Setting up Museums in India

 Setting up Museums in India 

Jawhar Sircar

Art East Vol II, no 1-2, December 2017

      Museums began in the 18th century as a very European manner of displaying the pomp and glory of kings and emperors, as an extension of the same extravagance with which they built their grand palaces and luxuriant gardens. They were meant to overawe the visitor rather than to welcome him. The sheer wealth of the great empires like the Austro Hungarian, the Ottoman, the French or even the British spurred the need to display the artefacts and antiquities that the empires had collected, acquired or simply looted from other parts of the world. One of the best such examples is the case of the Amaravati sculptures and architecture that were picked up by the British from Andhra Pradesh in the nineteenth century and simply taken way from India. They constitute the finest specimens of art work of Peninsular India and represent the earliest excellence of Indian Buddhist art. The relief carvings contain not only the story of the life of the Buddha and the Bodhisatvas from the Jataka tales that are so lifelike even after two millennia of devastation by man and nature, mainly man. It is difficult to believe how such a spectacular edifice like the stupa that was a hundred feet high was just lost sight of and left to collapse amidst ruins, with little public memory of its greatness. But what is more difficult to tolerate is the utter callousness with which local Indian contractors in the nineteenth century actually pulverised the historic architectural pieces, the carved limestone railings and priceless sculptural work to make lime mortar for use as cement.

             This explains why these irreplaceable creations of the best of artists require protection and their most appropriate storehouses are museums. In a way, therefore, the limestone carvings that were taken away by the British to their museum in London, with no consent from the conquered Indian people, actually served a better purpose than those that were left back at the site to be destroyed so mercilessly in India. After all, countless people of the western world had the facility to witness and appreciate the excellence of Indian art better in London for centuries. Incidentally, those portions of the art work of Amaravati that were taken away to the Indian Museum in Kolkata received a lot of care and safety, which simply reinforces my statement that we need museums to showcase our proud history. It is a different matter whether we do so as part of an imperial narrative or as a national emporium that instils pride and strengthens the narrative of the nation state. After all, nations also require institutions to showcase their past achievements and their progress or historical development, and every nation has therefore at least one National Museum. And, frankly speaking, the western nations that took away entire edifices of architectural masterpieces from Asia and Africa may have indulged in acts of colonial plunder, they cared better for their booty and displayed them far better and effectively that the countries that lost them.

             It would also not be fully correct to say that museums were only showcases of imperial glory and might, though the support that they received from imperial governments were mainly to reinforce this theme. They grew during the age of ‘Enlightenment’ when Europe discovered the big world that lay beyond its confines. Shipping, transport, industry and better organisation of resources meant adventure and explorations, emanating from the excitement of knowledge: the insatiable hunger to know more of exotic lands and people, far away. While there is no doubt that a large degree of racial superiority lay below this theme, the fact is that the yearning for knowledge was equally strong. In 1784, when the Asiatic Society was set up in Kolkata by concerned British citizens, it was in pursuance of their quest for knowledge. But it was specifically that knowledge that would help them understand and rule the newly acquired territories in India. The numerous coins, terracotta, tablets, textiles and pieces of architecture and sculpture that the Society collected needed to be housed properly and the British government provided a large plot on Chowringhee in the early years of the 19th century. The laborious tasks of cataloguing and exhibiting were then tasked up, not only for these historical objects but for the excellent specimens of natural history and Indian geology.

     This led to the establishment of the Indian Museum in 1814 which, incidentally, occupied the sprawling backyard of the Asiatic Society that is on Park Street. We had no Kyd Street running in between in those days and none of those later buildings that presently separate the rear compound of the Society from the Museum existed. It was the first such museum in Asia and, truly speaking, one of earliest attempts in the world to organise collections for the purpose of serious study and knowledge, rather than for dazzling visitors. The museum was guided by a Dutch botanist Nathaniel Wallich, which explains why it has as much of life science collection as it has of antiquities. It was not a public place and was open initially only to British citizens and their scholarly ‘native’ assistants and collaborators. The grand building that the museum occupies came up much later and was designed by Walter Granville in 1875. As the British spread and prospered all over Indian subcontinent and in the neighbouring countries, so did the collections of the Indian Museum. Portions of monuments were ripped apart and transported to Kolkata, which was both good and bad. The east gate, the carved railings, sculptures and priceless relief works of the Bharhut stupa of true 2nd-3rd century BC were uprooted by Cunningham and reassembled in the Indian Museum in Kolkata which served as the best art history classroom of India. Several generations of scholars have been educated in its nuances that would never have been possible if every one had to trudge to Satna in central India, from where these came. At the same time, it deprived the site of its best specimens. This is a trade off that all museums have to take to reach the best antiquities available to the visitors, many of who may not even appreciate their value.

