, in Great

Britain, he became a barrister, as Mohandas Gandhi had before him. and took

a second doctorate from the London School of Economics. Returning to

Bombay, Ambedkar threw himself into the politics of Maharashtra, winning a

seat in Bombay's Legislative Assembly. In the midst of India's Independence

struggle, Ambedkar rose as the leading champion for the "depressed

classes." While outside of India it was Gandhi who became known as the

untouchables' advocate, within India and among the untouchables it was

Ambedkar who was recognized as their great leader. The roles played by

Ambedkar and Gandhi in Indian history are comparable to those played by

Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln in American history, both in

politics and subsequently in the popular media.[4]

Within the freedom movement Ambedkar became the great advocate of

secularism. Despite his continual struggle with Gandhi and the Indian

National Congress over their inability to transcend Hinduism's continuing

reliance upon caste and its implicit support of the concept of

"untouchability," he was able to maintain a political presence that allowed

him to become the principal drafter of the Indian constitution and main

source for that document's staunch secularism. He was also, in this role,

responsible for choosing the nonbrahmanic wheel and lion-capital symbols

adorning the nation's flag and seal.

In 1935, despairing of Hinduism's inability to renounce the caste system

and the stigma of untouchability, Ambedkar declared his intention to

convert to a religion that did not endorse the heinous hierarchy. He

"solemnly assured" the Depressed Classes Conference at Yeola, "that though

I have been born Hindu, I will not die a Hindu." He considered

Christianity, Islam, Arya Samaj, and Sikhism, but from relatively early on

his choice was Buddhism. While it had been virtually extinct in India for

centuries, Buddhism was a traditional Indian faith, based upon suppositions

familiar to every Indian. Besides rejecting caste, Buddhism was also a

major world religion, with vast support in the nations surrounding India

and high respect in India itself.[5]

On October 14, 1956, a decade after Independence and precisely two decades

after his original declaration of his intention to convert, Ambedkar took

his Buddhist diksa (initiation) at Nagpur. On that day and the next he

personally led the conversion of about one-half million who had come for

that purpose. By the time of the 1961 census there were 3.25 million

Buddhists in India. Millions more have converted since.[6] For Ambedkar and

his many associates and followers, the conversion was not merely a

practical matter, but one of deep, psychological significance. They were

rejecting a system that condemned them, but they were also committing

themselves to an ideology that disputed the possibility of karma,

transmigration, and a divine hierarchy by birth, embracing instead a faith

that stressed the equality of all human beings. In repudiating the power

and prestige of the brahmans and their creed, they were choosing an

alternative that promised them progress without limits, that from the

beginning rejected the idea of untouchability.[7]

Ambedkar's epithet, Maitreya, carried significance in the movement he

founded, for Buddhist tradition held that after the death of the Sakyamuni

(the historical Buddha) another Buddha, or Bodhisattva (perfectly

enlightened being), called Maitreya would appear on earth to bring a

renewed enlightenment.[8] Significantly, Ambedkar's conversion coincided

with a worldwide celebration of the Buddha's Jayanti, the twenty-five

hundredth anniversary of Sakyamuni's enlightenment.[9] As in this adoption

of the epithet Maitreya, the new Buddhists[10] have resurrected and

revivified a number of traditional Buddhist concepts and imageries. In the

interest of exploring, defining, and legitimizing their Buddhist identity,

they have also taken symbols and motifs from Buddhist imagery abroad and

invented new imagery to fit their modern situation.

The reuse of Buddhist monuments of the past, with their powerful resonance

in panIndian elite and popular culture, has been employed to sanction the

new faith by enhancing its identification with established tradition.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, British and Indian writers raised a

laudatory literary and scholarly appreciation around the rediscovery of

India's Buddhist past. The intellectual richness of this tradition and the

aesthetic power of its magnificent remains elevated Indian Buddhism in the

eyes of the British and of the outside world, and, consequently, of India's

modern elite.

