Impart

For centuries, board games in the Indian subcontinent have reflected worlds of politics, trade, art, and belief. Played across royal courts, homes, and everyday social life, they have engaged with themes of strategy, morality, and spirituality. From Moksha Patam (Gyan Chaupar) and Pachisi to Ganjifa and Pallanguzhi, these traditions reveal how play has long been woven into cultural life across the region. Many of these games also shared cross-continental histories shaped by migration and exchange. Pallanguzhi, played with shells or pebbles on a board of pits, shares similarities with mancala games across Asia and Africa, pointing to links with pre-colonial Indian Ocean trade. Ganjifa, a Persian card game introduced through the Mughals, became known for its elaborate painted cards depicting animals, kings, gods, and epics. Moksha Patam — a game rooted in Hindu and Jain philosophy — travelled to Victorian England in the 19th century, where it was adapted before becoming the Snakes and Ladders familiar today. Ludo is believed to be a modern variant of Pachisi, a cross-and-circle board game. The materials used to make boards and game pieces reflected the worlds of their players — from Mughal courtiers serving as Pachisi tokens and Ganjifa cards crafted from ivory and tortoiseshell, to the everyday use of wood, cowrie shells, paper, cloth, and palm leaf. Today, games like Ganjifa and Moksha Patam survive as cultural artefacts, while organisations across India work to revive and reintroduce traditional games for contemporary audiences. Learn more via the link below https://lnkd.in/ddbvWseQ

This month’s newsletter explores how objects and architecture shaped memory, ritual, and political authority across South Asia. From Chola temples and bronzes to Gandharan sculptures and medieval hero stones, it traces histories of devotion, kingship, and cultural exchange across regions and centuries. Also featured are exhibitions, films, conferences, and conversations on art, photography, textiles, and music.

‘Mirasis’ — hereditary musicians, genealogists, and bards — once occupied a vital place within Punjab’s musical and cultural life. Through praise, satire, and commemoration, they shaped how memory, history, and social life were preserved and performed. Over time, however, changing patronage systems, colonial ethnography, and Victorian moral attitudes toward performance reshaped how ‘mirasis’ and their traditions were understood. In the process, certain sounds and identities came to define Punjab in the public imagination, while others gradually faded from view. In our upcoming Impart Dialogue, historian Dr Radha Kapuria reflects on these historical shifts and the changing status of performers within Punjab’s musical worlds, tracing the emergence of the folk stereotype associated with the region today. The session will take place on Thursday, 21 May, 2026 at 6:30 pm (IST) via Zoom. Sign up now via link below. https://lnkd.in/dXgxi2Dr About the Speaker Dr Radha Kapuria is Associate Professor of South Asian History at Durham University, specialising in gender, music, performance, and cultural history. Trained at the University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and King’s College London, her work is informed by the intersections of personal history and the political legacies of the Partition. She is the author of ‘Music in Colonial Punjab: Courtesans, Bards, and Connoisseurs, 1800-1947’ (2023), and co-editor of ‘Punjab Sounds: In and Beyond the Region’ (2024) and ‘Performing’ Nature: Ecology and the Arts in South Asia’ (2025).

Subscribe to our newsletter to explore 10,000 years of South Asia’s art and cultural histories. From Chola temples to Gandharan relics, our latest edition ‘Objects That Outlast Empires’, explores how material culture shaped histories of ritual, power, memory, and exchange. Each edition offers thematic deep-dives, curated readings, and recommendations for deeper engagement with contemporary conversations on South Asian art. Sign up via the link below https://lnkd.in/dGknVS7A

