Posted by: John Elliott | October 1, 2025

Indian art boom generates $96m in two weeks’ auctions

Saffronart hits $40m for a single auction

Indian art galleries on show in London’s Frieze exhibitions

There’s a boom in the modern Indian art market with sales recently totalling £96.2m at international auctions in a period of under two weeks, and with a significant number of Indian galleries showing at the Frieze London and Masters exhibitions in the UK capital this month.

The strong prices have revived memories of the first boom in 2005, which was partly triggered by newly-rich Indian buyers working in New York financial services. That fell away with the 2008 financial crisis. This time, the boom has a stronger base, leading to 10 or more galleries showing at the Frieze exhibitions. There are many new buyers of all ages, even though the boom is partly fueled by individual collectors competing for the top lots.

“Indian art is now being accepted as an asset, like gold or real estate, that you buy and hold because of its long-term value, rather than trading,” said Dinesh Vazirani, who founded the Saffronart gallery with his wife Minal in 2000.

F.N.Souza’s “Houses in Hampstead”

Leading the sales, Saffronart almost doubled the maximum total for an Indian auction to $40.2m, while Sotheby’s and Pundole each totalled $25.5m and $18.3m with Christie’s trailing at $12.4m. All four were celebrated as “white glove” sales, where all the lots were sold. 

Top prices were achieved for a variety of artists. They were inevitably led by members of the ultra-safe Bombay-based Progressives Group, which began in the 1940s, with names such as F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain and V.S. Gaitonde. Records were also set however for later artists including Bhupen Khakhar, Mohan Samant, Arpita Singh Vivan Sundaram and Nalini Malani who have been attracting increasing interest at auctions, though there were few works from contemporary artists.

Competition between two top collectors helped to boost prices for some prime lots, notably at Sotheby’s auction in London on September 30 where Manjari Sihare-Sutin, co-head of South Asian art, said the £18.9m ($25.5m with premium) achieved was the department’s highest total in its 30-year history.

Two Souza works created a new record for the artist after a contest between Shankh Mitra from the US, who is a relatively fresh collector and was in the auction room, and Kiran Nadar who bids down the telephone for her large art museum in Delhi. 

M.F.Souza’s “Six Gentlemen of Our Times”

Bidding against Mitra, Nadar won the Emperor at a hammer price of  £4.2m, ($6.9m with premium), beating the artist’s previous $4.89m record set at Christies in New York in March 2024.

A few lots later, in another tussle that began with nine bidders, Mitra set a higher record with Houses in Hampstead (above) at £4.6m ($7.57m with premium). This followed a Christie’s New York contest between th two collectors last March for a notable Husain work that Nadar eventually won for $13.75m. Mitra has also been buying extensively in other auctions, challenging Nadar’s success for many years at acquiring the best works by top artists. He is the ceo and chief investment officer of Welltower Inc, a real estate investment trust working in the healthcare sector. 

A comparable Souza Belsize Park, London, 1961 is coming up in an on-line auction at London-based Roseberys auctioneers on October 24. It is a little under half the size of House in Hampstead , so could get bids far far above the unrealistically modest £15,000 ($20,000) top estimate.

Another Souza record came in the Saffronart sale on September 27 in Delhi for a unique collection (above) of six 10in x 8in pen and ink on paper drawings titled Six Gentlemen of our Times. This sold for an unexpectedly high hammer price of Rs170m ($2.30m including 20% buyers’ premium), which was the highest auction price ever paid for a South Asian work on paper. 

M.F.Husain’s “Morning Bath”, painted in his 20s

Delhi-based art critic Geeta Kapur has described these heads as “a combined portrait of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, sly, evil and at the same time terrified.” The next lot was a similar single man’s head by Souza. It went even more surprisingly at a hammer price six times the top estimate for the rupee equivalent of $67,797 (including the premium). 

All four auction houses pitched many of their estimates low – at Sotheby’s 94% of the lots exceeded their top estimate. The aim was to draw in bidders at a time when art is being increasingly seen in India as a strong investment, pulling in new collectors – a third of Sotheby’s buyers were new to the auction house.

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Saffronart packed its 85-lot auction so successfully with top priced works that the leading ten lots alone went for a total of over £25m. The total $40.2m beat a $25.2m all-India record that Saffronart set in April.

The low estimates brought some remarkable multiples. 

Pundole’s Rs1.62m ($18.29m) auction of 81 lots on September 25 in Mumbai had a dramatic start with memorable early works by members of the Progressives Group, all painted when they were in their 20s. They were part of a collection assembled by Emanuel Schlesinger, an Austrian emigre who fled from Europe in the 1930s to escape Nazism and became a patron of young Bombay artists.

“Bombay from Malabar Hill”, painted by S.H.Raza in his 20s

A figurative 32in x 31in oil on canvas, Morning Bath, by M.F. Husain (above) fetched eight times the top estimate at a hammer price of Rs190m – $2.46m including Pundole’s 15% buyers’ premium. Three watercolour landscapes by S.H. Raza included a 12in x 18.5in panoramic view across Bombay’s Marine Drive and city from Malabar Hill (above) that went for 14 times the top estimate at a hammer price of Rs22m ($248,000 including premium).

Works by Mohan Samant, a lesser-known member of the group, who mostly lived in New York, had several successes with a personal record of Rs5.5m ($62,000) hammer price, seven times the top estimate, for a 33in x 27in watercolour, Red Carpet.

Arpita Singh’s record “With and Without Shadows”

“We saw increasing emphasis on artists outside the more predictable names,” says Dadiba Pundole. “Collectors are also more aware of works of academic importance, and are willing to fight for these, irrespective of medium or scale.”

Arpita Singh’s record came in at Rs165m ($2.14m with premium) at the Pundole auction for a colourful 68in x 68in oil on canvas titled With and Without Shadows (above).  The veteran artist had a highly successful retrospective exhibition in London during the summer, which brought fresh attention to her work.

Pundole’s top lot was a 45in x 36in oil on canvas by Tyeb Mehta depicting a female labourer from 1983. It sold for a hammer price of Rs260m ($3.37m including premium). Also in this auction, Bhupen Khakhar achieved a record work-on-paper price of Rs42m ($544,839 with premium) for an erotic gay form of puja, with the artist in the crowd. 

V.S.Gaitonde’s record work painted in 1971

Gaitonde’s record came in the Saffronart auction for a glowing gold coloured untitled 55in x 40in oil on canvas in the artist’s iconic misty style (right). This was an early work, painted in 1971, and it fetched a hammer price of Rs560m ($7.58m including the premium) exceeding Gaitonde’s previous record of Rs420m at a Pundole auction in 2022.

Bidding was slow for the top lots at Christie’s $12.34m auction on September 17 in New York where a V.S. Gaitonde achieved a top price (including premium) of $2.39m and a Tyeb Mehta Trussed Bull went for $2.03m. 

By contrast, another work in Mehta’s Trussed Bull series was sold (to Shankh Mitra) for Rs470m ($6.37m including the premium) at Saffronart’s auction, following a record $7.2m set for a similar work at Saffronart in April.

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Posted by: John Elliott | August 5, 2025

Trump’s 50% tariff and Russian oil demands destabilises US presidents’ 25 years work to draw close to India

Historic distrust of the US being revived as Trump raises US import tariffs up to 50%

Trump says India, buying Russian oil, “doesn’t care” how many Ukranians are killed

President Donald Trump’s decision on August 6 to raise tariffs to 50% on many Indian imported goods from the end of August has seriously undermined work pursued with India by four earlier US presidents, starting with Bill Clinton 25 years ago and continued by Trump himself till a few weeks ago, The task has been to coax India gradually to move away from its historic Soviet and Russian allegiances and build lasting links with the US and other Western powers.

Trump’s move, triggered by India becoming the biggest buyer of Russian oil since the Ukraine war began, is reawakening and strengthening India’s instinctive distrust of America. Calls are emerging for it to stand up to his demands to cut the oil purchases, “Resisting the US might cause short-term pain, but not doing so will hurt India’s national interests,” was the headline on an article by Shyam Saran a former foreign secretary, who describes Trump as “a nightmare”.

The presidents have all considered their approach necessary in order to develop India as a buffer against the growing power of China – despite a general understanding that, with its developing policies, initially of non-alignment and now multi-alignment, the world’s fourth largest economy was unlikely to come fully on-side with the West.

Narendra Modi and Donald Trump in February

Good progress has been made by the US in terms of wide-ranging defence and other co-operation. Angry however that India is boosting Russia’s economy by buying its oil during the Ukraine war, Trump has disrupted the relationship along with his boosting trade tariffs first up to 25% and now to 50%. At the same time, he is sidling up to Pakistan and the country’s all-powerful army chief General Asim Munir as well as making aggressive remarks that are escalating the row.

