Visual power

JUN 24 -

I saw visuals of Egyptian pyramids on the news on television the other day. The report showed an unemployed man dragging a huge hungry-looking camel at the foot of one of the gigantic structures. The reporter was haranguing him with questions about his clientele. The camel man said he hadn’t had any customers for over a year. Tourists are not coming anymore because of the uncertainties in the country. Other news about Egypt speaks of uncertainty in the elections. As per the media, people are condemned to choose even by not choosing, to use Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialist dictum, between two candidates who do not represent the spirit of the Spring Uprising. But they did not have other choices. Elections in Greece gave a similar choice to the people. While musing on the existential angst of the people of these two ancient and very important countries in the 21st century, something else strikes me, and I contemplate the nature of the relationship between state pow er, politics and the people.

I turn to Nepal. The people have become stunned by the demise of the Constituent Assembly. They don’t know what to do now. I am referring to the above scenario to say this. Perhaps after big political changes, euphoria, elevation of hopes, a great social stirring, and even a certain degree of violence and civilian sacrifices, politics works its way through narrow lanes. The modus operandi is imperceptibly shaped by the psyches of the people involved in political management, their lust for power and money and the bogies they create to frighten the other.

History is often brought in such contexts. History is interpreted as space to which you can turn, visit its interiors, sweep it clean and then come back to the present and feel we have cleaned history and now we move forward. History is not something that can be cleaned from the rhetorical and pragmatic position we take today. It can be interpreted, reinterpreted or even misinterpreted, but it cannot be cleaned all over again. That is indeed the burden of the New Historicists’ thinking.

We, the people of this country who have been living with each new turn of reality, suddenly feel we are not helpless, but we do not know where to begin. We may say it is the lull before the storm, for the sake of the metaphor at least. But we know that when the course of smooth action is disrupted, people not only in Nepal but in other countries too are condemned to choose, to use the existentialist expression again, between options which do not interest them.

In Nepal, we have been discussing a lot about the identity question. It’s a legitimate and important debate to my mind. But we have not looked at the question of visual representation of history, power and the common people. Nepal, which is called a mosaic of cultures, should be looked at from both image and concept. This country known as Nepal today has remained a phenomenal space identified within heuristically drawn cultural boundaries. Those who write history write the history of feudalism, and of parties and power cronies, but not of the visuals of history represented through culture and art. No one understands Nepal if he or she fails to understand the power of the visuals, and how they have created bonds between people and provided ways of looking at the world.

I will never forget this incident. In the first week of August 2010, I went with a group of Gurukul artists and friends to see the Swet Chaitya or White Stupa in Beijing which was built by Nepali artist Arniko in the 13th century. Film actor Rajesh Hamal said, “Perhaps Arniko was the first true artist who understood internationalism and assimilations involved in art.” I was struck by the talented movie artist’s observation that the internationalism and assimilation seen in the visual production of Nepali cultural and artistic heritage was an important component and power of the civilisation, polity and art of this space here now known as Nepal.

Visuals were created for aesthetics, polity, trade and religion, and for transcendence of borders. Every layman knows that at the heart of each artistic, architectonic and textual form of Nepal Mandala, there is the power of the visuals. It seems that the

visual production of polity, power and art, and also of the showing of diplomatic gestures, was the central formation of the culture and civilisation of Nepal. The long ignored powerful Mithila murals, the lovely house decorations and structures of “chautari” or banyan-peepal locations of the Limbus, and the suave and bright colours of clothes made by their women, the different house and wall paintings of people in Madhes, the rich visual productions of cultures among different ethnic groups in Far West and hundreds of other stylo-visual traditions show the pervasive use of visual power in this land.

The Nepal valley is the greatest mosaic. Anyone speaking about the restructuring the country today by ignoring the heritage, psyche and modes of assimilations and conflicts in this country understands nothing. Speaking about the variety of cultural heritage and identity in this country is not a new phenomenon. The borders that are being criss-crossed and the traditions of people’s cultures and visuals that have been hegemonised by state policies at different times, and the visuals that the state sells as national identities (but shies away from recognising the power of the originary and the people that produced them) should be topics of discussion today. 

Space does not allow me to discuss more here. I have only mentioned the topics that I have been discussing with post graduate students at the moment. It is for the young generation to explore these realms by interpreting and using with gratefulness the work done in this regard by senior native and foreign scholars, some of whom have done very brilliant visual studies of our cultures and traditions. To understand Nepal, we should understand its pragmatics, aesthetics, power relations, assimilation and transcendence of visual culture.