Indian Art and the Bangladesh War.

In the visual realm, the Bangladesh war of 1971 is bound up with images of communal violence and mass migration that recall the trauma of 1947 when Bengal was divided between West and East Bengal, India and Pakistan. As in the case of the 1940s famines and the Partition of India and Pakistan, the birth of Bangladesh churned out a large number of what Jacques Rancière calls ‘naked images’. Yet, contrary to Partition, the body of works that resulted from this war, whether in documentary photography or in formally experimental painting and print, is seldom examined, and that despite considerable artistic mobilisation. By analysing the responses of Indian artists, including that of Bhupen Khakhar and K G Subramanyan, this article asks crucial questions on the enduring role of partitions within South Asian artistic production. The article also probes India's changing role within the hierarchies of the international system and considers Indian artists' position vis-à-vis the politics of the Non-Aligned Movement and Third-Worldism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]