As a part of our in-person programming, we recently conducted a two-day workshop for the students of the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and, in collaboration with Dr Shikha Jain, Director of Preservation and Community Design at Dronah — an interdisciplinary organisation focused on cultural heritage conservation, urban planning, and sustainable development. Through the workshop, the students explored both historical objects and contemporary works that engage in dialogue with the past, tracing how earlier forms continue to resonate within present-day artistic practices. This inquiry extended beyond the classroom through a site visit to the National Gallery of Modern Art, where the students studied how curatorial practices frame the narratives around art. The workshop ended with a visit to Dronah, where they had an opportunity to interact with Dr Jain, who discussed diverse practices within heritage conservation and management across architecture and craft. Across these encounters, participants examined how historical, cultural, and social dynamics continue to shape the interpretation, display, and valuation of art across the public sphere, cultural institutions, and government bodies. To learn more or partner on educational programmes, follow the link in our bio. https://lnkd.in/dZPQiUYV

How did Punjabi music come to sound the way it does today? Join us for our upcoming Impart Dialogue with historian Dr Radha Kapuria, as she draws on her book 'Music in Colonial Punjab: Courtesans, Bards, and Connoisseurs, 1800-1947’ and the co-edited volume ‘Punjab Sounds: In and Beyond the Region’ to explore how historical shifts across the long 19th century reconfigured Punjab’s cosmopolitan musical cultures. Moving from the Lahore court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh — where courtesans held civic influence and bards preserved political memory — to contemporary cultural expressions, the session traces the role of music in shaping the region over time, and how the familiar sounds associated with Punjab today came into being. The online discussion will be held on Thursday, 21 May, 2026 at 6:30 pm (IST) via Zoom. Register now through the link below. https://lnkd.in/g_-t5aWE This event is a part of Impart Dialogues (formerly MAP Academy Live) — a series of expert-led talks, conversations, panels and exhibition walkthroughs organised exclusively for our online community. About the Speaker Dr Radha Kapuria (@radhakapuria)is Associate Professor of South Asian History at Durham University, specialising in gender, music, performance, and cultural history. Trained at the University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and King’s College London, her work is informed by the intersections of personal history and the political legacies of the Partition.

Fanged masks, bulging eyes, and towering forms — at first glance, the performers of Bali’s traditional ‘Barong’ dance and Tulu Nadu’s ‘Bhuta Kola’ rituals appear fearsome. Their striking costumes and masks do not represent evil, but embody guardian forces that maintain balance between opposing energies. Across the Indian Ocean, the rituals of ‘Bhuta Kola’ in Tulu Nadu and ‘Barong’ performances in Bali emerge from distinct yet resonant cosmologies. In Tulu Nadu, ‘paddanas’ (oral epics) describe a world divided between ‘gramya’ (cultivated land), ‘aranya’ (forest), and ‘bhuta’ (spirit) — realms that exist in tension. Through ‘Bhootaradhane’ (spirit worship), ‘daiva patris’ (mediums) invoke ‘bhutas’ — entities that are not purely good or evil, but elemental forces that restore cosmic balance between the realms. A similar framework underpins the Balinese practice. The principle of ‘Rwa Bhineda’, expressed as “bhuta ia, dewa ia” (he is an evil spirit, he is a god), affirms the coexistence of opposing forces. Entities such as ‘bhuta kalas’ (elemental and temporal forces) are not demonic, but manifestations of imbalance, appeased through sacrificial offerings and ritual performances. Despite geographic distance, these traditions share a visual language. The daunting imagery reflects the paradoxical nature of guardian deities, embodied by ‘Barong’ in Bali and ‘Panjurli’ in Tulu Nadu. Rather than signifying evil, their chaotic powers are seen as necessary to protect the community from harm. In both regions, the practices are rooted in agrarian lifestyles that emphasise the protection of land and crops with the help of these forest guardians. Trade routes linking the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia enabled the movement of ideas as much as goods, embedding the Sanskrit vocabulary of “bhuta” across regions, though they were localised according to existing beliefs. In Tulu Nadu, ‘bhutas’ emerge as ancestral guardian spirits who communicate through mediums; in Bali, they remain abstract forces to be appeased. Kunal Chauhan traces these shared cosmologies and visual languages across regions. Follow the link below to read the full story. https://lnkd.in/gZQUpfvK