In adopting Buddhism, the Mahars and others who followed Ambedkar's lead

became heirs to India's vast store of ancient Buddhist imagery. In much the

same way that the Republic of India--also following Ambedkar's lead--found

peculiarly Indian, transcommunal symbols in the ancient Asoka's four-lion

standard and wheel, the Buddhists adopted an already established symbolism

that expressed not only their aspirations for the future but their

connection with a highly honored Indian past, providing them with a direct

link to a significant portion of India's ancient remains. After centuries

of denial of entry to temples and of association with the great events and

monuments of the past on the basis of caste, they now claimed a great

history of their own. Indeed, the Buddhists' monumental temple remains and

stone sculpture are even older, and so, by some measure, more prestigious,

than those of the brahmanical Hindus.[11]

Thus in Maharashtra, where most of the new Buddhists are concentrated, they

have taken the world-renowned Buddhist monuments and imagery of the west

Indian rockcut temples as their own (fig. 1). Turning their backs on the

Hindu temples from which they were for so long denied entrance, they have

established a special interest in Karli, Ajanta, Ellora, and numerous other

sites of major cultural significance and antiquity. Though they have not

been able to take possession of these monuments, most of which are under

the control of the Archaeological Survey of India, they have asserted their

new identity with them through visits that amount to pilgrimage. In this

way they gain the access to a cosmic identification denied them in many

Hindu shrines.[12] One of my most vivid experiences in India was to witness

Ellora's Visvakarma caitya--a gray, twelve-century old aesthetic relic and

one of India's best-known historical and tourist monuments--transformed

into a living rainbow of actualized faith by a gathering of local

Buddhists. Here, the despised descendants of a glorious tradition endowed

itself with a new legitimacy.

The vast store of ancient Buddhist imagery also serves as a source of

emblems and decoration for both public monuments and private homes. Where

in Hindu homes you will find puja (worship) rooms and decorative elements

filled with deities and pictures of well-known Hindu monuments and in

Muslim homes or shops, images of the Kaaba or Taj Mahal, in Buddhist homes

you will find replicas of famous Buddhas and photographs of important

monuments, such as Sanchi, Sarnath, and Bodhgaya. Already famous and

commonly reproduced as India's national treasures, these monuments are once

again peculiarly Buddhist. In Mahar homes, and even in some former

community temples, Buddhist images have replaced those of Pandurang and

Rukmabhai and other Hindu deities formerly honored, but never so truly

available.[13]

It is important to recognize that these Buddhist images are not treated in

the same way as the Hindu ones they have replaced. Ambedkar's rationalism

goes further than many sorts of Buddhism in flatly denying the existence of

gods, and so these images are taken, not as idols for offerings or

devotion, but as representations of beings to be respected and

emulated.[14] The garlands placed upon them signify respect, not

supplication.

A second source of ready-made imagery is the international Buddhist

tradition, which has intensified its involvement in India over the past two

centuries, as British colonial interests located important Buddhist sites

and made them accessible. When the wealthy Birla family chose to build a

Buddhist temple in Bombay in the early 1950s, the Japanese made available

images and priests. The Buddhist conversion movement has found similar

responses from surrounding Buddhist communities. I have seen Tibetan, Thai,

Burmese, Japanese, and Sri Lankan images donated to various new Buddhist

temples.[15] A good example of this is the lifesize, fiberglass seated

Sakyamuni from Sri Lanka in the Shanti Vihara at Nagpur (fig. 2). This

imagery too serves strongly in terms of legitimation and identification. It

allows the Buddhists to dignify their modest temples with luxurious and

impressive images quite beyond their modest means. Whatever the theological

viewpoint, this is an important issue for a largely impoverished community.

More importantly perhaps, this usage offers a powerless minority community

direct connections with a powerful international Buddhist world. As the new

Buddhists identify themselves by and with these finely crafted images and

the creed for which they stand, they also identify themselves with the

international success and power of that world, through the actual

possession of these images.[16]

More interesting than these uses of past or imported imagery, however, is

the new imagery that serves to express these new Buddhists' particular

history and aspirations. This art allows a more direct manifestation of the

community's creativity, and harnesses that creativity to one of art's most

significant potentials, its ability to explore identity. If the adoption of

traditional Buddhist forms allows the community to signal its

identification with that tradition and to legitimize itself through this

prestigious connection, the creation of new imagery allows it to explore

its interests and destiny as a modern Indian community struggling for its

place in the second-half of the twentieth century.

Public Buddhist monuments are mostly images of the historical Buddha,

Sakyamuni, Ambedkar, and Mahatma Jyotirao Phule (the nineteenth-century

Maharashtrian leader regarded as Ambedkar's major predecessor). These

statues in the new imagery are found at crossroads, public squares, and the

entrances to Buddhist neighborhoods or institutions, in the same kinds of

places we are used to seeing other major national figures, such as Gandhi,

Sivaji, and Subas Candra Bose. The Ambedkar statues indicate the presence

of the people who have chosen to transform their lives through his

teachings.

