Midweek Review

An Imaginary Museum or a Museum Without Walls:David Paynter and L.T.P. Manjusri

Published

3 years ago

2022/10/12

by Laleen Jayamanne

“David Paynter is a great master of painting…his talent and greatness were not properly identified and well appreciated by the Sri Lankan society while he was alive. However, his artistic capability has been well recognised and appreciated where he studied, in England and in Italy. Most of his paintings consist of Sri Lankan vegetation…his paintings and murals are landmarks of Sri Lankan Christian Art. His palette was very broad with sensitive tones and he was brilliant in painting figurative forms.” “David Paynter Untold Story,” Catalogue Essay, 2015 (p.5). Professor Sarath Chandrajeewa

Because he died intestate, David Paynter’s sister Eve Darling who inherited all his paintings bequeathed them to the Faculty of Visual Art of the University of Visual and Performing Arts via professional guardians, with strict instructions to adhere to her brother’s wishes that none of them should be sold. But they were in fact sold illegally and that tragic saga of recovery is on the public record. After a protracted legal process, the stolen paintings and drawings were found and now hang in the specially created J.D.A. Perera Gallery in the Faculty of Visual and Performing Arts.

* * *

Despite numerous calls for it, what’s still missing is a National Collection of Lanka’s Modern art, at the Colombo Museum. Just recently, a group of writers published a piece in The Island, calling for the preservation of what’s left of the artwork done by the artists of the Aragalaya. They suggested that the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art should consider doing that. I had earlier made a friendly suggestion that the Museum document the cultural events at gotagogama, where art and politics intersected so vibrantly and surprisingly as never before in Lankan history. In the 1950s when as children we were regularly taken to the Museum by our school, St Bridget’s Convent, we were excited to miss class and never tired of re-seeing Sri Wickremarajasingha’s throne and the life-sized models of the stone-age Vaddha family arranged next to their cave dwelling. We said, ‘katugeta yanawa’, (going to the house of bones). Our katuge was built in 1877 and appears to be slowly developing into a national museum for the 21st Century with a separate Natural History wing as well. Paul Deraniyagala, its first Lankan director from 1939-63, was a zoologist by training, and so the collection he assembled had a paleontological focus on fossils of plants and animals and ancient geological rock formations. These revealed the pre-historic evolution of life on the island, which included human bones popularly referred to generically as ‘Balangoda man’. Perhaps this is the origin of our vernacular usage, ‘katuge,’ or more properly kauthukagaraya. The word ‘Museum,’ however, has a Greek derivation from ‘museion’ which means the shrine of the nine muses who are thought to be the inspirational source of all the arts and also history and astronomy.

* * *

Nazreen Sansoni, director of Barefoot Gallery, expressed the problem well when she said, “The country has produced some talented people. But if you can’t get the government to push it, you can’t get anywhere.” She believes that Sri Lankan art would progress by leaps and bounds if only the private sector and the government could join to support the artists”. (Smriti Daniel, ScrapBook: Chandrajeewa; News Papers & Magazines Collections from 1985-2010, ed. Malsha Fernando, 2011, p. 87).

Chandrajeewa himself, in his role as art historian, has said much the same in relation to the paintings of J.D.A. Perera, David Paynter and Stanley Abeysinghe who headed the National School of Art and Crafts in the earliest decades of the 50s and 60s. He has said, “All these three principals were great pioneer painters in Sri Lanka during the 20th Century”. They taught painting at the art school in a variety of styles (modernist, academic, crafts/design), and also exhibited their own work, once in a group show in 1949. As friends, they would meet regularly and discuss each others’ work. Paynter had an international profile, having been trained at the Royal Academy of Art on scholarship and spent time in Italy and France on a travelling scholarship to study art. If their work

was readily accessible together with the work of the 43 Group in the National Museum, it would be possible to research the interrelationships between this group of artists at the art school, and the more programmatic modernists of the 43 Group. Rohan de Soysa, in his essential account of the 43 Group mentions that both Ivan Peries and Aubrey Collette, two founding members of the 43 Group, studied with Paynter for a short period. In the very small, largely Anglophone art world (with the notable exception of Manjusri thera), centred mostly in Colombo 7 (at Alborada, Wendt’s residence and Heywood, the early name of the art school), it is hard to imagine that they didn’t communicate with each other. Did they see each other’s work for example? And if so what did they think about it, one wonders.