          In the nineteenth century, other museums also came up in India. In Mumbai, the Victoria and Albert Museum was established in 1855. After Independence, it was renamed as the Bhanu Daji Lad Museum and a few years ago, it was throughly renovated. From 1905, efforts were undertaken to establish a museum in the posh Fort area of Mumbai and this ultimately led to setting up of the famous Prince of Wales Museum, that has been renamed as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sanghrahalay. It is certainly the most updated and modernised museum in India and is run in the best professional manner possible in India. This has been possible because its administration is truly autonomous, unlike the government run museums of India. It does not matter much whether the funder and controller of such museums are state governments or the central, because they are hardly vibrant or attractive. Since the ministries and departments are accountable to the legislature, the press and to the CAG, it is ultimately the bureaucrats who run these museums. In many cases, they understand very little of how museums are to be run but so great is their power and so deep are the rivalries among the few professionals available in the governmental museums, that everyone plays up to the bureaucratic overlords. This is further compounded by the typical unimaginative manner in which all government organisations function which results in very slow modernisation of galleries and the dullness of appearance and displays.

             The south did not lag behind and the Madras Museum came up in Egmore of Chennai (formerly known as Madras) as early as in 1851. It is, therefore, the second oldest governmental museum in India after the Indian Museum and it has a rich collection of archeological finds and coins, especially of the Roman period. Its formidable Indo-Saracenic building houses a very impressive art gallery that has rare collections of Ravi Varma paintings, among other stars artists. Among the princely states, Travancore was the first to set up a museum in Thiruvanthapuram in 1855, which was torn down in 1874 and rebuilt in 1880 as the Napier Museum, in honour of the Governor of Madras Presidency. The best collection of Raja Ravi Varma paintings are available in its Sri Chitra Art Gallery, while the main museum has a fantastic collection of artefacts and Tanjore art. The Government Museum was set up in Bengaluru in 1865 and can claim to be the oldest continuing museum of the south. Two British officers, Surgeon Balfour and Bowring, the Chief Commissioner of Mysore, played a critical role in its establishment. It has an excellent archeological collection, more so because some of the most grand architectural and sculptural works in India like those of the Vijayanagar Empire have been found in the Sate. It also houses the oldest inscription in the Kannada language which is dated to around 450 AD.

             In 1874, FS Growse, the Collector or district officer of the district of Mathura set up a museum that became very important because of its ancient sculptures that go back to the 3rd century BC from the famous Mathura school of art. It is the proud owner of antiquities from some of the most significant periods of Indian history like the Kushan and Gupta eras. The enterprising director general off archaeology, Alexander Cunninghm made significant contribution to it and this ‘state government’ museum played as critical a role in establishing the early history of India as the national museums did. Along with other state museums like Patna, Lucknow, Chandigarh and Bhopal, they have also played an important part in familiarising several generations of Indians about the rich culture and history of their country.

            The Victoria Memorial of Kolkata has an interesting history. When Queen Victoria died in 1901, Lord Curzon was the Viceroy and he was greatly interested in emphasising the glory of the British Empire that was then at its height. He proposed: “Let us have a building, stately, spacious, monumental and grand, to which every newcomer in Calcutta will turn, to which all the resident population, European and Native, will flock, where all classes will learn the lessons of history, and see revived before their eyes the marvels of the past”. The imperial purpose of setting up museums could not find better expression and in 1906 the Prince of Wales, later King George V, laid the foundation stone. It took fifteen long years to be completed even after generous donations were given by the pro-British ‘native’ rulers of India. Its Indo-Saracenic architecture borrowed heavily from European classical styles and while the parts are rather mixed up, the whole gives a rather stately appearance. The problem, however lies in the space for galleries which is rather restricted as it is more of a magnificent building than an educational museum.   

       Among the major traditional museums of India are the Baroda in present day Vadodara and the Salar Jung in Hyderabad. Maharaja Sayaji Rao of the ruling Gaekwad family founded the Vadodara museum which was completed in 1894 and opened to the public. The art gallery was completed in 1914, but did not open until 1921 because of the problems of shipping the collection from Europe during the First World War. It accommodates valuable objects of art, jewellery, sculpture and archaeology but its skeleton of a massive blue whale and its Egyptian mummy are crowd pullers. Salar Jung II, the former Prime Minister of the Nizam of Hyderabad in the third and fourth decades of the 20th century, is  reputed to have the largest one-man collection of antiques in the world. He had passionately collected artefacts of different countries and outstanding specimens of decorative arts and after his death, his fabulous collection was taken over by the central government as a large part of it was being pilfered. They were moved to a more spacious building and many additions were also made.

        After this, we come to the last but perhaps the most important museum in India, the National Museum in New Delhi. It began operating in August 1949 from the Viceroy’s palace that was renamed as Rashtrapati Bhavan after Independence. Its roots go back further as the capital of India was moved from Kolkata to Delhi in 1911 and by 1931 the new swank buildings of New Delhi that had been designed by Lutyens and Baker were full of life. But there was no grand museum in this imperial capital to celebrate the new grand The Indian Museum had stayed back in Kolkata with all the grand objects that the Empire had collected but from the second decade of the 20th century, a lot more had been collected. For instance, India received a part the famous Aurel Stein collection of Central Asian manuscripts, art objects and even frescoes that had been taken away from the walls of caves of China’s Xinjiang. Then, in 1947-48, the Royal Academy organised a magnificent exhibition of Indian art and artefacts in London that was later displayed at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi, amidst a lot of fanfare. This triggered the idea of setting a real ‘national museum’ in the national capital that had permanent galleries to showcase the new nation’s pride. In 1955, Prime Minister Nehru laid the foundation stone and the building was inaugurated in December 1960.  It has a very large collection of over 200,000 objects and though it's space is constricted because the Archeological Survey blocked its expansion for several decades, its display is the best among the Central museums. After all, the capital’s museum is always under watch and pressure.

