Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

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India Society's Exhibition of Modern Indian Art be singled out for praise. The black-and-white room includes a masterly large-size cartoon for " Asoka's Last Gift," by Mr. A. K. Haldar, the head of the Lucknow School of Art, excellent etchings by Mr. Mukul Dey, Principal of the Calcutta School of Oriental Art, and a vigorous mezzotint by Mr. Gupta, who leads the art movement in Lahore.
The progress of architecture in Western India is demonstrated in the long corridor, and there are interesting sculptures from Bombay and Lucknow.
For the British visitor the most irresistible, and perhaps the most surprising, impression is that of the underlying unity of aims and ideals which this all-India Exhibition demonstrates. This seems a most valuable lesson to learn at this particular moment, when it is more than ever important that the peoples of India and of this country should understand one another.
We have so often been told to think of the peoples of India as cut up into numberless races, creeds, and castes with mutually exclusive aims and ideals, that it can only be helpful to be made to realize beyond the need for words how great is the fundamental similarity of thought and aspiration which links the King's subjects in all parts of his great Indian Empire.
Through modern Indian art we become aware of a spiritual unity among Indians which transcends whatever political differences may ruffle the surface of Indian thought. For nowhere are Indian thought and the Indian outlook upon life more faithfully reflected than in the art of that great country.
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