Russian treasure

Why was Roerich - also known as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh - selected for a national honour that might seem at odds with the others?

When Indira Gandhi’s government decided to honour a handful of artists as “national treasures” in the mid-1970s, her own proclivity towards Bengal and Santiniketan — where she had studied — could not be ignored. Six of the artists in the list of nine were from Bengal. A seventh, Raja Ravi Varma, arguably the most well-known among artists who changed the discourse around Indian art, was from the South but had a popular pan-Indian appeal. An eighth, and the only woman in the group — Amrita Sher-Gil — was half-Hungarian, but patriarchy and her own tendency to dress in saris helped the babus prerogate her as Indian rather than half-Indian. The ninth among them was the strangest choice of all, a Russian whose only claim to India was the 19 years he lived here till the time of his death: Nicholas Roerich.

Why was Roerich — also known as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (1874-1947) — selected for a national honour that might seem at odds with the others? The answer to that may well lie in Jawaharlal Nehru’s admiration for a person whom he saw embracing the idea of Hinduism through the works of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and the lessons of the Bhagavad Gita. Roerich was a man of many parts: a painter, of course, a writer, philosopher, theosophist and enlightener not unlike someone else Nehru admired greatly, Rabindranath Tagore. When Indira Gandhi cleared the list of the National Treasure Artists, she paid homage to both, even though Tagore was a painter last and Roerich was a painter first. 

There are certainly similarities between both figures. Born to wealthy families, extensively travelled, with an interest in literature and philosophy, drawn to architecture, both opted to make their homes in remote areas — Tagore in the khois of Santiniketan amidst the Santhals of Bengal, Roerich in Naggar, a tiny village in Himachal Pradesh. If Nehru admired the former enough to send his daughter to Tagore’s bucolic university for an education, he appeared fascinated by Roerich’s cocking a snook against British hegemony in the Great Race for Asia. 

Roerich’s Asian expedition had grabbed the attention of intelligence and espionage agencies around the world when he set off “from Sikkim through Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram Mountains, Khotan, Kashgar, Qara Shar, Urumchi, Irtysh, the Altai Mountains, the Oryot region of Mongolia, the Central Gobi, Kansu, Tsaidam, and Tibet”, managing in between detours into Siberia and Moscow.

In Naggar, Roerich painted some of his most majestic Himalayan vistas, and was visited by Nehru and Indira Gandhi, and among other things, they spoke of cooperation between India and the USSR. His empathy for India and wish to see it free of British yoke may have played a prominent part in his selection as a national hero. Though nominated for the Nobel peace prize on several occasions, Roerich failed to win the award. Nor could the Indian government confer civilian honours on him without upsetting its non-aligned apple cart. The posthumous recognition — nothing more — as one of nine artists, the first among firsts, was an acknowledgement of Roerich’s respect for India, and his choice of making it his home in the last two decades of his life.

Yet, unlike his other National Treasure peers, Roerich’s works are collected not just in India but around the world. Of course, this has to do with his non-Indian, non-Himalayan works as well, and paintings appear regularly at auctions in America, Europe and Asia. His works are coveted by collectors in India, but as national treasures they are not allowed to leave the country. Why paintings made before he came to India, and which have nothing to do with it, should be compelled to comply with this strange ordinance, is beyond the imagination of many.

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated