A careful look at the stock market shows us that events like the Afghan war and that of Iraq that followed close-on have severely shaken people?s confidence in investment as we have known it for over half a century now. The peace engineered largely by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II and by the resounding defeats of the US in Korea and Vietnam after long wars gave the world the confidence that a new world order that respected international norms of civilised behaviour would emerge.

Much of this confidence was frittered away by the war in Afghanistan and the replacement of the modernising Najibullah regime by a series of mad mullahs and warlords.

An untitled water colour painting by Ramkinkar Baij

This was followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the people?s democratic states of Eastern Europe that were replaced by starry-eyed capitalist regimes that were unable to sustain the large markets handed over to them and actually allowed them to disintegrate to a point where they were small enough to serve their narrow interests.

Faced with this sudden disappearance of the other, US imperialism prepared to make hay while the sun shone and launched its present career of senseless aggression and plunder. The attack on Iraq, a secular Arab state, as one of the ?axis of evil? powers is not only an attack on alternative supplies of oil, but also on the existence of an independent secular power in South Asia, India.

While the US does not seem to have shifted from its reliance on Pakistan (largely because undemocratic regimes are more pliant than democratic ones to outside pressure), we must not forget that Iraq was a secular state, a steadfast friend, a source of oil supply and the only Arab state to support India on Kashmir.

Our safety lies in remaining as independent as we can from the influence of the US. Our contemporary art is one of the strongest elements of the secular and modernising culture of the national movement that packed off British colonial rule after the mass movements of the 1920s unleashed themselves. Investing in this art is to ensure that the arena in which our industry and agro-industry have developed will not be truncated.

In fact, Indian contemporary art has entered the global market successfully, thanks largely to the NRIs and some foreign collectors, notably Chester and Davida Herwitz in the US, Esther School in Holland and Masanori Fukuoka in Japan.

Our effort must be to carry this momentum forward. Significant among our contemporary artists are those of the Santiniketan School, Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Ram Kinkar Baij and Benode Bihari Mukherjee.

Close on their heels, we have the regional groupings that emerged after independence in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi and Srinagar. The Mumbai group was the most radical, with FN Souza, VS Gaitonde, KH Ara, MF Husain, SH Raza and Tyeb Mehta as its leading lights.

Raza was also a leading light of the Srinagar group, which later gave us artists like GR Santosh and Bansi Parimoo. In Kolkata, there were artists like Paritosh Sen, Rathin Moitra and Nirode Majumdar, to name only a few.

In Chennai, we had the towering figure of KCS Panicker. A recent series of philosophical essays on Tyeb Mehta?s large painting ?Shantiniketan tryptich,? by Ramachandra Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi?s grandson, entitled, ?Svaraj? is an apt reminder of the close relation of our art with the Indian national movement.

Collectors, however, must understand that not all or any art produced today is contemporary. India is a country where anachronisms thrive and we have to keep clear of them.

There is a lot of calendar art, Kitsch, devotional art, decorative art and the like. None of this is contemporary art. Then there is the hybrid colonial art of Raja Ravi Varma and his acolytes, spawning a mixture of western Kitsch and Indian revivalism of which Uma Bharti?s recent performance with a birthday cake and candles in a Madhya Pradesh Hanuman temple is a good example. And the outrage it provoked could well be a good reflection of what people think of such a blend today.

Indian contemporary art is independent and radical. And there are enough radical artists around, so it can become a powerful visual force to protect our sovereignty and independence both as producers and as a market. But to do so effectively, it must reflect the secular and modernist traditions of our struggle for independence and steer clear of revivalism of all sorts.

Those who want Indian investments to remain secure must patronise this art and carry its momentum forward as there are a lot of young artists producing this already. The nature of our best investments is that they are modern, scientific and original. Our contemporary art being one of these cannot be otherwise.