Painting

পটচিত্র ও পটের গান

Patachitra and Pater Gaan

Bengal, practised since at least the 13th century; living centre at Naya, Pingla, Paschim Medinipur

Where it stands

Thriving

Swarna Chitrakar and Anwar Chitrakar, Naya village, Pingla, both internationally exhibited; the Chitrataru cooperative

Visitors and photographers at a Pingla patachitra stall, painted scrolls and cloth spread on the ground before two women painters.Contact Base (WB), via Wikimedia Commons

A patua unrolls a scroll twenty feet long, frame by frame, and sings the story as it goes, a song she wrote herself, to a tune she composed, about a painting she made. Painter, lyricist and singer are the same person; the scroll is a storyboard and the song is its soundtrack. It is, functionally, cinema four centuries early. The pigments come out of the kitchen and the hedgerow, soot for black, kusum flowers for red, turmeric for yellow, indigo for blue, bel-fruit gum to bind them. The subjects run from the Chandi and the Ramayana to the tsunami, the pandemic and girls' education. Patachitra has always been journalism as much as scripture.

ইতিহাস History

Where it came from

Pata (পট) is cloth or scroll; chitra (চিত্র) is picture. Bengal's Patua or Chitrakar community has painted narrative scrolls since at least the thirteenth century, and probably earlier — the form is referred to in medieval Bengali literature and the mangal-kavya poems assume an audience already familiar with it. The living heartland is Naya, a village in Pingla block of Paschim Medinipur, with surviving clusters in Birbhum, Bankura, Purulia and Murshidabad.

What distinguishes Bengal's pata from Odisha's is that it moves and it sings. A jorano pat (জড়ানো পট) is a vertical scroll of paper panels pasted end to end and backed with old sari cloth, sometimes twenty feet long, painted in sequential frames. The patua unrolls it frame by frame and sings the pater gaan (পটের গান) — a narrative song that the same person has composed. Painter, lyricist and singer are one. It is, functionally, pre-cinema, and the patua carries the projector on his back.

In the nineteenth century a branch of the community migrated to the bazaar around the Kalighat temple in Calcutta and adapted the craft for a pilgrim market: single sheets, mill paper, cheap watercolour, sold fast. That offshoot became Kalighat pat, fed into Jamini Roy's modernism and from there into twentieth-century Indian art.

The scroll tradition itself nearly died in the twentieth century and did not. Bengal Patachitra was registered as a Geographical Indication on 28 March 2018, and Naya is now one of the few Indian craft villages with a rising, not falling, number of practitioners.

A Naya patua unrolls a long jorano pat for foreign visitors at a village stall hung with painted scrolls.Contact Base (WB), via Wikimedia Commons

সংস্কৃতি Culture

Who does it, and who used to

The single most important fact about the Naya patuas is one that Indian public life finds awkward and they do not. They are Muslim by faith, they carry the Hindu occupational title Chitrakar, many use both a Hindu and a Muslim name, and they paint and sing the Chandi-mangal, the Ramayana, Krishna's life and the Durga narrative for Hindu patrons. They also paint Gazir pat, the scrolls of the Muslim saint Gazi. Nobody in Naya treats this as a contradiction, and it has been the normal arrangement for centuries.

The second fact is about women. Patua singing was traditionally a male performance — the man walked village to village with the scroll and the woman stayed home — and women painted without being credited. That changed within one generation. Swarna Chitrakar, born in Naya in 1974, learned painting and pater gaan from her father, was married young because of family poverty, and went on to perform and exhibit in Australia, China, England, France, Germany, Sweden and the United States; she received a state visual arts award in 1994. Her five daughters are all patuas. Naya now has more women painting and singing under their own names than any comparable Bengali craft village, and Down To Earth has documented the direct link between that and household income.

Subject matter is not restricted to scripture. Patuas have always painted the news, and the modern repertoire includes the 2004 tsunami, 9/11, trafficking, girls' education, HIV and COVID-19.

The patua Nadira Chitrakar with her child in a Pingla house whose walls and pillars are covered in pata work.Prianxi, via Wikimedia Commons

তাৎপর্য Significance

Why this, and not something else

Patachitra's claim inside Durga Puja is that it supplies the narration. The clay image is a single frozen moment; the chalchitra behind it, which is a branch of patachitra, is the sequence that explains it. Where the chal has gone, theme pujas now commission patas across whole pandals to do the same work.

The deeper significance is about who holds the story. In most Indian devotional traditions the authorised narrator is a brahmin reciting Sanskrit. In the pat tradition the narrator is a low-status itinerant, frequently Muslim, singing in Bengali a song he wrote himself, to an audience that has paid him in rice. The Durga narrative reaches a village through that channel rather than through a temple, and it reaches it in a version the singer composed. Authorship of the sacred story sits, in this tradition, with the poorest person present.

That is also why the pat absorbs the news so readily. A form in which the singer writes the words will always end up singing about the flood that happened last month. Scripture and journalism are not separate genres here; they are the same scroll, unrolled at different speeds.

