History

In his epic Śamba, author Kālakūṭa conjectured that the legendary prince Bhagīratha, to whom is attributed the flow of the river Ganges through the Indian plains, must have been an irrigation engineer, who carved out the channel of the Hoogly river, to be joined by the otherwise almost dried streams of the rain-fed rivers of the Chuita Nagpur plateau. This should have turned an otherwise arid landscape into a somewhat cultivable, and more importantly habitable region. The conjecture fits in with the semi-mythical legends about Bhagīratha.

I based my painting on Śamba, the chapter from the Ramayana which records a dramatized version of the story as well as a few remarks made by literateur Saradindu Bandyopadhyay in Indratulaka. The backdrop is the western-most part of Bengal, with its red laterite soil and small hillocks of pre-Cambrian rocks, haphazardly and thinly forested with śāl and eucalyptus trees. I have assumed Bhagīratha approximately to be 400 years older than (an ancestor 15 generations before) Rama, the hero of Ramayana. So, the time frame should be around 5500 BC.

1. Śrī Rāma, the political envoy

2. Swami Vivekananda, the spiritual envoy

3. S. Ramanujan, the mathematician envoy

It always requires someone to execute, often by brute force, a divine vision of a Seer. Religion and politics have always been interrelated; and that's not necessarily a bad thing if the underlying religious ideas are not inhuman. While the Buddha envisioned his philosophy, an Aśōka was needed to approximate that to materialization. Vidyāraṇya stayed by the realization of his dream of an independent kingdom reclaimed from the Sultans who had captured India. Vivekananda climaxed the national reclamation of India, while Subhas Bose designed its political model.

(from left, from top) Girimēkhala, Ajātaśatru, Buddha, Aśōka, Kaṇiṣka, Bhikkhu Mahēndra, Bhikkhuṇī Sañghamitrā, Vidyāraṇya, Subhas Bose, Sāyaṇa, Vivekananda, Harihara, Bukka.

... of Alexandria (624 AD) or Nalanda (c. 1200 AD)

An allegorical painting of Babur (ref. his portraits), the first Moghul Sultan, attacking the spiritual aura of Rāma, the earliest documented emperor of a substantial part of India (ref. the Rāma Jātaka).

About the great political achiever in 15th century Bengal, who freed Bengal from Afghan rulers, but whose dominion ultimately didn't last due to his unworthy son and successor... based on 

1. Sir Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), History of Bengal vol. 2

2. some ideas by my friend Sohom Sen

[(from left) Gaṇēśa, Kṛttibāsa, Nur Qutb Alam’s daughter, Jalaluddin]

References:

1. Rama sketched from the Valmiki Ramayana

2. Lakshmana and Devi Sita from description in Krttibas' Ramayana

3. Krittibas from common folk perception of a Vaisnava scholar's appearence in Turko-Afghan-colonized Bengal

4. The peepul tree in Phuliya under which Krttibas wrote, in close proximity of the Ganga's bank

5. Devi Sita's costume copied from the painter's Mother's collection of Phuliya's local cotton textile sarees, in which Krttibas must have imagined his epic's Goddess-Muse

6. Krttibasa was probably commissioned by Gaudesvara Ganesha to make a ballad adaptation of the Ramayana, which woul serve as a Lamp during the Dark Ages of the land. It did, and there is ample reason to belive this work itself spurred the Vaisnava craze and and around Phuliya, bringing up a legend like Mahaprabhu who modified religious perceptions of India and strengthened them to survival in the darkest times; and inspired Tulsidas 2 centuries later, who re-populazied the Rama cult for times till today.

1. ‘Sensei’ Rashbehari Bose in favour of Subhas C. Bose (1943)

2. Advaita ‘Ācārya’ in favour of Biswambhar Mishra (Mahaprabhu later) circa 1500

based on Saradindu Bandyopadhyay's novella, ‘Sadāśibēr Ādikāṇḍo’

In 1660, Moghul viceroy Shaista Khan carried out mass slaughter in Pune, to show Moghul strength in retailation to Shivaji and the Marathas' attempts of freedom struggle. He very symbolically occupied the Lal Mahal as his residence, the very same building where the Maratha leader Shivaji staye during boyhood. Hoping to have crushed Maratha morale, Shaista indulged in lavish vices. On Apr 5h 1663, Shivaji and his men, camouflaged within a wedding procession, stole into Lal Mahal, a building Shivaji knew every nook and passage of, and ambushed Shaista in his harem. Records say that Shaista was shielded and saved by the agility of his slave-girls, but not unassualted: for Shivaji, though couldn't kill him, chopped off his four fingers in the fight. The painting is based on Sir Jadunath Sarkar's Shivaji and his Times, Orient Longman edition (1992), p. 68, and also on folk tales I came across during my trip to Pune in 2025. This frame shows that Shaista's injury was not Shivaji's inability to kill him; rather a surgery, as the only part of Shaista's body which Shivaji could blow his sword on without any chance of hitting a woman.