Pictures of the Raj
Swasdee, Thai Airways in-flight magazine -Philip Reeve

Thousands of rich, intricate Shekhawati wall paintings that should be honoured as a proud part of India’s heritage are now being forgotten, neglected and left away.

It was the most bizarre car I’d ever seen. The engine was an unhooded mass of twisting tangled pipes; the wheels a floppy oval shape. A pet dog, paw on the handbrake, sat upright next to the European chauffeur and a distinguished lady dressed in a bonnet and fox-fur style. One thing was certain such a vehicle could never be roadworthy. Just as well it was only a painting on the wall of a remote Rajasthani town.

On another wall, a man in a bowler hat pedaled a penny-farthing bicycle; only the pedals were missing, his feet turning in the air. Elsewhere, a British couple sat in a basket under a hot-air balloon, though the air was not produced by the gas flames but by the man himself, vigorously blowing into the balloon through a pipe.

The comic naivety of the wall paintings is understandable, as the Indian artists who portrayed these images of Victorian and Edward England had never seen a real car or a European. These extraordinary frescoes were commissioned by the palatial mansions of their desert homeland of Shekhawati.

The Marwaris, enterprising brokers for the East India Company in the 19th century, described their British bosses and their peculiar pastime to the local artists. Alongside these amusing paintings are many more traditional scenes of Rajasthani life, as well as elaborately-detailed murals depicting the history of the Rajput rulers and the epic stories of Hindu mythology. The earliest date back to 1750; the last was completed in the 1930s.

Shekhawati lies within the triangle of Delhi, Jaipur, and Jodhpur. No other region in India, and probably the world, has such a profusion of frescoes as this barren region of Rajasthan’s thar desert. Yet few people aside the locals are aware of their existence and fewer still have traveled to Shekhawati to view these unknown art treasure. The thousands of frescoes covering the havelis or mansions of the Marwari merchants, as well as the forts and cenotaphs of the Rajput kings, remain for the most part in state of obscurity and dilapidation. Their wealthy owner long gone, many of the valuable frescoes are covered by layers of dust and grim or hidden away in padlocked rooms.

Fortunately, they have been protected from the harsh sun and gritty winds and many are in an excellent state of preservation. With no previous existence of a distinct school of painting in Shekhawati, the frescoes suddenly blossomed and flourished for some 200 years under the generous patronage of the Marwari caste. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the art was lost.

Often away from home on business, the massive havelis that the Marwaris built, and the colorful frescoes, were largely a gesture to the women and children they left behind.

The women rarely left the confines of their mansions. A retinue of servants did any errands. Door-to-door salesmen would bring their wares to the havelis. Only the tiniest of windows gave them a view of the outside world, and the lavish decoration of their apartments was meant to compensate for the social seclusion. The vibrant colors and exquisite details of the frescoes, covering almost every square inch of available wall space, also compensated for the blank palette of the desert environment.

The Marwaris were born with the Midas touch. From humble beginnings as the local shopkeepers and moneylenders, they became the nation’s most successful merchant community. They exploited Shekhawatis key position on southern Silk Road, along which the great trading caravans once traveled between China Middle East. With the advent of faster maritime trade, the overland route became obsolete but the enterprising merchants simply moved to the new ports of Calcutta and Bombay, making their fortunes trading with the East India Company.

Today the Marwaris include some of the country’s most powerful industrialists and businessmen. Now living in luxury modern residences in cities, the Marwaris return to Shekhawatis. The desert mansion, crumbling and in despair, are left in the hands of elderly caretakers or rented out to families at an incredibly cheap price – around 300 rupee a month (US$ 8 ).

To emulate the British ruler, their dress and customs, was to rise in social hierarchy of colonial India, hence the fascination shown in the frescoes for all things Europeans. Gramophones, telephones umbrellas, trains, cars, steam ships, cigar and pipe smoking, as well the latest European dress fashion, are all depicted in a naïve style that mixed Western realism with the flat two-dimensional style of Rajasthani miniatures and the Mughal school of painting. This hybrid style that emerged in Shekhawati at the turn of the century, became known as the Company School after the influence of the East India Company.

The earliest frescoes were executed on wet plaster using a technique almost identical to the Italilan method of fresco-buono, developed in the 14th century. It is not known whether the technique traveled to north India through the Mughals, who knew of it from Persia, or whether foreign missionaries introduced it to the Mughal court. It is possible the technique was indigenous to India, whose mural culture dates back to the second century BC and the Buddhist frescoes of the Ajanta caves in India’s Maharashtra state.

The Shekhawati artists made sketches on the walls, scratching the outlines into the wet plaster with a sharpened stick. The colors were then mixed in lime-water and made to sink in through the manual process of beating, brushing and polishing. A gum made from local plant or a derivative of camel fat was used as the crucial binding agent. A chemical reaction between plaster and pigment as the wall dried also helped seal the painting into plaster. The artist had to work with speed as well as skill, painting while the plaster remained wet.

The earlier frescoes all used natural pigments; chalk and lime for white, orange saffron, yellow and ochre from iron-rich clay. Yellow was also obtained by evaporating the urine of cows fed for ten days on nothing but mango leaves. The resulting paste was rolled into small round gaya golis and produced a brilliant yellow when diluted with water. This preparation was later banned when the process was proved to be damaging to the health of the cows, considered sacred by all Hindus

The easiest way to see the frescoed havelis is by jeep. A guide is also invaluable as there are an incredible number of havelis to choose from and many are locked up. A guide can usually locate the caretakers and keys for you. The main towns of interest, Nawalgarh, Mandawa, Ramgarh, Fatehpur, Mahansar, are conveniently located in the close proximity to each other.

Ramesh Jangid runs a guest house in Nawalgarh and is perhaps the only resident of Shekhawati actively dedicated to the preservation of the frescoes. I asked him how he first developed such an interest in them. " I was fascinated by them even in my childhood," he enthused. "From the age of five I used to walk past the Aath-havelis on my way to school and I was always terribly excited to see the wall painting.

I was puzzled as to why the owners of the havelis, some of the richest families in the country, were not preserving the frescoes and their ancestral homes. "They certainly have the money to maintain and restore them," Ramesh agreed. "the problem is that they are no longer attached to the havelis. The new generation have adapted to a modern lifestyle in the cities. They show no interest in developing the havelis for the tourist industry."

Ramesh lamented that the last ten years have seen the greatest deterioration. "People don’t value heritage. Some of the havelis have been converted into shops. The walls are knocked down and the frescoes messily painted over. Even the local politicians stick their own posters right on top of the beautiful frescoes!" I asked Ramesh if he was at all hopeful about the future of the frescoes. I’m not a pessimistic person," he told me. "But if I am realistic, I do feel that it is almost a hopeless case. Just may be before most of the frescoes are destroyed, some influential people will take an active interest in them and help to preserve such a valuable and unique expression of our Rajasthani culture."

Francis Wacziarg and Aman Nath, the authors of the only book published on the frescoes of Shekhawati (unfortunately now out of print), share Ramesh Jangids sentiments. They end their book on a similarly fatalistic note, ‘the new houses are garish and conspicuous… tradition is disowned. Even though most of the havelis belong to a community that continues to have the means to support them, the towns of Shekhawati have the semblance of crumbling ghost settlements.

Sadly that may be so, but venture within the crumbling exteriors of the havelis and you will still discover a fantastic world of frescoes, brimming with imaginations and color, an artistic heritage that deserve not just local but international recognition.