           The Central government set up the Allahabad Museum in 1931 and its rock art gallery has India’s best collection of prehistoric paintings. It has sculptures and art, like a wonder collection of Roerich paintings. In addition, it has artefacts connected to India’s freedom movement. After Independence, every state government engaged itself in building up the story of its people who had emerged, in almost all cases, as new linguistic entities. In addition, we have the magnificent National Gallery of Modern Art, the National Railway Museum and dozens of other specialised museums on different subjects. In fact, the term museum that was once synonymous with artefacts, antiquities and archaeological finds can now signify any collection under the sun.

          Having traversed the history of museums in India, we must admit that they have been splendid platforms for instilling not only a knowledge of our past, but also inculcating a pride in the achievements of our forefathers. Neither the empires of the Mauryas, the Gupta, the Mughals and Vijayanagar nor the kingdoms of the Cholas, Cheras or Pragyotishpur could have foreseen that their conquests and culture would become the building blocks of the world’s second biggest nation.They were ruling or subjugating diverse many of who were opposed to their views, but in course of time they were actually co-opting varied cultures into a federal equilibrium. The evidence of their artistic achievements display an underlying unity not only in the numerous depictions of deities and the people, from bhikshus to yakshas and there is much more to learn than simply features, dresses or styles. It is underlying unity of world views that are as apparent in later ages as well, when we examine the profusion of miniatures, whether they be Mughal or Pahari, Rajasthani or Dekkani. Thus, as one strolls through the galleries of our museums, we may observe the innate harmony that emphasis India’s basic emotional and aesthetic unity which outshines the difference and diversity of its people and no institution brings this out better than museums.

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It’s a civilisational conflict, not a border issue

It’s a civilisational conflict, not a border issue

Jawhar Sircar

(8^th July,2020, The New Indian Express)

In these troubled times, when the soldiers of the two largest nations of the world fight and kill each other so viciously, let us try to trace the historical roots of such antagonism. If both nations hark back to a common narrative about Buddhism being a gift from India and both respect the pious Chinese monks who came here on pilgrimage, where does such pent up anger come from? We need to understand first that India and China are not just two nation states and that they are really two of the world’s oldest and largest civilisations. This means they are steered by cultural values that go deep into their history. The current imbroglio indicates that somewhere down the line, their civilisational approaches diverged rather sharply.

Once we dig and mine through history and sift relevant facts, we are able to put our finger on the exact period when their paths forked widely and rather irretrievably. It is strange that history books never point to those remarkable decades between 260 and 230 BCE when the root programmes of the two subcontinents were decided upon, and set in stone for ever. We find that the regimes of India’s great emperor Ashoka (269 to 232 BCE) and China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang (246 to 210 BCE) shared some a few decades in common. They were located far away from each other and we need to note how completely different their approaches were: to governance, nationhood, the ideals of the state and the role of the ruler and the people.

In his initial years, Ashoka was reportedly aggressive, if we go by the Lankan Buddhist chronicles, but some time after the bloody Battle of Kalinga (circa 260 BC), he became a complete pacifist. On the other hand, Qin (pronounced as ‘Chin’) had emerged as the first great unifier of the Chinese people through a series of bloodbaths and he kept his sword drenched in blood all through. He lent his name to the unified ‘nation’ and cut through local variations to develop a common written language for the entire Chinese people.

At this point, the initial divergences become clear between the homogeneity imposed by China’s emperor and the heterogeneity encouraged by India’s ruler. Ashoka issued well over 30 edicts and inscriptions on rocks and pillars in far-flung corners of his empire and used different languages like Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic. Their scripts ranged from different variants of Brahmi to Kharoshthi and others. Not only was the language and the messaging modified to suit local cultural nuances and sentiments, even the body was edited to factor in indigenous sentiments. For instance, his thirteenth rock edict expressing remorse for the slaughter at Kalinga was identical in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it was suitably modified at the sites in Odisha.

Ancient China had no room for local diversity and insists, more so now, that it has to be the same language and script throughout its territory and wonders how India can be one nation with 22 major languages, dozens of other languages and over 600 dialects. Not only was coinage made common in China some 23 centuries ago but even the length of the axle of carts and carriages had to be absolutely uniform. Deviations were punished severely and dissenters were executed, and this spirit is alive even now. Contrast this to the Dhamma that Ashoka propagated as “mercy, charity, truthfulness, purity, gentleness, and virtue” in his Major Pillar Edict No. 7.

When Ashoka prohibited the slaughter of animals as seen in his Major Rock Edicts numbers I and II, he reflected in a way the collective consciousness of the people of this country. It is amazing to note that even the vast majority of non-vegetarians here, whether Hindu or otherwise, eat the flesh of just a handful of animals out of the 8.7 million species, most unlike other countries of the world. The difference is more pronounced in China and according to the Humane Society International, more than one crore dogs and some 40 lakh cats are eaten there every year.