The progressive British educator and painter C. F. Winzer, who had studied modernist art in Paris in his youth, was appointed the Chief Inspector of Art at the Dept. of Education between 1920-32 and became a catalyst in creating institutions promoting modern practices of art education in colonial Ceylon. In his professional role he came into contact with artists who were also art teachers like J.D.A. Perera and W. J.G. Beling, who he promoted as local pioneers of Secondary and Tertiary level art education in the country. Winzer’s friendship with Wendt in the 30s, according to de Soysa, quietly laid the foundation for the formation of the 43 Group, of which Beling was a founding member.

Oral History

J. D. A. Perera, Paynter and Stanley Abeyratne and Tisse Ranasinghe (all very dedicated teachers), were adversely affected when the dominant Sinhala-Buddhist-nationalist ideology on art and culture (as a result of the 1956 Sinhala only Bill), came to dominate the ethos of the art school. In contrast, the 43 Group founded in 1943 was able to flourish independently thanks to Lionel Wendt’s visionary patronage and bequest, which was later used judiciously by his friend Harold Peiris (as the executor of his will and patron of the arts), to create the invaluable Theatre and Art Gallery in his name. Soon after Wendt’s untimely death in ‘44 the artist Harry Pieris took the initiative to guide the group and its widening circle, building on the pioneering work done by Wendt. Pieris had taught for three years at Tagore’s Shantiniketan in Bengal and knew Sanskrit and prior to that had his training at the Royal Academy of Art in London and also in Paris. It was during his time at Shantiniketan that he was able to guide Manjusri thera who came there to study Chinese and Chinese art, to go to Tibet and Sikkim to be trained in the Mahayana visual traditions by the court painter. He already knew Pali, Sanskrit and Bengali. It was Harry Pieris who also astutely advised Manjusri to take back to Ceylon the drawings he had made of Lankan Buddhist temple paintings, instead of gifting them to Shantiniketan. According to de Soysa, it was also Harry Pieris who saved a large part of the neglected Lionel Wendt collection (deteriorating in a basement), from been auctioned off in 1963. This formed the 43 Group collection at the Sapumal Foundation which he established at his home.

I know of one artist, Nadine David, who studied drawing with Paynter for three years at Heywood and after he left the art school she continued her studies with him at the farm he set up in the east coast for adolescent boys who had left the Paynter Children’s Home in Nuwara Eliya, which was established by his family as a home for abandoned children of mixed race. Interviewing now aging students who have studied with some of these master artists who were also dedicated teachers would be such a rich way of doing a bit of oral history of a period now perhaps mostly lost to memory and history. The ‘guru-Shishya’ transmission of skill and energy is a precious, value-laden exchange even in a non-Indian, ‘westernised’ Lankan context, from which we can learn.

