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How Islamic art is a memory capsule of our culture

By Arman Khan
29 November, 2022

Far from the binaries that we’d like to slot our histories into, it’s between the minarets and minbars of our  monuments that we find stunning clues of a richer, diverse past

“I will barely say a word,” says a voice on the soundtrack of French auteur Jean Luc Godard’s 2013 film Goodbye to Language, adding, “I am looking for poverty in language.”


In linguistics, one of the first modules taught to students is this poverty of language that Godard toys with in his experimental film. He plays with exposure and light, scrambles the greys and black and exaggerates the reds—anything and everything that can substitute words. Can we string a beautiful phrase to describe the beauty of a landscape, the film seems to argue, or do we delude ourselves with second-hand expressions?

Portrait of the goddess Saraswati commissioned by Ibrahim Adil Shah II. Image: Facebook.com/MedievalIndianHistory

Historian Manu S. Pillai, the author of bestsellers like The Ivory Throne and False Allies, tells The Established that when it comes to “Islamic” art in India, whether it’s in architecture or paintings, there is, indeed, some scholarly divergence

This question finds resonance with me when I come across categories used to describe art and architecture—minimalist, maximalist, Gothic, Brutalist, contemporary and many more. Do these words encompass all the beauty and nuances that these structures hold? It is perhaps a similar sentiment you feel when facing a stunning monument in the middle of a lonely road in Delhi—how and where do you place it? Is it Islamic? Indo-Persian? Or, simpler still, just Indian? But if we don’t describe these historical edifices and the worlds surrounding them, nailing them down into easily understandable and relatable language, do we lose them to the vagaries of time?


Arbitrary classifications? 

Historian Manu S. Pillai, the author of bestsellers like The Ivory Throne and False Allies, tells The Established that when it comes to “Islamic” art in India, whether it’s in architecture or paintings, there is, indeed, some scholarly divergence. “Some prefer Persianate or Islamicate, for instance, but I personally find ‘Islamic’ too broad a term and something of a generalisation.”

The way Pillai sees it, the contrasts in our monuments are too endless ever to be limited to a single category. He cites the example of the Mishkal Mosque in Kozhikode in Kerala, technically “Islamic” because while it is a mosque, it follows local Malayali architectural forms.

Mishkal Mosque in Kozhikode in Kerala, technically “Islamic” because while it is a mosque, it follows local Malayali architectural forms. Image: Kerala Tourism

“It looks very different, then, from the kind of ‘Islamic’ buildings in Bijapur,” he says. “In that sense, ‘Islamic’ might be useful as a broad category in some contexts, but it eclipses internal diversity. I would classify monuments based on periods or geography. For instance, the samadhis of the ancestors of Chhatrapati Shivaji near Ellora are Islamic in style. They are ‘Hindu’ monuments but look Islamic. What do we make of these, then?”

Living pages of history 

Perhaps we end up losing sight of these complicated, rather nuanced realities when we limit ourselves to easy categories—more often than not best suited for pamphlets of political parties and hollow sloganeering. On 27th November, a local MLA threatened to raze a newly constructed bus stop in Mysuru because it “looked like a mosque”; it had “three domes” on top. It is no surprise that this bus stop, on the Kerala Border-Kollegal section of National Highway 766, now only has a single central red dome, with the other two domes missing. 


“Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” historian Rana Safvi, author of books such as Where Stones Speak and In Search of the Divine tells The Established. “It mirrors its time because buildings don’t have just a physical existence; they bear witness to people and institutions that flourished there and the interactions that took place there,” she adds.

“Many historical sources show that the people who made these monuments did not see their identities in religious terms, which is how we see the past,” says Anirudh Kanisetti.  Image: Pexels

Yusuf Arakkal's Ganga series is more concerned with portraying the harmony between cultures; the jagged and charcoal-laden brush strokes seem to convey the sparks that fly amidst it all. Image: Facebook

Safvi goes on to mention that the physical environment shapes built heritage and any architecture is a visual testimony of the past. “They bear witness to the sensibilities, progress, technology and concerns of the era in which they took birth. Art gives us a glimpse into the lives of both royalty and ordinary people. Miniature paintings open up that world for us; based on them, we can reconstruct the history of the people’s material culture.”

