Independence Day in India 1947, and my mind goes back to my parents telling me that everyone wanted to read the newspaper in Malayalam in Kerala ( Changanacherry and Champakulam) and in the vernacular in different parts of India. In 2016, when I curated Tatwamsi at the India International Centre of Kerala’s Silent Valley photographs the distinguished Chairman of Indian International Centre Prof MGK Menon spoke to me about his role in collecting India’s Modern Masters for Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Bombay (Mumbai) for Homi Bhabha. Menon said: “ In the 1950’s , Bombay was a different place.
Independence Day 15th August 1947 was a historic event, that was equal in importance to the most momentous happenings of our crowded days. We couldn’t believe that the British flag was being brought down all over India, and the Indian Tirana would be hoisted. Amidst great sadness of partition was the breath of freedom and the thought that two hundred years of British rule over our teeming subcontinent and its ancient civilization had come to an end in a manner far more noble than it began.
” Thus so many years hence it is a good time to look at the collection of the TIFR Mumbai which has been documented by the brilliant art curator, historian and author Mortimer Chatterjee and wife Tara Lal in Mumbai. Replete with photographs of Homi Bhabha and Prof Menon and many other paintings, this collection is a veritable toast to India’s Moderns. Chatterjee and Lal go back in h.