What is“Indian Art?": Reading Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy

Abstract

What is“Indian Art?": Reading Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy examines the ways in which the Ceylonese-English geologist-turned-philosopher of art Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877– 1947) theorised “Indian Art” as he sought to articulate his anti-colonial aesthetic nationalism in early twentieth-century India, in conversation with other ideas of aesthetic nationalisms, including the Bengal School of Art led by Abanindranath Tagore. Coomaraswamy conceptualised Indian art by attempting to revive the ancient Hindu-Buddhist past through selective references to the Vedas and other classical traditions. In doing so, he often selectively employed categories from Greek philosophy to discuss intellectual equivalence between ancient Indian and ancient Greek thought on aesthetic judgment. If colonial historiography, pioneered by James Mill, created a three-tier hierarchy placing the Greeks at the highest tier, then Coomaraswamy turned that hierarchy on its head by articulating an intellectual equivalence between ancient Indian and Greek thought. In other words, instead of rejecting the colonial parameter of aesthetic judgement that inferiorised the arts from India, Coomaraswamy used a similar parameter to claim equality, if not superiority, of India over the “West,” in articulating his aesthetic nationalism. In contrast, the Bengal School artists approached Indian artistic identity by referencing not only the Hindu-Buddhist past but also the Mughal past, while also locating themselves within a Pan-Asian ideology, most prominently nurtured by the Japanese philosopher Okakura Tenshin. Thus, this thesis employs a comparative analysis to demonstrate how Coomaraswamy’s concept of Indian artistic identity converged with and diverged from that of the Bengal School, and how both played significant yet distinct roles in shaping perceptions of Indian art.