Pritika Chowdhry is a creative practitioner of ‘counter-memory.’ Her sculptural installations are anti-memorials of traumatic historical events, presenting narratives that disrupt hegemonic collective memories. Trans-national in scope, her installations focus on partition, civil and military wars riots, border violence, genocide and terrorism.
On the 20th anniversary of the Gujarat Pogrom, arguably the most significant communal riot since 1947, and the event that inspired her lauded work,
Memory Leaks: The Spectres of Partition, I speak to the artist about what motivates her, and why her practice remains so important today.
How do you define anti-memorials and counter-memory? And why do you believe they are so important?
I think of anti-memorials as a memorialising gesture that goes against the grain in some way. I am thinking here of Sue-Anne Ware’s project, The Anti-Memorial to Heroin Overdose Victims. In this project, she is tackling the mainstream idea of heroin addicts as inconsequential individuals, not worthy of being mourned in the public realm.
My work also resonates with James E. Young’s theories on anti-memorials. He writes,
Anti-memorials aim not to console but to provoke, not to remain fixed but to change, not to be everlasting but to disappear, not to be ignored by passers-by but to demand interaction, not to remain pristine but to invite their own violation and not to accept graciously the burden of memory but to drop it at the public’s feet. (Young, 1997).
The thing that really interests me about anti-memorials is that they are an act of resistance. Counter-memory is similarly an act of resistance. Michel Foucault theorized the concept of counter-memory and counter-history as an individual’s resistance against the official versions of history and memory. So-called ‘official’ memorials and monuments are often accepted as the ‘true’ version of history. And that is why I think it is important, even critical, to examine historical narratives from the anti- and the counter-, to excavate these subjugated versions of events.
Admittedly, as an individual artist or scholar, and one not beholden to government or state agendas, I can do this. It is a different matter for the director of parks or the head of a municipal organisation who may be responsible for approving permanent, public monuments.
Do you believe that art has the power to enact social change? And if so, where does your work fit into this belief?
I do, and maybe this is a bit idealistic, but I do believe that art has the ability to shift perspectives, in a way that, let’s say, debate may not be able to. And that is why I keep making the work I make.
Most of the work I have made seeks to make visible something that we would rather not talk about, because maybe it is painful or perhaps shameful in some way. I often think that the tagline for Counter-Memory Project should be ‘memorialising unbearable memories.’
For example, What the Body Remembers seeks to make visible the widespread abductions and rapes of women in the Partition riots in 1947. This is something people, definitely the survivors, don’t want to talk about. Their immediate family won’t want to talk about it because it dishonours the family name. And then the next generation may not want to talk about it because they are embarrassed to admit that something so grotesque has happened in their family.
Neither of the state actors want to include this shameful chapter in their nationalistic narrative of how India gained independence from the British, and how the pure state of Pakistan came to be born. (Pak in Urdu means pure).
So, then who? Who can bring up the fact that over 300,000 women, both Hindu and Muslim, were abducted and raped, and put through unspeakable violations? And bring it up in a way that people can actually bear to look at it, and hear it, with empathy.
That’s where my artwork fits in. Art has the power to enact social change; indeed, it must.
How can art help us come to terms with traumatic events? How does it differ from other forms of memorialising?
I think art can take us emotionally to places within ourselves that words cannot. The experiential nature of art can move us, and maybe give us permission to be vulnerable to see and feel deeper truths about ourselves and the world we live in.
Other forms of memorializing, such as state-sponsored monuments have a very specific purpose – their purpose is to hail us into the position of nationalistic and patriotic subjects. To be that, to be a nationalistic and patriotic subject, we need to forget the misdeeds of our nation-states. We need to believe that our nation is noble, fair and egalitarian. In order to believe that we need to forget the traumatic events that happened in order for our country to be born as a nation-state.
Art made in a thoughtful way, I think, can achieve the balancing act of asking the hard questions and generating compassion and new understanding of those that we might have harmed. Making an anti-memorial is not the same as being anti-nationalistic! Sometimes, it is like walking tightrope though!
I tussled with this issue when I was making Ungrievable Lives, an anti-memorial for 9/11. I made that work for an art exhibit commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11. In that work I am asking the viewer, that as we remember and mourn the victims of 9/11, can we also mourn and remember the over 1 million people that have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?
