Silence between the notes

The highlight of the exhibition is a display of Gandhi’s scribblings about the Partition on the back of envelopes.

On June 2, 1947, Lord Mountbatten met Mahatma Gandhi to discuss the imminent Partition of the Indian subcontinent. This was just a day before the announcement of the Partition and it was a Monday — incidentally, the day Gandhi was undertaking his weekly vow of silence.

Instead of conversing, Gandhi communicated with Mountbatten via handwritten notes on the back of five used envelopes, which are now the only surviving record of their exchange. Tangled Hierarchy 2 is a speculative curatorial thought experiment with historical handwritten notes by Mahatma Gandhi at its centre. On June 2, 2022, exactly 75 years since Gandhi wrote those words, the first iteration of Tangled Hierarchy opened at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, UK. The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art brought the exhibition to India as part of the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2022-2023.

“In his silence, Gandhi leaves us an archival document from the day before the Partition was announced,” says Mumbai-based contemporary artist Jitish Kallat who curated the exhibition, which is a coming together of artworks, archival documents and objects. Its dates overlap with the tumultuous weeks in 1947 when maps were abruptly redrawn, leading to catastrophic violence and the forced migration of 20 million people. “As we reflect upon the historic Gandhi notes, we find ourselves once again in a tangled hierarchy — a world caught in a strange recursive loop — where tragic human displacement recalling that of the Indian Partition is currently unravelling in Ukraine,” he reflected.

The exhibition also includes works by Kader Attia, Kim Beom, Zarina Hashmi, Henri Cartier Bresson as well as celebrated neuroscientist Dr Vilayanur Ramachandran, cognitive scientist Roger Shepard, and The Partition Museum amongst others. Part of the exhibition is the Mirror Box invented by Dr Ramachandran, which alleviates the pain in an amputee’s phantom limb. “The trope of amputation of the body here is seen alongside the dissection of borders and land,” informs Kallat. The Mirror Box is seen alongside chest boxes carried by refugees in 1947 across partitioned land, all sourced from the Partition Museum’s collection. In Mona Hatoum’s Untitled (coat hanger), a cut-up map mutates into a string bag. “Highlighting fragility and combining elements of the global with the domestic, this evocative work is seen in close conjunction with two refugee luggage trunks from 1947 that have crossed the newly formed borders,” said Kallat. Yet another audio piece is the Shepard Tone by cognitive scientist Roger Shepard seen alongside a Henri Cartier Bresson photograph of refugees at the 1947 border camp.

Also, part of the exhibition is S L Parasher, lecturer and vice principal at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore. During the tumultuous weeks of Partition, when his family had escaped the riots to settle safely in Mussoorie, Parasher was informed that his trip to Paris had been approved. Although this was life-threatening, he boarded one of the last trains back to Pakistan without papers or a ticket to complete the necessary documentation. While he was unable to go to France, he managed to return to India, narrowly evading death. Exhibited within Tangled Hierarchy 2 are his deeply moving drawings, documents and a sculpture he made by modelling the soil of the refugee camp at Baldev Nagar, Ambala, where he fulfilled his role as the commandant of the camp.

So far, exhibiting Tangled Hierarchy 2 has been rewarding, especially due to the wide and varied audiences. “In the south of India, it has a different resonance since the pain of Partition was experienced here with some geographical distance,” noted Kallat.