The style of these monuments varies greatly from a highly perceptual to a

more generalized realism, depending upon the nature of the patronage. The

monuments in front of the Lok Sabha (Parliament) in New Delhi and the old

Secretariat building in Bombay are realistic works in bronze. Those by the

roadside in Karnataka and Maharashtra are blander, and often cruder,

popular productions in plaster or concrete. Whether the variations in style

have more to do with the availability of funds or intentional choice is not

yet clear to me. It is possible that thirty-five years do not provide a

long enough history to develop the variety of alternatives from which a

conscious choice can be made. Nor is there a centralized authority to

codify stylistic or iconographic design. As in the past, style is

essentially a matter of region, era, and economic support, not of ideology.

Most modern Buddhist art shares the same generalized naturalism of bright

colors and somewhat stylized features common to other popular imagery in

India.

A typical monumental portrait of Ambedkar can be seen on the highway

leading north from Aurangabad to Ajanta (fig. 3). In the spirit of India's

traditional religious imagery of the past two thousand years, where such

images have much the same style and iconography regardless of where they

are located, Ambedkar is presented as a man in a blue business suit, white

shirt, and red tie, with a fountain pen in his pocket and a book in his

hand. He is bareheaded, his dark hair neatly combed down, and he wears a

pair of black-rimmed spectacles. He stands squarely in what the ancient

iconographic texts called samabhanga, or no bends. In the context of Indian

religious imagery, this figure makes three points: this is a city man, a

man of learning, and only a man--not a god.

As a Westerner who first saw this image in the mid-1960s, I found the style

immediately called to mind contemporaneous American Pop art, with its use

of blandly simplified realism, brightly colored surfaces, and deadpan

expression. But this is how the uninitiated usually respond to things they

don't understand, explaining them by distorting them into versions of

things they do know. For Buddhists and other people living in Maharashtra,

the image is a simple but clear expression of the Mahar's own modest yet

cosmic desires and potentiality. Here, those who had been forbidden a

public presence announce both their presence and their newly claimed right

to a place at the center of creation, by displaying an image of the Bombay

statesman who pled their cause before the world and taught them that they

were more than the "children of god," or Harijans, as Gandhi called them.

They are the followers of Babasaheb Ambedkar. The garland around the

statue's neck is not part of its structure but something added by his

respectful followers. Like the image's fresh coat of paint, the garland

indicates the community's active presence.

The relatively standardized iconography has only existed for a few short

decades and has yet to be fixed in a text. Ambedkar's blue business suit is

as regular as Sakyamuni Buddha's orange samghati robe--I have never seen

another garment or color used[17]--and it is as meaningful. Where the

samghati's patchwork of rags stands for Sakyamuni's presence as a wandering

beggar, the blue suit indicates a man of modern education and civic status.

The book in his hand augments this concept: the enlightened one of the

modern era rejects the hierarchies of the past, handed down in canonical

texts that the lower castes and outcastes were forbidden to hear, see, or

teach. Instead, faith is placed in modern secular learning and civil

disputation open to all. When the book is identified, it as the Indian

constitution, sometimes it is labeled "Bharat" (India), but it can also be

taken more generally to represent the value Ambedkar and the community

place upon education and the secular culture of the cities.

Most often Ambedkar stands with one leg slightly advanced as if walking,

his arm raised and index finger extended as if pointing (fig. 4). This

particular gesture, which seems to have no narrowly agreed upon definition

within the community as yet, does seem to have a generally understood

significance. To his followers, Ambedkar's hand gesture stands for oratory

or teaching, both activities with which he is popularly associated. Indeed,

Ambedkar's The Buddha and His Dhamma, the bible of the new movement, has a

line drawing of this very hand pose on each page. It is, apparently, the

new gesture, or mudra, of teaching.[18]