The ‘wet market’ of Wuhan came into the limelight when Covid-19 appeared in that city and among the live animals slashed and cut with knives before customers were bats, raccoons, civets, pangolins, boars, rats, snakes, frogs and dozens of others. The 2009 volume of Entomological Research lists 187 species of edible insects that many Chinese eat and it is common to see roadside vendors roasting and selling insects as delicacies. These include cockroaches (there are farms to breed them), bees, earthworms, locusts, scorpions, dung beetles, crickets, big flies, mantis, grasshoppers and others.

The point is that the basic regard for life that is cherished even by non-vegetarians in India is alien to most Chinese. While India has no record of ever attacking any foreign country, China revels in its history of aggression. We may not have followed all desirable ideals but we feel guilty and know what we should have done. We are schooled to stop at some point—and our diet is just an example. But we confront a civilisation that considers restraint as weakness. The fact is, however, that we have to live with the other culture so we must learn to understand its worldview and adjust our sights and strategies accordingly.

(Please Click Here to read thearticle on The New Indian Express Website)

Mystic Poets : Rumi and Tagore

Mystic Poets  : Rumi and Tagore

Jawhar Sircar

January 15, 2018 of ‘Happenings’ Special Issue on  Tagore

        In this world of deafening din and amidst the beastly brutality that is perpetrated every day every where in the name of religion, what keeps the faithful going are the soft gongs of the bell of love. We strain to hear its gentle peal above the depressing cacophony for it reassures us not to lose heart for humanity is but one. For centuries, poets, prophets and singers have revelled in the songs of mystics who have grasped, in flashes that come and go, the essence of our existence that  lies essentially in its oneness with the Creator. Thus, the six centuries and half that separate two savants from two distant lands disappear, as do the rigours and dictates of their different religions, once they bask under the heavenly ray of mystic realisation. The mystic poets and scholars we refer to are Jalal-ad-din Muhammed Rumi of Persia and Turkey and Rabindranath Tagore of Bengal and India. Rumi was born in 1207 and Tagore in 1861 and even though they never sat face to face, they lit the same lamp of eternal truth: of love, peace and hope. Rumi wrote primarily in Persian and Tagore in Bengali. At times, Rumi used Turkish, Arabic and Greek while Tagore spoke and wrote a lot in English. Rumi’s  Masnavi (Mathnawi) is regarded as a masterpiece in Persian, while Tagore’s Gitanjali was the first work from the wide world of the darker majority that lies beyond Europe to be accorded the Nobel Prize. Both have been translated into innumerable languages and are widely read today all over. Their poetry has influenced not only in their own language but the literature of so many other countries as well.

              But where we are concerned, it is not their mastery over the language that draws us but their sheer beauty of conception and the utter fluidity of expression that mesmerises us, long after both have left the world. They stress on the essential unity of mankind and of man with the divine. As Alice Beatrice Chesca puts it so wonderfully: “their lyrics display in their thought a perfect world belonging to a unique spirituality, full of love, God, passion, music, colour and metaphor”.^[1] One comparison will explain how both expressed their undiluted wonder at the handiwork of the Master and reposed their complete faith and unqualified subservience to Him. In his Gitanjali (Tumi Kemon Korey Gana Koro He Guni, Tagore breaks into raptures: 

       “I know not how thou singest, my master!

        I ever listen in silent amazement.

        The light of thy music illumines the world.

        The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky.

        The holy stream of thy music breaks through

         All stony obstacles and rushes on.

         My heart longs to join in thy song,

         But vainly struggles for a voice.

         I would speak, but speech breaks not into song,

         And I cry out baffled.

         Ah, thou hast made my heart captive

         In the endless meshes of thy music, my master!”^[2]

Rumi expresses his amazement in a similar vein when he exclaims: 

       “You are the master alchemist.

         You light the fire of love

         On earth and in the sky,

         In the heart and soul

         Of every being

         Through your love

         Existence and nonexistence merge.

         All opposites unite.

         All that is profane, becomes sacred again”^[3]

In yet another poem, Music Master, Rumi’s expressions^[4] are even more closer to Tagore’s:

        “We rarely hear the inward music

          But we are dancing to it, nevertheless

          Directed by the one who teaches us

          The pure joy of the sun,

          Our Music Master”^[5]

   

