IndiaPost.com - Portrait of a Gandhian artist

India Post News Service

NEW DELHI: Mahatma Gandhi is the favorite subject of international artist Suraj Sadan, a Canadian citizen of Indian origin. An exhibition of his Gandhi drawings and paintings was mounted at Gandhi Museum, near Gandhi Samadhi in Delhi, last month. But India has changed, he says. He found only lukewarm interest in Gandhi and his views, in spite of the ‘Gandhigiri’ fashion introduced by the Munnabhai film.

An outstanding portrait painter with dozens of international awards and honors to his credit, Sadan has painted a number of national and international leaders but he has dedicated his life to spreading the message of Mahatma Gandhi through his drawings and paintings.

Ever since he met the Mahatma in 1947, at a post partition refugee center at Kingsway Camp in Delhi, he was won over for life. The Delhi exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations from January 20-February 28. Inaugurating the exhibition, India’s Minister of Tourism and Culture Ambika Soni wondered aloud if she was watching actual photographs, so lively was the impression created.

She congratulated the artist for beautifully capturing the moods, the sentiments and the message of the Mahatma. Meira Kumar, Minister for Social Justice & Empowerment found that various facets of the Mahatma had been portrayed with great sensitivity. High Commissioner of Canada David Mallone said even though Suraj Sadan was living in Canada, he hasn’t given up his Indian roots.

However, Suraj says the response to his exhibition was much better in 1968 when President Zakir Hussain opened his show. Suraj Sadan is a humble man with an engaging smile. Talking to India Post, he felt nostalgic about old times. He said Gandhi is honored more abroad than in India. In Canada, USA and France he found a better response from non-Indians.

After going through his exhibitions, they told him, "India may be poor, but morally you people are very very advanced." Bringing up the matter of Gandhi, they would touchingly say, "O what a country. If Gandhi had been alive there would have been no war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Today there is violence everywhere in the world." The first portrait Suraj Sadan made as a 14-year old Delhi boy was of Jawaharlal Nehru. He presented it to the great Indian leader. "I had drawn the portrait from a faded picture in a newspaper. Nehru caught me by the neck. ‘Always have the person pose for you.

If this is not possible, do it from a real picture.’ Next birthday of Nehru, 14 November, 1956, he presented the Indian leader with his portrait drawn from a real picture. Nehru smiled and autographed it for him. In 1963, he did a portrait of then Army Chief General JN Chaudhary which now adorns the Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun. Since then, six more portraits of military leaders done by him are on display at the military academy. Among other Indian leaders he has drawn are Dr Rajendra Prasad, Dr S Radhakrishnan, Dr Zakir Hussain, Dr VV Giri and Indira Gandhi. On his present visit, he has drawn the portrait of Meira Kumar, the Indian Minister for Social Justice & Empowerment.

During the Gandhi centenary in 1969, a special exhibition was held in Paris of his drawings and paintings of Mahatma Gandhi. He has also designed stamps for the Indian government issued during the centenary year and the UNESCO publicized his Gandhi portraits in a big way. When former Army Chief General JN Chaudhury was the Indian High Commissioner in Canada, he invited him over and Suraj Sadan found satisfying work there. He ultimately settled down in Canada. Suraj Sadan was in Delhi in January and attended the Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas. "It is an eyewash", he says.

"They are interested only in their own PR. I have been getting e-mails to come and invest in Gurgaon, Faridabad, Mumbai. What they are asking in fact is come and empty your pockets here. They are not interested in good work." Suraj lives with his artist wife Danielle Legrain. His son Charles-Ravi Sadan works in a bank and daughter Annabel Sadan is an IT executive. "I am happy in Canada," he says.