Challenges in the history of colours: The case of saffron

Abstract

This article delineates the emergence of saffron as a colour of national importance in the late 1920s, when Nehru recognised it as an ‘old colour’, and Suniti Kumar Chatterji claimed that it was symbolic of ‘Indian life’, thus elevating it from its humble position as a kacha colour. The need to assess such claims has prompted a longue durée approach to unravel the complexities of writing a history of colours in the Indian milieu. An attempt has been made to analyse the role played by history in defining saffron and equating it with Hinduism—marginalising the colour red in the process. This study argues that through a selective interpretation of the past, regional and local usages and meanings of geru, kesari or kusumba came to mean a well defined shade of saffron in the second half of the 1920s and were eventually equated with the nation’s history. At another level, this is a story of the triumph of history over the past, precision over ambivalence, singularity over multiplicity, standardisation over fluidity, and knowledge over the experiential dynamics of seeing.

Nacionalismo na Índia de Narendra Modi e do Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) | Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Nationalism in India

“…Porém, o BJP procura transformar a identidade nacional indiana, baseada na ideia de "estado-civilização indiano" (que não tem continuidade histórica estatal, religiosa e política), em uma ideia de "estado-civilização hindu", escorada em uma narrativa de continuidade da civilização hindu por milhares de anos, e que ao mesmo tempo exclui minorias religiosas, como os muçulmanos (Therborn, 2021;Saleem, 2021). Este processo é chamado de "safronização da Índia" (Santos, 2021), referência à cor do açafrão, associada ao hinduísmo desde os anos 1920, que significa "desapego do mundo físico" (Jha, 2014). Mural Internacional, Rio de Janeiro, Vol.12, e60103, 2021.…”

Dyeing the Springtime: The Art and Poetry of Fleeting Textile Colors in Medieval and Early Modern South Asia

“…bha or kasumal-dyed cloths (the names given for textiles dyed with safflower) were valued as religious offerings and as the material for precious garments. Although saffron has become a religiously-potent color in the past century, it was the vibrant, and fleeting yellow, orange, red, and pink colors produced by safflower that more frequently appeared in earlier manuals on gift-giving and accounts of religious festivities (Jha 2014). As Sadan Jha notes, nineteenth accounts describe a special class of dyers in northern India, known as kusum .…”

From Sacred to Commodity and Beyond: Colour and Values in India

“…Also, I would like to express my gratitude to Vidyanand Jha, the discussant for an earlier draft of this article and participants of the workshop on ‘Exploring values: Interdisciplinary perspectives’ organized by IIMC, Kolkata. This is a part of an ongoing study on the social history of colours in India and has built upon an earlier article on colour saffron (Jha, 2014). The author acknowledges that some examples and arguments have been reproduced from the earlier mentioned article to substantiate and carry forward the argument made in this article.…”