The art of Santiniketan’s Ramkinkar Baij (1906-1980): Evoking the rugged poetry of Santal village life – West Bengal

Ramkinkar Baij (1906-1980)
Read more in The Telegraph (Calcutta) >>

Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, Gopal Ghose, Gobardhan Ash… and now Ramkinkar Baij (1906-1980). The year 2013 may yet prove to be one of rich retrieval of art heritage, some of it marginalized in Bengal’s collective memory.

Although wide recognition did not come to Baij early, he gained the status of a cult figure that ensured a certain mystique around his personality that was almost as compelling as his art. […]

For what his temperament obviously sought was splendid simplicity in images that, quite incidentally, threw up a complex of suggestions. Images that sprang not from grand themes —mythology or millennial prescriptions — but from what he saw around him: nature and the life of the people from villages around Santiniketan, the Santhals, who were guiltlessly unselfconscious about their taut, weather-beaten bodies and daily toil. After all, wasn’t he a disciple of Nandalal Bose?

Both nature and human figures are sensuously evoked through a wealth of versatile lines — close and scribbly or racy, calligraphic, flowing — and breezy, dappled watercolour or ink, reduced to pale, almost accidental, unbidden stains. A much-seen work in thin, grey daubs of ink, called Trees in an early publication, is here along with some watercolour landscapes of minimalist eloquence that can’t fail to touch the viewer. […]

A few linocut prints from the 1940s address big themes such as the Bengal famine — though in microcosm — and the Quit India movement. But Baij was always more than ready to embrace the rugged poetry of village life, the gritty syncopation of its everyday rhythms that yearned to be eternalized. A fine example would be the etching, Mother and Child (picture). Or the paintings that turn daily rituals into intimate cameos and the ordinary into the iconic.

Ramkinkar’s Baij's "Santhal Family" (cement and laterite gravel) at Santiniketan photo © Ludwig Pesch
“Santhal Family” by Ramkinkar Baij >>
(cement and laterite gravel) at Santiniketan >>
Photo © Ludwig Pesch | Santal customs >>
UNESCO World Heritage Centre >>

But masterly as they are, it must be conceded that it is primarily the sculptures that earned Baij the status of a guru. With unusual material and a gravelly texture that celebrates the Birbhum terrain with its termite hills and parched, brittle earth, Baij gives to his Santhals a virile, matter-of-fact durability and resilience as they go about the business of life, taking its challenges in their stride, communicating their vulnerability without the slightest trace of sentimental heroism. It’s because Ramkinkar Baij had no ideological point to make, but was an instinctive artist with an insider’s insights. […]

Source: “Brittle earth and virile men” by Rita Datta, The Telegraph (Calcutta), 26 October 2013
Address: https://www.telegraphindia.com/1131026/jsp/opinion/story_17438590.jsp#.Uu0l4vakAfl
Date Visited: 20 June 2020

The landscape of Santiniketan is dotted with sculptures by Ramkinkar Baij (1906-1980), largerthan-life figures of Santals who were in reality part of the landscape. A Santal family, complete with dog, a group of workers running along at the call of the mill, their clothes flying in the air, a thresher, all situated along the main road. When Ramkinkar created Sujata, an elongated figure of one of the disciples of Buddha, he placed it just a little distance from the seated Buddha. Nandalal planted Eucalyptus saplings in the area, knowing that one day these tall trees would be a perfect setting to Ramkinkar’s Sujata. It was Nandalal Bose, who created an environment where art would be a part of life and the children of Santiniketan have grown absorbing these beautiful monuments as they have the oxygen in the air. […]

Santiniketan is in many ways a pioneering step in the field of education and rural reconstruction. Located in the heart of nature amongst Hindu, Muslim, and Santali villages which were in ‘serious decline’ despite a rich cultural heritage, the school, from almost its beginning aimed to combine education with a sense of obligation towards the larger civic community. The ‘voice of the vedic tongue’, Tagore said, outlined the nature of Santiniketan, envisioned as the ideal form of the traditional Indian hermitages which had at one time flourished in the forests of ancient India, great seats of learning from which the Upanishads had evolved, exploring a universal and humanistic life of the mind. Although Tagore was highly critical of Macaulay’s system due to which, unlike the West, education, particularly higher education, was cut off and insulated from the living social corpus of India.
Santiniketan revives and gives form to Tagore’s interpretation of the ancient Indian concept of tapoban. […]

Source: “Santiniketan” submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre by the Archaeological Survey of India (Date of Submission: 20/01/2010)
Date Visited: 5 February 2013
Backup copy (PDF, 150 KB) >>

[Bold typeface added above for emphasis]

See also

Amartya Sen

eBook | Free catalogue: Museum of Santal Culture (Bishnubati)

eBook | Free catalogue: Banam: One of the ancient musical instruments of the Santals

eJournal | Writing and teaching Santali in different alphabets: A success story calling for a stronger sense of self-confidence

Folk art

Jamini Roy

Nandalal Bose

Rabindranath Tagore

Ramkinkar Baij

Santal | Santali language | Santali script – Ol Chiki

Santiniketan

The Santhal family and the invention of a subaltern counterpublic

The Santals by Boro Baski

Sanyasi Lohar

Tagore’s commitment to Santali villages near Santiketan

Tagore and rural culture

UNESCO World Heritage Centre

West Bengal

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