Remembering a long-forgotten hero 

Celebrate bicentenary of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah with art: exhibition, heritage walk & talk in Kolkata. Visual artist Soumyadeep Roy, with help of descendant Manzilat Fatima, is organising the tribute. Roy's grant-aided project, Huzn, explores lives around the nawab. Intekhab exhibition displays his works. Response immense, people want to know about the nawab & his legacy.

An exhibition, a walk and a talk to be held this weekend in Kolkata will mark the bicentenary year of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, the last king of Awadh who spent his final years on the outskirts of what was then the capital of British India.

The tribute is the brainchild of visual artist Soumyadeep Roy, who is organising it with the help of, among others, Kolkata-resident Manzilat Fatima, who is the great-great granddaughter of Wajid Ali Shah and his wife Hazrat Mahal.

“Since the nawab was an artist himself, we are celebrating and commemorating his birth anniversary through art. We will be hosting an exhibition, a heritage walk, and a talk,” said Mr. Roy who, with the help of an art grant received from the German consulate back in 2017, has been working on a project on the nawab, and it is his works that will be on display at the exhibition.

“I think we live in polarised times and it’s inspirational to look back at personalities, especially artists, who were more liberal in their approach and had to tackle and overcome boundaries and restrictions in their own times. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was definitely one such artist and personality and there’s something so charming and fascinating in not only the way he made art himself, but the way in which he facilitated and paved the way for other artists around him,” he said, explaining why he was fascinated by the nawab.

His grant-aided project, titled Huzn, was an exploration into the peripheral lives around the nawab and the people who migrated to Calcutta with him. While working on it, he parallelly began creating artworks on the nawab and it will be those on display at the exhibition, called Intekhab.

The events will all take place in Metiabruz, where the exiled Wajid Ali Shah spent the last part of his life. “The response has been immense. For the heritage walk alone, where we were expecting a small group, but some 84 people signed up and we had to close registrations. The reason for the overwhelming response might be that people actually want to know about the nawab. Both Metiabruz as well as Wajid Ali Shah have been villainised since the 19th century itself, and yet, their popularity continues to soar. Popular Indian cinema, even contemporary films, are hugely indebted to him and the legacy he left behind,” said Mr. Roy.

Manzilat Fatima, a well-known foodpreneur and a descendant of the nawab, said: “Intekhab is a befitting tribute to a king by a visual artist. I am so overjoyed that the city is remembering our great-great grandfather and paying rich tributes to him.”