The burgeoning genre of big illustrated volumes on art and culture in India – often referred to as “coffee table books” – has an outstanding new addition. Mumbai: A City Through Objects –101 Stories from the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum (Harper Design, Rs. 2999) has been edited with great flair by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta. It is an instantly invaluable resource on Urbs Prima in Indis, the “first city in India” that expanded explosively from isolated fragments of coastline under Portugal to the second-largest city of the British Empire (after London), and foundation stone to India’s modern identity.
Mehta has been working with that
remarkable history for many years, as main architect of the revitalization of
what was The Victoria and Albert Museum when it first opened in 1875. Renamed
100 years later, it remained fusty, hidebound, and meaningless to 21st century
audiences until she gave the old collection new wings with clever, audacious,
profoundly impactful programming. This new book burnishes and enhances that
legacy most impressively.
“Museum objects are time machines,” writes
Mehta. “They allow us a peek into a civilization long past or bring us face to
face with today’s issues, in a sense harking the future. Like architectural
treasures, objects are record keepers that reveal their mysteries as you get
more deeply engaged.”
She elaborates: “As you read the many
object stories, you begin to glean Mumbai’s evolution from a small group of
marshy islands – that the Greek polymath and geographer Ptolemy called
Heptanesia – into the dynamic powerhouse that it is today. You begin to understand
the many layers of the city’s history as the Museum shifted focus over 165
years…This is not a comprehensive history but a sociocultural reckoning.”
Mumbai: A City Through Objects wheels through an illuminative
selection of artworks and artefacts, from the famous sixth-century stone
pachyderm from Elephanta to stunning 21st century sculptures by Sudarshan
Shetty and Jitish Kallat. Mehta says her museum’s collection is “small but
unique, and bears testimony to the city’s constant renewal. It gives voice to
the vision and dynamic energy of the many people who have laboured for,
supported, or contributed in some way to the city’s making [and is] a record of
these ambitions and dreams, and the traumas of upheavals the city has experienced
on its extraordinary journey of transformation.”
With such creditable purpose, so usefully pursued, it may be
nitpicking to point to where this otherwise unqualifiedly superb book misses an
opportunity. That is its treatment of Bhau Daji Lad, whose two-page
biographical sketch – by Ruta Waghmare- Baptista – comes off as rote. We can
and should expect better from the institution named after this great pioneer,
who argued so passionately for “a temple of science containing the wonder for
ages, of Literature, Science and Art” and constantly pushed back against
colonial-era race barriers in ways that seem astounding today.
The late historian Teresa Albuquerque is much better on Lad in
her 2012 Goan Pioneers in Bombay, describing how the Mandrem-born prodigy
arrived in colonial Bombay at the age of 10 in 1822, along with his father, “a
simple painter making earthen images who hoped to make a better living in the
city.”
Albuquerque writes that Lad “studied first in the Marathi
Central School, and then attended a free private class conducted by Govind
Narayan Madgaokar, after which he gained admission to the Elphinstone
Institution” where “the Earl of Clare, Governor of Bombay, was simply
enthralled at his performance in the game of chess and advised his father to
give him a sound education.” Soon afterwards, “young Daji joined Elphinstone
College, swept off all the prizes and scholarships plus a gold medal.” From
that point, his preternatural intelligence and energy went in every direction:
Sanksrit, archaeology, numismatics, education, photography, dramatics,
politics, civic reform.
Even that laundry list is not nearly complete, because, when
already well into his thirties, Albuquerque writes “yet another avenue of study
unfolded itself to this brilliant academician with the opening of Grant Medical
College. Discarding every foreboding prohibition, Bhau Daji boldly enrolled
himself as a free student in its first batch and, along with three other Goans,
came out with flying colours at graduation in 1851. Soon after, he set up
private practice in the city, and, assisted by his brother, also reached out to
the poor and needy. He distinguished himself by operating on tumours and eye
cataracts, and even performing obstetrical surgery.” Ever the patriot, he “refused
to accept any payment from a Goan who came especially from Goa for his
treatment.”
That last line is poignant, but also highlights the hidden
history of Goa in the making of Mumbai – and by extension modern India. Thisis
incredible lore, starting with Rama Kamati, the central native figure in
seventeenth-century British Bombay, described in1670 as “so necessary for his
knowledge of all the affairs of [the city] that we are forced to make use of
him.” Later came droves of ambitious Goans seeking advancement through
education: Bal Shastri Jambhekar (the mentor to Dadabhai Naoroji and father of
Marathi journalism), Kashinath Trimbak Telang (the first Indian judge at the
Bombay High Court, and first Indian Vice- Chancellor of Bombay University), and
Dr Gerson da Cunha (the renowned orientalist researcher) amongst many others.
None of that, of course, is the purview of Mumbai: A City
Through Objects, though perhaps we can hope for greater engagement with Bhau
Daji Lad’s strand of cultural history in future endeavours from museum named
after him. When I reached out to her over the telephone earlier this week,
Mehta told me her book was meant to spark discussions to understand the past
better, but also identify directions in which we can walk together in the future:
“we have to be inclusive, give the younger generations time to grow, empower
artists to turn the tables on the colonial gaze, question and dismantle
obsolete ways of thinking.”
One
final Goa-Bombay element to this fine new book bears mentioning. It is
published by Harper Design, which is headed by Bonita Vaz-Shimray, a Bombay
Goan who has relocated to her ancestral homeland (along with her husband and
young son). When I emailed to ask whether we can make these kinds of projects
happen here, she wrote back, “Goa has a unique combination of history and
contemporary culture that appeals to the general populace, and content from
this small but significant state is bound to be remarkable given the
ever-growing creative community. For me, the homecoming to Goa after my family
left for Bombay over a century ago has certainly sparked curiosity about my
identity and roots. Artist monographs such as Antonio Xavier Trindade, his
daughter Angela; and also, Angelo da Fonseca form a critical discourse about
our colonial past and the way forward. I must commend the concept and research
in Heta Pandit’s book Grinding Stories: Songs from Goa, and I hope to see and
publish more pertinent studies in reclaiming lost tradition.”