Sushil Kumar Bafana
Exhibition
The Venerable Life Of Acharya Tulsi
(9th Acharya of Jain Swetambar Terapanth sect)
A Mural Painting by Dr. Manju Nahata
Size: 56 feet x 4 feet Base: Cloth mounted on the board Medium: Tempera, Earth colours
2nd August - 7th August, Indian Museum,
27, J.L.Nehru Road, Ashutosh Birth Centenary Exhibition Hall,
Kolkata, India
Prof. Asok. K. Bhattacharya, an eminent historian, inaugurated the exhibition.
Shilpi Sri Dhirendranath Brahma, former head of the Department Of Indian Style Of Painting, Govt. College Of Art And Craft, was chief guest.
When I visited the exhibition on 5th August 2006, it came into my mind to share this visit to a wonderful piece of Arts with the readers HereNow4U. Thought, done, I asked Dr. Nahata to write a comment on her paintings, which are already published in HereNow4U.
“Apart from being an ardent student of anekantvad (non-absolutism), which was a subject of my doctoral thesis, I had right through my life as a painter (especially on and about this subject) cherished a desire to do a canvas depicting the life of Acharya Tulsi, my guru in the Aryan sense of the term.
While working, I realised that a single canvas was not sufficient for me to highlight the exceptional achievements of this noble soul and thus the canvas turned into a mural. The mural encompasses, in seven continuous boards, Acharya Tulsi’s life from his birth to his demise, highlighting some major incidents in his great life. This mural is my humble dedication to Acharya Tulsi, whose sacred samadhi is at Gangashahar, Bikaner.”Dr. Manju Nahata
Then I received some personal details of the painter: Dr. Manju Nahata is the wife of Sri Surendra Nahata and the daughter of Sri Khemchand Sethia, a leading layperson of the Terapanth sect. She has received her PhD on the subject “Anekant and Painting” from JVBI Ladnun. She was among the students, when the Indian president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam distributed the degrees to the students of JVBI in a function on 20th October 2005. Dr. Manju Nahata last year also received the Jain Vidya Award. In the contact classes of JVBI correspondence courses, she works on different subjects. In 2000, the author of this report was also student in the correspondence contact classes given by her on the topic “Anekant” and in 2003 on Hindi literature.
Her command over Hindi literature and her very good knowledge of Jain metaphysics match with her faculty of expression. Further, she is editor of Terapanth Mahasabha newsletter Abhudaya. She is in charge of the Bikshu Granthagar, library of Mahasabha in Kolkata.