In the interim: administering art in India, after independence, before institutions

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article focuses on the Indian state’s relationship with art, and art institutions to gain insights into approaches to nation/state formation and administration. It asks two questions: How was art administered in India between 1947 and 1953, the period after India’s independence but before formal institutions for it came up? And what were the implications of decisions taken during this period on subsequent institutional choices? I argue that matters of art were addressed here–in the “interim”–not merely in a formal manner through political and administrative procedures, but as the very question of political and administrative matters, intricately intertwined with appeals of taste, rule, disinterest, gains, penny pinching, but most of all, of problem solving. From the commitment to solve problems were at hand, in a country ravaged by Partition, unemployment, and a poor economy, what emerges is not a pious approach to tradition; nor do decisions affecting art practice follow some predetermined path to modernity. Neither does the state’s approach simply correspond to the view generally taken in existing literature where the starting point tends to be the framework of secular nationalism. Rather, by being attentive to everyday problem-solving and decision-making processes of statesmen who led the project of institution-building–Nehru, Azad, Patel among others–we discover the priority they gave to building state capacity; everything else, including nation-building followed from this. In this regard, even though there was no specific programme yet in place for looking into the arts, the arts got looked after in almost all matters concerning politics.