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Art Connect-An IFA Publication 2009

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“Is there an Indian way of thinking?” asked AK Ramanujan twenty years ago in
an essay of the same name. The answers will vary, he says, depending on which word
in that question is being emphasised—Is there an Indian way of thinking? Is there an
Indian way of thinking? Is there an Indian way of thinking? And so on. Before going on
to illuminatingly address the last of these formulations, Ramanujan promises us that
“We have not heard the end of these questions—or these answers.”
This issue of ArtConnect reveals how persistent questions of national identity and
character are—especially when talking about culture. N Kalyan Raman, in his review
of Kirtana Kumar’s performance, The Wedding Party, describes the dissimulation around
Indian weddings and the “marathon dance of deception” that they consequently are.
Shumona Goel’s film installation, Family Tree, reveals the breakdown of the idea of
‘Indian’ in the context of migration—an experience which leads to a fractured present
where “we are never really quite at home. Never in the US, never in India…” On the
other hand, says Kaushik Bhaumik, this passage from being singularly Indian to a
psychically troubled migrant leads to the possibility of “a family tree exorcised of
superstition and the irrational”

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AWDF.0665.C1

AWDF.0665

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AWDF.0665

Publisher

India : India Foundation for the Arts., 2009

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English

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