What Was Modernism (in Indian Art)?

The life and works of Ramkinker Baij narrate another dimension of the story of the history of modernism in India. It is due to the fact that his works have pursued a deliberate revolt against the antinomies of mainstream/national modernism. Modernism in Indian art deserves a question that starts with a ‘what’ more than a ‘when’. The craving for a beginning may not help us to tackle the complexities of this historical matrix. The big what in the history of modernism tells us the history of vertical appropriations and the institutionalised character of hierarchisation. This history unfolds the ways through which the cultural elite in India have appropriated the material and cultural production of the subalterns, while denying both the subalterns’ contributions and the elites’ own history of appropriation, thus reinforcing their own sense of self and glorifying their own cultural violence.