The question now is whether this has done serious damage, not only to India-US relations but also to wider Indo-Pacific strategy, or whether it could be at least partially blown away once Trump’s battles with India over trade tariffs and Russian oil sales have been solved.

The extra 25% will come in to force on August 27, two days after trade talks planned, but not yet confirmed, to take place in New Delhi. It became clear on August 4 that Trump was not waiting for the talks to proceed because he had decided to make Russian oil his immediate goal. He has also said that there could be further secondary sanctions, which presumably could include electronics and pharmaceuticals that remain exempt for now.

India’s foreign ministry criticised the US tariffs “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”. Its oil imports were “based on market factors and done with the overall objective of ensuring the energy security of 1.4bn people of India”. On tariffs, Modi said he would “never compromise on the interests of farmers, livestock owners and fishermen”.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform on August 5: “India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits. They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine”.

That brought a quick uncompromising response from India, which Trump is targeting while not challenging China that is also a big oil purchaser. “The targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable,” said Randhir Jaiswal, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson. “India began importing from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the [Ukraine] conflict, The United States at that time actively encouraged such imports for strengthening global energy markets stability.” India also alleges that the European Union and the US continue to actively trade with Russia in excess of India’s trade.

Prime minister Narendra Modi, who has flattered Trump at every opportunity, is inevitably undermined by his supposed international buddy suddenly turning on India. This was not expected, certainly not with the current persistent ferocity. The two leaders basked in triumphal joint “Howdy Modi” and “Namaste Trump” rallies when they visited each other’s countries in 2019 and 2020. When Trump was re-elected, there were signs that the close rapport would continue, even though his “America First” approach would lead to tougher trade demands.

One recent irritant in the relationship is that Trump seems unable to tolerate Modi and Indian officials persistently rebutting his repeated (and over-stated) claims that he personally ended the recent near-war between India and Pakistan. The US was involved in behind-the-scenes peace making along with other countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UK. India however is hypersensitive about outside interference in its Pakistan relations so resists Trump’s public claims.

Trump’s tirade began on July 30, when he announced that India’s imports would be hit with 25% tariffs from August 1, the deadline that had been set when he first announced (and then postponed) 26% tariffs on April 2, his trade war “lib­er­a­tion day” .

Hand in hand, parading around the Gujarat stadium at a mega rally in February 2020

Trump is frustrated over what he sees as India’s slow moves on key tariffs, especially for US agricultural exports such as soya beans, dairy products and wheat where India’s import tariffs can reach as high as 40%. Trump’s electoral base needs access to these exports as well as other items where India has made concessions. But Modi cannot move far without upsetting farmers, many of whom are poor and make up 40% of the country’s workforce. 

The Financial Times reports (Aug 5 print edition) that India was blind­sided after it hired Jason Miller, a cent­ral Trump cam­paign adviser, to try to get the pres­id­ent’s ear: “New Delhi struggled to con­vince the US pres­id­ent it was doing enough to open its mar­kets to US export­ers. Each time Lut­nick presen­ted Trump with a new Indian pro­posal, the pres­id­ent sent him back to nego­ti­ate harder, people famil­iar with the mat­ter said”. As the clock wound down, Trump launched his attack. (Miller has a chequered history).

Saying “India is our friend”, Trump then made his first threat of an additional undefined “penalty” because of the large oil and military equipment purchases from Russia. 

“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care, their tariffs are too high, among the highest in the world,” he declared a day later in his late-night Truth Social posts, mixing the trade and oil issues. That hit international news headlines but, in typical Trump style, it ignored reality – India is a growing major world economy, its traded goods with the US totalled some $130bn in 2024, and the US is India’s largest trading partner.

The 25% tariffs were not a surprise. India had been preparing for trouble since a possible deal is said to have arrived on Trump’s desk a few days earlier. India’s official response has been that it is “studying the implications”, but ominously added it would “take all steps necessary to secure our national interest”. That seems maybe to have provoked Trump’s “dead economies” remark.

India’s role as the biggest purchaser of Russian oil is a key issue now that President Vladimir Putin is resisting Trump’s attempts to end the war with his imminent deadline of August 8. Since the war began, India has cited Russian low prices to justify increasing purchases that currently make up 35% of its total imports compared with 37% from Saudi Arabia and the UAE and 22% from Iraq. The US share has risen in response to Trump pressure from 3.5% in 2023-24 to 7.3% in April. Trump has said he will impose sanctions on Russia and countries that buy its oil including India and China if Putin does not agree to a ceasefire by August 8.

Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House and one of Mr. Trump’s most influential aides, on August 4 warned that Trump had “said very clearly that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia.”

Trump had told reporters on August 1, “I understand that India is no longer going to be buying oil from Russia…. That’s what I heard. I don’t know if that’s right or not. That is a good step. We will see what happens.” The word from Delhi was that he was wrong. A climb down on buying from Russia indeed looks extremely difficult, given India’s robust stand on the issue so far. It does seem likely however that energy concessions will form part of the eventual trade deal, probably with India agreeing to step up its oil purchases from the US.

Narendra Modi with Russian Vladimir Putin who had just given him the Order of St Andrew the Apostle the First-Called, Russia’s highest civilian honour – July 2024

Oil has also figured in developing relationship between Trump and Pakistan, which has offered him an astonishing array of deals ranging from cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence to hydrocarbons and critical minerals – plus nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief, discussed trade and his country’s potential for mining bitcoin and exploring rare earth minerals in a surprise White House lunch last month that marked the beginning of the new relationship. Since then, Pakistan’s lobbying efforts have been stepped up in Washington, and it looks as if Trump has been hooked.

Last week Trump announced a deal with Pakistan to develop the country’s “massive oil reserves”. That surprised observers because Pakistan has only a low level of some 240m barrels. He even provocatively suggested Pakistan might one day “be selling oil to India”. 

When he launched his tirade, Trump had just returned from a triumphal semi-private trip to Scotland, where he mixed visiting his two golf courses and opening a third with a visit from Sir Keir Starmer who flew with him in the presidential Air Force One passenger jet and helicopter. He also finalised an EU trade deal with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Council president who flew in from Brussels.

Gangster King Trump

That led Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, to dub Trump a “blend of gangster boss and Medieval king but adapted for our televisual age,” adding: “When the boss-king takes his court to Scotland, British and European leaders fly in to seek his favours, which he loves”.

Three days before Trump arrived, Modi had been feted on an official visit to the UK where he met King Charles as well as Starmer and signed an India trade deal. Maybe that provoked Trump to focus on what India had not negotiated with the US, tempting him to bring Modi down a peg or two.

In China, Xi Jinping is watching Trump’s moves against his large neighbour. How far this will drive Delhi closer to Beijing remains to be seen. India has many stable diplomatic and other links with the West, not least the Quad alliance with the US, Japan and Australia which is due to hold its annual summit in India later this year. There is also the BRICS grouping that Trump has decided to attack.

But even if the disputes over trade tariffs and oil purchase are resolved – and neither will be easy – Trump’s flirting with Pakistan will continue to make India unsure when dealing with unpredictable US presidents, now and in the future. It could also drive India back towards Russia, which is what all the presidents have been trying to stop for a quarter of a century.

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Posted by: John Elliott | July 26, 2025

New India-UK trade agreement moves on from decades of dreams

Dramatic, though phased, reductions in tariffs plus other deals

Diplomatic significance that a Labour Government can work with India

LONDON: For decades India and the UK have eulogised about their common heritage, their shared values and common language, hoping a series of isolated initiatives based on good intentions would yield material results in terms of increased trade and investment partnership. But the dreams of future potential have never been fully realised, even though two-way trade has grown from some £3bn in the early 1990s to £43bn last year.

The signing of a multi-billion-dollar free trade agreement during Narendra Modi’s official visit to the UK this week (July 23-24) should gradually change that after the years of unrealised hopes. “Today marks a historic day in our bilateral relations,” Modi said during a signing ceremony at Chequers, the UK prime minister’s country residence. The aim is to double two-way trade to over £80bn ($112bn) by 2030.

Narendra Modi and Keir Starmer speaking at Chequers – photo KinCheung/PA

After three years of tough negotiations, there are to be wide-ranging phased tariff reductions, though the deal still has to be approved by the UK parliament, which might delay implementation till next year. There is also fresh and expanded co-operation in other areas including visas plus defence, technological cooperation, education, climate and security.

Britain has signed recent trade deals with the US and the European Union, but prime minister Keir Starmer said at Chequers that the Indian deal was the “biggest and most economically significant” the UK has concluded since it left the European Union in 2020. 

