Jitish Kallat's Tangled Hierarchy exhibition explores Partition's silence through Gandhi's notes and contemporary art

In August 2022, Indian artist Jitish Kallat curated the exhibition Tangled Hierarchy at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, England, commemorating the 75th anniversary of India's Partition. The display showcases five envelopes containing handwritten correspondence from Mahatma Gandhi to Louis Mountbatten, stemming from a meeting on June 2, 1947, regarding the Partition. This correspondence underscores the unspoken aspects of the traumatic separation that led to the displacement of 10-20 million individuals and resulted in 200,000 to 2 million fatalities. The exhibition also reflects themes explored during the March Meeting 2022 in Sharjah, where Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak discussed postcolonial theory. Featured artists include Paul Pfeiffer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Alexa Wright. The exhibition is open until September 10, 2022, and Radha Chakravarty has newly translated Mahasweta Devi's book Our Santiniketan.