IIT Gandhinagar draws a line as students sketch Phoolan graffiti

Portraits of BRA, Savitribai Phule and Phoolan Devi touch a raw nerve

A graffiti camp that was promoted as an opportunity for creative expression turned out to be too hot for IIT Gandhinagar to handle. The Institute has now erased all the walls, around a dozen, painted over two nights by about 15-20 students, with professional artists and artists from National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) mentoring them. The ART@IITGN, the campus’ art wing, had organised the event in the first week of November.

All was fine until one of the mentors, an “Ambedkarite Budhhist”, used the space that was allotted to her for graffiti of Bhimrao Ambedkar, and some others created graffitis of Savitribai Phule and Phoolan Devi, all icons of lower caste assertion in India. All other paintings were pre-approved by the authorities, except for the Phule and Phoolan Devi ones, as this segment was earmarked for impromptu graffitis. Campus WhatsApp groups began buzzing over the political undertones of the Phule graffiti and by the time a portrait of Phoolan Devi with a gun in her hand began to take shape, the administration intervened to stop it. All graffiti has now been painted over, and the walls now sport a silent, fresh white look. 

While Dalit students on the campus say that the institute had a pattern of “restricting” certain forms of expression on campus and that even some student bodies were responsible for this, the Student Senate leaders who protested the portrait of Phoolan Devi said they were not approved and had to go. The Director, Registrar and Administration, and communications officer of IIT Gandhinagar, have not responded to The Hindu’s requests for a comment. 

Phoolan Devi, a lower-caste woman and icon for the marginalised classes, took up guns against upper caste Hindus to avenge her gang rape in 1981 in Behmai village, Kanpur Dehat and surrendered two years later. She was elected to Parliament in 1996 on a Samajwadi Party ticket two years after her release. She was in 2001 killed by an upper-caste man, Sher Singh Rana, who claimed he wanted to avenge the Behmai massacre.

Mitesh Solanki, an MA student at IITGN, and coordinator of the graffiti camp, said that almost all the paintings were pre-decided and approved by the curator on campus. When Rohini Bhadarge, a pop artist, Ambedkarite, and fine art student from Thane was called to guide and assist the students, she was given a wall to herself and another was given to a team for impromptu sessions - where the portraits of Ambedkar, Phule and Phoolan Devi came up. 

“My piece was initially meant to be just his portrait but I was told that this would be making it too political and was asked to add some text, or books, or a message,” the 24-year-old Thane-based artist said, adding the real problems started when the Phoolan Devi painting started to materialise.