Victoria Memorial to display Guru Teg Bahadur’s painting
Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service
Kolkata, November 23
The iconic Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata is to put on display a famous painting of Guru Teg Bahadur, whose martyrdom day falls on Saturday.
Jayanta Sengupta, curator of Victoria Memorial Hall, said they were hoping that by this February, the maintenance work at the galleries would be over following which the painting of the Ninth Sikh Guru would be put up for permanent display.
“Besides Guru Teg Bahadur, we also have two paintings of Guru Nanak Dev and Guru Gobind Singh. We are going to bring out a folio with reproduction of the paintings of the three Gurus. The paintings could be framed and mounted on a wall. Once the folio is ready, we will get in touch with major gurdwaras in the country, the SGPC authorities and all those who will be interested in the paintings,” Sengupta said.
The portrait of Guru Teg Bahadur, which is now in the storeroom of Victoria Memorial Hall, is of special interest to devotees. “Guru Teg Bahadur went to Dhaka (now in Bangladesh) in the latter half of the 17th century. A reputed painter was assigned the job of making a portrait of the Guru. The painter accurately drew his clothed body, but failed to draw his radiant face. Sensing his predicament, the Guru himself drew the face and completed the painting”, said Bachan Singh Saral, general secretary of the Kolkata-based Bangladesh Gurdwara Management Board.
The painting, which was in Sangat Tola Gurdwara in Dhaka, was brought to India and handed over to the Victoria Memorial Hall after the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. The Victoria Memorial Hall also has a collection of other Sikh paintings. It also has many paintings by Emily Eden (Governor General Lord Auckland's sister), including painting of Maharaja Ranjit Singh for which the Maharaja was reported to have agreed to give her sittings.