Namal Avanthi Jayasinghe, in her fascinating book investigating Manjusri’s Surrealist affiliations, has revealed some important biographical information through a valuable interview she conducted over the phone, with one of Manjusri’s daughters, Manjista Manjusri, who is also a painter. She informs us that most of his later work is deposited in a ‘safe vault,’ which is not accessible even to her. Jayasinghe’s book ends with three extraordinary images from temple paintings. There appears to be a very rich, wild folk-imagination here for artists to draw from. Elaborating on this aspect, Jayasinghe makes the astute theoretical argument that there is a surrealist dream logic operative in these ‘surreal’ images of interlinked human-animal-vegetal forms. The three sets of images are as follows: the ‘Mara Yuddha’ from the late 18th Century, from the Rajamaha Vihara, Dambulla, which has a marvellous mixture of human and animal forms. The ‘Pathala Lokaya’ and ‘Asura Nikaya’ from 1930s at Gothabhaya Rajamaha Vihara, Bothale, show horned small human figures in a desolate nether world with smooth faces without features and grotesque skeletal bodies drained of a capacity to feel! As I first glanced at these two images without reading the text, I was sure they were Latin American Surrealist images rather than temple paintings from Sri Lanka! Jayasinghe argues that their structure is surrealist, in the expanded sense derived from Freud’s theory of the unconscious and the analysis of dreams, of strange juxtapositions, violation of both scale and organic logical linkages in favour of dream logic. The distinction between ‘historical Surrealism’ launched by Andre Breton in the 1920s and the older and far wider sense of the word proves to be a very productive move for Jayasinghe’s analysis of Manjusri’s work. So, if Manjusri’s surrealist inflected art is exhibited in a national collection with some of these proto-surrealist temple paintings they would be more accessible to artists to study than his celebrated book, which I imagine is a collector’s item. Jayasinghe characterises Manjusri as an artist-scholar who did extensive research into temple painting in the country, later became a journalist and then an artist who travelled and exhibited his work in Europe over a period of time as well. She reveals some astonishing statistics about his intellectual stamina and passion:

“He has published 155 articles in Sinhala and 55 articles in English in his effort to bring to public awareness the ancient and medieval temple art of Sri Lanka. His book, ‘Design elements from Sri Lankan temple paintings’, contains 159 plates of designs, from 75 temples.” In, “An Investigation of the Appearance of Surrealism in the 20th Century Sri Lankan Paintings; with reference to an analysis of the paintings of L.T.P. Manjusri” (The Contemporary Art and Crafts Association of Sri Lanka: Colombo, 2021, p.78).

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Midweek Review

Year ends with the NPP govt. on the back foot

Published

4 days ago

2025/12/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Dissanayake addresses Parliament as PM Dr. Harini Amarasuriya looks on. Dissanayake is the leader of both the JVP and NPP

The failure on the part of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) government to fulfil a plethora of promises given in the run up to the last presidential election, in September, 2024, and a series of incidents, including cases of corruption, and embarrassing failure to act on a specific weather alert, ahead of Cyclone Ditwah, had undermined the administration beyond measure.

Ditwah dealt a knockout blow to the arrogant and cocky NPP. If the ruling party consented to the Opposition proposal for a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to probe the events leading to the November 27 cyclone, the disclosure would be catastrophic, even for the all-powerful Executive President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, as responsible government bodies, like the Disaster Management Centre that horribly failed in its duty, and the Met Department that alerted about the developing storm, but the government did not heed its timely warnings, directly come under his purview.

The NPP is on the back foot and struggling to cope up with the rapidly developing situation. In spite of having both executive presidency and an overwhelming 2/3 majority in Parliament, the government seems to be weak and in total disarray.

The regular appearance of President Dissanayake in Parliament, who usually respond deftly to criticism, thereby defending his parliamentary group, obviously failed to make an impression. Overall, the top NPP leadership appeared to have caused irreparable damage to the NPP and taken the shine out of two glorious electoral victories at the last presidential and parliamentary polls held in September and November 2024 respectively.

The NPP has deteriorated, both in and out of Parliament. The performance of the 159-member NPP parliamentary group, led by Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, doesn’t reflect the actual situation on the ground or the developing political environment.

Having repeatedly boasted of its commitment to bring about good governance and accountability, the current dispensation proved in style that it is definitely not different from the previous lots or even worse. (The recent arrest of a policeman who claimed of being assaulted by a gang, led by an NPP MP, emphasised that so-called system change is nothing but a farce) In the run-up to the November, 2024, parliamentary polls, President Dissanayake, who is the leader of both the JVP and NPP, declared that the House should be filled with only NPPers as other political parties were corrupt. Dissanayake cited the Parliament defeating the no-confidence motions filed against Ravi Karunanayake (2016/over Treasury Bond scams) and Keheliya Rambukwella (2023/against health sector corruption) to promote his argument. However, recently the ongoing controversy over patient deaths, allegedly blamed on the administration of Ondansetron injections, exposed the government.

