(Prof. B.N.Goswami 1933-2023)
Prof.B.N.Goswamy,
the renowned art historian is no more. He was ninety years old. A man who
inherited his classy lifestyle and erudition during the tumultuous years of
colonial era kept that on without compromising even after India gained
independence. He was an IAS officer for a few years and left his administrative
skills behind to do further research on Indian art, especially Pahari and Sikh
art. His curiosity moved from recognizing the lesser known manuscripts and
illuminations from the regional varieties of Indian miniature traditions and
writing volumes about them, to the identification of artists who did signature
style works in the courts of northern provinces since the Mughal period. He pored
himself over innumerable volumes of documents kept by the temple priests whose
relentless documentations of the donors in cash, kind and art, without losing
the finer details such as the painters’ names, those of the donors and
witnesses under certain chieftains and kings, and brought out volumes on
artists such as Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India, Nainsukh of
Guler: A Great Indian Painter from a Small Hill State, Manaku of Guler: the
Life and Work of Another Great Indian Painter from a Small Hill State.
I met
Prof.B.N.Goswamy personally in 2012, when I was invited by Chandigarh Lalit
Kala Akademi to give an illustrated lecture. Prof.Goswamy, to my surprise, came
and sat in the front row and kept listening to my rather lengthy presentation for
slightly over one and half hour. After the lecture he shook hands with me and
said he enjoyed looking at the contemporary works of art that were detailed in
my presentation. Reading B.N.Goswami has always been a pleasurable thing. His
volumes are written in chaste English but never pretentious or deliberately
tedious and complex. He never encumbered his writing with unnecessary jargons.
He could transport an art history enthusiast and a general reader to the layers
of Indian art traditions prevailed in the northern provinces of our country both
in his writings as well as in his illustrated lectures. He had this theatrical
flourish in his presentations, which often ended with an image where Lord
Krishna was presented in an absent form, through a blooming tree.
Prof.
B.N.Goswami always reminded me of the late painter, Jehangir Sabawala; both of
them exuded a sense of Victorian elegance. While Sabawala was aloof in nature
(may be he was accessible to his friends, galleries, collectors and dealers,
which I was not) but Prof.Goswami remained accessible to students and scholars
alike, but never made himself a populist. He stuck to his methodology and
writing style and did not traverse to the realm of contemporary art (except for
once) as some art historians specializing in 19th century or earlier
centuries tend to do. Most of them believe that methodology makes art history;
a sort of stencil application of the historical methodology over contemporary
arts done in different contexts and intents, and make hybrid art historical
writings, overtly jargon infested and opaque. Prof.Goswamy never fell into that
fallacy. To put it differently, he did not emulate a Hindustani singer who
thought he would rap for a change and cut himself a sorry figure.
Brijinder
Nath Goswamy, that was his full name. I never knew it till recently. I was reading
his book ‘The Indian Cat’, his last work on art history, approached through a different
trajectory where he picked up a set of Indian traditional works of art where
cats are depicted as a side character or a predominant one. In that book, one
of his foreign friends calls him ‘Brij’ and I was curious. Like the book revealed
another side of Goswamy, it also revealed to me that his name was Brijinder
Nath Goswamy and his close friends called him Brij. In every person there are
two persons, at least. One is for public consumption and another one for exclusive
private use. How was B.N.Goswamy in private, did he always wore a scarf around
his neck like some old film stars, or did he always sleep on a spotless
bedsheet and so on, we are not privy to know. But the public personality of
Prof.Goswamy was that of a meticulous art historian, always looking for a lost
name of an artist and giving him his due acknowledgement in Indian art history,
a delayed justice but what a justice!
We are
going to miss Prof.B.N.Goswamy for a long time.
-JohnyML
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