Gods in
the Bazaar
by Kajri Jain
Duke University Press, Durham and London,
2007
448 pp., illus. col. Trade, £71.00; paper,
£17.99
ISBN: 978-0-8223-3906-9; ISBN: 978-0-8223-3926-7.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@hogent.be
Indian Calendar Art is the
collective name for the mass-produced,
color-saturated printed images used in
calendars, advertisements, and packaging,
featuring gods and goddesses, movie stars,
babies, landscapes and more or less common
Indian people. Distributed as gifts on
the occasion of religious festivals and
the New Year, circulated as posters for
political parties, and used as wrappings
for incense and soap, they are practically
ubiquitous and unavoidable. Offices, market
stalls, and homes alike are adorned by
some image of Ganesh, Ram, Krishna, or
a popular movie semi-deity, depending
on the taste of the user or his business
partners. Airlines and supermarkets, domestic
and foreign companies, local shopkeepers
and multinationals, all of them seem to
keep the tradition of presenting calendars
alive. According to the status of customer
and supplier, they range from glossy 12-pagers
to single-sheet prints on the worst quality
paper, but they all share a limited repertoire
of images and stay within a narrow range
of aesthetic or iconographical diversity.
So what is so special about them that
they are worthy of a PhD thesis in art
history?
For one, it appears that the creation
and production of these calendars
is dominated by a relatively small number
of networks, the center of which lies
in the Southern city of Sivakasi, where
most of the publishers and presses are
concentrated. Orders are taken from all
over the subcontinent, and distribution
relies mainly on the bazaar
system, effectively connecting all regions,
religions and ethnically different communities.
Kajri Jain examines in great detail the
role of each of the agents in the supply
chain and describes how they take into
consideration the differences in taste
and sensitivity of the many regions and
religious communities. She concludes that
it is quite impossible to describe the
bazaar system in the terms of standardWesternpolitical
economy or business administration. Rather,
the system functions as a moral as well
as a material or commodity market. Vernacular
is the key word the author uses to understand
how the bazaar copes with the divergent
economic obligations of diversity and
standardization. From a purely economic
point of view, the introduction of the
concept of the vernacular might not be
necessaryat least Jain hasnt
given arguments to convince mebut
at a more encompassing level, taking all
the other functions of the bazaar and
the images into account, it nicely glues
together different fields of analysis
and that is probably exactly what is needed
to understand the extraordinary efficacy
and performance of a post-colonial economic
fabric.
Unfortunately, the voice of the consumer
or end-user of these fabulous imagesof
which there are no less then 156 reproductions
in the bookis almost absent.
By concentrating on the supply chain and
inferring from the choices of its agents,
Jain probably has a pretty good idea of
what calendar art is supposed to mean
in the life of the average Indian, but
any market analyst would want to know
what the customer says.
A second problem I have with this book
is the thick layer of post-structuralist
parlance dousing the otherwise clear fascinating
account of the industry. Surely, it isnt
necessary to repeat over and over again
that agents need to negotiate
seemingly paradoxical demands.
But apparently, a PhD dissertation in
art history needs to be drowned in this
kind of rhetoric. Pity. What Jain achieved
doesnt need all this post-whatever
mumbo jumbo and the book would be at least
three times less voluminous and three
times more readable without it. Look through
the trees, however, and you will encounter
a world full of surprising diversity,
economic ingenuity, and artistic acumen
both from the author and her subject.