Stretched accordion style across a corner of Varija Art Gallery in DakshinaChitra Museum is a 7.5-metre book titled The Pardhaan Continuum. This monumental illustrated story charts the rich history of the Pardhaan Gonds, a sub-community of the Gond tribes. It captures the myth of their sacred origin, traditional rituals and deities, anchoring itself around the stories of Bada Dev, their supreme creator.
The Gonds, one of the oldest indigenous Dravidian groups in India, are spread across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Odisha. Historically, the Pardhaans have served as the community’s priests, hereditary bards, and genealogists. And the book, part of Myth, Memory and Form, provides vital context for much of the textless Gond art found in urban areas today.
Art from Myth, Memory and Form
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The ongoing exhibition is curated and designed by architects, researchers, and writers Apoorva Mishra and Achyut Siddu, who are also the co-founders of Loksutr, a Madhya Pradesh-based design research practice which translates oral traditions and classical texts into illustrated manuscripts, books, and art. What makes this research into Gond narrative especially compelling is that the stories are incredibly difficult to date. Moreover, with each community member re-narrating the community-held memories their way, no two tellings are identical.
Achyut Siddu and Apoorva Mishra, architects, researchers and writers
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For Myth, Memory and Form, National Award-winning Gond artists such as Kailash Pradhaan and Ajay Marko, alongside Pattachitra artist Prahallad Moharana, recorded and transformed the community’s oral narratives into paintings. “We’ve worked closely with Pardhaans from Patangarh village in Madhya Pradesh’s Dindori district for over three years,” says Siddu. “Loksutr’s purpose isn’t livelihood generation, but to create the conditions for knowledge that’s currently inaccessible, hard to parse, or overlooked to find real expression and reach people.”
Siddu and Mishra with a few Gond artists
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Retelling ancient tales
On the museum’s walls hang 40 paintings, including a 10 ft. x 20 ft. canvas depicting the origin story of the River Narmada in a single, continuous scene. Most people know the 8th century CE Skanda Purana version, which describes Shiva sitting in such intense meditation that his sweat trickles down and morphs into a dancing woman named Narmada (narma means humour and da giver), later transforming into the sacred river.
Art from Myth, Memory and Form
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However, the story told by Gangaram Uikey, a Pardhaan Gond from Patangarh, is different. In his version, known locally as Amar Katha, Shiva and Parvati seek a lifeless place where the former can share the tale of immortality. They find a bamboo forest within the Satpura mountains, but Parvati falls asleep during the narration. Unaware, Shiva continues speaking, and the power of the tale animates two parrot eggs, granting them immortality. Furious at these unwanted witnesses, Shiva chases away the birds. Three drops of his sweat fall to the earth to form the rivers Narmada, Johila, and the Behtarni stream.
The third story on display, Smriti Sutradhaara, comes from the Vishnudharmottara Purana, a Gupta-period text written around the 5th or 6th century CE. Through the tale of King Bhayajit (later named Nagnajit), who painted the first chitra to revive a dead boy at Lord Brahma’s command, it establishes painting as the ultimate skill. This story has been rendered in the traditional Pattachitra style of Odisha.
Art from Myth, Memory and Form
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“Loksutr’s work responds to the triple challenges faced by India’s indigenous knowledge, which still lives in oral, performative, and transient forms, or sits in specialist archives that prevent the wider public from interacting with it,” Siddu shared at the inaugural lecture at Alliance Française of Madras. “When you strip a myth down to its essence — its archetypes, emotional resonance, and cultural symbols — it ceases to be just an old story and becomes a foundational blueprint for how we shape both the physical and digital worlds.”
A version of this exhibition, with just Amar Katha and The Pardhaan Continuum, was held in Delhi earlier, where it drew numerous student groups, who, Siddu noted, responded to the material with a noticeably deeper sensitivity towards these traditional knowledge systems.
An artist at work
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Of consent and control
“It is vital for us to understand Loksutr’s process of transforming an archive into art,” says Anitha Pottamkulam, director (culture) at DakshinaChitra, who’s also organising its workshop for Madras School of Social Work students. “A lot of well-meaning initiatives fail due to a lack of rigorous ethics. Take the recent news report about the apex body [Idu Mishmi Cultural and Literary Society] representing the indigenous Idu Mishmi community in Arunachal Pradesh’s Dibang Valley. They officially blacklisted four researchers for violating localised ethical standards.”
Anitha Pottamkulam, director (culture) at DakshinaChitra
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Loksutr’s books carry a premium price tag. The Whispers of Immortality, on the origin myth of the river Narmada, for instance, is priced at ₹4,550. Artists get paid for their paintings and receive royalties for every book sold. Their work, however, is built on the shoulders of many who came before them — from generations of Pardhaan bards to the pioneering art historian B.N. Goswamy. It was Goswamy, alongside art historian A.L. Dallapiccola, who in 1976 rendered into English the Chitralakshana of Nagnajit, the earliest known Indian treatise on painting.
The researchers entered indigenous community lands before receiving consent from the community’s Research and Ethics Review Board, and conducted “extraction-based” academic research, taking data and biological samples without meaningful, long-term participation or shared benefits for the locals. “What’s happened with the Idu Mishmi community is a warning about research and knowledge extraction that proceeds without the community’s consent and control,” Pottamkulam says.
Art from Myth, Memory and Form
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At a time when most Gond artists struggle to articulate the thinking behind their art, Loksutr’s research serves as a poignant reminder: selling indigenous art without recording the traditional knowledge behind it creates a product as hollow as the frantic flight of those two parrot hatchlings trying to escape Shiva’s wrath.
But, equally, it raises urgent questions. What happens when an oral story ends up as an image on someone’s phone? Does the story cease to be an event you experience and become an object you consume? Does writing one version of a story negate all other versions that live on in the memory? In the age of decolonisation and digitalisation, the exhibition sends the audience home with more questions to wrestle with.
‘Myth, Memory and Form’is on till December 6 at DakshinaChitra Heritage Museum, ECR, Chennai.
The writer is an expert on South Asian art and culture.
