CHAKRA: LINKING TRADITION TO MODERNITY
Late Keshav Malik pens down how artists of the Silpi Chakra group survived the impulses of the catastrophic partition and let their artistic spirit take an unrestricted form.

Good for once to have christened the tiny, new art group with two ancient Indic words. A baby born not only in the wake of Independence and the then celebrations but also with great blood-lettings in both wings of a dismembered India. Only the truest of the artist community do not rest content with routine gestures and so were Satish Gujral’s very first works: dripping with world pain. Though the artist now denies that he had the partition in mind while painting scenes from the great havoc, yet surely, it is the wisdom in an artist’s body that really directs his brush strokes, even when he interprets them in a different way. If artists do not toss and turn in their sleep or if they do not maniacally rejoice like tidal waves, there can only be tepid art.
Thus, it is my conjecture that Silpi Chakra had come into being because the muses had shepherd salient artists’ spirits to form a union of kindred souls. Artistic expression is a strange necessity, like thirst in a desert. And necessity itself is the mother of invention, thus happened the Chakra.
Silpi Chakra is long gone, only the name remains. What could have been in the subconscious of the more wide awake and articulate of those union forming artists? If only dimly and like all artists all over the globe, and for always, it could not be but the passion of raising the spirit in the body politic. Of course not all artists are art gurus. They are mainly in search for the light. Still some of them take it upon themselves to impart gentle lessons, by example, or by words, to the novice, to the new comer. Hence B.C. Sanyal, Sailoz Mookherjea, Biren De, Bhagat ji, K.C. Aryan and others. Artists would not want to cut themselves from the so called commonality. They are not snobs. Thus there were many communions that took place at Silpi Chakra, not just the placing of the paintings on the walls and sculptures on floor. These communions helped both viewers and the artists. But behind all this was a serious, salutary conspiracy: to enlist the Delhi public in the act of close looking and serious reflection on the meaning of life. Life mothers art, but in turn art teaches life to be human – to
lift its chin towards a limitless sky. But the best of these artists not only looked with their eyes but did so lovingly. This looking is not a mere act of convenience but of rapture. They cherished the whole spirit of our people and tried to yoke it to still higher endeavors. They knew by instinct that if limits were to be set on the vision of the individual, there would be no hope and no eager life, no adventure, no art, no poetry and no beckoning mystery.