Mounting concerns over drug safety and regulatory oversight triggered strong calls from medical professionals, and trade unions, for the resignation of senior officials at the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) and the State Pharmaceutical Corporation (SPC).

Medical and civil rights groups declared that the incident exposed deep systemic failures in Sri Lanka’s drug regulatory framework, with critics warning that the collapse of quality assurance mechanisms is placing patients’ lives at grave risk.

The Medical and Civil Rights Professional Association of Doctors (MCRPA), and allied trade unions, accused health authorities of gross negligence and demanded the immediate resignation of senior NMRA and SPC officials.

MCRPA President Dr. Chamal Sanjeewa is on record as having said that the Health Ministry, NMRA and SPC had collectively failed to ensure patient safety, citing, what he described as, a failed drug regulatory system.

The controversy has taken an unexpected turn with some alleging that the NPP government, on behalf of Sri Lanka and India, in April this year, entered into an agreement whereby the former agreed to lower quality/standards of medicine imports.

Trouble begins with Ranwala’s resignation

The NPP suffered a humiliating setback when its National List MP Asoka Ranwala had to resign from the post of Speaker on 13 December, 2024, following intense controversy over his educational qualification. The petroleum sector trade union leader served as the Speaker for a period of three weeks and his resignation shook the party. Ranwala, first time entrant to Parliament was one of the 18 NPP National List appointees out of a total of 29. The Parliament consists of 196 elected and 29 appointed members. Since the introduction of the National List, in 1989, there had never been an occasion where one party secured 18 slots.

The JVP/NPP made an initial bid to defend Ranwala but quickly gave it up and got him to resign amidst media furor. Ranwala dominated the social media as political rivals exploited the controversy over his claimed doctorate from the Waseda University of Japan, which he has failed to prove to this day. But, the JVP/NPP had to suffer a second time as a result of Ranwala’s antics when he caused injuries to three persons, including a child, on 11 December, in the Sapugaskanda police area.

The NPP made a pathetic, UNP and SLFP style effort to save the parliamentarian by blaming the Sapugaskanda police for not promptly subjecting him for a drunk driving test. The declaration made by the Government Analyst Department that the parliamentarian hadn’t been drunk at the time of the accident, several days after the accident, does not make any difference. Having experienced the wrongdoing of successive previous governments, the public, regardless of what various interested parties propagated on social media, realise that the government is making a disgraceful bid to cover-up.

No less a person than President Dissanayake is on record as having said that their members do not consume liquor. Let us wait for the outcome of the internal investigation into the lapses on the part of the Sapugaskanda police with regard to the accident that happened near Denimulla Junction, in Sapugaskanda.

JVP/NPP bigwigs obviously hadn’t learnt from the Weligama W 15 hotel attack in December, 2023, that ruined President Ranil Wickremeinghe’s administration. That incident exposed the direct nexus between the government and the police in carrying out Mafia-style operations. Although the two incidents cannot be compared as the circumstances differ, there is a similarity. Initially, police headquarters represented the interests of the wrongdoers, while President Wickremesinghe bent over backwards to retain the man who dispatched the CCD (Colombo Crime Division) team to Weligama, as the IGP. The UNP leader went to the extent of speaking to Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya, PC, and Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena to push his agenda. There is no dispute the then Public Security Minister Tiran Alles wanted Deshabandu Tennakoon as IGP, regardless of a spate of accusations against him, in addition to him being faulted by the Supreme Court in a high-profile fundamental rights application.

The JVP/NPP must have realised that though the Opposition remained disorganised and ineffective, thanks to the media, particularly social media, a case of transgression, if not addressed swiftly and properly, can develop into a crisis. Action taken by the government to protect Ranwala is a case in point. Government leaders must have heaved a sigh of relief as Ranwala is no longer the Speaker when he drove a jeep recklessly and collided with a motorcycle and a car.

