The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust has again shown, with a three-day exhibition-cum-sale of art works held in the Capital, that art and culture will not tolerate fundamentalist violence.

They did what artists can do the best. They made works of art for sale to help the riot victims. The visual artists were not alone in this. The event saw eminent vocalist Shubha Mudgal singing on the lawns of Vitthalbhai Patel House, while a film on the Gujrat carnage by Gopal Menon was also screened to collect funds for the victims.

The list contributors to the exhibition included K G Subramanyan (whose work sold for Rs 1 lakh), Satish Gujral (Rs 65,000), Somenath Hore, Sunil Das, Arpana Caur, Vivan Sundaram, Ghulam Sheikh, Bhupen Khakhar, Haku Shah, Krishen Khanna, Nand Katyal, Manisha Parekh, Atul Dodiya, Nilima Sheikh, Manu Parekh, Paramjit Singh, Jeram Patel, M J Enas, Parthiv Shah, Jitish Kallat, Arpita Singh, Amitava Das, Mona Rai, Kishore Shinde, Kanchan Chander, Probir Gupta, Pushap Mala, Robin Mondal, Sankho Choudhury, Sheila Makhijani, Shukla Sawant, Sonia Khurana, Sooni Taraporevala, Surendran Nair, Surjeet Caur, Hemi Bawa, Bulbul Sharma, Veena Bhargava, Jatin Das, Premalya Singh, Pramod Ganapatye, Ghislaine Aaroe Prins (GAP), Veena Bhargava, Yusuf, S G Vasudev, Vasudevan Akkhitham, Suhas

Nimbalkar, Subroto Kundu, Subbha Ghosh, Ajay Desai, Sukanya Rehman and many more. It was a virtual who?s who of Indian art today. So it was not difficult to collect around Rs 5 lakh from immediate sales.

There are other works that collectors would do well to buy as they are all priced extremely low, being works gifted to raise funds for a cause. These include a mixed media work by Ajay Desai (Rs 7,000), a drawing by Amitava Das (Rs 6,000), a work by Indra Promit Roy (Rs 3,000), a drawing by Madhao Imarte (Rs 4,800), Nand Katyal?s work (Rs 4,000), a mixed media work by Sukanya Rehman (Rs 5,000), photographs by Ram Rehman (Rs 1,500 each), an oil on canvas by Ratnabali Kant (Rs 45,000) a mixed media work by Probir Gupta (Rs 25,000), a photograph by Pushpamala (Rs 5,000), a couple of drawings by Krishen Khanna (Rs 45,000 each) and a fine serigraph of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee by Veer Munshi (Rs 4,000), stamped with a franking mark of the ?Ayodhya Verdict.?

Many of the works are memorable mementos of our times and the determination of artists not to let their impact pass unnoticed. It is heartening to note that the finest minds in our visual arts have clearly come out in opposition to them.

This is not surprising as the value of our contemporary culture and art in the globalised world is precisely because of its variety, its independent expression and its radical bull in Sunil Das? Bullfight series, with the victims of stereotyped dismemberment in Bhupen Khakhar?s works or the wounds inflicted on the civilisation of India by fundamentalist forces in Somenath Hore?s art, or the syncretic culture of India represented by Parthiv Shah?s photograph of artists M F Husain and Ram Kumar walking towards Humayun?s tomb together.

Art and culture are the greatest binding forces in our society today. And artists are boldly coming forward to assert their mission of being the glue that keeps so many different forces together.

And as long as they can do it, Indian art and artifacts and Indian unity will remain something worthwhile to invest in.