The Annual Report 2018-2019 is here! Browse for exciting highlights

Dear Readers,

Recently I was immersed in a difficult conversation with a friend who is also a mother. We were discussing 'Why the Arts?' for her daughters. And suddenly she blurted out, in an angry, exasperated manner, 'Do you think these men who are lynching Muslims across the country have never heard a song that touched their hearts? Or read a story about love? Or watched a film that made them feel empathy for another? What's the use, then, of the arts, if it cannot transform the vilest emotions inside of us?'

'What's the use of the arts, if it cannot transform us?' This is a question that has haunted me for a long time. Can we remove hatred, fear and anger from our hearts towards those we consider the 'other' if we immerse ourselves in the arts? Can we become more open, more aware, more connected, more human if we allow the arts to impact our lives? Or are these questions naive and irrelevant because there are far more powerful forces working to create what we are trying to erase or escape? Is it then unfair to expect the arts to undo the damages that have been done through centuries of oppression, discrimination and power-play?

These, and other such questions, about the value of the arts get asked of us at the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) every day. Whenever we seek funds, partnerships or support, the question comes up as to whether the arts really contribute to the making of a 'better, more just and equitable world.' I don't have definite and conclusive answers for this. In fact, having worked closely with artists and the arts over decades, I find it rather limiting to have doubt-free answers to life's questions. But what I do have is instinct, experience and trust.

Last year the Curator of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, Anita Dube invoked 'Possibilities of a Non-Alienated Life', where 'politics of friendships' was possible; and the works of artists from across the world were testament to this idea. Fakir Lalon Shah sings of how ridiculous it is to discriminate based on caste and religion when all humans share the fates of birth and death. Sudhir Patwardhan paints the huddled bodies of humans in the cityscape of Mumbai who jostle for space and yet live interdependently with grace and empathy. Alok Dhanwa's poem eloquently celebrates girls who run away to escape the prisons that are their homes. Works of artists through the ages have raised questions, and condemned acts of inhumanity and oppression. So much of the arts have been about empathy and aspirations to collectively live in harmony.

But for every song of love that is sung, there is also a story of hate that is told. For every poem for peace in a rally, there are images propagated that provoke wars. The arts is a medium, a language, and like any language it has the power to build or break—at will. This 'will' is crucial to what it manifests as, what impact it has on our lives. This 'will' is the intention of the creator or the artist. It defines what kind of art it is—one that attempts to connect and inspire or divide and destroy. Often this will is also the politics of the artist, culminating in the question: what is the raison d'etre of art? Albert Einstein once said that character, not intellect, makes a great scientist. Perhaps he was alluding to the morally neutral nature of science, which becomes good or evil depending on the will that harnesses its potential. That comment came from a scientist whose act of spurring on the atomic bomb cast a dark shadow over his entire life's work.

If the arts is like a language then we have to view it, like language, as a social practice. It does not originate in some genius's whimsical dream but is constructed and mediated through thinking, listening, seeing, experiencing and living in the world. It is not a legacy, nor is it free from the shadows of its past. It is learnt and unlearnt, negotiated and challenged. Like language it morphs; its relevance to contemporary lives is always in question.

This critical practice of the arts is what I trust to impact our lives in ways by which we can hope to imagine collective futures of peaceful co-existence. It asks difficult questions of our pasts. It provokes us to shatter the silences of generations congealing in our throats. It makes us uncomfortable in our familiar zones, and pushes us to wear the shoes of other people. It celebrates desire and dissent and dares us to fold, unfold and refold the stories of our lives. It acts as a mirror and microscope, telescope and prism, depending on where one places it. It acts also as a bungee rope from which one takes off and leaps into the unknown. It unblinds us to what we have not learnt to see—the absences in the room. It celebrates multiplicities of truths and enables us to experience 'otherness'. More than anything else it helps us listen—to our deepest selves and to others. Listen to the joys and anguish, the courage and helplessness—and in between, the silences.

This is what we attempt to support at the Foundation—journeys of artists and scholars with questions and doubts, challenges and provocations. These are stories for whose telling we seek support. And once they are ready to be told we organise events across the country to share them with the larger public. Those are the reasons for which we exist.

So the next time I speak to my friend, I would like to have a list of books, songs, and films that she can introduce to her daughters. Those works could perhaps narrate stories of people different from us in the way they eat, live, work and play; they could be tales of magic and adventure of girls who go off to faraway lands, tales that might introduce them to the privileges of caste and class. I hope they will help the children learn about the world and our relationship with it in fascinating, human and critical ways. Because that's the way I have always experienced the arts.

I hope you find some of those stories in here as you read of the work we supported in the past year. And I like to imagine that those narratives would remind you of similar stories in your life. Because that's also the way the arts work—building resonances between us. Please do share with us what you think. As always, your words enrich our quest.

Arundhati Ghosh
Executive Director

Click here to read the full Annual Report for the year 2018 - 2019.