For India, it is the first major free trade pact outside Asia since it decided not to join the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in 2019. 

The deal is significant diplomatically because it shows that Starmer has persuaded India that his Labour government is not shackled by the Labour Party’s historic pro-Pakistan stance over the disputed region of Kashmir and by over-riding sympathies for protests by minorities in the UK. Starmer has also approached the negotiations with a more determined workmanlike approach than Boris Johnson and other Conservative leaders.

King Charles greets Narendra Modi at Sandringham House. Modi presented the King with a sapling of the Sonoma dove tree or handkerchief tree – he has launched an initive that encourages people to plant a tree in tribute to their mothers.  Photo: X/@narendramodi

Viewed from India, the deal is significant because it shows how Delhi is widening its bets now that its developing alignment with the US has been upset by President Donald Trump’s erratic style of government. Put more formally, the deal is in line with India’s foreign policy of multi-alignment.

Modi’s 24-hour visit

Modi was said to be on a two-day visit, but he was only in the UK for 24 hours and did not come to London. He stayed the night he arrived in a hotel near Luton where he was feted by members of the Indian community. He flew in and left from the capital’s third airport at Stansted in Norfolk, near the Sandringham country home of King Charles where he met the King at the end of the visit. 

In between he was at Chequers, Keir Starmer’s country retreat not far from his hotel, where he also met businessmen and the Indian diaspora. This unusual avoidance of London meant there was no risk of the sort of mass demonstrations that greeted Modi on his first visit as prime Minister in 2015, when Parliament Square and surrounding streets were closed and barricaded. 

Modi was far from popular at the time, mostly because of mass deaths in 2001 in Gujarat when he was chief minister. The Times ran a headline saying, “Hold your nose and shake Modi by the hand”, while The Guardian went over the top with “India is being ruled by the Hindu Taliban”.

“As Akhil Patel handed a cup of masala chai to Modi at Chequers he cheekily told the Indian prime minister: ‘From one chaiwalla to another!’ ” – as a youth, Modi served chai at a railway station in Gujarat – Amit Roy in Eastern Eye

But times have changed, and the world has moved on. Since he became prime minister in 2014, Modi has rebuilt India’s image internationally as the world’s fourth largest economy. He has also built his own image as an international, though still controversial, statesman. While his critics now focus on his government’s authoritarian and Muslim-restricting Hindu nationalism, the world’s focus is on how to boost and manage trade in an environment dominated by Trump’s unpredictable tariffs. 

The Economist even said this week that the deal was “a rare win in the Wild West of global trade”, adding that “the global uncertainties of Mr Trump’s tariff vendettas make the pact stand out as an unusually well-negotiated and orderly way of boosting global trade.”

Moves towards an agreement began in 2021 but negotiations, which started a year later, failed to meet Boris Johnson’s glib target of India’s Diwali festival in November 2021. They were then delayed last year by general elections in both countries.

First announced in May, the agreement means that tariffs on more than 90% of UK exports to India will be cut over a decade with the largest reductions on cosmetics, clothes and food and drink. Duties on scotch whisky, which make up the bulk of the UK’s current exports, will fall from 150% to 75% immediately and eventually to 40%. In return, 99% of Indian exports to the UK, ranging from gems, textiles, leather and garments to engineering goods, and processed foods, will face zero tariffs.

Tariffs of up to more than 100% on British cars will slide to 10% by 2031, but will be restricted by a quota system till 2046. Negotiations are said to have been extremely tough, with India protecting its motor manufacturing industry. The FT has reported that British car makers are “underwhelmed” but added that government officials said the deal provided “unprecedented liberal access to India’s rapidly growing middle class”. 

India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and UK Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds sign the agreement in the Great Hall at Chequers – photo Sky News, 

The deal has not given the UK the access it wants into India’s financial and legal services. Talks are also continuing on a bilateral investment treaty aimed at protecting British and Indian investments in each other’s countries, and on UK plans for a tax on high-carbon industries that India believes could hit its imports unfairly.  

This was Modi’s fourth prime ministerial visit to the UK. Following the first one in November 2015, he came in 2018 for a Commonwealth Heads of Government biennial conference, where he played a positive role by helping the Queen ensure that she was succeeded as head of the organisation by Prince, now King, Charles. In 2021, he visited Glasgow for the Cop 26 climate change conference where his policies appeared positive, but India then broke ranks and helped China to water down a resolution phasing out coal-generated electric power. 

Modi has been in the UK at a time when India and China are improving their fractured relations, marked with an announcement a few days ago that Chinese tourists could apply f for Indian visas for the first time in five years. 

Relations are also improving with archipelago island state of Maldives where Modi stopped for a day on his flight back to Delhi. The current Maldives pro-China government, which was elected 18 months ago on an “India-out” platform, hosted Modi as guest of honour at its 60th independence celebrations yesterday. If this proves to be a real change, it will be a significant gain in India’s attempts to resist China’s development of close relations with all its neighbours.

India’s next target is a trade deal with Trump, who this weekend is at his two golf courses in Scotland where he will meeting Starmer. The US president first announced 26% tariffs on Indian goods on April 2, but postponed that till a new deadline of August 1. India’s trade minister, Piyush Goyal, said in London a couple of days ago that negotiations were making “fantastic progress”. There are however reports that India is testing how the markets would react if a deal is not done by the deadline.

That level of uncertainty no longer exists on the India-UK deal, which will soon challenge both countries to shake off past under-performance and deliver in terms of multi-billion trade and investment.

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Posted by: John Elliott | July 16, 2025

Art shows in London chase wealthy Indian collectors

Phillips exhibition opens to coincide with Lords Test and Wimbledon

Pichwai art sells well and the Ambani family lead at a summer party 

South Asian art is on a fresh surge in London with exhibitions and events that build on a boom in sales of Indian modern art. This is being partly fuelled by young high-earning collectors entering the market at a time when India’s financial confidence and markets are strong.

“Sans titre”, Casein (milk protein) paint on canvas 83in x 83in painted in 2001 by Paris-based Indian artist Viswanadhan, mixing, says the catalogue, Indian spiritual traditions and Western abstraction.

A major selling exhibition of works from across South Asia, Crossing Borders, opened last week at Phillips, a leading UK auction house that is reacting to the market’s potential by focussing on modern Indian and other art from the surrounding countries for the first time.

Partnered with the Grosvenor Gallery, a London-based specialist, there are 150 works by 64 artists priced at £5,000 to £1.5m on show till the end of July. The opening was timed to coincide with last week’s Lords test match (where England narrowly beat India) and the Wimbledon tennis tournament, both of which attract wealthy Indians to London. 

There has also been a splash at the Mall Galleries near Buckingham Palace of some 500 Pichwai paintings on cloth, board and paper produced by local artists in Rajasthan and priced between £95 and £25,000.

This was London’s first major exhibition of the traditional Pichwai art form and was organised by Delhi-based Pooja Singhal, who has been developing a market for some ten years. She says that about 300 works, including the most expensive, were sold in five days, specially attracting Indian buyers among a reported total of some 2,500 visitors. 

M.F.Husain’s Untitled (Village Scenes), 30in x 90in oil on canvas (1958), has the highest price in the show. It is similar in style to his £13.75m record priced work, comprising various smaller paintings collected on one big roll of canvas and then cut out for the finished work

On a smaller scale but still significant, a cycle rickshaw (below) loaded with stainless steel pots and pans by Subodh Gupta, one of India’s most high-profile contemporary artists, has briefly popped up at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, where Indian veteran artist Arpita Singh has an ongoing retrospective exhibition. Gupta also has a small pots installation at the Phillips show.

“A Place in the Sun”, Subodh Gupta’s installation of an Indian rickshaw with stainless-steel thalis, tiffin boxes, and milk pails, on show for the Serpentine summer party

Furthering the India focus, Isha Ambani Piramal, daughter of Mukesh Ambani, the country’s richest businessman, became the first Indian to lead the host committee for the Serpentine galleries’ glamourous summer party last month. (The annual Serpentine Pavilion has been designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum).

Meanwhile, on a different tack, a painting by Delhi-based artist Mukesh Sharma has been picked by Salman Rushdie for the cover of a new French edition of his 2005 novel Shalimar le clown.

Sharma says Rushdie spotted the 2018 acrylic on canvas on social media. Called Revitalising Memories, it was inspired by the Panchatantra (old animal fables) and folk art. (declaration of interest – I own a Mukesh Sharma painting). 

Crossing Borders

Spread across two floors at Phillips in Berkley Square, Crossing Borders has allowed the Grosvenor, which has a relatively small gallery near Pall Mall, to dramatically expand its artists’ annual summer exhibition. It also marks the growing trend for galleries and auction houses to co-operate – Grosvenor works with Saffronart, the market leader for Indian art auctions, on the Art Mumbai annual (November) show. 