I believe art can certainly help us come to terms with traumatic events, but not just as a source of condolence. Art can also help us come to terms with the trauma that we have caused to other people, and that might be even more important to heal the world.
Over the past year, calls have grown worldwide to pull down racist and controversial statues and memorials. How does your work fit into the zeitgeist?
The pulling down of these racist statues has been a very significant development worldwide, and I have been thinking about it a lot. I read a very interesting article about this worldwide phenomenon – it seems people are rising in mutiny, to at times quite violently remove these racist and controversial statues.
I came across an insightful essay on this subject by Renee Lehman, in which she suggests that this phenomenon may actually be a way of performing ‘collective catharsis.’ Apparently, Fanon had written about collective catharsis in his book, Black Skin, White Masks. I was quite struck by Lehman’s hypothesis, and I agree with it. Incidentally, I am also reminded of the pulling down of Saddam Hussain’s statue in Iraq when he was defeated.
To come back to the question, I think pulling down racist and controversial statues is a symbolic act, a performance of rebellion, a release of sorts, a reclamation of the subjugated people’s humanity. It is cathartic not only for the people who engaged in the act but also for those that watch it on TV or see it depicted in photos. I think it shows that the public, the ordinary people, have claimed a higher consciousness of what is just and fair, and what is unjust and unfair. People are saying, hey, we are really not okay with these public displays of racism and inequality in the civic environment that we live in every day.
Today they are pulling down symbols, tomorrow they may be ready to take on systemic racism. In this zeitgeist, I think the moment of anti-memorials has come! I think the public might be even more receptive to anti-memorials. Which means that the excavation of counter-memories may lead the way to durable and enduring social change.
Your instillations are always temporary. In an ideal world, do you believe that anti-memorials and traditional monuments should co-exist, or is part of the power of anti-memorials in their transience?
I think anti-memorials by their very nature are temporary and impermanent. Going back to James E Young’s framework for anti-memorials, he writes of them ‘…not to remain fixed but to change, not to be everlasting but to disappear…’ Before I had heard of Young’s writing, I referred to my works as mobile and temporary memorials.
I certainly think that traditional monuments and anti-memorials can co-exist, albeit uncomfortably! For example, one of the monuments I really do admire is the Vietnam War memorial by Maya Lin in Washington, DC. My response to that memorial though would be a list of all the Vietnamese soldiers and civilians that lost their lives in the Vietnam War. Can we make the Vietnamese victims more than nameless numbers? I have hope in our public consciousness – it may take a generation or two, but maybe we can!
What inspired Memory Leaks: The Spectres of Partition?
I've made a series of art installations about the partition of India in 1947, and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. This installation explores the periodic eruptions of communal riots that seem to happen with uncanny regularity in India since the Partition of 1947.
In 2002, in the state of Gujarat in India, a brutal and planned pogrom was conducted against the Muslim minority by the Hindu right, which left over 2000 people dead and several thousand injured. Sexual violence against Muslim women was widely used as a method of subjugating and humiliating the Muslim community.
The Gujarat Pogrom, as it came to be called, stunned the nation because it was very deliberate and planned, and extremely brutal. Incidentally, it occurred right after the tenth anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992. For many Indians, including me, the Gujarat Pogrom of 2002 was a tipping point.
It seemed like the Hindu right was baying for the blood of the Muslim minority community. The scale and extreme brutality of the violence clearly harked back to the Partition violence of 1947, and again in 1971. In researching this link between the partitions and communal riots, I stumbled upon Asghar Ali Engineer’s book, Communal Riots after Independence: A Comprehensive Account (2004). In this extensive book, Engineer has presented tabulated data on almost all the communal riots that have occurred in India from 1947 to 2002.
In further research, I found Paul Brass’s book, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (2003). In it, Brass coins the phrase, ‘Institutionalized Riot System ‘(IRS) to explain the dramatic production of riots on a regular basis in India, which Brass has divided into three phases: preparation, activation and explanation.
I was deeply impacted by these texts, and came to the conclusion that I, as a Hindu, owed it to the Muslim minority in India to reveal this complex and callous socio-political system, through my artwork. The common lay person in India is not likely to read these academic books, important as they are. As an artist, I can disseminate this academic information in an accessible way through my experiential anti-memorials. That is how I came to create the Memory Leaks installation.
