The feminine is not muse but master

This is the paradox at the heart of Dasa Mahavidya: Gesture, Form and the Feminine Divine, an exhibition that brings together the works of Krishnanand Jha (1947-2018) and Santosh Kumar Das. For centuries, the brush in Mithila painting has been held by women, who inscribed devotion, memory, and ritual on the walls of their homes. When men entered this tradition, they unsettled its gendered inheritance, creating both friction and possibility.

At the centre of the exhibition are the Dasa Mahavidya - the ten wisdom goddesses of tantra. These are not singular but plural, not reducible to one form but manifold embodiments of feminine power. Kali, the devourer of time; Tara, the guide across danger; Tripur Sundari, beauty incarnate; Bhuvaneshvari, mistress of the worlds; Bhairavi, the fierce one; Chinnamasta, the self-decapitated; Dhumavati, the smoky crone; Baglamukhi, the stunner of foes; Matangi, the outcaste musician; and Kamla, the lotus goddess of prosperity. These goddesses are believed to be manifestations of Goddess Parvati and are invoked for spiritual growth, empowerment, and the realisation of the Supreme through practices like meditation, mantra chanting and devotional acts.

Collectively, they represent what tantra insists upon: the feminine is not simply nurturing or benevolent but also terrifying, paradoxical, and boundless. She is creation and destruction, order and chaos, beauty and horror. To depict the Mahavidya is therefore not an ornamental act but a spiritual confrontation. For Krishnanand Jha, painting the goddess was both natural and radical. Born into a family of tantric priests at Harinagar, Madhubani, in Mithila, he was expected to continue priestly duties. Instead, he turned towards painting, making the sacred visible in a form traditionally reserved for women. Jha's priestly inheritance gave him a unique authority to approach tantric subjects with an insider's vision. His goddess of choice was often Chinnamasta, his family's tutelary deity the goddess who severs her own head and drinks her blood even as she nourishes others. In her, Jha found the paradox of power and surrender, destruction and life-force. In his compositions, the goddess is rarely still. She gestures, glances, and propels the viewer forward, as though the act of seeing becomes a ritual procession.

Where Jha's goddesses are in motion, Santosh Kumar Das' goddesses stand firm. His Mahavidya are symmetrical, frontal, and commanding. Their stillness radiates a meditative energy, like yantras rendered in living form. Das's trajectory is equally layered. His Dasa Mahavidya is an act of renewal. Each goddess is rendered with meticulous patterning, balanced symmetry, and a quiet but potent force. While deeply traditional, his paintings also converse with contemporary questions about identity, violence, ecology, and devotion.

In tantra, ritual authority has historically belonged to men, while in Mithila painting, aesthetic authority has long rested with women. When male artists like Krishnanand Jha and Santosh Kumar Das depict the Dasa Mahavidya, they stand at this interesting crossroads: inheritors of a male-dominated tantric tradition and entrants into a women's visual domain. Is this then a consolidation of male authority, tantric legitimacy grafted onto a female-authored art form or something more porous? Interestingly, several women painters, too, have painted the Mahavidya, thereby stepping into a ritual terrain usually closed to them. In this shared, unsettled space, neither gender holds uncontested power; the only true possessor of the field is the goddess herself - the feminine, who here is not muse but master.

('Dasa Mahavidya: Gesture, Form and the Feminine Divine' is on display till Sept 21 at Ojas Art Gallery, Mehrauli)


Select The Times of India as your preferred source on Google Search