Phillips does not plan to start auctions of South Asian art but will be including more works from the region in its auctions, says director Yassaman Ali, the exhibition’s curator with Grosvenor’s Conor Macklin.

 Rekha Rodwittiya’s 2025 “Home is wherever you are” 55in x 77in painted water colour over digital print of autobiographic imagery 

Indian artists dominate including Bhupen Khakhar, Nilima Sheikh, Anish Kapoor, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza and Ram Kumar, plus M.F. Husain who has the highest price work at £1.5m, having set an unexpected record for modern Indian art of $13.75m at a Christie’s sale in New York four months ago.

Other significant but somewhat lesser known names include Keralan artist Viswanathan (top image above), who had a recent retrospective with 40 works at Sharjah Biennial 16 spanning five decades, and Rekha Rodwittiya whose works (image above) have been described as “strong, politically vigilant feminist”.  

A group of Krishen Khanna’s bronze “Bandwalla“

Surprisingly Krishen Khanna, the only surviving major artist from the Raza, Souza and Husain mid-20th century Progressives Group, who has just celebrated his 100th birthday, does not have a painting on show, though his famous bandsmen do appear as a group of bronze statues.

The exhibition is a boost for Sri Lankan artists, five of whom have works led by Senaka Senanayake (below) and George Key. Senanayake’s son, Suren, told me that there was a revival of interest both in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. “When I was growing up, people didn’t really talk about art,” he said. “Sri Lankan art was hanging onto the coat tails of India, but now it’s seen as an asset”.

There are 13 artists of Pakistani origin, two still living in Pakistan – Quddus Mirza and Anwar Syed. The others include Huma Bhabha, a Pakistani American sculptor living in the US whose works are also on show till next month at London’s Barbican gallery, and Rasheed Araeen, who lives in London and had a display of his brightly coloured lattice-construction cubes at the Tate Modern two years ago.

Senaka Senanayake’s Untitled (Wandering Elephants) Painted 2025 – oil on canvas 60in x 96in

Among other Pakistani artists, there is Abdur Rahman Chughtai, famous for his small finely tuned drawings and paintings that adapt Mughal miniature style with modernism, and Syed Sadequain, who mixed calligraphy and figurative works. 

Pichwais, the Mountbattens and beyond

The profile of Pichwai art was raised in the UK 80 years ago by David Hicks, a prominent interior decorator who was married to Pamela Mountbatten, daughter of Lord Mountbatten, Britain’s last Viceroy. Hicks included Pichwais in arts and crafts he brought back for London’s high society. 

Originally, the hand-painted tapestries hung as backdrops in shrines behind the statues of Lord Krishna. From that, they have developed for use in various Hindu rituals and festivals depicting sacred cows and other images, but in recent years the works have been little noticed outside India. They are however now beginning at attract attention along with other regional and traditional works, such as Gond tribal art from Madhya Pradesh, as collectors begin to broaden their focus from the modern artists on show at Phillips.

A traditional rendering by Pooja Singhal’s ATB of devotees at Dwarkadheesh Manorath, Kankroli Haveli, in Rajasthan

Among prominent buyers are the Ambani family that are credited with giving a significant boost to the artists, acquiring gifts for guests at recent family weddings. They also have a collection that includes a 56-foot-tall Pichwai painting. Titled Kamal Kunj (2019–20), it is the work of Raghunandan Sharma, a leading artist, and Nathdwara illustrators, and is on show at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai.

Pooja Singhal, who comes from the third generation of a business family that runs a large agrochemicals group (PI Industries), achieved a pr coup for her Pichwai show at the Mall Galleries. Coinciding with the launch, the Financial Times ran a full-page illustrated profile on her Delhi home titled Cultural patron Pooja Singhal: ‘I want to make Pichwai a household name’ in its House & Home section on July 5 (July 3 online). Sponsors of evening events included Conde Nast and India’s Rajasthan-based RAAS hotel group. 

Singhal began to develop a business interest in the art form around 2016 and now runs Prichvai Tradition and Beyond which has had exhibitions in various Indian cities including a big presence at the annual India Art Fair in New Delhi. 

An ATB reimagining in black and gold of traditions from the Deccan in south India with Rajasthan’s Nathdwara in miniature style with Krishna symbolised by the tree surrounded by his cows

She was brought up near the Rajasthan city of Udaipur and says she remembers visiting the temple town of Nathdwara, about 40 kms away, where traditional Pichwai textile paintings began 400 years ago as a devotional art form. 

Somewhat controversially, Singhal does not have artists’ names on the paintings, nor on authentication certificates. Some sellers however do name their leading artists, for example Artisera, a Bangalore-based art centre,. and the providers of the best in the Ambani collection. 

A simple stone colour on cloth ATB composition 6in x 6in priced at £95

“We work as a collective and no one artist does the work,” she says, explaining that there is no central atelier for what she calls Atelier Tradition and Beyond (ATB), and that the artists are in various locations in and around Jaipur and Udaipur. “Many modern interpretations are conceived by me, or put on paper by a craftsman, and three or four artists complete the composition”. She says that there will be another Pichwai showing at Sotheby’s during London’s Asian Art Week in November.

The biggest event later this year will be a major Royal Academy exhibition at the end of October of works by Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949-2015) and other artists who worked with her. Titled A Story of South Asian Art – Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle, it will be followed by a full Mukherjee retrospective in 2026 at the Hepworth gallery in Wakefield, Yorkshire.

As Salima Hashmi, a veteran Pakistani artist and professor based in Lahore, told me in April when she curated a (not for sale) South Asian exhibition at SOAS, “We come back to the old colonial capital to talk to one another”.

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Posted by: John Elliott | June 17, 2025

Stone sculptures from Tamil Nadu at an English stately home

Stephen Cox’s works with an India focus on display at Houghton Hall and in London

Inspiration from goddesses, catamarans and the Concorde jet

When British sculptor Stephen Cox first visited the south Indian town of Mamallapuram that is famous for its ancient stone temples, he “sensed the importance of spirituality in the practices of the local craftsmen who were making sacred Hindu idols, architecture and other devotional objects”.

“Stone is the beginning of everything,” he says. “What enthrals me in Mamallapuram is that you see monolithic boulders that have been converted into shrines and temples as well as evidence of the technique of excavating into the cliffs of granite that reveal deities in the living rock”.

Stephen Cox at the Grosvenor Galley in Mayfair with “Gendi” that relates to the dual sexuality of Ardhanarishvara, the union of male and female within a single form.

Cox was there during the festival of Ayudha Puja that worships the tools of creation and production and seeks the protection of the Hindu goddess Saraswathi. “Even the smallest tools from humble steel chisels to the forge, trolleys, hammers and the trusty tractor were given the rights of puja,” he says, describing the ceremonies at the local government school of sculpture and architecture near where he later worked. 

This included “pouring oil over sculptures to provide religious impulse to their creation”.  There was a “total and intense acknowledgement of the tools in the Vaastu tradition” of merging structural design and space.  

That was 40 years ago. It drew Cox, as a sculptor, to the mythologies of ancient religions, and has led this summer to a large retrospective exhibition titled Myth at Houghton Hall, an 18th century stately home in Norfolk that is open till the end of September. Built in the 1720s for Sir Robert Walpole, then Britain’s prime minister it is now the seat of his direct descendent David, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley.

Cox’s s sculptures, including small bronze works, are also on show at the Grosvenor Gallery in London’s Mayfair till the end of this month (June).

When I talked to him at the Houghton Hall opening, I realised the strong Indian involvement in the inspiration for the sculptures, as well as the stone that he used.  

A Bidri botle on Warren Hasting’s desk

Mostly small delicately shaped works blend in the Houghhton mansion’s grand 18th century rooms with the original décor and ornaments. Indian connections include three “dark torsos” in black basalt. There are also a Bidri Jug and Bottle with a black patinated and copper casing inlaid with sterling silver, the bottle standing on the desk of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General (right).  Cox produced them using Karnataka’s traditional bidri metal handicraft in collaboration with the KASH Foundation in Bangalore, which links artists with traditional craftsmen.

Outside, located on spacious lawns and hidden in woods, are 20 mostly large abstracts and statues with stone from Egypt as well as India along with other sculptures that are permanently there.

The works from Mamallapuram (also known as Mahabalipuram) show Cox’s sense of ancient Hindu mythology.

