paula sengupta

Rivers of Blood
August 10 - September 10, 2010

"On the map, Chaddagram is on the Bangladesh-India border - the state of Tripura is on the Indian side, which explains the close links that my grandmother's family continue to have with the state. When Bengal was partitioned, evidently the line was drawn through Chaddagram - small wonder that my father had horrific memories of Hindu-Muslim riots and did not ever want to return to Bangladesh as long as he lived. In fact, he rarely even encouraged a conversation on it - it was mostly my grandparents who told us romantic stories of the village. Batisha, once a predominantly Hindu settlement, is now a prosperous Muslim village. After Partition, only three Hindu families remained, who consequently formed a small village by themselves in which they now live in relative isolation."
(Excerpt from the artist's diary. Cumilla, 13 June 2008)

"Kalia appeared to still be a predominantly Hindu village, which evidently had a large Baidya population at one time. Many families from here appear to have attained education, fame and fortune, though the village no longer appears prosperous. However, the ruins of many grand homes still remain as testimony to the glory that the village had once seen. Few in the village also recall the 360 Durga Pujas that used to take place in various Hindu homes in the village …
The house in Kalia was left to the care of an old family retainer at the time of Partition. For three consecutive years after that, some members of the family continued to return annually for the Durga Puja. The puja grew increasingly smaller as the years passed and the process of Islamization more rampant. It was finally abandoned when the village Muslims broke in and disrupted the ceremonies. The family was allowed to bring nothing from the homestead. The house was perforce left abandoned some years after independence."
(Excerpt from the artist's diary. Jessore, 18 June 2008)

My family migrated to West Bengal on the eastern fringes of India in 1947 when, against the bloody backdrop of Partition, India and Pakistan were born as two separate nations. Consequently, in 1971, a third nation was born after yet another bloody battle of liberation - Bangladesh, at one time known as East Pakistan. The Indian Army fought to liberate Bangladesh.

My parents (and I realised mine) ancestral homes lie in what is today Bangladesh - my father's in the village of Batisha, perilously close to the border with the Indian state of Tripura; my mother's in the village of Kalia, a small distance from the Benapole border with Kolkata.

In January 2008, then in my fortieth year, I crossed the border to Bangladesh for the first time. I experienced an odd sense of alienation and belonging all at once, and an irrepressible desire to return. I returned in June the same year, traversing this incredibly beautiful and troubled nation from Chittagong to Benapole, as the summer turned to monsoon and the magnificent rivers rose in spate even as I crossed them.

Rivers of Blood is the visual rendering of a diary that I wrote documenting my travels through Bangladesh. It is the story of countless families displaced by the Partition, perhaps the single most significant event in the history of the Indian Subcontinent, the burden of which the three nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh continue to bear even today.

To render this diary, I appropriated the nakshi kantha, a quilting tradition from Bangladesh, where the kantha or quilt tends to become the narrative field. Traditionally embroidered by women on found fabric, nakshi kanthas act as deeply relevant social and cultural signifiers, emerging as a strong political voice in an era of turbulence. I initially simulated the nakshi kantha in the drawing and etching mediums, but later turned to embroidering on found Colonial textiles myself, juxtaposing the run stitch of nakshi kantha with Colonial forms of embroidery such as cross-stitch. Thus material and medium emerge as strong signifiers in this entire body of work.

"That evening in Jessore we went viewing nakshi kantha that is produced in the vicinity. I bought a large exquisite vermillion red kantha for a paltry $40. It was intricately embroidered all over with tales of the village - simple tales of bride and groom, elephants in the banana grove, rice fields swaying gently in the monsoon breeze, swollen rivers flowing swiftly by, and peacock tails metamorphosing into the flora and fauna of the Bengal countryside. In it were all the tales of a Hindu people, their rites, rituals, cultures, and practices, today encased in Islam. I wondered, are these people Hindu or Muslim, or a layering of both? What divides us - a religion and a geographical border, or a culture that I seem to have known for centuries past?"
(Excerpt from the artist's diary. Jessore, 18 June 2008)

Paula Sengupta
August 2010