        We can literally quote hundreds of verses and poems where Rumi and Tagore are one and inseparable. But then, on closer examination of their lives we see how different were their backgrounds. Jalal-ad-din Rumi was from a deeply religious background and like his father, he was also a Muslim scholar and teacher of Islamic studies. He is invariably referred to as a religious teacher: in Afghanistan, Rumi is known as Mawlānā, in Turkey as Mevlâna, and in Iran as Molavī. Tagore’s grandfather and father were from a family of feudal lords who were well known capitalist entrepreneurs as well. At the same time, they were also prominent leaders of the new ‘Protestant’ revolution, the Brahmo sect, that broke off from the prevailing religion of Hinduism and were often derided for their faith, ritual and lifestyles. His father was a pious other-worldly man and was, in fact, called Maharshi or the ‘great sage’ of the Brahmo faith. Tagore never wavered from its ideals; he imbibed its passion for discarding Hindu superstitions and rituals, but he rose far above his inheritance. He hardly ever referred to any deity in his works and that was rather difficult given the all-pervasive nature of Hindu polytheism, where every idiom, metaphor and virtue or vice was invariably associated with some god or goddess. In fact, his constantly abstract address of divinity could easily be substituted by the beloved. We must understand that while Rumi spoke to the dominant and, in most cases, the only religion all around him, Tagore belonged to a religious minority, a microscopic minority, whose primary audience consisted of idolatrous Hindus: who were his readers, listeners and audience. He was acutely conscious that his Bengali language belonged equally to the Muslims of the province, who were in a majority according to the colonial census statistics.

          Despite this unenviable situation, Rabindranath Tagore was never uneasy for his words flowed from his heart, rather than his pen. And his very soul was that of a mystic who saw no barrier among religions and a poet who believed passionately in love for God and Man as the distilled essence of all religions. Not a word of his, nor any phrase ever offended the sensibilities of either the Hindus or the Muslims of Bengal who were, unfortunately, quite adversarial at critical junctures of his life. In fact, in the 1950s, the Pakistani regime cracked down on the Bengali language patriots of East Pakistan (now, Bangladesh) for opposing the imposition of Urdu. Tagore was dragged in as the Bengali Muslims considered him to be the greatest exponent of the language for which they had laid down their lives.^[6]. Pakistan made several attempts to wean away the Muslim Bengalis of East Pakistan from Tagore by painting him to be a landed aristocrat (which he was); a religious Hindu (which was not true) and an exploiter who had no sympathy for the toiling Muslim masses: again untrue, as evidenced from Tagore’s life and works. The West Pakistani establishment rummaged through billion of words and expressions that Tagore had written so spontaneously in order to find some proof of being pro-Hindu or of some snobbery or bigotry but it failed altogether.^[7]

            Rumi, on the other hand, had no such circumstances to tackle but he had to contend against the deep rooted religiosity of Muslims that could be rather intolerant at times. He was a Sufi mystic who could transcend the mandate of orthodoxy and talk freely of wine, love and songs. But none could question his utter devotion as a Sunni Muslim as well, who was an expert in the scriptures. Rumi belonged to the class of Islamic philosophers that includes Ibn Arabi the Andulasian theologian and Mulla Sandra of Iran who are regarded as the greatest philosophers of Islam and Sufism. These transcendental philosophers are often studied together in traditional schools Islamic mysticism, philosophy and theosophy throughout the Muslim world. Rumi, whose chief message is the unity of being, imbibed the theosophy or transcendental philosophy with his heart and soul. It is in this context that we appreciate Rumi as a thirteenth-century Muslim scholar who took Islam seriously and declared openly that:

         “I am the servant of the Qur'an as long as I have life.
          I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen one.
          If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings,
          I am quit of him and outraged by these words.”

     Rumi asserts what he sincerely believed in: "The Light of Muhammad has become a thousand branches (of knowledge), a thousand, so that both this world and the next have been seized from end to end. If Muhammad rips the veil open from a single such branch, thousands of monks and priests will tear the string of false belief from around their waists.”^[8] We need to appreciate the state of knowledge in the thirteenth century when Islam appeared as a great tsunami of energy that had gripped the known world that was still rife with brutality and primitively cruelty. The Western world was caught in negative orthodoxy of the medieval ‘Dark Ages’ and religious reform movements were centuries away: as were the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Tagore lived six and a half centuries later when Science had come to dominate the world and was naturally less orthodox. In fact, as one who was from a reforming mission, he could not afford to be identified with any religion or religion per se. Other than this essential requirement was also the very philosophy that guided the poet laureate: universal brotherhood as a panacea to the rival and often bitter claims of rival religions in India and the world in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. 

     Orthodoxy notwithstanding, Rumi’s depth of spiritual vision extended beyond narrow sectarian concerns. His belief in the superiority of Islam does not instil any hatred for other religions, for he believed that "the Light of Muhammad does not abandon a Zoroastrian or Jew in the world. May the shade of his good fortune shine upon everyone! He brings all of those who are led astray into the Way out of the desert."^[9] As a true Sufi, he explains that:

       “On the seeker’s path, wise men and fools are one.
        In His love, brothers and strangers are one.
        Go on! Drink the wine of the Beloved!
        In that faith, Muslims and pagans are one”^[10]

        Tagore, on the other hand, was more open to the finest that different religious philosophies had to offer: the Upanishads, Vaishnavism, the Brahmo Samaj, the Bhagavad Gita, modern Western thought and literature, Christianity, and the liberal and humanism. Yet, both were eternally hungry in their quest to be one with the Creator of this wondrous universe and that is where their mystic love dominated their intellectual cravings. In Tagore’s words:

     “Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

      He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground

      And where the path-maker is breaking stones.

      He is with them

      In sun and in shower,

      And his garment is covered with dust.

      Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him

      The bonds of creation;

      He is bound with us for ever.