One of the most accessible and famous comprises a circle of 11 Yoginis (below) , sensuous female deities with human form and animal heads, carved in dark grey basalt, located in a clearing in one of the woods. Part of a series of 64 statues, they are based on Yoginis originally commissioned for 64 circular temples by a ruler during the south Indian Pallavi late 9th and mid-10th century AD dynasty. This became a discredite cult and led to temples being stripped of their most beautiful sculptures, says Cox.

a circle of 11 “Yoginis” – sensuous female deities

Author and historian William Dalrymple writes in an essay in the exhibition’s expansively illustrated handbook: “In ancient India, yoginis were understood to be the terrifying embodiment of feminine shakti, beautiful, sensual yet fanged beings who feasted on human blood and possessed extraordinary yogic and tantric powers”.

Cox says that he considered there was some room for him as a sculptor “to return to a visual play on the theme of Yoginis looking for animals” like the rhinoceros and the gharial that were not represented in the cult. “With all the sensuality in Indian art there is also a ruthless violence that is represented, but usually in the function of protection and good. There is a very strong nature theme in the cult which may have good possibilities for this age of Global warning”.

Age 79, Cox trained at UK art colleges in the 1960s and is best known for his often-large monolithic sculptures in stone, with site-specific pieces initially in Italy and then in India and Egypt. 

“Yatra” – Tamil Nadu fishing boats balanced on poles

His went to India when he was invited in 1985 by the British Council to go to Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu to represent Britain at the Sixth Indian Triennale, where he won a gold medal for his rock cut Holy Family group. He was chosen because he was willing to move there to work, not just visit. Initially he stayed for about six months and set up a workshop, which he still maintains with stpathies, the local craftsmen.

The original “Yatra” being assembled in Delhi’s Jamali Kamali Gardens

He draws on “indigenous materials to create contemporary works that resonate with historical and cultural connotations,” says the Royal Academy where he is a member. “Using traditional techniques, he has carved marble, alabaster and porphyry rock, and was the first artist for many centuries to gain access to the Imperial Porphyry Quarries in the Eastern Mountains of Egypt”. 

His affection for the Tamil Nadu coastal people and traditions is demonstrated by Yatra (above), also called Granite Catamarans on a Granite Wave. First done in the mid-1990s at the Jamali Kamali Gardens near Delhi’s Qutub Munar (left) and now on show at Houghton, fishing boats are balanced on poles in black and white Indian granite. 

“I saw the coming and going of fishermen in their catamaran boats setting off like empty hands in the morning and returning with the sea’s bounty in the evening,” says Cox. “The Tamil word catamaran (Catu Maram) means bound logs and its stark simplicity of form reminded me of the supersonic passenger jet Concord that was built in my home city of Bristol”.

He was “struck by the vast difference between the two technologies” and thought that one day he would imagine a way to use the form and commemorate its beauty into a sculpture, which he eventually did. That happened after the 2004 tsunami hit the coast and led to the boats being modernised with fibre glass and resin, helped by South Korea. “With the white diorite posts that marched across the landscape of South India I devised a sea upon which the boats could float,” he says

“Interior Space”, a 14-tonne sarcophagus

Anthony Gormley, a famous British sculptor, who taught art along with Cox at the start of their careers and had his work on show at Houghton last year, told me at the opening that his favourite sculpture was Interior Space, a 14-tonne sarcophagus or stone coffin first carved in 1995 (above).

“Stephen’s use of the void is very interesting, making emptiness mean something with his use of space,” says Gormley. “You don’t need to go inside,” he laughed, explaining about the temptation to squeeze through a narrow vertical slit that only extremely slim people can do with any confidence they will be able to squeeze out again. Cox’s website more seriously says, “The imaginative conceptions of the ‘afterlife’ of the peoples of ancient civilisations is the driver of the series”.

There’s also a sense of possibly inaccessible or inescapable space in the arrangement of a decorative mass of delicately coloured Aswan granite from Egypt (right) that dominates the view from the main house down a wide swathe of grass that stretches into the distance towards Sandringham, King Charles’ country retreat. 

It’s possibly the most instantly appealing work in the grounds and emerged, unexpected, when a large boulder was split into slices and revealed what looked like bodies and ghostly faces. Cox’s sculptor’s role came into play with the void between the slices, accessible through tempting gaps.

“For me,” says Cox, “art is a metaphor for the things that religion, as a domain, actually gives a man – the spiritual”.

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Posted by: John Elliott | June 5, 2025

India and Pakistan take their battles to foreign capitals

India wants Pakistan to be marked out as a terror state

Risk of war between the nuclear powers after future terror attacks

With no prospect in sight of a permanent solution between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir, nor any sign of a reduction in tensions, both countries have despatched delegations abroad with the aim of winning support from foreign capitals on their basic demands and their focus on terrorism. This follows military action taken by India earlier this month against Pakistan after gunmen shot and killed 26 people, mostly tourists, in the Indian Kashmir resort of Pahalgam on April 22.

India was the first of the mark, sending seven delegations of members of parliament to 32 countries to win international support for condemnation of Pakistan as a terrorist state. The delegations are warning that India will respond militarily if Pakistan-originated terror attacks occur again on its soil.

Pakistan has followed India’s initiative with a delegation headed by Bilawal Bhutto, former foreign minister and son of the country’s president, which is in the US denying that it is responsible for the attacks. Bhutto will be in London next week. A separate mission has gone from Islamabad to Moscow to offset Russia’s historical closeness to India.

India responded to the killings in April by attacking terrorist installations inside Pakistan, which then hit back at India’s military locations. That led to four days of sharply escalating tit-for-tat aircraft and missile battles. Hostilities stopped on March 10 after diplomatic intervention by the US, UK, Saudi Arabia and other countries that feared the two nuclear armed countries could tip into a full scale and possibly catastrophic war.   

Bilawal Bhutto (left) and Shashi Tharoor, leaders of the Pakistan and India delegations to the US (Hindustan Times montage)

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has said that there was now a “new normal” that any future terrorist activities would be regarded as a Pakistan military attack, to which India would respond militarily.

This virtual threat of war has caused alarm internationally, but India is concerned that it does not have support in foreign capitals for its claim that terror attacks staged every few years in Kashmir, and occasionally elsewhere, are organised and supported by the Pakistan government, or at least by the heads of the army and security services, notably the ISI.

That is why the message is blunt. “India stands for peace, but if terrorists shed the blood of innocents, they will be held accountable,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, a former BJP cabinet minister, who is heading the Europe delegation that has been in London this week. If terrorism was “aided by state actors — as in Pakistan — it must be treated as war”. 

The Pahalgam attack that targeted Hindus was “ideological religious fanaticism sponsored by a proto-military state”, M.J. Akbar, a member of the delegation and a former newspaper editor and government minister, told me. That was why the country had united, including Muslims as well as Hindus, to support the government in its military response and in its attempt to win over international opinion.

Some critics in Delhi suggest that, aside from the mass of activity on social media, Pakistan was more successful at influencing the international press and foreign opinion during the four days of fighting, partly because the Modi government does not bother to deal with the foreign media constructively..

“The Pakistani intelligentsia with aristocratic bloodlines and Oxbridge backgrounds have significant clout in Western liberal circles, including think tanks, NGOs, universities and diplomatic parties,” Coomi Kapoor, a veteran columnist, wrote recently, reflecting a feeling common in Delhi that, as a country, India is frequently misunderstood abroad. “Modi’s India, painted by Pakistan as an illiberal democracy encouraging Hindutva zealots, is not a favourite in such company.” 

The India delegation to the UK at a meeting in the Parliament

India’s delegations each include seven or eight politicians along with a former senior diplomat. Demonstrating the rare country-wide support for action against Pakistan, the politicians include at least one Muslim and come from all political parties, though the government rejected a mostly low-level list of names proposed by the Congress Party and picked representatives with foreign policy experience including Shashi Tharoor, a former senior UN official, to lead the delegation to the Americas.

Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party leader, is campaigning in Delhi to undermine the unity, despite the national mood. He is attacking the Modi government for allegedly bowing to a trading-linked demand by President Trump that the fighting should stop. “Trump gave just a signal, picked up the phone and said, ‘Modi ji, what are you doing? Narendra, surrender,” Gandhi alleged recently. “Narendra Modi obeyed Trump’s signal”.

India is specially targeting countries that are current members of the United Nation Security Council, where Pakistan is currently a member, but India is not on the council’s revolving membership system. On the list are small countries that it rarely bothers with diplomatically such as Denmark, Colombia, Panama, Liberia and Congo. 

But the list does not include South Asia countries – Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives and Afghanistan – where one might expect an initiative to begin. “If our neighbours are not persuaded, what hope is there of distant Panama even beginning to understand our argument?”, asks Mani Shankar Aiyar, a former diplomat and Congress government minister.

