Between passion and freedom

Balvinder

This is the story of an unsung and little-known artist Jagmohan Lal Dhami. An accomplished artist, he gave up his passion for art and entered the freedom struggle of India. He dreamt of a place where creativity could flourish. He, surely, wasn’t the only one to harbour the dream; but, what makes his tale worth retelling is its untold artistic delight and the fact that he did not seek any office of profit as a reward for his sacrifices.

While much has been written about the bloody Partition of Punjab and many a creative work has been produced on the subject, the cultural divide it imposed upon us has not been much talked about. Partition inflicted upon us ruthless cultural wounds, but the most painful one, perhaps, was the division of the huge and rich collection of art and artefacts at Lahore Museum. One wonders with what agony would have custodians of the museum divided its collection into two apparently indivisible parts!

Interestingly, our ‘share’ was first dumped at Patiala and then shifted to School of Arts and Craft in Chandigarh (now Government College of Art) building in 1962. It remained there till 1968 when the new museum was formally inaugurated.

Today, it might sound strange, but most of the valuable collection — from delicate Pahari miniatures to rugged Gandhara sculptures — would lie in the open corridors of the art school. 

We were then students at the school and knew a recluse Dhami ‘sahib’ (as he was addressed by all), as the first official photographer of this temporary home to the bleeding and bruised museum collection. None of us then knew that he was an accomplished artist and a professional photographer, too. 

Always clad in simple khadi, Dhami would display his strong Gandhian affinity through a tiny Congress flag that he had put on his bicycle, and on which he would paddle to work every day. A now antique 120-format Rolleiflex camera hung across his shoulder.

Dhami’s artistic prowess can be gauged from the fact that he, in the late 1960s, had the privilege to work on a painting that the great Punjabi artist Sobha Singh was finishing in the premises of Government Museum & Art Gallery, Chandigarh. Now, why was the maestro working on that masterpiece, a portrait of the 10th Sikh Guru Gobind Singh riding a horse, at the museum is an interesting story.

Chandigarh’s first Chief Commissioner MS Randhawa, a great art connoisseur, happened to visit Sobha Singh at his home in Andretta, Himachal Pradesh. The artist was working on this painting and a mesmerised Randhawa immediately asked Sobha Singh to sell it to the museum in Chandigarh. He gladly accepted the offer and promised to send it to the museum when it is complete. However, assessing the worth of this yet-to-be-finished but incredible artwork, a far-sighted Randhawa feared that the artist might accept someone else’s more lucrative offer. He told Sobha Singh to bring the incomplete painting to Chandigarh and finish it there at the museum itself. We, the students, were to witness this process.

The maestro had finished the painting when a visibly dissatisfied Dhami, an extremely soft-spoken person, whispered to Sobha Singh that the horse on which the Guru was riding seemed to fly, and not rest on the rocky ground. He said the rocks required deeper tones. Sobha Singh was only too glad to give his colour palette and brush to Dhami to do the needful. And Dhami obliged by putting on the painting the last few finishing strokes! Dhami’s frank criticism owed itself to the fact that he and Sobha Singh, along with actor Pran, followed the same guru, Delhi-based photo artist JL Lekhi, in the mid-1930s.

Those days, he would shuttle between Delhi and Patiala to learn art and photography. During one such visit, he managed, through W.M. Hutton, an official taxidermist of the Patiala royalty, to show to Maharaja Bhupinder Singh a large-sized charcoal sketch of the Maharaja leading a ritualistic procession in the city.

Flattered by the young boy’s confidence, the Maharaja called Dhami to his court and gave him a cash prize of Rs 101, a huge amount in those days. Besides, the Maharaja sanctioned him a scholarship of Rs 15 a month to study art at the famous Mayo School of Art, Lahore. The amount was sufficient for both Dhami and his wife to live in Lahore and study art there.

However, after the demise of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh in 1938, Dhami’s scholarship money was reduced to Rs 10. Following the monetary crunch and his bent towards the freedom struggle, Dhami left the art school two years later and joined the Congress party. 

Back in Patiala, he opened a photo studio for survival and got actively involved in the freedom movement under Sewa Singh Thikriwala, the local pioneer of the nationalistic Praja Mandal Movement.

He, along with the likes of Gian Singh Rarewala, also spent more than 13 months (1939-40) in jail. As he was hounded by the police even after his release, he went to Assam for a short period. It was a tough life there for Dhami, who now had a son to look after too.

After the Partition, Dhami joined the Punjab public relations department as a printer in 1948. In 1965, he shifted to the museum in Chandigarh as its official photographer. Engrossed in his work of documenting artworks and events, he did not pursue his artistic talent with the exhibitionistic gusto that he used to have as a young boy.

The day Giani Zail Singh became President of India in 1982, Dhami passionately told his family of three sons (two of whom are professional photographers) and wife, how during the freedom struggle, both Giani ji and he had walked a long distance from Patiala railway station to a Congress party meeting once as they had no money to hire a tonga. That drive is missing in today’s leaders. Do our artists fare better?

PS: Most of the inputs for this piece have been provided by Dhami’s youngest son, SM Dhami, a well-known photo artist from Chandigarh. He recently retired as a museum photographer, a post that his father had held till 1980.