The patua Joba Chitrakar holds up a hand-painted T-shirt in Pingla, with painted saris and stoles hanging behind her.Prianxi, via Wikimedia Commons

কীভাবে How it is made

The work itself

Panels of paper are pasted end to end with tamarind paste and backed with strips of old sari cloth to make a flexible scroll that will roll without cracking. The drawing is laid in directly, without underdrawing, in the swelling-and-tapering contour that carries the whole composition. The pigments are made by the painter and are entirely vegetable, mineral or animal. Black is bhushakali, lampblack from a soot lamp. Red comes from kusum or palash flowers and from red earth; yellow from halud (turmeric) and from raw turmeric-and-clay mixes; blue from cultivated nil (নীল, indigo) and from aparajita flowers; green from bean leaves; white from khori, chalk dust; brown from burnt clay. The binder is bel (বেল) fruit gum, sometimes tamarind seed. Brushes are squirrel-hair or goat-hair set into a quill or a bamboo sliver. The scroll is finished by burnishing and is stored rolled. The song — the pater gaan — is composed in a metre matched to the frames, so the length of a verse determines how long the audience looks at each panel. The painting and the song are made together and neither is complete alone.

পটpata / pat: A scroll or painted cloth; the root word of patachitra and patua.
জড়ানো পটjorano pat: The long vertical rolled scroll of joined panels, unrolled frame by frame during performance.
পটের গানpater gaan: The narrative song sung while the scroll is unrolled, composed by the painter.
চিত্রকরChitrakar: "Painter" — the occupational title of the patua community, used as a surname at Naya by painters who are Muslim by faith.
ভুষোকালিbhushakali: Lampblack collected from a soot lamp, the black pigment of the pat palette.
বেল আঠাbel aatha: Gum from the bel fruit, the binder that fixes the natural pigments to the paper.
গাজীর পটGazir pat: Scrolls of the Muslim saint Gazi, painted and sung by the same hands that paint the Chandi.
চৌকো পটchouko pat: The square single-frame painting, as opposed to the long narrative scroll.

কাহিনি The stories

What people tell each other about it

Muslim painters of the Chandi

At Naya in Pingla the scroll painters are Muslim. They carry the surname Chitrakar, many hold both a Hindu and a Muslim name, and they paint and sing the Chandi-mangal, the Ramayana and the Durga narrative for Hindu clients, alongside Gazir pat, the scrolls of a Muslim saint. This is not a recent experiment or an interfaith initiative. It is how the pat trade has worked in Bengal for centuries, and it sits at the commercial heart of the Durga Puja art economy — the painted backdrop of a great many household Durgas in Nadia and Kolkata was made by a Muslim hand.

Swarna Chitrakar's scrolls

Swarna Chitrakar was born in Naya in 1974, learned painting and pater gaan from her father, and was married young because the family was poor. She received a West Bengal state award for visual arts in 1994 and has since exhibited and performed in Australia, China, England, France, Germany, Sweden and the United States. She paints the 2004 tsunami, the September 11 attacks, tuberculosis, HIV, child marriage and child trafficking, and during the pandemic made a seven-scroll COVID-19 awareness project with its own song. Her five daughters are all patuas. She illustrated The Patua Pinocchio in 2015.

The village that sells its own work

Most Indian craft villages lose most of the price to middlemen. Naya restructured that. Working with banglanatak dot com, the patuas formed the Chitrataru cooperative and started POT MAYA, an annual festival held in the village itself, so that buyers, curators and tourists come to Naya and deal with painters directly. Photographs from the festival show visitors sitting on the ground while a woman unrolls a twenty-foot scroll for them. The change is measurable in women's household incomes, which Down To Earth has documented, and in the fact that the number of practising patuas at Naya has gone up rather than down.

A T-shirt with a pat on it

A well-known photograph from Naya shows the patua Joba Chitrakar holding up a black T-shirt hand-painted with pat motifs — birds, fish, the round staring eyes of the pata idiom — in a room hung with painted saris and stoles. That garment is the reason the scroll tradition still exists. Scrolls are slow, expensive and bought by institutions; painted textiles and merchandise are fast, affordable and bought all year. The patuas' own assessment is unsentimental: the T-shirt pays for the time it takes to paint a twenty-foot jorano pat that almost nobody will buy.

দেখুন Watch

Patachitra, Pingla, Paschim Medinipur | Banglanatak.combanglanatak dot combanglanatak dot com's own documentation of the Pingla patuas, made by the organisation that helped the village form its cooperative.

Pot Maya 2017 | Pingla, Paschim Midnapore | Banglanatak.combanglanatak dot comFootage of POT MAYA, the annual festival at Naya, which is the mechanism by which the village now sells directly to buyers.

The Living Heritage of Bengal Pattachitra | Stories from Pingla with Manorajan ChitrakarMeMerakiAn extended interview with the Pingla patua Manoranjan Chitrakar on the scroll tradition and the song that goes with it.

এখন Now

What state it is in

This is one of the genuine revival successes in Indian craft, and the reasons are documented rather than mysterious. The NGO banglanatak dot com worked with the Naya patuas from the mid-2000s to form the cooperative Chitrataru, register the craft, and build a direct market. The annual POT MAYA festival at Naya now brings thousands of visitors into the village itself, so buyers meet painters without a middleman. Bengal Patachitra received its GI on 28 March 2018. Practically, this has meant diversification. Naya patuas now paint scrolls, saris, stoles, T-shirts, lampshades, furniture and whole pandal interiors, and the non-scroll products carry the household. Women's earnings in particular are documented as having risen substantially, and several women patuas run their own accounts and their own commissions. Named practitioners are numerous and reachable, which is unusual: Swarna Chitrakar, Anwar Chitrakar (National Award 2006), Manimala Chitrakar, Joba Chitrakar, Nadira Chitrakar, Shyamsundar Chitrakar. The risk now is not extinction but flattening — a market that buys decorative motifs on merchandise and does not commission the long scrolls or pay to hear the song.

Sources for this page

Beforeচালচিত্রChalchitra (Painted Backdrop)After আলপনাAlpona (Ritual Floor Art)