A shared culture 

I recently came across the ‘Ganga’ series by the late popular painter Yusuf Arakkal at the ongoing retrospective of his works at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bengaluru. A far cry from the typical representation of Ganga as an endless river that heals, Arakkal’s Ganga is more concerned with portraying the harmony between cultures; the jagged and charcoal-laden brush strokes seem to convey the sparks that fly amidst it all. 

We may see a similar sentiment when historians reflect on our past. There is no excessive romanticisation in this Utopian world where all communities thrive and co-exist peacefully, nor is there a disproportionate focus on the many wars. 

“We tend to judge medieval and early modern history from a contemporary lens,” says Safvi. “The picture that art and architecture give us is of power and patronage, not of clash of cultures or hostility. There are many paintings of wars and battles, but these are for territorial gain and not steeped in religion.”

The way she looks at it, the “syncretism” of the time reflects in the paintings depicting Holi, Diwali and of yogis and yoginis along with Sufis and saints. This shared culture is also reflected in the adaptation of the lotus by the Sultans of Delhi and later, with the Mughals, where we see the Jama Masjid of Delhi crowned by a lotus and finial. Safvi clarifies that this feature is distinct from mosques elsewhere in the Islamicate world.

“We tend to judge medieval and early modern history from a contemporary lens,” says Rana Safvi. Image: Pexels

Public historian Anirudh Kanisetti, author of Lords of the Deccan, says such interpretations considerably damage  our past and do a major disservice to our stories. “They portray the past in a way even our ancestors might not have thought about,” he says. “Many historical sources show that the people who made these monuments did not see their identities in religious terms, which is how we see the past.”

Kanisetti adds that by projecting contemporary ideas of what is truly heritage and not, we are being “violent towards the past as a whole,” thereby limiting our interpretation of those beautiful cultures as political statements. “A lot of the Mughal conquests in the Deccan were led by Rajput generals, and that is evident in the Rajput architecture,” he says. “Even if you look at the structures made after the Mughal decline, they are found in Maratha architecture because they didn’t see the Mughals’ idea of what is sacred as foreign or as an alien idea.”

Blending stories 

Across different eras, the examples of cultures existing in tandem without making a statement are endless. “An example of this is the portrait of the goddess Saraswati commissioned by Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur in the late 16th and early 17th centuries,” says Pillai. “At a glance, it resembles a Persianate miniature, but a closer study reveals it is Saraswati, given that the figure in the painting carries all the usual emblems of the goddess: A veena, a book, and so on.”

“ART MIRRORS ITS TIME BECAUSE BUILDINGS DON’T HAVE JUST A PHYSICAL EXISTENCE; THEY BEAR WITNESS TO PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS THAT FLOURISHED THERE AND THE INTERACTIONS THAT TOOK PLACE THERE”
Rana Safvi

Pillai further elaborates that the Sultan celebrated Saraswati even in his writings, and that the visualisation of this Hindu goddess is done familiarly—the Islamic way. “In a later period, Raja Ravi Varma depicted Hindu goddesses, and his work shows a strong Victorian, Western influence.” Similarly, Safvi shares the example of the famous Gobind Dev Temple of Brindaban, built by Raja Man Singh, which also has Mughal architectural influences. “Art is dynamic, not static,” she says. 

Kanisetti echoes a similar sentiment, adding that “art is essentially a highly condensed social fact” as it tells us a lot about the society and how it functioned—the constant and remarkable flow of people across massive landscapes where not just people but also their aesthetics and ideas were in circulation. “However, as much as we can appreciate their beauty, we must remember that there were unequal systems that produced them.”

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