From Partition to today, Krishen Khanna's work tells the story of a changing nation

Indian Express

05-07-2025

When an artist turns 100, it marks a turn in history, for he has been witness to all the page-turning episodes of his country and brought them to life on his canvases.
For the well-known artist Krishen Khanna, who turns 100 today, the most haunting memories are of Partition. Khanna was working at a printing press in Lahore when the rumblings of Partition, and of Independence, began. He depicts this vividly in his work, Refugee Train Late 16 hrs (1947), where a group of men and women can be seen tightly packed together while waiting for the train that can take them across the border. A couple can be seen embracing each other fervently, for they do not know if they will meet again. The artist's memories of Partition are as if it has just happened: 'It was during the crucial months…we trooped out in two cars and came straight to Shimla where the education department [his father was deputy director of education with the government] was then going to be founded. All the records had to be garnered and brought. The ones that didn't come, they had to be made up again through memory… But anyway, I was there, and I was looking out for a job. I couldn't go back…The evenings in Lahore would be penetrated by howling cries, as area after area would be set afire and it still haunts me and holds me immobile.'
Khanna's memories of Lahore remain vivid, even today. About a work like Maclagan Road (1990), for instance, he states, 'I spent several years of my childhood on Maclagan Road which was like a microcosm of Lahore. On this modest road lived professors and teachers of considerable distinction as well as my father who taught at the Government College. There was Dr Gurbax Rai, a homeopath who healed even the passerby. He actively participated in the freedom struggle and went to jail several times. During those difficult days, his wife would sell fruit preserves. As a refugee in Delhi he continued to live with the same dignity and simplicity. It was fantastic how this small stretch of road had people of every faith and profession, and belonging to different strata of society, all living in peace and amity.'
The artist's family shifted to India, and to earn a living, Khanna arrived in Bombay in 1948 where he joined Grindlays Bank. It was then that he came across the artists who formed the famed Progressive Artists' Group and were at the forefront of modernism. He met like-minded artists like M F Husain and S H Raza, and then he exhibited a painting which they all liked at the Bombay Art Society. The painting was called News of Gandhiji's Death (1948) and featured people reading newspapers under a light. The artist says, 'I was in Delhi when Gandhi ji was assassinated and I was going to Connaught Place and [there were] all these little islands with lights and people were gathered under the lights reading newspapers. That left an image in my mind. So I worked on that and did this painting.' Artists in the Progressive Group met frequently, had fervent discussions late into the night and supported and analysed each other's works.
There came a time when Khanna wanted to leave his banking job and paint full time. Supported by his wife, he was to give it up entirely in 1961. There was no looking back after that. His vast artistic resources drove him to make works which threw the spotlight on the marginalised and the ignored during the heady early years of Independence. In paintings like Rear View (1991), the plight of migrant workers huddled in trucks — like bundles of objects and painted in monotones — drew attention to their unchanging situation despite Independence.
Khanna's depiction of the bandwallas over the years expressed contradictions in the social situation in a vivid manner. The bandwallas in their bright but ill-fitting costumes and their straggly appearance bring light to the lives of others while remaining in a situation of constant deprivation themselves. Over the years, Khanna's bandwallas sensuously depicted the bodily stances and postures of those on the fringes of society, as well as their immense and heroic struggle to overcome their situation.
The retelling of the lives of many came together in his murals, the most well-known of which is the magnificent work, The Great Procession, made in the dome at the ITC Maurya, New Delhi in the 1970s. Presented with sardonic wit, the mural offers glimpses of India with all its contradictions and ironies: A woman scratches her ear in a temple, amid devotees; a man picks pockets outside a mosque; a tiger hides in a mountain cave to pounce on grazing goats; the merry bandwallas play in a corner while barbers and street performers ply their trade. There are humorous quotations as well, and author Khushwant Singh serves tea in a dhaba where the customers include Mulk Raj Anand and the artist himself. These vignettes of a life lived to its fullest are revealed like a procession in this mural of epic proportions.
Khanna's moving work, The Last Bite (2005), speaks for itself. It stands out for its reflection of the camaraderie and debates he shared with other artists, as well as the times that they foresaw. In this painting, Husain is central as a prominent member of the Progressive Artists' Group. He is flanked on the left by Tyeb Mehta, F N Souza and Bhanu Athaiya — the only woman member, who later became important as the costume designer for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982). The painting has other members of the artist fraternity, like Akbar Padamsee who seems to be addressing Bhupen Khakhar, who in turn appears to be looking out of the frame as if engaging with the common man. On Khanna's right is the famed V S Gaitonde addressing Jeram Patel, as the painter Jogen Chowdhury looks out of the frame. Manjit Bawa, Raza and J Swaminathan complete the group. As the last man standing, Khanna feels bereft of his friends and contemporaries, but his work and life provide sustenance, not just to himself, but to what he cherishes the most: The ordinary man on the street.
The writer is an art historian and independent curator based in New Delhi