      Meet him and stand by him in toil

      And in sweat of thy brow.”^[11]

               Rumi had penned similar verses on how God lies amongst the downtrodden and not in opulence, but these lines explain how he had completely surrendered to the Almighty.

             “We sleep in God's unconsciousness,

               We wake in God's open hand.

               We weep God's rain,

               We laugh God's lightning.

                We are then

                in this complicated world-tangle,

                That is really the single straight

                 line down at the beginning of Allah!

                 Nothing. 

                 We are

                 emptiness.”^[12]

              We can go on for hours and days on how two great masters separated by thousands of miles and so many centuries of time could speak in a similar vein. This is just a small sample of how those who can cross the reality of physics for the underlying metaphysics that binds us all.

       

---

^[1]The Oriental Culture and its Eternal Fascination; Acta Universitatis Danubius, Romania, Vol 5, No. 1/2011, p 177.

^[2] geetabitan.com, from translation made by Tagore himself.

^[3] Quoted in Chesca’s article quoted above.

^[4] Mustafa Zaman Abbasi: Breeze of Tagore, Rumi and Lalon, p 165 in Anne Teresa Tymieniecka: Sharing Poetic Expressions: Beauty, Sublime, Mysticism in Islamic and Occidental Culture. Springer

^[5] The Essential Rumi. Music Master https://www.wattpad.com/415867572-the-essential-rumi-completed-music-master

^[6] Anisuzzaman: Claiming and Disclaiming a Cultural Icon: Tagore in East Pakistan and Bangladesh. University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol 77, no 4, Fall 2008, pp 1958-69.

^[7] Fakrul Alam: Tagore and National Identity Formation in Bangladesh, p 225 ff in Debashish Banerji: Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century: Theoretical Renewals. Springer India 2015.

^[8] Ibrahim Gamard, Rumi and Self Discovery, Dar al Masnavi

^[9] Ibrahim Gamard, Rumi and Islam, p. 163

^[10] Amin Banani and Anthony A. Lee: Rumi: 53 Secrets from the Tavern of Love, translation.  p. 3

^[11] Open Thine Eyes, Gitanjali

^[12] The Essential Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks et al. 1995. Castle Books, New Jersey.

Financial Inclusion Over The Decades

Financial Inclusion Over The Decades

Jawhar Sircar

Sanko, Bandhan Bank, January 2018

         

              I was in college when Indira Gandhi nationalised 14 private banks in 1969, and there was wild cheering. Even students like us who were not in the Economics department could understand that the avowed purpose of this dramatic measure was to ensure that the savings and other funds deposited by citizens and businesses in banks were utilised for the greater public good. A few years later, I joined the Indian Administrative Service or the IAS in 1975, after giving up a far more lucrative private sector job in a fit of youthful patriotism. Most of us were determined to serve the nation rather than some private capitalists and we were keen to do something for the poorest of Indians. In those days, the central government and some state governments had several schemes, projects and missions to attack poverty.  Socialism was at its height those days that these top-down schemes were meant to ensure that the poor were attended to. In the districts that we reported for duty, we had specific targets under the ‘Garibi Hatao’ (Remove Poverty) pledge and there was also a detailed ‘Twenty Point Programme’ to lift the masses out of poverty that Indira Gandhi had introduced. But, as soon as she was defeated in 1977, all priorities and labels changed.

           The next Janata Party coalition government also plunged into welfare for the masses in their own way and we we were then directed to put our heart and soul to ensure that the new Integrated Rural Development Project succeeded. We had practically to force the nationalised or Public Sector banks (PSBs) to advance credit to the poorer sections, that could hardly mortgage any property. The traditional Public Sector Banks were not mentally geared to reach out to those who had no or little collateral and branded them as “un-bankable”. The poorest had to be helped and they were identified by the district officers, often in consultation with peoples’ representatives and they were to receive a certain amount of non-repayable government subsidy and a larger matching component of bank loan. Many of these anti-poverty schemes were also taken up by Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) that were set up by the designated ‘lead banks’ under orders of the Central government. These RRBs functioned in almost all the districts and they were meant to introduce a definite “rural” bias in both picking up deposits and in advancing credit. This helped penetrate hitherto untouched areas of India and un-banked ares and the enthusiasm with which several sectoral officers worked among the masses was indeed commendable. As Sub Divisional Officers, then as Additional District Magistrates and, later, as District Magistrates, we were all involved in holding regular monitoring meetings with the RRBs and the larger PSBs to reach the lowest layers with genuine measures to lift them above the ‘poverty line’. Frankly, the PSBs continued to be very reluctant in advancing any loan to the poor who they did not consider credit-worthy at all. This mentality of the public sector banks was far too overwhelming in the RRBs as well, which made our progress difficult. And though some RRB chiefs and senior officials fought against this mindset, it was, only a matter of time that the early missionary zeal was replaced by bureaucratic complexities. I remember the utter discomfiture of the representatives of the banks who were severely criticised in every monitoring meeting in the districts and sub-divisions. In fact, they were sometimes pounced upon by the elected members of the legislative assembly or the panchayats for their reluctance to pay loans. We protected them to the extent possible, but we could also decipher at times the in-built reluctance or cynicism of the bankers in advancing loans to people who did not fit into their description of being credit-worthy.

