Haren Thakur

He is known for his epic take on canvas, but well-known Ranchi-based painter Haren Thakur will soon have a brush with history in Ayodhya.

Thakur has been invited to take part in a weeklong national art camp based on Ram Katha scheduled from November 12-19. The camp at the historic city’s KS Saket PG College is organised by Ayodhya Shodh Sansthan, department of culture, Uttar Pradesh, with 15 artists from Orissa, Bengal, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra taking part.

Fifty-year-old Thakur is the state’s sole representative, thanks to his contemporary visuals on the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Radha-Krishna divine pair, Hanuman, among others.

In fact, Hanuman seems to be a recurrent muse, as the artist has painted the monkey-god seven times already.

At the Ayodhya camp, all participating artists will be asked to paint on the epic theme of Ram Katha on fittingly vast canvases measuring 5x4feet.

Thakur, the winner of several prestigious awards and also the founder and general secretary of Chotanagpur Art Research Development Society (Cards), was visibly excited at the opportunity.

“My artistic oeuvre has many influences from the epics. At the camp, I will make two paintings on Ram Katha, blending both contemporary and traditional elements,” he said.

Thakur also has a refreshingly original take on epics as a literary genre.

“According to me, epics across cultures are the grassroots of human philosophy. We forget that the genesis of human beliefs across the world lies in epics. In fact, they teach us the true meaning of life,” he said.

Heartening words these, at a time when Delhi University was forced to bow before pressure tactics of right-wing hardliners and drop from its syllabus scholar A.K. Ramanujan’s book of essays, Three Hundred Ramayanas.

Thakur believes that an artist can blend the ancient and the present-day to enrich the universality of epics across time and space. “We should try to evolve subjects related to human philosophy. What is eternal is ever-evolving,” he said.

Thakur, who has has taken part in art exhibitions in Calcutta, Santiniketan, New Delhi, Mumbai, as well as in Toronto, and been awarded by the Jharkhand state, Camlin Art Foundation, Sukumar Das Memorial, Academy of Fine Arts and Shilpi Samman, to name a few, is going to Ayodhya for the first time. “The legendary city will definitely have an impact on my artistic sensibility,” he said, adding his medium would be paper collage and acrylic.

What makes the Ramayana an eternal epic ?

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