Major cases, key developments

Instead of addressing public concerns, the government sought to suppress the truth by manipulating and exploiting developments

* The release of 323 containers from the Colombo Port, in January 2025, is a case in point. The issue at hand is whether the powers that be took advantage of the port congestion to clear ‘red-flagged’ containers.

Although the Customs repeatedly declared that they did nothing wrong and such releases were resorted even during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s presidency (July 2022 to September 2024), the public won’t buy that. Container issue remains a mystery. That controversy eroded public confidence in the NPP that vowed 100 percent transparency in all its dealings. But the way the current dispensation handled the Port congestion proved that transparency must be the last thing in the minds of the JVPers/NPPers holding office.

* The JVP/NPP’s much touted all-out anti-corruption stand suffered a debilitating blow over their failure to finalise the appointment of a new Auditor General. In spite of the Opposition, the civil society, and the media, vigorously taking up this issue, the government continued to hold up the appointment by irresponsibly pushing for an appointment acceptable to President Dissanayake. The JVP/NPP is certainly pursuing a strategy contrary to what it preached while in the Opposition and found fault with successive governments for trying to manipulate the AG. It would be pertinent to mention that President Dissanayake should accept the responsibility for the inordinate delay in proposing a suitable person to that position. The government failed to get the approval of the Constitutional Council more than once to install a favourite of theirs in it, thanks to the forthright position taken by its civil society representatives.

The government should be ashamed of its disgraceful effort to bring the Office of the Auditor General under its thumb:

* The JVP/NPP government’s hotly disputed decision to procure 1,775 brand-new double cab pickup trucks, at a staggering cost exceeding Rs. 12,500 mn, under controversial circumstances, exposed the duplicity of that party that painted all other political parties black. Would the government rethink the double cab deal, especially in the wake of economic ruination caused by Cyclone Ditwah? The top leadership seems to be determined to proceed with their original plans, regardless of immeasurable losses caused by Cyclone Ditwah. Post-cyclone efforts still remain at a nascent stage with the government putting on a brave face. The top leadership has turned a blind eye to the overwhelming challenge in getting the country back on track especially against the backdrop of its agreement with the IMF.

Post-Cyclone Ditwah recovery process is going to be slow and extremely painful. Unfortunately, both the government and the Opposition are hell-bent on exploiting the miserable conditions experienced by its hapless victims. The government is yet to acknowledge that it could have faced the crisis much better if it acted on the warning issued by Met Department Chief Athula Karunanayake on 12 November, two weeks before the cyclone struck.

Foreign policy dilemma

Sri Lanka moved further closer to India and the US this year as President Dissanayake entered into several new agreements with them. In spite of criticism, seven Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs), including one on defence, remains confidential. What are they hiding?

Within weeks after signing of the seven MoUs, India bought the controlling interests in the Colombo Dockyard Limited for USD 52 mn.

Although some Opposition members, representing the SJB, raised the issue, their leader Sajith Premadasa, during a subsequent visit to New Delhi, indicated he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, raise such a contentious issue.

Premadasa went a step further. The SJB leader assured his unwavering commitment to the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that was forced on Sri Lanka during President JRJ’s administration, under the highly questionable Indo-Lanka Accord of July, 1987, after the infamous parippu drop by Indian military aircraft over Jaffna, their version of the old gunboat diplomacy practiced by the West.

Both India and the US consolidated their position here further in the post-Aragalaya period. Those who felt that the JVP would be in a collision course with them must have been quite surprised by the turn of events and the way post-Aragalaya Sri Lanka leaned towards the US-India combine with not a hum from our carboard revolutionaries now installed in power. They certainly know which side of the bread is buttered. Sri Lanka’s economic deterioration, and the 2023 agreement with the IMF, had tied up the country with the US-led bloc.

In spite of India still procuring large quantities of Russian crude oil and its refusal to condemn Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, New Delhi has obviously reached consensus with the US on a long-term partnership to meet the formidable Chinese challenge. Both countries feel each other’s support is incalculably vital and indispensable.

Sri Lanka, India, and Japan, in May 2019, signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) to jointly develop the East Container Terminal (ECT) at the Colombo Port. That was during the tail end of the Yahapalana administration. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration wanted to take that project forward. But trade unions, spearheaded by the JVP/NPP combine, thwarted a tripartite agreement on the basis that they opposed privatisation of the Colombo Port at any level.

But, the Colombo West International Terminal (CWIT) project, that was launched in November, 2022, during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s presidency, became fully operational in April this year. The JVP revolutionary tiger has completely changed its stripes regarding foreign investments and privatisation. If the JVP remained committed to its previous strategies, India taking over CDL or CWIT would have been unrealistic.

The failure on the part of the government to reveal its stand on visits by foreign research vessels to ports here underscored the intensity of US and Indian pressure. Hope our readers remember how US and India compelled the then President Wickremesinghe to announce a one-year moratorium on such visits. In line with that decision Sri Lanka declared research vessels wouldn’t be allowed here during 2024. The NPP that succeeded Wickremesinghe’s administration in September, 2024, is yet to take a decision on foreign research vessels. What a pity?

The NPP ends the year on the back foot, struggling to cope up with daunting challenges, both domestic and external. The recent revelation of direct Indian intervention in the 2022 regime change project here along with the US underscored the gravity of the situation and developing challenges. Post-cyclone period will facilitate further Indian and US interventions for obvious reasons.

****

Perhaps one of the most debated events in 2025 was the opening of ‘City of Dreams Sri Lanka’ that included, what the investors called, a world-class casino. In spite of mega Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s unexpected decision to pull out of the grand opening on 02 August, the investors went ahead with the restricted event. The Chief Guest was President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is also the Finance Minister, in addition to being the Defence Minister. Among the other notable invitees were Dissanayake’s predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose administration gave critical support to the high-profile project, worth over USD 1.2 bn. John Keells Holdings PLC (JKH) and Melco Resorts & Entertainment (Melco) invested in the project that also consist of the luxurious Nüwa hotel and a premium shopping mall. Who would have thought President Dissanayake’s participation, even remotely, possible, against the backdrop of his strong past public opposition to gambling of any kind?

Don’t forget ‘City of Dreams’ received a license to operate for a period of 20 years. Definitely an unprecedented situation. Although that license had been issued by the Wickremesinghe administration, the NPP, or any other political party represented in Parliament, didn’t speak publicly about that matter. Interesting, isn’t it, coming from people, still referred by influential sections of the Western media, as avowed Marxists?

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

The Aesthetics and the Visual Politics of an Artisanal Community

Published

4 days ago

2025/12/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

Through the Eyes of the Patua:

Organised by the Colombo Institute for Human Sciences in collaboration with Millennium Art Contemporary, an interesting and unique exhibition got underway in the latter’s gallery in Millennium City, Oruwala on 21 December 2025. The exhibition is titled, ‘Through the Eyes of the Patua: Ramayana Paintings of an Artisanal Community’ and was organized in parallel with the conference that was held on 20 December 2025 under the theme, ‘Move Your Shadow: Rediscovering Ravana, Forms of Resistance and Alternative Universes in the Tellings of the Ramayana.’ The scrolls on display at the gallery are part of the over 100 scrolls in the collection of Colombo Institute’s ‘Roma Chatterji Patua Scroll Collection.’ Prof Chatterji, who taught Sociology at University of Delhi and at present teaches at Shiv Nadar University donated the scrolls to the Colombo Institute in 2024.

The paintings on display are what might be called narrative scrolls that are often over ten feet long. Each scroll narrates a story, with separate panels pictorially depicting one component of a story. The Patuas or the Chitrakars, as they are also known, are traditionally bards. A bard will sing the story that is depicted by each scroll which is simultaneously unfurled. For Sri Lankan viewers for whom the paintings and their contexts of production and use would be unusual and unfamiliar, the best way to understand them is to consider them as a comic strip. In the case of the ongoing exhibition, since the bards or the live songs are not a part of it, the word and voice elements are missing. However, the curators have endeavoured to address this gap by displaying a series of video presentations of the songs, how they are performed and the history of the Patuas as part of the exhibition itself.