This image of a Bombay lawyer is in striking contrast to the standard Hindu

god depicted in the traditional garb of dhoti or sari, with multiple limbs

and fantastic attributes. The contemporary Buddhist imagery combines

elements of past art with new features, connecting past traditions with a

distinctly different present and future. Seeing Ambedkar's image in tandem

with the more traditional one of Sakyamuni, as they are regularly shown,

emphasizes just this juxtaposition (figs. 4, 5, and 10). Following the

rationalism of Ambedkar's interpretation of Buddhist doctrine, his

portraits emphasize his humanity. In this vision, we return to one of the

earliest attitudes of Buddhist theology, which claims that the Buddha is

not a god but an enlightened man. Pictorializing the issue proclaims it. in

the repetition of the pose and iconography, we see a construction of the

formal identity of Indian traditional art. Thus the Ambedkar image is not

only identifiable but comparable with the icons of the hegemonic

traditions. Variations in its form have been elaborated to explore its

meaning. One Ambedkar image in Aurangabad, for instance, has beneath it a

wheel flanked by seated deer, a familiar composition from ancient art of

nearby Ajanta, symbolizing the wheel of the law put into motion by

Sakyamuni's first teaching in the deer park at Sarnath. Though the intent

here seems to be projection of Ambedkar as a teacher, it also likens him to

Sakyamuni.

The least expensive and so most popular of all religious images in India

are the ubiquitous chromolithographs made by the Sharmas and their

competitors, which include images of every sect and popular hero.[19] Among

these images, which are created for Buddhists by artists who are not

themselves Buddhists, we find Buddha, Ambedkar (fig. 5), and Phule.

Ambedkar is here shown in a sympathetic bust portrait, an ethereal vision

of Sakyamuni Buddha with one hand raised in the abhaya gesture for

dispelling fear floating behind him.

A poster using Ambedkar's photograph to call a mass civil rights rally in

downtown Bombay also has images of an ancient Bodhisattva and a black

panther (fig. 6). It links the contemporary Buddhist movement to its

international history through the eighth-century Bodhisattva from

Thailand[20] and to an international civil rights movement through the

1960s and seventies iconography of the American Black Panther party.[21]

The Dalit Panthers, who sponsored the rally, are a politicized movement of

the left, composed largely of Buddhists. This combination of images

indicates the Buddhists' exploration of their identity and potential. While

some more conservative Buddhists might reject the panther symbol, some

Marxist Dalits might reject the Bodhisattva. In this poster, the polarities

of the community are embraced. This is more than just quotation and

combination of ancient and contemporary imagery; it is conscious

exploration of the Buddhist community's identity and of the meaning of the

Buddhism it is developing.

The site of Ambedkar's funeral pyre, or samadhi, on the beach at Dadar, in

Bombay, is marked by a domed memorial in a small garden. Pilgrimage is

common and a particularly large darsan, or witness, is held each year on

December 6, the anniversary of his "death" (fig. 7). The Ambedkar Memorial

Shrine, which amounts to what in Buddhist terminology is called a caitya or

stupa, combines traditional and modern elements. The most striking

traditional elements are the half-round dome rising from a square platform,

and the torana gateway (arches) on the south and north of the platform. The

relatively squat proportions of the wall supporting the dome possibly

relate to the relief imagery of ancient stupas in central India,[22] and

the square platform may refer to the stupas of ancient India's

northwest.[23] The gateways, on the other hand, are similar to those

depicted in reliefs from both central and southern regions of ancient

India.[24] The design is, in any case, not a copy of older imagery but a

new synthesis.

Beyond these general forms and proportions, similarities with past

structures cease. The body of this stupa, like many, if not most, religious

structures built in India today, is constructed in reinforced concrete,

rather than the traditional brick or stone. This new and structurally

liberating medium has allowed the creation of a stupa type largely unknown

to historians of Indian art.[25] Unlike the ancient stupas, which are

nearly all solid masses, the Ambedkar caitya is a hollow, inhabitable

shell, containing chambers with figurative imagery as well as a portion of

Ambedkar's ashes, which can be seen through openings in the dome and base

and approached directly.

The other great site of the new Buddhist geography, the location of

Ambedkar's conversion and the first mass conversion, is the Diksha Bhumi

(conversion ground) at Nagpur. A great stupa hall is currently under

construction there.[26] Perhaps it would be more useful to see this as a

hall containing a stupa. There is a model of the structure, designed by the

architect Sheo Dan Mal, at the site (fig. 8). Its extremely low base, upper

walkway, and flatter profile resemble the ancient stupas of Sanchi (fig. 9)

and Amaravati. It also has northern style torana and a number of rather new

features such as an embanked, grassy platform and corner fountains.

This is a great stupa-shaped auditorium for mass community gatherings.

