Madhubani: Mithila's Living Canvas
From a drought-year courtyard in 1966 to a Padma Bhushan and a railway station: how the painted walls of Janaka's kingdom became the world's best-known women's art tradition.
For as long as oral memory runs, the women of Mithila have painted the mud walls and floors of their homes for every wedding, every Chhath, and every festival. The painting was never sold. It was the house itself, dressed. Then, in the winter of 1966, a second monsoon failed. The rice crop died. A young officer from the All India Handicrafts Board, Bhaskar Kulkarni, walked into the Jitwarpur courtyard of a Brahmin widow named Sita Devi with a bundle of blank handmade paper and one question: could the painting move from the wall to the page? Within ten years, Sita Devi's paintings hung in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and she had been awarded a Padma Shri. This lesson walks from the Kohbar wedding wall of the old Maithili home, through the five styles of the tradition (Bharni, Kachni, Godna, Tantrik, and Kohbar), past W. G. Archer's 1934 earthquake discovery of the wall paintings exposed by collapsed houses, into the 1966 drought and the long, surprising rescue that followed: Padma Shris for Sita Devi, Jagdamba Devi, Ganga Devi, and Baua Devi, the Mithila Museum in Tokamachi, Japan, the 2007 GI tag, and the 2017 Madhubani Railway Station, painted end to end by more than two hundred and fifty women from Mithila itself.
The Drought Year Paper
Jitwarpur village, Madhubani district, Bihar. A dry afternoon in late 1966. The monsoon has failed for the second year in a row. The fields are hard and pale. A young officer from the All India Handicrafts Board in Delhi, Bhaskar Kulkarni, walks past a row of mud houses toward the courtyard of a Brahmin widow named Sita Devi. In his cloth bag, he carries a bundle of blank handmade paper, a few bamboo pens, and small bottles of colour. Sita Devi is standing in her courtyard, staring at the cracked ground. She has painted the walls of her home for every wedding and every Chhath for the last thirty years. But there is no wedding this year. There is no food either.
Kulkarni is on an emergency mission. The drought has destroyed Mithila's rice crop for two seasons running. The Handicrafts Board has sent him from village to village to find a craft, any craft, that the women of Mithila can sell to outside buyers for cash. Wall paintings cannot be sold. A wall cannot be taken to Delhi. He sits down on a low stool, opens his bag, and asks her whether the imagery she paints on her courtyard walls could also be painted on a sheet of paper.
Sita Devi had never held a sheet of paper like this before. She took it anyway. Within a decade, her paintings would hang in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and she would be awarded a Padma Shri by the Government of India. A tradition that had never been for sale, and almost died for want of a market, was about to become the best-known women's painting tradition in India.
A Painting Tradition With No Known Beginning
Mithila is the old name for the region of north Bihar and a small part of Nepal that was once the kingdom of King Janaka, the father of Sita in the Ramayana. Maithili women have painted the walls, floors, and courtyards of their homes for as long as their oral memory runs. The Valmiki Ramayana, at Bala Kanda 1.73.27, records the verse that Janaka spoke when he gave his daughter in marriage to Rama in this very region: