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Yaadkosh

Chitrashala is a museum of aunique collection of vintage popular culture art, comprising of thousands of dazzling oleographs, lithographs and other forms of visual print art dating from the later part of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. This stunning collection of Sumant and Asha Batra, now with the Foundation, offers a fascinating glimpse into the vast history of Indian popular culture and its traditional novelties.

The popular calendar culture centres broadly around three themes: religious or dharmic epic scenes, especially figures from the Mahabharata and Ramayana; patriotic (portraits of national heroes and leaders, past and present); and publicity material (advertisements).
The invention of lithography and its mass circulation in Indian society profoundly transformed the patterns of communication between individuals, society and religion in both private and public space. The grandeur and narrative force of Hindu mythologies and the elaborate episodes of the epics dominated the calendar art space for the first few decades. Raja Ravi Verma, popularly regarded as the father of calendar art, is accredited with pioneering the perfecting of western models of representation. His oleographs and chromolithographs popularized the images of gods and goddesses which Verma rendered with astounding realism. Alongside him, there were several contemporary popular artists like, Hem Chander Bhargava, B.G Sharma, L.N Sharma,Yogendra Rastogi and others whose work became highly popular as a form of visual mass culture.

Hindu deities and mythological characters in action (primarily picked from Raja Ravi Varma’s renditions) flooded the market, appearing on goods ranging from cloth, dye to safety matches. Textile mill labels that were attached to bales of cloth produced in Britain (with cotton likely extracted from India) carried varied images from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as well as images of gods like Krishna, Ram, Durga, Saraswati and Ganesh that made them collectibles and objects of personal veneration.

Soon, the imagery spilled over to the nationalist movement. The country was simmering with the struggle for freedom – Swadeshi caught up and rampant printing galvanized Indian sensibilities. Resultantly, goddesses started being depicted closer to what we recognize today as Bharat Mata. Closely entwined is the beginning of the singular story of Hindu identity that went on to define the majority belief as early as the mid-1800s.

There are other fascinating stories around this art. The regional advertising scene, for instance, that thrived in bazaars, comprising almanacs, pictorial calendars, product labels and more, and became the vehicles for the first advertisements in Bengal.Along with products (riding on monies and businesses), this visual culture influenced etiquettes, styles and behaviours en masse. Tracing the history of advertising covers the elegance of India as an important global market, the emergence of a new culture of consumption, and the emergence of a new middle class.
Chitrashala collection includes a staggering variety of mythological narratives. Besides mythology, the collection comprises of labels from matchboxes, fabrics, fire crackers; covers of Hindi novels, illustrations from books, advertisements, historical stills, postcards, and much more.
The collection of calendar art provides significant insights into our history as a nation and people.These visuals and their retrospective importance to the idea of building modern India.Sadly, surpassed by glossy prints and photographs, calendar art now belongs to an era gone by. The objective behind setting up Chitrashala Museum is to preserve the precious history of India and its representation through the calendar art. The preservation isespecially relevant to the pluralistic nature of Indian reality.
Chitrashala holds both entertaining and educational value. It is our aim to create a unique interface with the youth of the nation, through engaging story-telling and interactive media experiences. This will be integral to reviving debates and conversations around the significant role played by popular visual culture in shaping our conceptions of nationhood and identity.
Presently, Chitrashala exists in the form of a set of galleries located in Hotel Te Aroha in Uttarakhand. The Foundation is developing a museum in Goa using the collections of Sumant and Asha Batra.
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Sumant Batra is the Founder and Managing Trustee of Indian Cinema Heritage Foundation. Indian Cinema Heritage Foundation is a public charitable trust set up to establish and operate Indian cinema heritage museum, archive, library, research and resource centre, and cultural spaces. The Foundation undertakes preservation, restoration and conservation of cinema and related memorabilia, artefacts, equipment, books, magazines, other material related to cinema history and heritage. It also undertakes research and documentation of the history and heritage of Indian cinema and its people, and preserve the legacy of the people who have contributed to Indian cinema. The Foundation is documenting the contribution of artists and technicians from Goa to Indian cinema.

Another key objective of the Foundation is to disseminate and promote the work of the Trust, its activities and products through seminars, conferences, festivals, exhibitions, videos, audios and other mediums; and carry out activities with respect to film, arts, music, theater and cultural events. Other projects of the foundation include, Kumaon Literary Festival, Chitrashala, Fellows of Nature and Literary Bhagidari. Indian Cinema Heritage Foundation is registered under Section 12AA and 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961.

For more details, visit www.cinemaazi.com/ichf
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