Self-taught artist Chittaprosad is best known for his powerful images of the Bengal Famine and scathingly critical caricatures and cartoons. This work stands out visually, with folk touches to his portrayal of the torch-bearers. He uses the imagery of Raavan-dahan during Diwali, the practice of burning effigies of the demon God Raavan in commemoration of his defeat in the hands of Rama, to portray a scene of anti-colonial struggle. The Englishman with the Union Jack top-hat stands in for the demon God as dhoti and kurta clad men bear the portraits of nationalist leaders on their shoulders. The tri-colour is placed almost as a crown atop Rajendra Prasad, Gandhi, Maulana Azad, and possibly M. N. Roy.

Sudhir Khastgir was an artist born in erstwhile undivided Bengal. Although he trained under famous proponent of Swadeshi, artist Nandalal Bose, in Santiniketan, Khastgir did not follow in the same visual style as his Santiniketan teachers and peers and forged his own unique style. Khastgir did a number of watercolour paintings in 1946 that capture the spirit of Satyagraha that permeated the nation during the late stages of the Indian freedom movement and pay homage to a philosophy of resistance that has and continues to inspire struggles against injustice, inequality, and oppression across the world.

This confident portrayal of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar donning a power suit brings to mind the formidable achievements of this public intellectual in different fields: politics, law, social reform and economics. Popularly known as ‘Baba Saheb’, Dr. Ambedkar is remembered as a Dalit icon, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, and the first Minister of Law and Justice of independent India. He dreamt of a democratic nation in which all citizens were equal, and ‘depressed classes’ had fair political representation. He tirelessly worked for it too, most significantly through anti-caste campaigns like the Mahad or Water Satyagraha of 1927 to allow Dalits to use water from public tanks, through his contribution to the Constituent Assembly debates and by championing the progressive legal reforms like the Hindu Code Bill. This portrait was made by V.B. Pathare—an artist trained in the techniques of European realism and well-known for his portraits of national leaders like Jyotiba Phule and Indira Gandhi—in the heyday of the Dalit Panthers’ movement in Maharashtra.

Chittaprosad’s bold lines, thick brushstrokes and the compact treatment of pictorial space in this striking work effectively conveys the charged atmosphere of what seems to be a Kisan Sabha meeting at Panjra, Maharashtra. The recognisable CPI sickle and hammer on the flag hanging from the bamboo structure, the intense expressions on the faces huddled together and heightened by the interplay of light and shadow allude to the 1946-47 Left-led organisation of sharecroppers, landless labourers and tribal communities, towards more militant forms of action in several regions of Bengal, parts of Kerala, and Telengana. While, as an artist-cadre for CPI, Chittaprosad was touring parts of Maharashtra to cover many such meetings and gatherings, most famously the convention at Bezwada, his younger contemporary Somnath Hore documented the revolutionary landscape of districts of undivided Bengal during the mass mobilisation of Tebhaga Andolan.

Satish Sinha’s watercolour aptly captures the miasma of impoverished squalor in which displaced families were languishing while jostling for space in congested Government-sponsored camps and railway platforms at the Sealdah station. In the face of escalating communal violence and intense rioting in Calcutta, Noakhali and Tippera throughout 1946, various parts of the city experienced a huge influx of refugees (mostly Bengali Hindus) from East Bengal. The August riots in Calcutta had snowballed into other riots and brutal attacks on minority populations in different parts of the country like in Bihar, United Provinces and Punjab, making the partition of India an inevitability. Even before the declaration of the Radcliffe line, thousands of displaced people from both Hindu and Muslim communities were caught in transit trying to save themselves from falling prey to mindless violence. The sense of disquietude expressed in Sinha’s 1946 work augurs the complete disruption of the regional economy, acute food shortage, and unemployment that would be brought about by partition and continuing influx of refugees well into the 1950’s.

Gopal Ghose’s abstract expressionistic rendering of this complex image of trauma and violence that he witnessed around him sums up the apocalyptic tenor of the time. Ghose worked on this painting in1946, the year of the massive 4-day Hindu-Muslim riots that overtook Calcutta in response to Jinnah’s call for ‘direct action’ on 16th August 1946. The ‘Great Calcutta Killings of 1946’ is an instance of highly organised communal violence linked to institutional politics that had claimed more than four thousand lives and rendered close to one-hundred thousand people homeless. During the great famine of 1943 Ghose, along with artists like Zainul Abedin, had filled two sketchbooks recording his observations of the sufferings and despair of the starving masses. In this later work, the battered musical instrument seen through a haze of furious flames and smoke telegraphs a sense of cultural disharmony that led to one of the worst communal riots in modern memory.

The Writers’ Building, originally designed to house clerks of the East India Company, and the square in front of it have been a stage for crucial events of our history for nearly 250 years. At the peak of revolutionary activity in Bengal, three young members of the Bengal Volunteers group, Benoy, Badal and Dinesh assassinated the Inspector General of Prisons N.S. Simpson in this area to protest the brutal torture of political prisoners by the colonial state. Today the square (formerly called Tank Square and then Dalhousie Square) has been renamed as BBD Bagh, in their honour. Examining the layered history of this site further reveals the existence of a monument in the square, dedicated by the British to the victims of the infamous ‘Black Hole tragedy’. Through the usage of bright heady colours in this work from the late 1990’s, Prokash Karmakar envisions a dynamic role for the Writers’ building as the seat of state power in the fractured political landscape of post-partition Bengal.

This work by Chittaprosad, dated May 1947, comments on the political situation during the transfer of power: as the steaming cauldron is carried away by smirking men in uniform, five ladle-in-hand ‘cooks’ proudly strike poses claiming credit for the ‘broth’ they have knowingly spoiled. These five co-conspirators can be identified as Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee, members of the 1946 Cabinet Mission Sir Stafford Cripps and A.V. Alexander, Secretary of State Lord Listowel, Viceroy Mounbatten’s chief of staff Lord H.L. Ismay. A visual spin-off of a well-known English phrase, this incisive political commentary exemplifies Chittaprosad’s signature satirical mode of caricature reserved for oppressors like these politicians who were too busy saving their political careers to care about the on-ground reality of the nation they were attempting to ‘liberate’.

The vibrant palette of this poster, which is part of a series of offset prints made in 1960, effectively echoes the celebratory portrayal of M.K. Gandhi as a nationalist icon championing the philosophy of non-violence and a charismatic organiser of masses. The poster caption reads, ‘When World War II began and India was forcibly dragged into it, India’s soul rebelled. And Gandhiji began his final struggle, the ‘Quit India’ movement, in 1942.’ Rising political unrest in the years leading up to independence prompted a spate of popular outbursts and revolutionary activities in various pockets across the country in the teeth of intense state repression. In the words of historian Sumit Sarkar, “The summer of 1942 found Gandhi in a strange and uniquely militant mood. Leave India to God or to anarchy, he repeatedly urged the British”—a mood reflected in the accusatory posture of the man leading the group of protestors in the direction of a stock figure placed at Gandhi’s feet and representing the ruling class.