Can you take us through the symbolism of this installation?
The installation is comprised of ritual copper vessels used in Hindu temples for cleansing through water and fire. Dharapatras, which are copper pots with a spouted bottom, are used in Hindu temples to drip water or milk on deities. Havans are copper containers used in Hindu temples to light the holy fire and make offerings to the fire.
Seventeen dharapatras have been etched with details of as many communal riots. Each dharapatra is etched with unending tally marks and the location of a significant Hindu-Muslim riot, and the year in which it occurred.
They are presented as a durational installation with water dripping out of the bottom of the vessels into seventeen havans. Each of the havans contain partially burnt books written in Urdu, the language spoken by Muslims in India and Pakistan.
Each riot is accompanied by a certain set of rhetorical claims by the majoritarian Hindu actors, such as these outlined below –
• The riot happened spontaneously because of a trigger event.
• The trigger event involved a Muslim man who committed a deliberate act of offending Hindu religious sensibilities, like killing a cow, or stealing a Hindu idol, or attacking a Hindu man, or violating a Hindu woman.
• The Muslim man then gathered other Muslims of the area and this group of aggressive Muslims attacked Hindus in the area.
• The Hindus of the area responded righteously to defend their religious sentiments, and fought back the aggressive Muslims, in noble and fair ways.
• The deaths and destruction of properties was equal on both Hindu and Muslim sides, or more on the Hindu side.
• Gangs of armed Muslim men prowled Hindu neighbourhoods, to loot and kill Hindu people, and rape Hindu women.
All of these are jingoistic claims aimed at rationalising and justifying the communal violence and the engineered riots that occur with regularity. Most of the time, the riots are engineered in time for a political event such as elections, to galvanize the Hindu electoral base of the local politicians.
Both Asgar Ali Engineer and Paul Brass demonstrate with fully tabulated data (as well as verifiable historical reconstructions of events leading up to various riots) that each of these claims are patently false and politically motivated.
In Memory Leaks, my goal is to contest these untruths by emobodying and manifesting the conter-memories of these riots, in the following ways –
Firstly, the numbers of casualties on Hindu and Muslim sides are not even close to equal. The Muslim deaths are usually 6-10 times more than Hindu casualties. But data about numbers of deaths is usually not revealed by the State so as not to inflame the situation further. Hence, the unending tally marks on the dharapatras alert the viewers that the official numbers are false and should be questioned and investigated independently.
Secondly, the destruction of property is not at all equal on both sides. The Hindu rioters come prepared with addresses of Muslim shops and houses, and selectively burn and damage only the Muslim properties.
Thirdly, the verified existence of IRSs in several Hindu-majority cities and towns of India, ensures that the initiators and aggressors of communal riots are the Hindu right workers and politicians, not the Muslim minority population.
Fourthly, the riots did not just occur spontaneously but were engineered by the Hindu IRSs, not by volatile Muslim men.
Fifth, the Muslim minority population is almost always on the defensive, due to their lesser numbers and lesser resources. They are on the backfoot, trying desperately to defend their communities, because the local police and politicians are Hindus and backing the Hindu IRSs machinery.
Lastly, it is the Hindu men that systematically use rape and sexual violence on Muslim women in the most brutal of ways, to subjugate and humiliate the Muslim community.
Organized pogroms targeting Muslims are hailed as ‘cleansing’ the Indian land of the impure Muslims by the Hindu right. Frequently, the Muslims are killed and burnt, and their houses and shops razed to the ground. The smoldering books are a metaphor for the decimation of Islamic culture in these acts of violence.
What was your thought process behind the name Memory Leaks: The Spectres of Partition?
My hypothesis with this artwork is that the IRSs hail the Partition violence as a way to galvanize their Hindu right base into participating in the riots. So, the memory of the Partition violence is continually being harnessed in the present day, to instil fear-based aggression in the minds of Hindus and to demonize the Muslim minority population.
The narrative of the Partition violence is similarly polarized in India and Pakistan to paint the other community as the aggressor and violent one, and the home community as the noble and righteous victim.
