ANALYSING PEDAGOGICAL CHANGES IN POST-INDEPENDENCE INDIA THROUGH THE LENS OF K. G. SUBRAMANYAN’S PRACTICE

Abstract [English]

Post-independence Indian art education developed through uneven negotiations among modernity, inherited cultural frameworks, and institutional authority. Scholarship on the period often treats pedagogy as curriculum alone, rather than as lived studio culture, material conditions, and the everyday micro-politics that shape artistic formation. This paper proposes a framework for reading pedagogy as institutional culture in motion, produced through teaching practices, shared spaces, material access, public platforms, and tacit values that students absorb through making. Using K. G. Subramanyan’s trajectory across Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan (1944–1948) and the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda (early 1950s to late 1970s), the paper argues that his pedagogical practice mediated between tradition and modernity, craft and fine art hierarchies, and studio freedom and university regulation. Through his writings, institutional initiatives, and selected works, as well as the distinct trajectories of students associated with Baroda, the paper suggests that Subramanyan’s contribution lay less in prescribing a method than in reshaping the conditions under which artistic knowledge could be produced, circulated, and legitimised.