Pakistan is trying to whip up international support for the Indian military action, dubbed Operation Sindoor, to be examined and condemned by the UN unless India can prove (which would be difficult) the direct involvement of the Pakistan government. 

 Ravi Shankar Prasad and Baijayant Panda, leaders of India’s teams to Europe including London and to the Middle East including Algeria

Significantly, Bhutto has admitted in the US this week that it lacks support for its claim that Indian Kashmir should be part of Pakistan, which is the primary issue generating the hostilities. “As far as the hurdles we face within the UN and in general, as far as the Kashmir cause is concerned, that still exists,” he said in New York.

The Indian delegation that has been in London this week has been talking to parliamentarians, policy think-tanks, the media, the Indian diaspora and other groups as well as second-ranking politicians in the British government and parliamentary opposition. The two countries’ prime ministers, foreign ministers and top diplomats are regularly in touch, so the job has been to canvas opinion more widely.

India’s warnings do not however mean that a war between the two nuclear neighbours is imminent. There is no chance of military action until there is another terror attack. The last attacks were in 2019 and 2016 so, on past performance, they might not happen again for three or four years or even longer. Some security specialists however fear that Modi’s threat might increase the risk of an earlier attack because terrorists will want to seize the chance of creating major conflict

India is now the world’s fourth largest economy and Modi’s primary economic and diplomatic focus since he came to power in 2014 has been to build the country’s status as a peaceful and stable major power that welcomes foreign trade and investment. 

The Kashmir attack and India’s military response is a major setback to that aim, which is why the government believes it needs to win world opinion to stop Pakistan avoiding, in the UN and elsewhere, being marked out as a terrorist state. 

Whether the delegations have had any success in influencing governments’ opinions is open to question. They generated news back in India and Pakistan but made few waves at their destinations.

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Posted by: John Elliott | May 11, 2025

Escalating Indo Pak conflict has halted – for now

Modi says there is a “new normal” and warns ‘If there is a terror attack on India, we will hit back“

Pakistan’s army chief and Chinese technology emerge as new threats

Trump wants to mediate on Kashmir, but India resists such offers

After four days of escalating hostilities that brought India and Pakistan nearer to war than at any time since the Kargil border conflict in 1999, the ceasefire announced yesterday (May 10) halted the two nuclear-armed countries’ cycle of increasingly serious attacks and counterattacks. But it did little to improve diplomatic relations and does nothing to solve the basic problems of Kashmir. 

Indeed, the risks of conflict may have worsened. Pakistan has for the first time been put on notice by India that any future terrorist activity would be seen virtually as an act of war. This was indicated by officials over the weekend and has been confirmed (May 12) by prime minister Narendra Modi in a tv address to the nation where he said “We have only kept in abeyance our operations against Pakistan; future will depend on their behaviour.”

“We have set a new normal,” he said. “If there is a terror attack on India, we will hit back. We will take stern action at every place from where the roots of terror spring forth. India will not accept any nuclear blackmail….We won’t see the government that sponsors terror and terror outfits as different.”

Pakistan has also been shown to be led by a powerful aggressive chief of army staff, General Asim Munir (below), who has more power than the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif. He is blamed by India for triggering the crisis with the terrorist attack that killed 26 Indian tourists on April 22. And it has more advanced and effective Chinese-origin air and missile technology than had been realised. 

Modi’s “new normal” means India would feel free to bomb military installations, as it has been doing in this crisis for the first time since wars in the 1970s, instead of merely striking at terror camps as it did after attacks in 2016 and 2019 and, initially, after the recent April 22 attack on tourists in Pahalgam. At a media briefing on May 11 a senior army officer said Pakistan had been told of India’s “firm and clear intent” to respond “fiercely and punitively” and with “decisive force”,

Neither government wants outright war, but these are serious potential escalations that will increase international concern about the risks of confrontation between the two nuclear-armed countries. Terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistan have been part of the relationship for decades.

Pakistan has a long record of sponsoring terror dating from its support of the militant Khalistani 1980’s independence movement in the Indian Punjab to support for the Taliban and harbouring the al-Qaeda leader, bin Laden.  

There have been media suggestions that General Munir’s aim has been to disrupt Kashmir’s gradual return to some stability after decades of unrest. Unlike Pakistan’s previous army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who tried to normalise relations with India, Munir has strong religious and ideological beliefs that govern his nationalist approach. He did not seem to accept the positive progress. 

Shekhar Gupta, a veteran Indian editor, has even suggested that the completion of a railway express service between Delhi and Srinagar in the Kashmir valley may have triggered Munir’s reaction and determination to act.

Shortly before that attack, Munir had spoken publicly, saying: “No matter where you live, remember – your roots lie in a high civilisation, noble ideology, and proud identity.” He added that Kashmir “will be our jugular vein, we will not forget it, we will not leave our Kashmiri brothers in their historical struggle”.

After India began to strike back at Pakistan with Operation Sindoor on the night of May 6, defence experts across the world began to monitor the action in the skies because this is the first time that Chinese fighters have been used in combat against advanced western hardware. This is especially important given the risk of China making a military bid to take over Taiwan and because of co-operation between China and Russia in Ukraine. 

A fighter jet fuel tank near the scene of a reported crash in Wuyan Pampore, South Kashmir – Daily Telegraph photo

The extent to which Pakistan had been armed by China with advanced technology was not widely recognised till claims emerged that Chinese-origin jet fighters had been used to down India jets, probably a French Mirage and also a Rafale, India’s most recent high-profile acquisition.

Indian officials would not confirm or deny the reports, but admitted at the media briefing that “losses are a part of conflict”, though all its pilots had returned home. Loss of a Mirage was admitted later.The officials also claimed to have “downed a few Pakistani planes”.

Pakistan has only admitted “minor damage” to one plane and sees the overall result as having “shattered myths of Indian supremacy in tech, diplomacy, and warfare”.

Pakistan’s use of the Chinese equipment highlighted the role of the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation, whose shares rocketed by more than 40% in just two days last week, the Financial Times reported on May 9. “Almost three decades after first taking to the skies, the Chinese plane-maker’s first fighter jet, the J-10 Vigorous Dragon, had finally seen combat — and survived.” The jointly developed JF-17 fighter and PL-15 airborne missiles were also used along with HQ-9 Chinese surface-to-air missiles, providing significant unexpected challenges to India. 

“Aside from co-operation on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, a lot of what China supplied used to be low-end stuff – tanks, artillery, small arms,” a defence specialist told the FT. Pakistan was “becoming a showcase for some of China’s newer capabilities.”

This was also the first confrontation with drones – mostly Turkish by Pakistan and Israeli by India – which increased flexibility for cross-border assaults without the risk of losing expensive aircraft. 

What happens next is not clear, apart from a meeting tomorrow (May 12 ) between the directors general of military operations (DGMOs). These senior army officers conduct the formal communications – and run a hot line – between the two countries since there has been no declaration of war.

The US would clearly like to use the crisis to try to tackle the two countries’ basic claims for Kashmir territory. It would probably argue that, after helping to broker the cease-fire, it has a role to play in trying to find a long term solution. Such offers have always been rejected by India.

America’s secretary of state Marco Rubio announced yesterday that India and Pakistan had agreed “to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site”. London and Abu Dhabi were rumoured to be possible locations but, while this was welcomed by Pakistan, Indian officials said it was not part of the cease-fire agreement. 

China’s J-10 ‘Dragon’ shows teeth in India-Pakistan combat debut – FT graphic

President Donald Trump, who stole the world headlines by announcing the ceasefire yesterday, followed up by offering to mediate in what he described as “1,000-1,500-year-old conflict”. India always refuses any international mediation, and its politicians quickly pointed out that the Kashmir issue that has led to the wars and terrorist activity dates from the partition of the two countries in 1947,not ancient history.

The ceasefire was agreed after extensive international contacts yesterday. The US was directly involved along with Britain and Saudi Arabia together with Iran, the UAE and Turkey. China’s foreign minister Wang Yi is reported to have spoken  to India’s national security adviser Ajit Doval, calling for a ceasefire, and presumably was in touch with Pakistan.

Pressure for a ceasefire built up early yesterday after India accused Pakistan of multiple attacks on military and civilian sites using high-speed missiles, drones and fighter jets. India then responded with air-to-surface BrahMos cruise missiles (jointly developed with Russia) and other weapons, aimed at Pakistan’s military targets such as command centres and radar installations. This included three Pakistan air force bases away from border areas. There were also reports that Pakistan was massing troops near the border.

