The 58 historic paintings adorning the walls of the outer circular corridor of Parliament House have acquired a fresh lease of life following a massive restoration exercise. The paintings unfold major landmarks of the 5,000-year history of India.
The painstaking job has been executed by a known authority in the field, IK Bhatangar, a retired professor and head of the Department of Conservation of the National Museum Institute of History of Art, Conservation and Museology, and his five assistants. The work had been, in fact, assigned to the National Museum, which in turn, outsourced it to Bhatnagar, given his experience and skill. It took Bhatnagar and his team seven months to remove dust from the surface, sharpen outlines of drawings and shine them. This was followed up with a chemical treatment, which leaves a transparent film over the paintings.
?At least 28 paintings had been damaged, and we had to undertake their colour integration,? Bhatnagar said, adding that ?it was possible to restore 16 of them on the spot, but 12 had to be removed to the temporary workshop set up at Parliament House?. He said some others had suffered figment flaking.
However, none of the 58 panels had escaped distemper splashes. ?But mind you, we followed the basic principle of conservation?minimum intervention,? Bhatnagar said. He cited the example of a painting by S Sen Roy, depicting King Porus taken prisoner by King Alexander, which has a dark tone though the battle between the two took place during daytime. ?However, we struck to the original tone and made no attempt to alter the shades,? Bhatnagar said.
He traced the damage to four sources. The first came splashes of whitewash, which were only made worse by the labourers, who, while wiping them off, ended up damaging the paintings more. A number of paintings had splashes of water. There were scratches left by furniture moved carelessly through the corridor while several paintings bore marks of human vandalism.
For the future, Bhatnagar has advised Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar to consider providing glass casings to the paintings. He has also offered to hold a one-day workshop for training the staff in their upkeep. One aspect, which has been overlooked while conceiving the idea, is that the entire corridor is not adequately lighted and, therefore, the effect of the paintings is also lost. Bhatnagar, however, is not in favour of spotlighting the paintings, because it would compromise their life. A diffused lighting, according to him, would do.
It was the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha, GV Mavalankar, who conceived the idea of decorating the corridor with paintings, drawn by eminent artists of the country, way back in 1951. A wide range of themes was identified and drawn in water colours. They include ?Shiva as Yogi? (HV Ram Gopal, Chennai); Rama Rajya?Rama, Sugriva, Hanuman, Vasishtha, Lakshmana, Sita, Bharata, Shatrughna and the three mothers, Kaushalya, Kaikeyi and Sumitra (PL Narasimha Murthy, Chennai); Buddha turning the wheel of law?Dharma-Chakra Pravartana (Sushil Sarkar, Chandigarh); landing of Indian naval merchants in Java (Jagdish Mittal, Hyderabad); Rajendra Chola and his naval expedition to Sri Lanka, Nicobar, Kadara and further east to overcome the Sailendra empire (KK Hebbar, Mumbai); Shankaracharya and Ramanujacharya (B N Jijja, Delhi); Sher Shah Suri with the gateway of Purana Quila in the background (Indu Rakshit Satyaloka, Calcutta); Akbar, Todarmal, Tansen and Abul Fazal, Faizi and Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khana (M K Sharma, Jaipur); Rana Pratap on his horse, Chetak (Ramesh Pandya, Baroda); Jahangir and Noorjahan (Prabha V Dongare, Baroda); Rani Laxmi Bai of Jhansi and Tantya Tope (Madhu Powle, Mumbai); Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh (Sobha Singh, Himachal Pradesh); Quit-India Resolution (Satyen Ghosal, Kolkata); Dandi March (RN Parikh, Ahmedabad) and hoisting of the flag at the Red Fort (Bimal Das Gupta, Delhi).
Bhatnagar, who lists the restoration of the Air Force Museum here among his memorable assignments, is looking forward to another challenge: to restore the Persian-style painted ceiling of Ashoka Hall at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.