     For several years, other multi-pronged attempts were made by government and the Reserve Bank to instil a sense of duty among bankers to reach the poorest strata to help them be more productive. At times, almost coercive measures were used by the political bosses. Union Banking Minister, Janardan Poojary, for instance, organised regular “Loan Melas” where bankers were made to part with funds almost under duress and these alienated the bankers even more. These were called ‘poverty alleviation’ measures then — as the term ‘financial inclusion’ was not in vogue in the 1980s and 1990s. Besides, they had seen that when large scale loans were given under pressure, many unscrupulous elements disappeared with their money or did not generate enough economic benefits to repay their loans. One exercise that would have been interesting in those days, and even now, and this to compare how much the banks actually lost on account of these anti-poverty schemes and the amounts they lost because more powerful industrialists refused to repay their loans. It was typical of the latter to engineer the sickness of their own industries, after siphoning off its funds through over-invoicing of purchases and under-invoicing their sales realisation.

        Another fault of the system was the top-down paternalistic approach that it entailed. Once the poor were ‘identified’ by the Block Development Officers and their officials, and were told to apply to the banks for assistance, all decisions about which schemes or projects would suit them or were to be given to them were made by officials of different departments,— not by the beneficiaries themselves or by the bankers. In states like West Bengal, people’s representatives at the Panchayat level. Different departments like fisheries, small scale industries, agro-processing, women’s welfare, handlooms and so on were given specific targets to fulfil and they were more bothered about utilising their department’s allotted subsidies and about meeting targets than about credit-worthiness and capabilities. This target fulfilling could only happen if the banks extended the matching loans and hence, the pressure on them. It is also undeniable that the very large number of small loans made the entire operation too cumbersome and unwieldy to handle, with the limited amount of manpower that these banks had. Besides, public banks with low productivity (that was partly due to excessive paper work and complicated rules) and relatively high wages found the whole idea to be  very costly, in administrative terms.

         Everyone was fully aware that this large informal sector of the economy was serviced by money lenders who had thrived for centuries because the formal banking sector found it extremely difficult and uneconomical to penetrate the bottom half of the pyramid. Even a few years ego, Sadhan Kumar Chattopadhyay stated quite clearly in the RBI working paper entitled ‘Financial Inclusion in India: A Case Study of West Bengal’ (2011) that “moneylenders are still a dominant source of rural finance despite wide presence of banks in rural areas.” In two thirds of such cases, he noted that moneylenders lent at interest rates as high as “10-20% per month” and even this was doubled if it was not repaid in time. This bottom segment of the pyramid that is so vulnerable to loan sharks, incidentally, contains much more population that the top half. Even though moneylenders openly charge cut-throat rates of interest, no one was willing to bell the cat.

        This is the mission that Muhammad Yunus took up from the early 1980s in Bangladesh that became popular as ‘micro finance’. It has gone through several variations and adoptions in the Indian sub-continent and in the rest of Asia and Africa. It consisted of reaching the small man instead of waiting for him to become bank-worthy and line up at the counter as these were next to impossible. Yunus and those who followed him proved quite conclusively that small doses of finance could do wonders to these struggling millions who have no access whatsoever to some sort of organised capital and have historically fallen prey to moneylenders.  These teeming millions, who range from the petty tailor or cobbler to the basket maker or the vegetable seller, could ramp up their operations and increase their own productivity and earnings if only they could get a little loan, without going through complications and dilatory banking or other official procedures. The Central government realised the efficacy of this approach and encouraged the setting up of Self Help Groups (SHGs) of poor beneficiaries, especially women, who could work in clusters to gain some possible synergy and also stand guarantee for the loans extended to individual members. In 1999, the SGSY or the Swarna-Jayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana was established to encourage villagers take up more self employment through Self Help Groups.

       Another major problem that appeared on the horizon, especially in states like West Bengal, was the mushrooming of Chit Fund Companies that offered fantastic rates of interest to borrowers to entice them to keep their life savings with them. They followed the “Robbing Peter to pay Paul” principle, which meant that they utilised fresh deposits to pay off earlier deposit-holders, which was impossible to sustain beyond a point. Thus, when they were caught or exposed, the promoters tried to escape with whatever wealth they had cornered, but thousands of trusting deposit holders were devastated. I remember that when I was Special Secretary in charge of Institutional Finance in the Finance Department of West Bengal from 1993 to 1995, one of our prime tasks was to stop these chit funds from duping the masses. They were often quite powerful and went to the courts for orders against us. Government was, however, determined and we swooped down on these firms and made large scale arrests and seizures. Some of these big owners like Sanchayita and Sanchayani moved the High Court and the Supreme Court for legal redress but justice came to our side. The problem of how to tackle thousands of cheated investors was indeed very painful and we were under considerable strain.