“It was at this juncture that Pakistan reached out to the US for urgent intervention,” reports India’s NDTV (a pro-government tv channel owned by businessman Gautam Adani, who is close to prime minister Narendra Modi). “According to government sources, US officials had already been in contact with both sides in anticipation of escalating tensions. But the alert around strategic assets led Washington to step in more decisively”. India then “signalled that the Indian armed forces were prepared for the next phase of escalation, which would have involved coordinated strikes on energy and economic targets, as well as deeper strategic command structures”. 

Pakistan was also concerned about the future of two IMF support measures totalling $8.4bn, of which $1.4bn was agreed on May 9. There was increasing international criticism, including allegations that such funds were diverted to military activity and support for terrorism. The Islamabad finance ministry reportedly provided written assurances to the IMF that funds would not be diverted.

This has been a brief crisis following the terror attack last month. There is, so far at least, little hope that it will lead to any improvement in relations between the two countries. 

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Posted by: John Elliott | May 7, 2025

India and Pakistan in crisis with risk of war

Next move awaited after India struck terrorist camps – as guns blaze on the LoC

Pakistan claims India lost five modern jet fighters

The bombing by India on May 6 of its “Operation Sindoor” targets in Pakistan was politically inevitable following the terror attack on April 22 that killed 26 holiday makers in a Kashmir meadow at Pahalgam. It was similarly virtually inevitable that, in order to limit the risk of an outright war which neither country really wants, alleged terrorist camps would be the primary targets rather than military installations.

Pakistan said the next morning that at least 26 people were killed and 46 others injured in the Indian attacks, ominously accusing New Delhi of committing an “act of war,” to which Rajnath Singh, India’s defence minister, responded: “We only hit people who killed innocents and made them pay,” Reports suggested that in India at least eight people were killed by Pakistani shelling.

Pakistan is claiming that it shot down three French-made Rafale jet fighters and two Russian-made planes – an MiG29 and a Sukhoi-30. India initially said all its planes returned safely but later reports said one or two had been downed.

If irue, the losses would be a major blow to India’s military pride, questioning its real expertise. The Rafales are new aircraft and are seen as the peak of India’s air capability.

It is a tragedy that, while other countries are marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, in which some 74,000 Indian soldiers died and a total of 1.3m served, India and Pakistan are risking another conflagration, one that is the latest result of undefined borders left behind by Britain in 1947. 

“The unfortunate coincidence highlights the enduring tension between India’s global possibilities and its regional constraints in the eight decades since World War II, decolonization, and Partition,” wrote C. Raja Mohan, a Delhi-based columnist and strategic specialist this morning.  

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has recently been sidelining Pakistan diplomatically, having failed twice to develop co-operative relations soon after he became prime minister in 2014. The primary dispute between the two countries over Kashmir is not solvable in the foreseeable future but Modi, like other prime ministers before him, had hoped to improve relations on trade and other issues. 

His primary focus now is to build India’s economy and its international status as a peaceful and stable major power, while growing closer to the US and trying, in recent months, to improve relations with China. The Kashmir attack is a setback to that approach both in terms of India’s stable image and its need to deal actively with Pakistan. 

The Islamic Resistance Front, an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, has been named by India, which accuses – without evidence – Pakistan military of being behind the attack. India sees as significant a speech made by Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, delivered just a few days before the attack, which referred to Kashmir as the “jugular vein” of Pakistan.

As prime minister of a proudly nationalist government, Modi has had no option but to strike back after the April attack, even though there is no immediate need to show strength in order to win votes for his Bharatiya Janata Party government in a general election, as there was after 2019 terror attack. Indian aircraft then crossed into Pakistan air space for the first time since a war in 1971. That led to an aerial engagement where an Indian MiG-21 was shot down and its pilot captured.

It would have been totally inadequate for Modi to have just massed troops on Kashmir Line of Control (LoC) that marks the defacto border between the two countries, as happened after an attack in December 2001 on the Indian parliament. The Congress government that was then in power responded by moving troops to the Line of Control. As many as a million troops eventually faced each other across the LoC in a crisis that led in June 2002 to foreign nationals being advised by western governments to move out of Delhi.

Despite belligerent war talk in both countries during recent weeks, including reference to their nuclear weapons, they are both assumed to want the conflict to be limited, if possible, to Indias’s strike and the inevitable response that Pakistan has said it will deliver.

Whether that is possible remains to be seen, though Pakistan is coming under intense pressure from the US, UK, Saudi Arabia and other countries to restrict its reaction. It has been carrying out heavy shelling against India across the LoC, and India is attacking back. There might also be a risk, if India really has lost aircraft, that Modi will feel he needs to reassert supremacy by striking again. 

The possible loss of aircraft raises the question of the two countries’ relative military strengths. “If it escalates to all-out war, then Indian superiority will come into play and it will be very strong,” retired Lt Gen Rakesh Sharma, now at a New Delhi-based security think-tank, told the Financial Times.  “But in case of limited offensives, they could be close to parity”. 

Pakistan’s military is half the size of India’s, and its defense spending was a tenth of India’s US$74.4 billion last year, according to the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies quoted by the FT. India’s total was Asia’s second largest after China and the world’s sixth largest. Both countries have a nuclear capability. with between 160 and 170 warheads each according to the Arms Control Association

India obtains 40 percent of its defense equipment from Russia, down from 70 percent a decade ago with the US becoming a major supplier. Pakistan gets 80 percent from China – including more than half its 400-strong fighter and ground attack aircraft – according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, having switched away from less reliably friendly Western sources.

If India goes further in attacking Pakistan than the US wishes, it risks a boycott that could slow down delivery of new orders but would not affect its fighter aircraft and much of its other equipment that are not of US origin.

Of the two countries, Pakistan, which is unstable politically and weak economically has more to lose from a sustained confrontation, though its military would probably welcome an opportunity to justify its overwhelming role in the country’s economy and government.

India is currently talking up the confrontation, as it has been doing for days, even ordering civilian drills on what to do in time of war – from turning lights off at night to hiding under school desks – and advising people to stock up with food supplies.

But its government wants peace – providing it is seen to have dealt with those responsible for the terror attacks and any subsequent military action, and that could lead to dangerous escalation.

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Posted by: John Elliott | April 22, 2025

Veteran Indian artist Arpita Singh stars in London’s Hyde Park

Two exhibitions track stresses and tensions in India and across South Asia

Auctions hit records with new wealthy Indian buyers bidding $millions 

Six months after an exhibition was held at London’s Barbican Centre showing India modern art from the end of the last century, a retrospective has opened in a Hyde Park gallery of works by Arpita Singh, 87, a respected but under-recognised Indian artist whose large oils on canvas portray the complex crosscurrents of Indian life.

A poster at a London tube station based on “Man on Tiger with Clay Bird”, a 1991 oil on canvas. Photo John Elliott

Staged in the Serpentine Gallery North till July 27, this is Singh’s first solo show outside India.

“Arpita talks about violence, wars and aggression, and all sorts of injustice, while using the language of play, always humour jest and wit,” her friend and fellow artist Nilima Sheikh told me earlier this year. “She’s reluctant to talk about the content of her art, instead she talks about the process, the way she uses oil on canvas”. 

This coincides with another exhibition – (Un)Layering the Future Past – at London University’s SOAS of 26 young artists (most born in the 1980s) from across South Asia.

The aim here is to spread artistic awareness of different South Asian countries’ social and other issues such as the region’s ecology, gender, migration and political unrest with a mix of paintings and drawings, textiles and installations.

A detail from “The Longest Revolution”, an embroidery at SOAS by Nagpur-based Varunika Saraf. (c Chemould Gellery Mumbai)

Sponsored by Delhi’s Dhoomimal Gallery memorial trust, it is on show till June 21 and has been co-curated by Salima Hashmi, a veteran Pakistani artist and professor based in Lahore (FT profile 26/4/2025 here) .

“We come back to the old colonial capital to talk to one another,” she told me, lamenting Pakistani artists’ lack of visa access to India and other restrictions on freedom of expression. 

“Artists have to be first responders,” she says. Recent generations of artists in India had been more focussed on galleries’ requirements than on issues. “In Lahore we question everything”. 

Arpita Singh who speaks briefly about her art on tiktok here.

Though Hashmi doesn’t approve of the commercialisation of many artists younger than Arpita Singh and her fellow Baroda school, both exhibitions are significant at a time when the Indian art market is growing rapidly with record multi-million-dollar auction prices. 

London is becoming a focal point for exhibitions. Sculptures by Homi Bhabha, a Pakistani-American, will be on show at the Barbican next month, and an exhibition centred around the Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee will open at the Royal Academy at the end of October. 

It is tempting to describe Arpita Singh’s large oils as cluttered or as a cacophony, but that would be too negative for her complex rendering of Indian life with a seemingly unstructured array of women and men standing, lying, or sitting among almost map-like landscapes and townscapes that include cars, buildings and (almost always) disconnected aircraft.

