High Up In Roerich Country

Jawaharlal Nehru

At the end of a dirt road leading off the Left Bank, a couple of miles beyond the erstwhile Naggar Castle, stands a dazzling white house.

At first glance it looks like one of the run-of-the-mill touristy cottages mushrooming all over the Kullu Valley. But as you skip past a little gate, ticket and brochure in hand, you suddenly realise that you are staring up at the great Russian painter Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerichs Indian retreat. An exhibition of the Russian masters landscapes from his much-acclaimed Himalaya series is currently on display at Roerichs Naggar residence.

This exhibition has been lovingly put together by his followers. Roerich was an institution. Studying Roerichs style and making his works widely known is a religion for me, says Tchapaeva Rimma, a German guide for tourists to the Valley, and a member of the Eastern Roerich Society and the International Roerich Memorial Trust headquartered at Naggar.

 

This exhibition highlights Roerichs photographs and small paintings pertaining to the Himalayas and the Kullu Valley. His other lesser known works have also been included, adds Rimma, who journeyed to the Russian masters house from Yalta, Ukraine, on the Black Sea. Every year a steady trickle of art students and painters finds its way to the reclusive Russian painters mountain get-away, hidden in the centre of a Himalayan pine forest.

Although a Roerich commands its weight in gold, the master preferred to keep his distance from admirers.

Even in pre-independence India, there were few who actually met the reclusive painter. A mystic, Roerich channeled his vast energies into producing more than 7,000 painted works. He explored the sphere of monumental and applied arts and has even left behind a whole series of sketches for furniture, mind-boggling costumes and embroidery.

The Russian painter held a unique world-view, founded upon the fundamental laws of existence.

The artist passionately wrote: Where there is culture, there is peace. There is a heroic deed, there is the right solution to the most complicated social problems. So long as culture is only a luxury, only a Christmas pudding, it will not improve life. Culture should come closest to everyday life, whether it is a hut or a palace.

The artist also founded the Roerich Pact, committed to preserving culture and world monuments, even during times of war.

There were many takers for this idea which included the likes of Albert Einstein, Bernard Shaw, Thomas Mann, Herbert Wells, Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore and many other outstanding scientists and artists from various countries. In 1954, on the basis of what is now known as the Roerich Pact, the International Convention at Hague passed the historic Act to protect cultural values in wartime.

Not surprisingly, Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But when it came to the crunch, the artists low-profile cost him the award. Roerich shot to fame at an early age, but his long periods of residence in India secreted away in Naggar cost him a continuing recognition from the West.

Yet its clear now that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Roerich has re-emerged posthumously (he died in 1947 at Naggar) in the Slavic States as a central figure whose works paintings, stories and poetry fill up the cultural vacuum left by some 70 years of cultural and ideological repression, says Rimma.

In early 1913, the Russian painter planned to journey round the East, but World War I frustrated those plans.

His cherished dream came true only in 1923, when along with his wife Yelena Ivanovna (philosopher and writer), sons Yuri Nikolayevich (a well-known Orientalist) and Svyatoslav Nikolayevich (a painter and art critic), he came to India.

In 1925, Roerich and his wife set off on a cross country voyage that began in Srinagar, through the Karakoram range of the Himalayas, on to Ladakh, and into the Takla-Maklan desert. The expedition, accomplished on yak, horse and camel, finally took them to Atlai in Siberia.

They then went onto Mongolia and Tibet, where they were reportedly stranded in the freezing cold, without any supplies.

They made it through that though, and finally completed a hazardous journey back to their adopted home in India.

For Roerich, this three year artistic and ethnographic expedition was a treasure trove he collected many ancient manuscripts, works of art and medicinal knowledge.

And in 1928, set up the Himalayan Research Institute, Urusvati which means Morning star light, to conduct research on some of his findings.

Roerichs tryst with the mountains seems to be instrumental in his emergence as a primary painter of the Atlai and the Himalayas. Besides depicting the land and its people, its history, mythology, spiritual traditions etc, perhaps the most significant is the tri-partite theme that surfaces in many of his paintings: Cosmos, Earth, and Humanity.

At the end of the 30s, Roerich wished to return to his motherland: I would like to be there as soon as possible and to contribute my experience and knowledge to the cause of Russia, he is said to have remarked. But he was prevented by the outbreak of another world war.

He had packed his books and pictures for what was to be his last journey, but fate willed otherwise and Roerich died in 1947 in this very house at Naggar.

Today, this Russian artists house strewn with priceless objets dart is as much a place of homage for budding artists as Stratford-upon-Avon is for literateurs.

Rahul Gul

A correction: The last sentence in H Masud Tajs column, `Architecture, which appeared in the issue dated 4.11.96, should have read: The 26th floor was the architects site office and he shared the floor only with cooling-towers with their ubiquitous water flow.