While the old stupas are sites commemorating the great events of the

Buddha's life, relics of the faith, or, most often, the Buddha's passing,

these new stupas are sites for staging the new Buddhists' future. At

Nagpur, the hall's basement contains living spaces for bhikkhus (members of

the monastic brotherhood) and smaller meeting rooms, which are marked on

the exterior by the windows lining the embanked basement. Although the

arched form of the windows refers to the traditional past, the very

presence of windows indicates the transformation of the stupa's content. At

the center of the structure at basement level, a small stupa marks the spot

of the great conversion, another connection with the past. The current

needs and interests of the Buddhists, however, are represented by new forms

that shape a different future. Commemorating the original conversion,

Diksha Bhumi Day, one of the community's four great annual observances, has

its major ceremony here.

Another kind of building constructed by the community are meeting halls,

which it calls viharas. While the term viharas traditionally referred to

monastic dormitories, and bhikkhus still sometimes stay in them, this is

not their main function today. Nor are viharas temples, which they resemble

with their images of deities at one end and even towers over these deities.

The common Marathi terms for temple, mandir and deul, are carefully avoided

when speaking of viharas.[27] The new viharas differ significantly from the

Buddhist temples built by the Mahabodhi Society at Sarnath or the Birla

family at Bombay, which resemble the temples of the ancient past. Indeed,

these viharas have a different purpose altogether.

Like the Diksha Bhumi hall, viharas are gathering places that contain

commemorative imagery. The images placed at the end of the hall resemble

the sanctum images of the Hindu temple, but here they are part of the human

space, not separated in a chamber for ritual purity, with attending

priests. People do not pray or make vows to these images; they are

memorials, not icons. Some may have rooms for bhikkhus, but the bhikkhus'

purpose is to instruct and lead the community, not to attend the images.

Viharas present a visual imagery that requires care to read. Though not

worship halls, they take a form that is only slightly different,

encompassing altarlike platforms and images. The apparent contradictions

seem heightened when we witness a scene approximating worship, such as the

one shown in Triratna Buddha Vihara in Bombay (fig. 10). Here is a

community in the progress of transformation. The common Indian form of the

temple hall, altar, and worshiper have been altered only slightly, but the

change is highly significant. In a Tibetan context, the Tibetan Buddha

image on this altar would be worshiped with devotional faith; in another

era, the bhikkhu would be a priest or a worshiper and the woman holding the

incense would be praying. But in this context, where the ideology of

devotion is explicitly rejected and an ideology of rationalized action is

proclaimed, the woman standing between the ancient imagery of the Buddha on

one side and the modern imagery of Ambedkar before Parliament on the other

is offering homage not worship. Old forms are transformed by new meanings.

The viharas are used for community meetings and functions of all sorts,

from Buddhist education and political action to pre-school. The Buddhist

teachings offered there, called wandana, are memorial services centered on

the Pali texts of the Theravada canon. Since they are not worship services,

they are never called by common terms like puja, used to designate worship.

For the most part, they are led by lay people, men and women. Discussions

begin with an honoring of the Buddha and Ambedkar, but not a call for their

blessings.

The Shanti Vihara, at Shantivana, on the outskirts of Nagpur, shows the

same contradictions (fig. 11). A modest brick structure finished in

brightly painted plaster, it has a gathering hall with one image at the far

end, surrounded by rooms for the bhikkhus and others who may reside or meet

there. Unlike most viharas, it has the tower that marks the traditional

Indian temple, here assuming the form of a small stupa. And indeed it is

intended to house relics of the Sakyamuni Buddha, which have been donated

to the Shantivana complex. The forms are thus not so unlike those of a

Hindu temple. It is clearly a religious structure, with which all Indians

are familiar.[28] But the use of the building is to link the messages of

Ambedkar and the Buddha, and to transform former habits of supplication

into those of social action. W. M. Godbole, a long-time associate of

Ambedkar's and organizer of the great diksha, is the vihara's designer. It

is part of an as yet unfinished seminary complex for training bhikkhus in

the evangelical work of spreading Ambedkar's message, in which social

transformation takes a religious form.

Finally, an aspect of the new Buddhist art we need to consider is the work

of individual artists and designers. Ram Tirpude, a local Nagpur artist and

perhaps the first new Buddhist artist, began the community's aesthetic

activity by giving already existing imagery a new Buddhist use. Tirpude

designed the stage at the Diksha Bhumi for the original conversion with

materials at hand to fashion a miniature of the Sanchi stupa as a canopy

over the heads of Ambedkar and his associates.

The common situation of Buddhist artists today is seen in the work of P. B.

Ramteke. The most popular Buddhist works are portraits of Ambedkar, either

taken from the original or based on surviving likenesses in photographs.

Ramteke's Babasaheb Ambedkar of 1987 falls into the latter category. An oil

painting based on a photograph, it shows the familiar bespectacled face,

with only parts of the coat and tie. More personal than some images,

intensely human, it is unquestionably a successful attempt to bring out the

acutely penetrating, yet compassionate gaze of the young man who would

become a Maitreya for his community and modern India. The original oil was

done as the basis for a widely available, inexpensive color lithograph

(fig. 12).

This community-oriented, inspirational art is the equivalent of the

traditional art of solidarity and identity found in most religions or

political movements in the world. Artists may express themselves either

personally or impersonally in this vein, indeed, the B. G. Sharma

lithograph (fig. 5) and other commercial works, as we have seen, may be by

artists who are not themselves Buddhists. The primary point of these works

is what they say, not how or who says it. This is an art of community, of

emblems of identification with group ideals It stands in distinct contrast

to the individualist art of the gallery world of the bourgeois cities.

In the case of Ramteke, we have an academically trained artist with a

gallery career quite separate from his religious art. In his gallery art

Ramteke may occasionally, but only subtly, reveal elements of his Buddhist

orientation. While his Buddhist art is naturalistic and communal, his

gallery art is essentially abstract and personal in both form and content.

Ramteke sees his gallery work as having developed in stages over the years

from a colorful diagrammatic style in the surrealistic vein of Paul Klee or

Joan Miro--both of whose influences he cites with alacrity--to increasingly

abstract formulations. The stage he reached in 1988 and 1989, he feels

expresses his independence from models and his most particular vision. Of

the three dozen works of his I have seen, only Joy of Unity (fig. 13) of

1987 has an identifiable Buddhist content. An essentially abstract design

of colorful insect, reptile, and birdlike shapes flickering about a

reticulated plane of grays and whites, the work on closer inspection

reveals a statement on the harmony of India's religions. The dark rectangle

at the bottom represents a structure decked with motifs symbolizing India's

different faiths: a trident for Saivism, a cross for Christianity, and a

half-moon for Islam. These forms are contained within a curving gray form

recognizable as the outline of a Buddhist stupa that unites the other

religions. In India, as everywhere in the modern bourgeois world, gallery

art is essentially personal and decorative. To succeed in that world,

religious artists must leave their social interests relatively obscured.

The study of this new Buddhist art offers a variety of useful insights, not

the least of which help us to understand earlier Buddhist art. Since

ancient India's Buddhist traditions came to an end without leaving a

literature explaining its beliefs, it is difficult to interpret a great

deal of the symbolism and instrumentality of the remains. The presence of

this new Buddhist tradition suggests alternative readings for many items

about which we now can only speculate. It can offer expressive

interpretations for objects and texts whose functional context we have

lost. More important, it can provide evidence of a fluidity of possible

meanings in contrast to the limited ones offered by a literal reading of

texts.

Finally, and most significantly, the new Buddhist imagery gives us a

genuine revolutionary art. In a discipline that spends much of its effort

considering whether or not selected imagery is "revolutionary," or

emblematic of change, or even a facilitator of change, here is an art that

is an instrument of social change of the most vital kind. India's new

Buddhists are a community in the process of a profound revolutionary

change, which is using visual imagery as a major means to accomplish that

transformation .

Normally, when we speak of revolutionary artistic forms in Western art

criticism or history we refer to normal novelty. Art that has a technically

unusual surface form--a new decorative style, more often than not--we term

revolutionary. The changes involved are significant only in the world of

aesthetic decoration and elite cultural discourse. Most likely they involve

no development in meaning and certainly none in the social or material

reality of their producers and consumers-their creators and buyers, if you

will. This use of the concept of a revolutionary art is largely a matter of

inflated rhetoric.

The art of these new Buddhists is different in two ways. First, it is an

art stylistically and pictorially conventional in the extreme. There is no

formal novelty. Changes from the past are essentially matters of content.

Second, it is an art of social and material transformation, a significant

tool in the transformation of Indian culture and society. The identities it

portrays are precisely those being used by the Buddhist community to

reshape its psychology and reorient its social and material life. To the

degree that it recognizes the Buddhist personality and focuses energy on

new and different statuses and material possibilities via education,

election, and conversion, the new Buddhist art is a materially powerful and

socially significant instrument for change.