      The Reserve Bank went in for several measures to tighten up of regulations for NBFCs to Non Banking Financial Companies and for RNBCs, i.e., Residuary Non-Banking Companies. But the issue of how to operationalise financial inclusion remained, because while government could often tackle moneylenders under the law if officials at the lowest levels were clean and determined and local authorities could arrest chit fund promoters, it could not ensure financial inclusion. The banking system could just not collect small deposits from a million households nor could it lend to millions by going to their doorsteps. This is where micro finance stepped in and lent money to an unprecedented large number of household and to self-help groups. In the last two decades, micro finance institutions (MFIs) penetrated more deep into the countryside and among the urban poor than was imaginable.

           By 2006, I had moved to Delhi which gave me the opportunity and, in my new official capacity as India’s Development Commissioner for MSMEs or Micro, Small and Medium Industries, I had the benefit of observing quite closely how the micro finance institution worked. The Khan Committee Report of the Reserve Bank (2005) was being discussed in banking circles and serious note was of the practice of ‘financial exclusion’ that existed in the banking sector. This was when the RBI’s Governor, Dr YV Venugopal, officially recognised the term “financial inclusion” in RBI’s policy and the RBI demanded that banks review their existing practices to align them with the objective of financial inclusion. Dr Reddy did his best to expand credit to micro and small enterprises and he admitted that “existing banking practices in India tended to exclude rather than attract vast sections of population”. The RBI insisted on making available a basic "no-frills" banking account. I was then, incidentally, on the Board of the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), where I learnt a lot about financing at the grassroots level. It was at this exciting stage that I got deeply involved in locating finance for the lowest tier of industry that provided for the maximum amount of employment at the minimum cost. It was also our endeavour to reach the bottommost strata of society with doorstep financing.

           Because the world of finance was dominated by big banks, the new experiment of MFIs were looked upon with a lot of suspicion. One of the southern states complicated this issue by rapidly expanding micro finance operations, but some MFIs indulged in speculative practices, which made the MFIs appear in the public eye as the new class of extortionist moneylenders. Both the state government and the RBI came down heavily on these groups and their modus of operations but the whole MFI sector came under pressure. At the same time, there was also a lot excitement as many policy makers felt that the MFI approach had the potential of providing a possible solution to the vexed problem of reaching banking services to the grassroots level. These restrictions continued to restrict MFIs and there were several pressures on the RBI to put a cap or limit on the uppermost rate of interest MFIs could charge. Equal attention was, however, not paid on masking available cheaper and easier funds to the MFIs so then they could then on-lend to micro-borrowers at reasonable rates. It was SIDBI that introduced me to the problems of micro finance and we were able to discuss problems threadbare at the policy-making forums in the RBI and in the government. SIDBI also had a system of rating MFIs that took assistance from them and this is where I heard of the pioneering work that Bandhan was doing in West Bengal.

           I left the MSME sector by the end of 2008 as I was promoted as Secretary in the Government of India, but I kept up my interest alive. I sincerely believed that if India was to convert its demographic mass into an asset and to avoid the pitfall of sinking with the disempowered bulk, then special and imaginative steps needed to be taken. Among the steps taken to ensure “financial inclusion”, very few programmes succeeded like micro finance did. It was good to see that the number of beneficiaries or borrowers rose from 35 lakhs in 2005 to 267 lakhs in 2010. But then, 2010 and 2011 turned to be really problematic years for the micro finance sector and its growth pangs went through its and the ups and downs, with policy shifts. The Community Development Finance Associations reported that the number of MFI branches fell from 13,562 in 2011 to 10,697 in 2013. The industry lost almost half its staff. The number of borrowers stagnated and slowly went up to just 275 lakhs  by 2013 but the loan portfolio changed very little between 2011 and 2013 (Rs 2470 crores to Rs 2570 crores). From 2014, the crisis started ending, and growth was resumed as the RBI became more pro active. In 2013, the IMF-World Bank noted that "financial inclusion is no longer a fringe subject. It is now recognised as an important part of the mainstream thinking on economic development based on country leadership."

      By 2016, the number of MFI branches had risen to 11,644 and the number of borrowers went up to 399 lakhs or 4 crores approximately. Their loan portfolio grew to Rs 6390 crores. But one shift was noticeable, i.e, as the rural markets appeared more problematic, MFIs had started lending in cities and the share of urban lending in MFI loans went up from one third in 2013 to two-thirds in 2015. Two positive developments have taken place in the recent past. In August 2014, Narendra Modi launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana which was operated by the Banking Department of the Finance Ministry which meant that public banks were bound to comply with its orders. At the inauguration stage itself, 1.5 Crore bank accounts were opened under this scheme, which was declared by the Guinness World records to be the world’s highest achievement in this domain. Guinness’s Certificate declared that "The most bank accounts opened in 1 week as a part of financial inclusion campaign is 18,096,130 and was achieved by Banks in India from 23 to 29 August 2014". By 1 February 2017, over 27 crore bank accounts were opened and almost ₹66,500 crores were deposited under the scheme and both figures have gone up since then.

      The other was that in recognition of its dedicated service to the poor through its MFI, Bandhan was given a banking licence whereas giant corporates like Reliance were not. This meant that it could source its own capital at lesser rates than those charged by lenders. It also had the benefit of having several lakh enlisted accounts under its MFI for several years that could now be rendered complete banking services, with the same bonding and warm  relationship.