Across contemporary artistic practice, Urdu text appears as both material and memory — shaped as much by aesthetic inquiry as by histories of linguistic politics, erasure, and shifting cultural perception. Once a language formed through the intermingling of Hindavi with Turkish and Persian influences, Urdu was widely associated with plural cultural worlds. Over time, especially in the aftermath of the 1947 Partition, it came to be framed through increasingly narrower identities, alongside declining literacy and institutional neglect. These conditions form an inescapable backdrop to the ways the Perso-Arabic Urdu script is encountered today. In contemporary works, Urdu is not only a medium of expression but also a site where histories of marginalisation persist — inscribed, fragmented, or reworked across image, surface, and form. Shweta Upadhyay traces how artists Baaraan Ijlal, Faiza Hasan, Saba Hasan, and Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai reimagine Urdu as both language and image, navigating identity, loss, and continuity. Follow the link below to read the full story. https://lnkd.in/dPqhavJg

Palm-prints on walls, some engraved, some smeared in vermillion, carved, graceful figures on hero-stones in royal cenotaphs — the satis of Rajputana speak from beyond. But the story of these etchings are far more complex than meets the eye. Rajput women who once died on the funerary pyres of their husbands are still revered by their natal and marital clans. Obedience to the family satimata (the woman who died as sati and is worshipped as a deity), it is believed, ensures continued prosperity — her warnings and curses still resound through family ceremonies. The cult of a satimata began at the moment of her grisly perishing. While the Rajput man was groomed to seek valour in death on the battlefield, the woman was taught to seek valour in death on the pyre. Together, they would be worshipped as ‘vir’ and ‘sati’, memorialised jointly on their ‘devali’ (stele) erected at the site of their burning. The sati’s death brought honour to her natal family, as well as new titles, lands, and wealth. It also underscored political alliances between her marital and natal clans, eulogising and consecrating both on her memorial stone. Etchings of multiple women on many of these stelae are sombre reminders of their roles as facilitators of glorious afterlives for their husbands. While the sati memorials reflect gender archetypes of premodern warrior society, the continued devotion to satimatas provide an insight into experiential devotion within modern Hinduism. Escaping the grasp of impending widowhood, whether through voluntary ‘sacrifice’ or ‘socially coerced suicide,’ the satimata becomes a direct link between her descendants and their God. Meeting death on the pyre of patriarchy, the woman emerges as the goddess of her own cult.

Our newest book, ‘Paper Gardens’, brings together over a hundred botanical illustrations produced between the 17th and 20th centuries — each an encounter between plants, botanists, artists, and the British Empire. As botany came into its own as a science during this period, the Indian subcontinent became a major site of survey and documentation. British botanists collected, classified, and circulated plant specimens in service of the empire’s economic, scientific, and political ambitions. Central to this enterprise were thousands of botanical drawings produced by skilled, often uncredited, Indian artists. Anchored by essays from art historian Holly Shaffer, botanist Henry Noltie (Henry Noltie), and novelist and poet Sumana Roy, the publication explores artistic lineages, the role of archives, and the deep ties that exist between plants and local communities. Together, the essays reflect on authorship, attribution, collecting, categorisation, study, and erasure — questions that continue to shape how we understand these illustrations today, and which are also explored in the exhibition ‘Paper Gardens: Art, Botany, and Empire’. Featuring artworks from the collection Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), alongside major international collections from Victoria and Albert Museum, Oak Spring Garden Foundation , Wellcome Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Mobot Garden, The Linnean Society of London, and New York Botanical Garden, the book offers a window into the journeys of the artists, institutions and images that shaped botanical knowledge in the subcontinent. Designed with elaborate care by the team at TSK Design, ‘Paper Gardens: The Lives of Botanical Illustrations in India’, is now available for purchase online and through the shop Museum of Art and Photography (MAP). Follow the link below to get your copy. ttps://https://lnkd.in/dM_TFDzv