Hence, the memory of the Partition is continually ‘leaking’ into the present to recreate the same emotional reactions of fear, violence and blame. I believe this is a key component to understand the continuing cycles of communal riots in India.
This piece invites viewer participation through the pouring of water into the leaking dharapatras. What effect do you think this participatory action has on the viewer? Are you in some way making them implicit in the actions you are memorialising?
I invite viewers to participate by pouring water into the dharapatras because it is symbolic of a shradhanjali in Hindu religious rituals. Hindus pay homage to gods and goddesses by pouring water on the idols, and also to the dead by sprinkling water on the corpse. As a ritual, it is a powerful and symbolic way to memorialize the scores of Muslims who have perished in these riots.
Also, the action of pouring water continuously animates the memories of the riots as the water flows out drop-by-drop into the havans below. Havans are traditionally used in Hindu rituals to light the holy fire and often Hindu rioters use the holy fire from the local temple to set fire to Muslim houses and shops in a symbolic way of cleansing the land of the impure Muslims. In the context of the riots, these fires are acts of arson. Water is used to douse these fires and the viewer is thus helping to douse the fire that has burnt the Muslim neighbourhoods. The half-burnt Urdu texts in the havans are symbols of the Muslim culture and properties being burnt.
I am appropriating the dharapatras and havans as objects loaded with ritual significance and reinscribing them as containers of history that tenaciously hold and incessantly leak the memories of the Partition violence into the communal strife of the present day.
The viewers need to be up close to the dharapatras to pour water in them. Hence, they are looking at the tally marks up close and reading the details of the particular riot inscribed on each dharapatra, its location, and the year in which it happened. The goal is to educate, involve, and engage the viewer in the empathetic action of paying homage and memorializing the Muslims that have suffered in all these riots.
Additionally, by memorializing the Muslims that have died in the communal riots in India, the art installation functions as an anti-memorial as it contests the jingoistic rhetoric of the Hindu right about these communal riots.
Which artists, if any, have influenced you in the making of this work?
The main influences in the making of this work have been other scholars. In creating the conceptual framework for this project, and in executing the physical materiality of this anti-memorial, I humbly stand on the shoulders of Asgar Ali Engineer, Paul Brass, James E Young, and Michel Foucault.
Bibliography
James E. Young, "Germany’s Memorial Question: Memory, Counter-Memory, and the End of the Monument," The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol 96, no 4, Fall, 1997, p855.
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” In Donald F. Bouchard (ed.), Language, Counter-memory, Practice, Trans. D. F. Bouchard, Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977) p139-164.
R. Lehman, “Fanon and Collective Catharsis: The Removal of Racist Monuments Around the Globe.” MIR, https://www.mironline.ca/fanon-and-collective-catharsis-the-removal-of-racist-monuments-around-the-globe/. Accessed 18 Oct. 2021.
Engineer, Asghar Ali. "Communal Riots After Independence: A Comprehensive Account." Shipra, 2004.
Brass, Paul. "The Production of Hindu - Muslim Violence in Contemporary India," Seattle, London: University of Washington Press, 2003.
Artist Bio
Pritika is a socio-political, feminist artist, curator, and writer, based in Chicago, IL. Pritika's artworks have been acquired into prestigious museum and corporate collections, such as the Weismann Museum, American Swedish Institute, the Target Corp, in Minneapolis, MN; in addition to several private collections. An engaged, practicing studio artist, Pritika is the Senior Curator at South Asia Institute, and a Board Member of the Woman Made Gallery, both in Chicago.
Pritika has shown her works nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions in the Weismann Museum in Minneapolis, Queens Museum in New York, the Hunterdon Museum in New Jersey, the Islip Art Museum in Long Island, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, the DoVA Temporary in the University of Chicago, the Brodsky Center in Rutgers University, and the Cambridge Art Gallery in Massachusetts.
Author Bio
Francesca Ramsay is an Art Historian, arts writer, and researcher. She is currently writing a 30,000 word monograph on a post-war British artist, and has recently been employed as a BBC researcher. Francesca trained at the Warburg Institute in London. As writer, gallery guide and tutor, Francesca has worked in some world-renowned institutions. These include the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, The Royal Albert Hall, and Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.
