Art, Work and Artwork—Lines of Inequality in Bhagwati Prasad’s Political Artivism

This article focuses on the works of Bhagwati Prasad, a New Delhi–based Indian graphic artist, with two book-length works—Tinker, Solder, Tap (Prasad, 2009) and The Water Cookbook (Prasad, 2011)— and several short graphic narratives to his credit. Prasad has recently also come into the picture for his internet zines, particularly for his Hashtag series, in which he showcases the political power of art. In his forthcoming project, titled Auzaaron ki chuppi aur Kolaahal (Silence and Clamour of Tools, unpublished), he attempts to chart a history of Delhi, through the eyes (or hands that use tools of construction) of migrant labour: labour that crosses over geographical lines or borders in search of ‘work’ and food. Basing itself on the mentioned artworks of Prasad, this article attempts to understand the relationship between ‘art’ with ‘work’. In doing so, it would look at how artwork in tandem becomes a tool of creating socio-political awareness and how such ‘conscious propagandizing’ of art (which I call artivism) becomes a final cry for change in structures that are deeply entrenched in hierarchy-ridden socio-economic or caste/ class disparities. Much of Prasad’s artistic expression is rooted in a characteristically Indian cityscape and what can specifically be termed as peri-urban sustenance in the marginal spaces, which the postcolonial, neoimperial and casteized Indian condition constructs. His artworks, besides being inspired by his own lived reality as a child that grew up in a Dalit, working-class habitat, forge the indispensability of a downtrodden workforce that builds and constructs cities with the clamour of their tools, yet remains invisible and silent to histories. In an atypical but exciting way, Prasad swaps the artist and the worker, dismantling the artificial divide between their societal positions. The methodological approach this article uses to interpret and assess Prasad’s activist art is through the notion of ‘lines’: the smallest unit of drawing out a sketch on a page. Lines, by definition, connect dots while giving these connections a semblance of shape, expression and meaning. These lines that connect also concretize into lines that divide and segregate. This article argues that the migrant physical labourer (often those belonging to the lower castes) or the shramik, twice removed beyond lines of inclusion/exclusion that society draws with the indelible ink of caste and class, remains unknown, invisible and hated perhaps, for the very work they do. The artist-asa-worker trope is fundamental to understanding the ways in which lines of art and lines of work together critique this discriminatory discourse and re-form political consciousness. In doing the intersectional critical analysis, this study will draw concepts from the multi-disciplinary theoretical traditions of Marxist humanism, caste studies, graphic art appreciation and culture studies.