'Mahatma Gandhi was a master choreographer of his own image'

New Delhi, Oct 15 Mahatma Gandhi was a finicky master choreographer of his own image, dismissed most works of art around him as lacking a soul, was not a patient or good "sitter", and thus an "indifferent muse". And yet, artists were repeatedly drawn to him, says noted Indian-American Indologist Sumathi Ramaswamy in a path-breaking book that chronicles the manner in which artists have portrayed the Father of the Nation for more than a century.

 

 

Gandhi "was a master choreographer of his own image", satyagraha "was itself an aesthetic form and social scientists who ignore this fact really missed a foundational aspect of the Mahatma's way of being and relating to the world", Ramaswamy, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History and International Comparative Studies at Duke University at Durham in North Carolina, told in an interview about her seminal work, "Gandhi in the Gallery The Art of Disobedience"

( With inputs from IANS )