Some time ago (in September 2024), government-friendly news portals exerted a lot of energy “fact-checking” and, in the process, denied a viral social media post that claimed that the gigantic “Statue of Unity” sculpture of Vallabhbhai Patel had developed “cracks” and was in danger of collapsing. It was also reported that the police had booked the person who had made the claim.

While the “Statue of Unity” may in fact be intact, as of now, the suggestion that it might be damaged was not, hypothetically, as far-fetched as it was made out to be. After all, not long before that rumour had emerged, a 35-foot statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, installed in the Rajkot fort in Sindhudurg in Maharashtra, did collapse on August 5, 2024. Predictably, even in this instance, the police swung into action and arrested the sculptor.

Large, record-breaking, landscape-altering artworks portraying great men that have fallen, or are at the risk of falling, can be read as parables for the state of culture (and the culture of the state) in the Indian Republic today. Apart from their perennial structural precariousness, they point to two things: one, that, contrary to the lament of many in the art and culture world in India, the state does invest the money it harvests from taxpayers into cultural projects, and that these projects are gargantuan, and the money involved is considerable (According to one calculation, the cost of a single mega-statue dwarfs the cost of holding several editions of a noted biennale.)

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The second aspect this cult of sculptural grandstanding points to is that notwithstanding the expenditure and pomp and circumstance that attend to these projects, ultimately, like all exercises in vanity and narcissism, they are hollow, fragile, and may develop a tendency to bend and fall, in response to the inevitability of gravity. Sooner or later, statues, like the regimes that install them, will fall. In the interim, these exercises in idolatry will continue to function as avian public conveniences as they await the measured, unhurried, collaborative iconoclasm of nature and time. Not even the apparently all-powerful Indian state can arrest time or its co-conspirator, nature.

Sublime decadence

The decline of mainstream culture in India into a state of sublime decadence has become almost impossible to deny or ignore. While the Union Culture Ministry celebrates and publicises group exhibitions of paintings featuring the Prime Minister’s visage, the Lalit Kala Akademi organises art workshops in which artists are encouraged to translate the Prime Minister’s Viksit Bharat (Developed India) vision into artworks. Meanwhile, the National Gallery of Modern Art, in partnership with the patron and founder of a major private museum, presents a show in which leading A-listed contemporary artists are invited to reflect on the 100th episode of the Prime Minister’s personal radio broadcasts (Mann Ki Baat, or Talking from the Heart) to the nation. In terms of genteel sycophancy as a synonym for cultural achievement and engagement, nothing can rival the spectacle of film stars eager to take group selfies clustered around the Prime Minister, an actor who outshines them all. Everyone else is a back-up dancer, an extra. In a nutshell, that image alone conveys the film industry’s lack of self-respect.

Culturally speaking, India today must be ranking close behind the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. All we are missing are televised broadcasts of performed renditions of the Prime Minister’s portrait in stadiums and at suitably grandiose new architectural sites by means of carefully choreographed displays of synchronised calisthenics. Who knows, a busy and forward-thinking bureaucrat in the Culture Ministry in search of a well-earned promotion may already be contemplating this possibility. Perhaps there will soon be study tours to Pyongyang. There is so much to learn while you stay focussed on the Make in India theme.

While state support for culture extracts its levy from artists in the form of homage to the rulers and their agenda, high-networth private patrons of art and culture too extract a high price. Private patronage tends to treat the presence of art as decor for personal vanity and aggrandisement. It is assumed that artists will genuflect in front of wealth, as much as they are expected to do so in the face of power. And, more often than not, the cultural agendas of wealth and power in India today coincide in a form of national narcissism that replaces the value of autonomy of thought and expression with an uncritical glorification of the ersatz, kitschy, shiny confection that is offered up as “Indian culture”.

Often, this only results in the amplification of the patron’s “taste” and whimsy, dressed up in the perpetual PR-speak of suitably sonorous press releases, rather than in a curatorially grounded appreciation of artistic practices, autonomy, or aesthetic choices. The building of large eponymous “museums” or “cultural centres”, featuring a founder’s initials, without well-thought-out curatorial or acquisition policies, or a distinct programming profile that is not simply a mishmash of whatever is available, does not do the art and culture scene a favour.

