Haunting images of hungry Bengal by a forgotten artist

A deserted gallery opens its doors to a lone visitor. Inside, a forgotten chapter of Indian history unravels in all its horror and poignancy. The 1943 famine, a man-made catastrophe that claimed at least three million lives in undivided Bengal is brought to life through the bold sketches and notes of Chittaprosad, an artist who, too, was lost in the mists of time.

Who would have remembered an emaciated girl Amina Khatun, her brother and an elderly man called Abdul Rehman, the faceless victims of the disaster? Or the pot-bellied children, a common sight in those days. Hundreds of destitute kids abandoned by their parents roamed the streets in search of food; only the lucky ones got picked up and sent to the orphanages. These are real-life scenes from a long spell of starvation and deaths as Chittaprosad went about documenting the devastating impact of the famine in Midnapore and later in various districts of what is now called East Bengal. Had it not been for his untiring efforts, the ultimate price that Bengal paid for the British war efforts in World War II would have escaped posterity. The British did try to suppress and destroy his work when it came out in the form of a book, but a handful of copies survived. They form the core of a month-long retrospective of Chittaprosad at the Delhi Art Gallery in Mumbai's Kala Ghoda.

The images in black and white (pen or brush on ink on paper) trace the evolution of an artist as Chittaprosad realises the importance of framing the frail human figures against their immediate backdrops. In the sketch of a long queue of the famine-ravaged waiting for medicines, we get a generous glimpse of the sparse interiors of a medical camp. Sometimes, an accompanying note brings out the sufferings of a victim.

Bimala Rishi's entire family had been wiped out, except for her baby son. He had been the only hope in her daily battle for survival. Chittaprosad had chronicled the extraordinary struggles of ordinary men, women and children, the peasants, as they migrated in millions from the villages to Kolkata and the small towns to stave off hunger and death.

The other two floors of the gallery are devoted to the artist's social and political views, at the core of which is his fierce loyalty to humanism. Born in 1915, Chittaprosad became a member of the Communist Party at the insistence of PC Joshi but later quit the organisation owing to ideological differences. Throughout his life, he drew and satirised to underscore among other things the greed of US imperialism and the might of the nascent nation state of India in crushing protests against inflation and unemployment. It pained him to see how the lives of ordinary citizens continued to be steeped in misery even after Independence. Two of his most striking political statements can be found in the drawings titled Quit Kashmir (1946) and Bangladesh War (1971)

A self-taught artist, Chittaprosad also dabbled in puppetry, illustrated a children's book and drew the poster of Bimal Roy's iconic film Do Bigha Zamin. He may not have had the dazzling brilliance that distinguished a few of his contemporaries, but his fearless stand against oppression and injustice continues to make Chittaprosad's works relevant in this day and age. In a letter to a friend dated June 26,1953, he writes: “No one knows it better than me that I am not a genius like Van Gogh. And precisely because I am not, my heart and life lies in the country's revolutions and struggles. I am dying because nobody seems to have any need of me.”

The author is Asst Editor with dna. The exhibition continues till August 12