Adharma (Unrighteousness)

J. Sultan Ali called himself ‘an urban artist drawn continuously to the spontaneity of folk and tribal art’. In his oeuvre, folk forms, mythological stories, figures, symbols, and script, came together in a uniquely modernist vocabulary, giving us thought-provoking works such as Adharma (Unrighteousness). The principles of Gautam Buddha—who preached Dhamma (Dharma, or righteousness)—are, here, attacked by angry, anthropomorphic beings, the chief of whom, a parrot, catches attention. The angry birds—the perpetrators of unrighteousness—allude to the priests of the existing dominant religion who were angry with the Buddha for defying their tenets.