In order to have long-term relevance, private cultural institutions and museums that make a claim to contemporaneity have to adopt a generative stance—committed to supporting and nurturing the new, the untested, the experimental, the fragile. Museums need not only be seen as sites of validation and affirmation, they can also incubate, they can be places where risks are taken with ideas and forms. So far, the cultural institutional infrastructure that has arisen in the wake of private philanthropy in the arts has only played a validating function. It has left the question of what tomorrow’s culture might be in a state of studied neglect.

Structural hostility

While a few foundations, not-for-profit art spaces, and artist-run initiatives struggle to sustain themselves and their independence in major metropolises, they remain handicapped by the provisions of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), whose letter and spirit runs counter to the deeply global (almost planetary) warp and weft of contemporary culture. In the absence of forward-thinking local philanthropy, or enlightened municipal or provincial support, artistic initiatives in India find themselves disabled by the structural hostility towards partnerships and initiatives that cross borders. This framework is written into the regulatory language put in place by instruments such as the FCRA, and it effectively constrains the effectiveness of independent artistic and cultural initiatives.

Besides such constraints, there is the ever-present possibility of censorious threats that come not just from the state per se but also from non-state actors who have taken upon themselves the role of cultural vigilantes, emboldened by the narrow and sectarian agendas set in motion by those in power. Such entities, which first tasted blood during the decade-long legal tribulations that the eminent painter M.F. Husain had to go through because of suits filed by hardcore Hindutva enthusiasts, have acted of late against filmmakers, writers, cartoonists, stand-up comics, and performers. They have threatened to disrupt exhibitions, film-screening venues, and festivals, leading to these events being cancelled. Recently, film festivals that planned to show movies made on the current situation in Palestine or on contentious issues in India have faced a combination of official and unofficial restrictions, which led to cancelled screenings and unwarranted changes in programming.

While all of this may suggest a bleak scenario for contemporary art and culture, it does not fully describe the state of play, which is actually far more lively than would be expected, given the circumstances. Despite all that is negative, biennales and festivals—far from Delhi and Mumbai—in Kochi, Goa, and most recently in Kolkata and Santiniketan, despite all their logistical handicaps, have managed to create islands of animated liveliness and thoughtful creativity. Foundations, archival initiatives, and artist-run spaces, sometimes with the small but significant support of hybrid local-global entities like the Goethe-Institut or Pro Helvetia, still manage to sustain residencies, workshops, pedagogical platforms, publication programmes, symposia, and a varied exhibition calendar.

Most importantly, there is an emerging spirit of can-do-ness among a new generation of artists and practitioners—often from non-elite, non-metropolitan, and non–art school backgrounds, with a significant presence of women artists, as well as those who identify as queer or non-binary, and who come from Dalit, avarna, indigenous, and minoritarian communities—that is totally changing the landscape of contemporary cultural production. The people who inhabit and shape this milieu are agnostic when it comes to institutional presence. They do not shy away from occupying space within institutional contexts but do not waste their time lamenting the weakness or indifference of institutions when that becomes evident. Instead of complaining, they build and sustain their own spaces and networks of practice. In the past five years, we have seen a mushrooming of kitchen-sink discussions, bedroom residencies, studio-shows, living room or terrace exhibitions, and seminars in stairwells—apart from “unannounced” performances in parks and interstitial public/semi-public spaces, and an active culture of DIY publications and webzines.

A return to status quo ante?

What this demonstrates is a gradual waking up to the fact that the lifeline of cultural well-being needs to find its own ecology of flourishing—which need not be subservient to or anxiously genuflecting towards either the state, the market, or large private entities. In any society, the health of culture depends on the willingness of practitioners to set their own terms for their existence and activity. The moment of realisation of the necessity of this mentality to emerge seems to have arrived. This also sets in motion a range of future possibilities. The current restrictive climate that governs cultural life is not eternal. It is bound to crumble in the face of the multiplication of the steady subversion of cumulative and capillary modes of cultural practice.

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When the edifice of official or mainstream culture as it exists today falls, like the gigantic statues that have fallen or will fall, there need not be any going back to the status quo ante of the cultural banality that marked previous regimes either. Cultural practitioners and artists, as well as critics and publics of today and tomorrow, can presume the possibility of entirely new beginnings. For this to happen, all these actors, artists, critics, and publics will need to be more ambitious, at least in their imaginations and desires. Statues will fall. And a hundred thousand flowers may blossom on the day it rains in the desert.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta is an artist and curator with the Raqs Media Collective.