This may not be the usual way to speak of revolutionary art, but we have so

thoroughly lost track of our basic meanings, and taken the analogy of Pablo

Picasso's and Jackson Pollock's "revolutionary" transformations of

decorative vocabulary so seriously, that it is refreshing to have a genuine

revolutionary imagery to remind us of the difference between the analogy

and the real thing and to point up how much time we spend on the trivial

imagery, which our wealthy compete to possess, and how little time on the

imagery that defines our living reality.

Notes

[1] I owe a great debt to Eleanor Zelliot and Vasant Moon for my

introduction to Babasaheb Ambedkar and the Buddhist movement, and for my

access to the new Buddhist art. I also wish to thank S. K. Thorat for his

discussions with me and particularly for a number of important suggestions

he made after reading a drain of this paper

[2] For a good general survey and explanation of the development of India's

ancient Buddhist art, see Susan and John Huntington, The Art of Ancient

India (New York: Weatherhill, 1985).

[3] Ambedkar lived on the edge of Harlem while attending Columbia

University. His writings include numerous comparisons of India's

untouchables and American Blacks. The most comprehensive biography is

Dhananjay Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission, 2nd ed. (Bombay: Popular

Prakashan, 1962).

[4] Eleanor Zelliot. "Gandhi and Ambedkar," in Michael Mahar, ea.,

Untouchables in Contemporary India (Phoenix: University of Arizona Press,

1972), 69-95.

[5] Eleanor Zelliot, "Religion and Legitimation in the Mahar Movement," in

Bardwell Smith, ed., Religion and the Legitimation of Power in South Asia

(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 88-105.

[6] Since the 1990 Parliament has readmitted those converting to Buddhism

to eligibility for the Scheduled Caste reservations in education,

government jobs, etc., that they had previously lost upon conversion, this

number is expected to double: see Times of India, May 8, 1990.

[7] Ambedkar's interpretation of Buddhism is supremely rational and

relatively distinct from the many other schools and sects now in existence.

Its prime text is his posthumously-published The Buddha and His Dhamma, 2nd

ed. (Bombay: Siddharth Publications, 1974). Ambedkar's interpretations are

compared with others in Joanna Rogers Macy and Eleanor Zelliot, "Tradition

and Innovation in Contemporary Indian Buddhism," in Studies in the History

of Buddhism, ed. A. K. Narain (Delhi: B. R. Publishing Co., 1980), 133-53,

and in S. R. Goyal. A History of Indian Buddhism (Meerut: Kusumanjali

Prakashan, 1987), 412-23.

[8] Though "Hindu" is a common synonym in English for later brahmanism or

brahmanical Hinduism, particularly in the colloquial English words that

differentiate among Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism in India. the term is

misleading. In India and in some cases in the United States, "Hindu" is

commonly taken as "Indian," although Jains, for instance. consider

themselves to be as Hindu as anyone else. To consider these other Indian

religions non-Hindu should not suggest that there is something non-Indian

about them.

[9] The international Buddha Jayanti. marking twenty-five hundred years

after gakyamuni's enlightenment (or his birth or nirvana, depending on your

source), was celebrated in India, Sri Lanka, and around the world in 1956.

Since the Buddhist calendar and its dates, like the Christian, are

disputed, all Buddhists do not agree precisely on the same dates for these

events. Nor do all new Buddhists feel comfortable with the title Maitreya

for Ambedkar, some seeing this as a Mahayana concept, which does not fit

their more Theravada vision.

[10] Some have called them new Buddhists or neo-Buddhists, but many among

them resent the implication that they are less authentic than other

Buddhist sects. Keer reports Ambedkar telling reporters on the evening

before his conversion that what he was initiating was a "neo-Buddhism or

Navayan[a]" (Keer, Ambedkar, 495).

[11] One of the most interesting facts of Indian art history is the early

avoidance of permanent materials by the brahmanical worshipers. There

exists Buddhist art in significant amounts from the third century B.C.E.,

but little brahmanical art in stone before the third century C.E.

[12] Though the practice of untouchability was outlawed soon after

Independence, and entrance to public temples guaranteed to all and enforced

by civil authorities, there is still in actuality a good amount of

discrimination. Seventy-one percent of villages bar former untouchables

from local Hindu temples according to the 1978 79 Report of the

Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. In the numerous

private temples, civil codes do not require openness.

[13] This includes even deities such as Matamaya. the Mahar smallpox

goddess, which belonged to the untouchable community rather than to the

brahmans and to which there was never a bar

[14] Macy and Zelliot, "Tradition and Innovation." 146.

