Sohrai and Khovar which have striking similarities to pre-historic art, sport the mud walls of over 100 plus villages of Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, attracting tourists from all over, thanks to the efforts of a couple Justin and Alka Imam, who have been promoting and conserving this dying art.
Till very recently Sohrai and Khovar which have striking similarities with prehistoric art found in the ancient painted caves of Isco, located in Barkagaon in Hazaribagh, was a dying art, but thanks to the patronage of art promoter and conservator-couple Justin and Alka Imam it now sports the mud walls of over 100 plus villages of Hazaribagh attracting tourists coming in droves to visit the “painted villages” of Jharkhand.
The art forms of Khovar and Sohrai have been organically created by a living culture. Providing a perspective and guide to view the traditional mural paintings, Bulu Imam in his seminal work, titled Hazaribagh School of Painting and Decorative Works, says “We must not let this prejudice our judgment of them, because, after all, they are the purest indigenous offering and flowerings of truly Indian culture in the most ancient sense.”
Khovar is a type of graffito art using reversed slip pottery technique which consists of applying a ground base coat of m a n g a n e s e black earth and letting it dry, after which a wet slip of kaolin (white earth colour) is applied and cut or scraped off in various designs or motifs with a plastic or bamboo comb, or with fingers. The underlayer is in stark contrast with the upper layer, usually black and white. Sohra is done during Diwali using cloth swabs or chewed twigs of the sal tree.
One of the leading practitioners of the Khovar and Sohrai wall art is Malo Devi Mhato (45) of Jorakath, a village standing amidst sal (shorea robusta) forest in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. Her oeuvre includes comb-cut paintings which she has exhibited in several cities abroad including Australia, England, Canada and Italy. Mhato’s painting on the walls of Hazaribagh railway station has been widely appreciated.
A member of the group who executed several murals on the walls of public facilities and offices in Jharkhand, she says, “I picked up the basics in my childhood while my mother painted the walls of our mud home and after my marriage, I learnt more from my sasu ma (mother in law).
Two years after the discovery of Isco caves, in 1993, the Australian High Commission funded INTACH to bring Khovar and Sohrai mural art onto paper using glue-paper technology.
Till 1995, INTACH nurtured over seventy traditional women artists who successfully transferred the mural comb-cut Khovar art onto handmade paper. It resulted in the formation of the Tribal Women Artists Cooperative (TWAC) and soon drew the attention of art curators from Australia who took back works for exhibitions in major cities in Australia. In 2000 the Australian Museum, Sydney invited three traditional women artists to paint murals on large-size boards and canvas which went into major collections.
Twice a year womenfolk from the ethnic communities, namely Munda, Santal, Oraon, Agaria, Birhor, Kurmi, Prajapati, Ghatwal and Ganju create verdant images of flora and fauna paint their mud homes with clay inside and out, celebrating harvest with Sohrai art done in colour while during the wedding season, it’s time for the Khovar murals to appear on the walls, made in black and white. The colours used are all locally sourced—kali mitti (manganese black), lal mitti (red oxide, dudhi maati (liquid kaolin) and peeli mitti (yellow ochre).
Considered auspicious symbols related to fertility, the paintings have been vanishing for varied reasons: village folks turning their homes into cement and concrete structures, young girls reluctant to pursue family traditions, increased incidences of migration to cities in search of livelihood and displacement of settlements due to mining activities and setting up of large thermal power projects.
Naively drawn but painted with great felicity and imagination the paintings are illustrative—deer and goat milk-feeding the young, birds feeding their chick, peacock and mongoose fighting with a snake, a peahen breaking an egg, the fabled “man bird’ on four-legged bird “chibba”, skeletal forms revealing baby animal inside the mother womb etc. Then there are plants and animals which once flourished in the forests of Hazaribagh, namely the humped cattle, Nilgai, Indian rhinoceros, elephant, hog deer, wild buffaloes, chital, wild boar and birds like the Bengal Florican, fowls, egret, wire-tailed swallow etc. Border patterns and decorative motifs signifying the river, trees, fish, lotus and mandala dominate the walls.
Explaining the process the painting goes through Justin elaborates, “After the monsoon has washed and weathered the mud house walls, the women artists repair and re-plaster their clay walls, courtyards, and rooms with cow dung, husk and earth readying it to apply the colours at different stages with cloth swabs and scrap it off with broken pieces of combs or chewed twigs of sal tree revealing motifs in dark black etchings, depicting the forest animals, birds, plants, flowers, fishes and symbols.”
The Imam couple has persevered to keep the traditional art alive on the village walls. Explains Alka who got married to Justin in 1998 and ever since then has dedicated her life to the preservation and promotion of the traditional mural arts besides offering newer avenues for the folk artists, “In the early years, we would load our car with the earth colours and scour the villages and identify the practitioners of the art. We would gift them with colours in order to motivate the women artists and to keep the art alive.”
Besides providing the earth colours, the Imam couple encourages the artists to colour their walls offering them occasional gifts like saris, blankets, LED bulbs and wall clocks. Interestingly, these incentives have not only provided crucial encouragement but also ensured the continuity of once-prehistoric art. The Sohrai Kala Mahila Vikas Sahyog Samiti (SKMVSS), solely made of practitioners of the art as its members received the GI tag within nine months of the application.
So far the Imam’s have created a database of 300 plus practitioners of Hazaribagh mural art– all members of Sahyog Samiti–who have executed collaborative projects at Bhagwan Birsa Jaivik Udyan, Birsa Munda Airport (Ranchi), Circuit House, Jharkhand Governor’s House, Delhi’s Asian Heritage Foundation and others. In addition, their individual works have been exhibited in art galleries in India and abroad.
In May 2020, thanks to the Imam couple’s efforts Sohrai-Khovar was offered the geographical indicator (GI) tag—a first for Jharkhand. One can locate these painted villages on Google too.
Dand village resident Anita Devi (36) has been painting her home since the age of 12. She was among the many who executed the murals at Hazaribagh and Latehar Railway stations and participated at the Lalit Kala Art Camp, held in Chennai in 2019 with two of her canvases. Says she, “When tourists come visiting our village and wonder at the painted walls it gives me a sense of pride and makes us happy. Some even visit us to buy the art pieces done on paper.”