The unfamiliarity of the art on display and their histories, necessitates broader explanation. The Patua hail from Medinipur District of West Bengal in India. Essentially, this community of artisans are traditional painters and singers who compose stories based on sacred texts such as the Ramayana or Mahabharata as well as secular events that can vary from the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York in 2001 to the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. Even though painted storytelling is done by a number of traditional artisan groups in India, the Patua is the only community where performers and artists belong to the same group. Hence, Professor Chatterji, in her curatorial note for the exhibition calls them “the original multi-media performers in Bengal.”

‘The story of the Patuas’ also is an account of what happens to such artisanal communities in contemporary times in South Asia more broadly even though this specific story is from India. There was a time before the 21st century when such communities were living and working across a large part of eastern India – each group with a claim to their recognizably unique style of painting. However, at the present time, this community and their vocation is limited to areas such as Medinipur, Birbhum, Purulia in West Bengal and Dumka in Jharkhand.

A pertinent question is how the scroll painters from Medinipur have survived the vagaries of time when others have not. Professor Chatterji provides an important clue when she notes that these painters, “unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are also extremely responsive to political events.” As such, “apart from a rich repertoire of stories based on myth and folklore, including the Ramayana and other epics, they have, over many years, also composed on themes that range from events of local or national significance such as boat accidents and communal violence to global events such as the tsunami and the attack on the World Trade Centre.”

There is another interesting aspect that becomes evident when one looks into the socio-cultural background of this community. As Professor Chatterji writes, “one significant feature that gives a distinct flavour to their stories is the fact that a majority of Chitrakars consider themselves to be Muslims but perform stories based largely on Hindu myths.” In this sense, their story complicates the tension-ridden dichotomies between ethno-cultural and religious groups typical of relations between groups in India as well as more broadly in South Asia, including in Sri Lanka. Prof Chatterji suggests this positionality allows the Patua to have “a truly secular voice so vital in the world that we live in today.”

As a result, she notes, contemporary Patuas “have propagated the message of communal harmony in their compositions in the context of the recent riots in India and the Gulf War. Their commentaries couched in the language of myth are profoundly symbolic and draw on a rich oral tradition of storytelling.” What is even more important is their “engagement with contemporary issues also inflects their aesthetics” because many of these painters also “experiment with novel painterly values inspired by recent interaction with new media such as comic books and with folk art forms from other parts of the country.”

From this varied repertoire of the Patuas’ painterly tradition, this exhibition focusses on scrolls portraying different aspects of the Ramayana. In North Indian and the more dominant renditions of the Ramayana, the focus is on Rama while in many alternate renditions this shifts to Ravana as typified by versions popular among the Sinhalas and Tamils in Sri Lanka as well as in some areas in several Indian states. Compared to this, the Patua renditions in the exhibition mostly illustrate the abduction of Sita with a pronounced focus on Sita and not on Ravana, the conventional antagonist or on Rama, the conventional protagonist. As a result, these two traditional male colossuses are distant. Moreover, with the focus on Sita, these folk renditions also bring to the fore other figures directly associated with her such as her sons Luv and Kush in the act of capturing Rama’s victory horse as well as Lakshmana.

Interestingly, almost as a counter narrative, which also serves as a comparison to these Ramayana scrolls, the exhibition also presents three scrolls known as ‘bin-Laden Patas’ depicting different renditions on the attack on New York’s Twin Towers.

While the painted scrolls in this collection have been exhibited thrice in India, this is the first time they are being exhibited in Sri Lanka, and it is quite likely such paintings from any community beyond Sri Lanka’s shores were not available for viewing in the country before this. Organised with no diplomatic or political affiliation and purely as a Sri Lankan cultural effort with broader South Asian interest, it is definitely worth a visit. The exhibition will run until 10 January 2026.