“My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising” 2005, one of Arpita Singh’s most well known works. Agents of bureaucracy in black jackets had taken over Delhi, says the catalogue, and “gradually dissolved the bonds that her generation had fought to build” – courtesy Arpita Singh and Vadehra Gallery

“The power of her narrative is how the world becomes a quilt of characters who play their own parts,” says Uma Nair, a leading art critic. “The beauty is how she weaves violence and chaos and patriarchal mores all so softly”.

The exhibition is titled Remembering, which led The Guardian newspaper to headline its review “Beautiful chaos reigns in India’s tumultuous past”. My main memories seeing the works at various times in India has been of a recurring sky-blue colour with the small aircraft appearing in most works, replaced later by guns, military figures and fighters. Nilima Sheikh told me the aircraft were to create a “sense of wonderment” for children.

The artist’s more approachable smaller watercolours and seminal ink line drawings are closely packed at the Serpentine with scarce description in two under-lit corridors that straddle the gallery. These are worth an exhibition of their own. More easily accessible interpretation is specially needed for people who drop in on an afternoon’s walk across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, to begin to appreciate the artist’s messages. Even experts find that challenging.

Munna Apa’s Garden, a 1989 oil on canvas – photos (above and below) courtesy Arpita Singh and Serpentine Gallery

“Look for secret trapdoors and open sesame codes if you like, but mind you, if you begin to think the meaning is more important than the game….you may well trip up,” warns Sheikh in the catalogue.

A 1989 oil, Munna Apa’s Garden is one of the most puzzling works (above). It looks at first like a random mix of homely scenes till one spots a body lying in the middle, which everyone seems to be ignoring. “Scales and perspectives don’t entirely make sense, as cars and airplanes are superposed onto a bed of flowers. Nor does one entirely understand what has gone wrong in this enchanting setting,” says the catalogue.

Devi Pistol Wali, 1990

Even more puzzling is Devi Pistol Wali where the supreme Hindu goddess Devi stands on a man in the style of the goddess Kali who’s sometimes depicted standing on the chest of Lord Shiva. Devi is pointing a pistol at a man with a sword accompanied by the usual aeroplane car and a turtle. 

Other works seem to reflect a change of mood down the years from a relatively gentle interpretation of Indian life to despair if not anger at developments of heavy government and bureaucracy, violence and wars. 

Exhibitions usually increase auction interest so it’s quite likely Singh will hit new records soon. Her highest dollar price of $2.24m was achieved at a Saffronart sale in December 2010 for a large 16-panel canvas titled Wish Dream (essay here by Uma Nair). That was the dollar equivalent of the Rs9.6 crore (Rs96m) auction price at the then exchange rate. It was beaten by Rs11 crore (Rs110m) paid in a Pundole (Mumbai) auction in August 2023 for Watching, by which time the rupee had fallen in value, so it translated as only $1.33m. 

Wealthy bid $millions

Recent auction records have been for works by the renowned Progressive group who began painting in the middle of the last century. At the Saffronart auction earlier this month, a record Tyeb Mehta, Trussed Bull, (below) had eight bidders up to nearly $4m, after which two fought it out to reach a total of $7.2m, twelve times the top estimate. The auction had record $25.2m total sales.

That followed a totally unexpected record of $13.75m for a memorable work by M.F.Husain, another member of the Progressives, that was taken so far above the expected $4m-$5m by two bidders that it may take some time to beat. 

Tyeb Mehta’s 37in x 41in oil on canvas

“There’s a mindset change with the wealthy of India finally accepting art as the best legacy to leave behind, the legacy of culture,” says Dinesh Vazirani, co-founder and director of Saffronart which is India’s leading auction house. “New buyers are coming in at serious values that I’ve not seen before with budgets of £2m to $5m – individuals as well as museums”. 

In July, a London exhibition aimed at these rich buyers will have works for sale by more than 40 of South Asia’s top artists. It is being staged by the London-based South Asia-oriented Grosvenor Gallery with Phillips, a leading auction house that does not usually handle Indian art. It is carefully timed to coincide with the Wimbledon tennis tournament and India-England Test match at Lord’s. “Everyone will be in town,” says Conor Macklin, founder director of he Grosvenor.

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Posted by: John Elliott | March 20, 2025

Indian modern art record jumps to nearly $14m

Unusual M.F.Husain work, not seen for decades, sets personal record

Two determined Indian buyers drove price to four times estimates

The top auction price ever paid for modern Indian art almost doubled yesterday (March 19) to $13.75m at a Christie’s sale in New York. This totally unexpected price, approximately four times estimates, was achieved for a rare painting by M.F. Husain, one of the country’s most prominent modern artists (below). The previous Indian art record was $7.4m, while the record for a Husain painting was $3.1m, set last year.

The “Volodarsky Husain” also known as “Gram Yatra” – 35in x 166in oil on canvas. Women play a central role – milking cows, milling grain, riding carts and caring for children — symbolising fertility, creation, and renewal

The surprising price was achieved because there were two (Indian) bidders, both determined to win, without whom the work would have sold for around $4m. It is very large 14ft-long painting (above and below) – known as the Volodarsky Husain – and it has a rare provenance, having been hidden away in Norway and scarcely ever seen in public since it was painted in 1954.

Kiran Nadar was determined to bring the work back to India and won it for her famous New Delhi art museum known as KNMA. It was highly predictable that she would be determined to obtain this important work by such a leading modern Indian artist as Husain. It is also quite likely that this was realised by her rival, who is believed to have been Shankh Mitra, ceo of Welltower, a US real estate investment trust.

Yet the two pursued each other and pushed the price up to what seemed unbelievable levels, topping $10m and stopping at a hammer price of $11.6m when Mitra gave up. The two bid against each other for other works in both the Christie’s auction and one that Sotheby’s held in New York on March 17.

The painting has remained largely unseen since it was bought in 1954 by a Ukrainian-born, Norway-based doctor, Leon Elias Volodarsky, who was in Delhi to establish a thoracic surgery training centre for the World Health Organization. Volodarsky took the work back to Oslo the same year and bequeathed it to Oslo University Hospital in 1964. Proceeds from the sale are going to support the training of doctors at the hospital.

All images of the Husain painting are courtesy Christie’s

Christie’s South Asian team first learned of the painting over a decade ago when they received photographs of it hanging, little noticed, at the hospital.

“This is a landmark moment and continues the extraordinary upward trajectory of the Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art market,” said Nishad Avari, head of Christie’s South Asian art.

I interviewed M.F.Husain in his London studio two years before he died in 2011,. He has painted far larger works than Gram Yatra, but this work is important because of the number of separate compositions and because it brings together aspects of art that he learned while travelling to Europe and China. (He painted a similar work, Zameen, in 1955)

The work consists of 13 scenes, each providing views of Indian village life, influenced by his travels. In 1952 he went on his first international trip to China, where he met artists and was impressed by the vitality of their paintings and calligraphic brushwork. A year later, he travelled to Europe, where he saw works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and others.

Both this week’s New York auctions have produced results far exceeding estimates, with a total of $24.9m at Christie’s and $16.8m at Sotheby’s.

Record prices at Sotheby’s included a Jagdish Swaminathan triptych Homage to Solzhenitsyn (1973) that sold for $4.68m, far exceeding both $1m–$2m estimates and the artist’s previous auction record set in December 2024 at Bonhams of $987,600. It is believed that the high price was the result of another Nadar-Mitra contest which Mitra lost.

In the Christie’s auction, a notable townscape by S.H.Raza,sold for a total of $2.3m against low $300,000-4000,000 estimates.

Indian modern art has been relatively slow to grow in value since prices first started to rise 20 years ago. Since then, top auction prices have been dominated by Husain and other members of the mid-20th-century Bombay-based Progressives group such as Raza and Tyeb Mehta, though Husain has lagged behind the others till now

But prices have been largely stuck in the $4m to $6m mark – far below, for example, Chinese art that easily passes $20m and has a record of over $40m.

That now seems to be changing. “The Indian economy is stirring and growing, so one sees these benchmarks in auctions that illustrate the spending power,” says Conor Macklin, who runs the Indian art-oriented Grosvenor Gallery in London.

“It feels like another seismic moment, as we last experienced in 2005, when Tyeb Mehta‘s Mahisasura first crossed $1m for a work of Indian modern art,” says Hugo Weihe, who was then in charge of Christie’s South Asian art. “That triggered a giant leap of confidence and recognition for the Indian modern masters.”

Bids however only go high when the person who is determined to acquire a work has one or more determined rivals. If what has happened in New York this week continues, there may indeed be the sort of boom that developed after 2005.

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