[15] A Tibetan image occupies the central place at the Triratna Buddha

Vihara, Bhandra East, Bombay (fig. 10). There is a life-size Thai bronze

image in Nagpur's Indra Buddha Vihar. A Burmese image sits on a small altar

at the Shantivana. next to the reliquary with Ambedkar's relics, Nagpur. A

Japanese image can be found in Nagpur's Ananda Vihara.

[16] There is commonly. as in the Shanti Vihara image, a dedicatory

inscription giving the name of the donor.

[17] The recent dedication of a portrait in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of

the Indian Parliament in New Delhi) showing Ambedkar in the long caftan

often worn by Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, was met with

instant criticism by his followers. It was not because of lack of proof

that he had on occasion worn such a garment in his days as a cabinet

minister--photographs of him dressed in a caftan were, in fact, the basis

for the painting--but because this was not the way the Buddhists want him

memorialized. See Times of India, April 19 and 28 (with a picture), 1990.

[18] The Japanese bhikthu at Ananda Vihara in Nagpur calls it Prajna

Tarowar, or sword of knowledge. Eleanor Zelliot's phrase "pointing toward

enlightenment" fits what I have heard many Buddhists say.

[19] It is not at all uncommon in India to have one community create images

for another.

[20] The fact that it is a specifically Thai image seems to carry no

significance. Its presence refers more to Buddhism's ancient and

international history.

[21] The Dalit (literally, oppressed) Panthers took part of their name from

the Black Panther Party for Sell Defence in the late 1960s. See Janet

Contursi, "Militant Hindus and Buddhist Dalits: Hegemony and Resistance in

an Indian Slum," American Ethnologist 16, no. 3 (1989): 441-57.

[22] Heinrich Zimmer, The Arts of Indian Asia (New York: Pantheon, 1955),

vol. 2, pl. 18.

[23] E.g., Huntington, Ancient India, pl. 8.8.

[24] Such images Irom Sanchi and Amaravati can be seen in Heinrich Zimmer,

Indian Asia, vol. 2, pls. 10 and 91.

[25] The form, which is not as rare as modern historians tend to assume,

has essentially not been discussed in modern studies, however For a

comparable image of a Buddhist temple in a Gandharan relief in the Lahore

Museum, see Heinrich Gerhard Franz, Buddhistische Kunst Indiens (Leipzig:

E. A. Seemann, 1965), pl. 209.

[26] Stupas are raised to enshrine three sorts of relics: bits of

scripture, the remains of those who have achieved enlightenment (such as

Ambedkar), and great sites of the faith, such as this one.

[27] Macy and Zelliot, "Tradition and Innovation," 146.

[28] The Christian theological seminary at Tumkur makes similar use of a

towered-temple form for its chapel. with the same purpose of displaying an

appropriate shape for an Indian religious structure.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 1 Cave 19, cat 475. Ajanta, Maharashtra.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 2 Sakyamuni Buddha in Meditation, cat 1975,

fiberglass, donated by the V. A. Sugathadasa and A. B. Gomes Trust, Sri

Lanka, to the Shanti Vihara, Shantivana, Nagpur.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 3 Ambedkar statue, cat 1960. Facing west on

Ajanta Road, north of Aurangabad.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 4 Ambedkar and Sakyamuni Buddha statues at

the entrance to the Tarodi Settlement, Nagpur.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 5 B. G. Sharma, Sri Ambedkar, cat 1960,

chromolithograph.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 6 Dalit Panther poster, December 1988.

Bombay.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 7 Ambedkar Memorial Shrine. Sivaji Park,

Dadar, Bombay.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 8 Model of Babasaheb Ambedkar Memorial

Complex, designed by Sheo Dan Mall Diksha Bhumi, Nagpur (begun 1982).

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 9 Great Stupa, 1st century B.C.E--.C.E.

Sanchi.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 10 Interior. Triratna Buddha Vihara, Hanuman

Nagar Government Colony, Bombay.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 11 Shanti Vihara, designed by W. M. Godbole.

Shantivana, Nagpur.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 12 P. B. Ramteke, Babasaheb Ambedkar, 1988,

photo offset reproduction of original oil painting, 15 X 17 inches. Private

collection.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Figure 13 P. B. Ramteke, Joy of Unity, 1987, oil on

canvas, 30 X 36 inches. Private collection.