A sculptural saga of farmers

In the popular imagination anywhere in the world, a scene depicting an agricultural farm or a field is always accompanied by a happy rippling note played in a flute that wafts over the wavy carpets of green. There is also a contrary picture where one sees the cracked surface of fields and the faces of farmers that resemble the broken earth. Artist Ratan Saha has seen both the scenes and has also witnessed the transition from abundant fertility of the farmlands to the agonizing dispossession of farmers by those agencies that are supposed to take care of them, their produce and their lives. This sincere yet ambitious solo exhibition of sculptures by Saha encapsulates his deep concern for the farmers in India (and elsewhere in the world too) as well as his own transition from the dominant bull imageries to the images and symbols related to agriculture and the lives of farmers. He rightly calls it ‘God of Seeds’.

Growing up listening to the evocative slogan, ‘Victory to Soldier, Victory to Farmer’ (Jai Jawan, Jai Kisaan) Saha brings the farmers’ crisis as the discursive center of his exhibition. Each work created in brass, copper and bronze could be an embodiment of the aestheticized history of Indian farmers who are reeling under the heavy yoke of debts, international patents and data control. The adverse impact of policy matters regarding agriculture devised by the profit based farming philosophy has been manifold and not a single avenue of a farmer’s life is left untouched by it. This dispossession of farmers is like a viral attack that infects each and every cell in a healthy body, and Saha takes each emblem or symbol from the farmers’ lives and gives them iconic image status in an effort to acknowledge their sacrifice for the nation and its people. In this sense ‘God of Seeds’ is a requiem sung to glory of the Indian farmers who deserve more than they are given today.

Saha makes a fragile farmer’s body by combining various farm tools and implements which stare at the viewers vacantly exactly the way a farmer would, had he been brought into a gallery space. This surreal vision is replicated in most of his sculptures as one could see the fertile and ripe fruits and vegetables growing big along with the foliage to make a pregnant/fertile ‘man’ who is at once a stand in image for a farmer and the ‘mother’ earth herself. In another poignant work, we see a girl child carrying a pumpkin on her head suggesting the burden that she has taken upon herself not simply of a full vegetable but the whole debt-burden pressed onto her little shoulders. She could be a child laborer in a farm who is also deprived of education and freedom. Saha is perceptive when he portrays three children happily sitting at a window and watching the lush green field lying ahead of them while their bodies are constituted by the very scene that they are seeing.

 A tractor is a beast of burden for the farmer and his pride possession too. But to buy one, he has to pawn everything that he has. Hence, in Saha’s imagination, a tractor is a composite being made up of all what a farmer gives away in order to get this machine home. So is the case of a water pump. A farmer carries a water pump in his head, fitted above his intricate turban. But that is just symbolic; it is not just an ornament but a concern. Like an additional brain or a crown, the water pump stays there in the head of the farmer. In another work he portrays a tiffin box. A tiffin box carries the food for the workers of all kinds. It is a metaphor for the fields that yield rice or wheat. Does one think of the source of the food when he opens his tiffin box at the lunch time? The artist makes the viewer to think about the source labor/laborer that makes food through this familiar symbolism.

As an adept sculptor Saha uses the dexterity in modeling to full use as he turns the brass, bronze and copper sculptures intricately designed, imparting the sense of malleability of clay to the abovementioned firmer and enduring materials. Saha shows tremendous craftsmanship to materialize his conceptual thinking and it is surprising to see the natural yet highly complex designs pertaining to the lives of farmers gaining sculptural materiality in his works. Sculpting foliage, fruits, seeds and so on in any material needs precision strokes and sharp thinking, it is too higher a task to transfer them into the metallic mediums and Saha with his many decades long experience as a sculptor has achieved this rare feat in this suite of works. During the previous years too Saha had employed complex modelling but the images were monumental and the components were more or less self-replicating patterns within the same work. But in the present body of works, one could see how each work displays a composite nature, bringing various visual elements from nature to create an organic whole.

Ram Kinkar Baij, the father of Indian modern sculpture was aware of the life of Indian farmers. When he did his monumental public sculptures, namely ‘Santhal Family’ and ‘Mill Call’ they became the indelible emblems of Indian agriculture laborers. After Baij’s sculptural articulation, Ratan Saha is the only one Indian sculptor who has come up with memorable sculptural engagements with the lives of farmers in particular and the impact of profit based agriculture in general. It is pertinent for everyone to take a good look at these works and do something towards alleviating the pain of Indian farmers. Ratan Saha does just flagging out of the issues and the rest has to come from other responsible agencies.