[Reader-list] 2nd posting

[Abhik Samanta]

*Second posting ; extremely sorry that it is so; images and the Gita Press*

These pictures as mentioned in the earlier posting serve to illustrate or
illuminate i.e. bring to light or throw light on words which are an act of
translation into a printed vernacular language. This was the paradigm of
time consciousness that was suggested in the earlier posting as the
contribution of Hanumanprasad Poddar, the man who had been a revolutionary
as a member of some of the various organisations that came into being in and
around Calcutta after the partition of Bengal in 1905. His involvement and
conviction in the Rodda arms conspiracy case as well as the significance of
the period of imprisonment in the story of his life perhaps shows an
intensity in the juxtaposition of an ideal time with that of an ongoing dark
time that is important in understanding the structuration of the Gita Press
cheapbook.

However Hanumanprasad's efforts at textually depicting this juxtaposition is
part of wider efforts that were undertaken from the premises of the Press
itself. This can be understood from the rubric 'Gita Press saint' which
occurs in some blogs on the net. Hanuman's spiritual guide Jayadayal
Goyandaka was as important in the configuration of this circle of devotees .
There is thus a juxtaposition at the heart of a juxtaposition that lies at
the core of the resounding success of the Gita Press as an institution .
Here it is Hanuman's position as a figure of charisma that makes him
significant.

The strategy of illustration is intimately connected with the notion of the
vernacular language through sensuality implicated in the idea of usage. The
sense of the picture can be had only through a notion of a social being.
This is the social being in which the figures enact or signify their shapes.

For instance in a tract entitled Jeevanupyogi Pravachan, the picture that
occurs on the cover is a male preacher who preaches from a text in front of
him to what can be quite literally called a 'sea of humanity' which is also
male. In another tract called 'stories for inspiration' or Prerak Kahaniyan
a bald and old preacher again preaches from a text to a group of four, who
can best be described as boys. The object of inspiration is also depicted in
the form of a man feeding a cow which symbolizes ideal work. The composition
of this picture is meaningful yet again in the suggested abeyance of the
laws of nature where the lion and the deer as well a peacock gaze in
different directions at the heart of which, is a blooming bush amidst which
is a banana tree standing firm and tall. The perspective of European  landscape
art forms the embodiment of a sea of humanity in the first picture while in
the figures , a quintessentially male depiction of the preacher is
contrasted with more androgynous but male figures in the audience. Similarly
in the second picture the banana tree stands out as a very subcontinental
form of the depiction of banana trees which however occurs in a picture in
which everything else is drawn to sight and scale of European painting.
Preaching, listening and consequent action are the forms of social being
that are depicted. The preacher sits on a raised platform while the audience
blends into the contours of the earth. In the second picture though the man
of action is located in the background it is the courtyard of a home
symbolized by two thatched huts. The background is thus a journey forward
into what the boys grow into which is a crucial indicator of the time of
usage which a vernacular addresses. As can be seen from the composition the
pictures seek to describe social being as a sensual reality.

The other two pictures I have chosen reflect a more individual quest, that
too of two different kinds which embody the notions of two distinct
personalities, Hanumanprasad Poddar and Jayadayal Goyandaka.

Hanumanprasad's tract is entitled 'shanti kaise mile' or 'how does one find
peace' and is part of a series entitled 'the reform of this world and the
next; part 4'

Both these images intend to convey a state of mind that is associated with
the act of reading. Seeing these pictures is thus intended to be an act
which is clearly the guiding principle which occurs before and after reading
the tract. In Hanuman's piece it is a man depicted as a God holding an arrow
and pondering while looking at it. He stands by a lake, shaded by a tree
across which is a temple. This could be an illustration from a story with
which I am not familiar but clearly the moment of soliloquy has the arrow as
a focal point with the bow held on the other hand.

The other picture is in Jayadayal's tract entitled how to bring about the
deprivation of all grief  or 'sampurna dukhhon ka abhav kaise ho'  which
shows a child meditating with closed eyes under a banyan tree beside a lake
, being visited by Vishnu who stands besides the child and looks endearingly
towards it. A striking aspect of both pictures is the way in which the
components of the scenery occur in similar form with exactly the same
implications. The lake and the trees on its bank are the sort of permanent
background in which the viewer encounters different meanings embodied in
human shapes. In this sense the figures are quite independent of their
background but become quite distinctively part of a series of images which
is distinctively repeated by the press. Since the past few decades the press
has been using photographs which will be elaborated in subsequent postings.

The production of these images show the way in which Hanumanprasad's notion
of a millenarian time of becoming which reflects the principles of
revolutionary organization in mass appeal juxtaposed with vanguard action as
described in the first two images, is transformed into an existence which
must be perpetually symbolic. This observation emanates from an historical
reality of Indian painting where divine scenes are made explicable only in
images which reffered to the contemporary-for instance Jayadevas Gita
Govinda or  Bihari's Sat Sai  which were illustrated by artists purged from
the Mughal court by Aurangzeb.  Here the substances of the images are
premised on their being not contemporary. It is as if the darkness of the
contemporary is bound to return but is offset only by the creative depiction
of icons embodied in scenery. The vernacular in Anderson's now historic
depiction of nationalism is intimately woven around an imagined community.
But the texts of the Gita Press can be meaningful only if it is perpetually
so.
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