On Modernist Practices in South Asia

Abstract

This essay explores the terms of modernism(s) on the Indian subcontinent. I focus on critical modernist moments, cutting across aesthetic forms in twentieth century South Asia. At stake are claims of a surpassing of the past that appear variously influenced by empire and nation, communitarianism and nationalism, memory and history, the mythic and the primitive, a fractured independence and a violent Partition, gender and sexuality, body and pain, and the epic and the contemporary. Taken together, on offer are heterogeneous yet overlaying temporalities of modernisms. These considerations are further clarified through the formidable images of Savi Sawarkar, an expressionist and dalit artist. Here the claims, contentions, and contradictions of a rather particular modern subject bring to life the anxieties, ambivalences, and identities spawned by modernity and its subjects.