The rise and fall of POT painting arts in West Bengal

The Pot chitra or Pot painting of west Bengal is very famous. Today I am going to explore all the details of them. How they are created, why they are still here. How they are still fighting with poverty and negligence form govt. and how we could save them today?

Potchitra was actualy mentioned in the puranas as well. Now, how they are being today painted by painters of the tribal villagers of west Bengal w- well ,this is a long story. So, I would like to keep my story short here. It was actually adopted by the malla kings who were ones ruled over Bishnupur. The malla kings of Bishnupur were the very favorite of these Pot artists and it was reported that they gave shelter of these painters from somewhere in north India. However, there are different stories regarding these Pot painters. Whatever the case was someday, when the Malla ruler ship abolished, the painters lost their shelters. They became stared getting backdated; they started losing their values as painters in Bengal. Today these painting are practiced by some families in tribal villages of Midnapore (West Bengal, India) and they are just declining. 

These POT chitra painters are actually called POTUAS … these painting tradition mainly were being done by Sutradhar people who were the expert potuas on those malla days . However, they are losing their value and struggling a lot due to negligence form govt . And due to following reasons mainly – 

1. West Bengal Govt. as well as Indian govt. is not serious regarding these pot painters. They are thinking that these are actually outdated, backdated and they no need govt. funding. 
2. Pot painting may look simple and no significance compared with modern art. In fact these paintings don’t have any industrial application or commercial application. However, we need to know that this is actually lost art. The original pot paintings are highly expansive and time consuming. It requires huge concentration and courage to complete a painting.
3. They don’t have any marketplace to sell their paintings. Pot painters’ uses old methods, old techniques. They required new techniques to art, as well as cheap and affordable. They also required new market to sale their products. 

Today due to negligence form govt. of west Bengal, these Pot painters got fund form European Union (EU) and they are running their events once in a year in October, November month generally. Every year these foreigners come in India in this village (Pingla Village, East Midnapore, and India) for these folk arts purchasing, photography, videography, study and researches. I am sure they will not be able to go long run because some day EU will stop funding. 

The family of these pot painters are now living in poverty because their art, their culture have no value. Today the next generations is not interested in learning this art because of no value. It takes a whole year to prepare some POT pains and sell to market but again profit is very low. They are even not teaching their next generations because they started feeling that this would not have any career on this. Since there is no support form govt. the event is going to be shorter year after year. 

Lets come on Pingla , The POT –MAYA date is announced by Mindnapore.in  website which is in 11th Nov to 13th Nov , 2018. Let’s come here and taste the POT art once again. 

Details you can find here - 

http://www.midnapore.in/festival/potmaya/pot-maya-naya-pingla.html