Colonial Calcutta’s Gods, politics and pop art inspire a Boston museum

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal traces how mass-produced religious prints from colonial Calcutta blended devotion, politics and commerce — sometimes on the same poster  

Swadeshi nationalism, Bengali devotion and tobacco form an unlikely triad.

Yet I encounter all three on a chilly Boston morning, on a poster that would almost certainly be deemed anti-national by today’s hypersensitive standards. 

Bengalis of the early 20th Century certainly knew how to capture an audience.

Kali Calcutta Art Studio About 1890–1900 Lithograph | Photo Credit: Marshall H. Gould Fund; Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this vivid poster of Kali is surrounded by carnage and delicately rendered text in blood red. Along the sides, it praises the Goddess as a protector, urging devotees to worship her image for courage. Below, there is an advertisement for Kali cigarettes, proudly declared to be ‘pure Swadeshi.’ (And, in the misplaced optimism typical of the period, also “trusted, reliable and safe to smoke”.)

 Laura Weinstein poses with a poster of Goddess Kali | Photo Credit: Special arrangement