Guler— Where time stands still to hold an ancient music

WE are shooting a film based on Indian classical music and its association with time. Our crew, headed by director Amit Dutta, is staying at the old ruined palace structure at Nandpur, Guler. Amit had chosen this location even before beginning to write the screenplay. The choice feels natural because Guler has been a home for the fine arts since its inception as a brother-state to Kangra in the fifteenth century. The Ragamala folios from this region remain among the finest crystallisations of the genre in the country.

A few days ago, our host, the owner of this palace, raised an interesting question about the reasons behind Guler’s rise as a pivotal centre for the arts despite being a small hill state on the distant periphery of the waning Mughal Empire. He cited William Dalrymple’s words from The Anarchy, where he writes that after 1707 the Punjab hill states witnessed a flowering of creativity as artists trained in Mughal ateliers found new patrons. Painterly families inspired one another in a way Dalrymple likens to Renaissance Italy, with Guler and Jasrota standing in the place of small yet cultured courts such as San Gimignano and Urbino.

While this comparison highlights the stature and importance of Guler’s artistic legacy, it also suggests that the collapse of the central Mughal authority created a centripetal movement of talent towards smaller states like Guler. Yet one should also remember that this region had been culturally significant since antiquity. It finds mention in the Mahabharata as a cluster of influential kingdoms whose rulers took part in the war at Kurukshetra. Archaeological evidence from the medieval period, including the eighth-century monolithic temples of Masrur, the early bronzes and carved wooden temples of Chamba from the seventh century, and the many early Nagara temples of Kullu and Naggar, testifies to a high culture sustained over at least two millennia.

The flourishing of Pahari painting is therefore not sudden. It carries the marks of a long-standing engagement with classical arts. Trigartha, the wider cultural centre, has always linked important regions such as Kashmir and Kannauj, as mentioned in the Rajatarangini. It maintained a distinct identity and a deep interest in classical traditions wherever they appeared in the subcontinent. Only such a background can explain why, when prosperity arrived, the painters and patrons of this region chose themes taken from demanding Sanskrit ‘mahakavyas’, the epics, the grand Puranas such as the Bhagavatam and Devi Mahatmyam, and the subtle theories of music that find visual expression in the Ragamala paintings. Here one sees a quiet but steady exchange between musicians, painters, poets and patrons.

This shared world becomes clear in Amit Dutta’s earlier documentary Notes on Guler, where he traced the fading remains of the birthplace of the Seu-Nainsukh family of painters. Today, Guler survives only as a shadow of its former self. Much of it was submerged when the Pong Dam was built in 1974, an understudied tragedy in which an entire way of life disappeared beneath the water. The son of the last king’s court-priest, the late Pratyush Guleri, reads aloud in this film a line from a poem by the last regent, Raja Baldev Singh: “Nirdhan Raja Atal Prabhutai,” meaning “a penniless kingdom, rich in God’s grace. The king had been a pupil of his court poet Pandit Brajraj who composed a version of the Ramayana titled Rama Ras Lahari.

Guler also produced the brilliant Sanskrit scholar and modern Hindi prose writer Chandradhar Sharma Guleri, who once interviewed the great musician and theorist DV Paluskar in Lahore.

Even in the times of financial strain, the cultivation of the mind was held close. This attitude is visible in the Ragamala tradition of Guler, where nature, folk idioms and refined music theory come together with ease. It is this union of vision and restraint that makes Guler an ideal ground for exploring a theme as abstract as music and time. Art does not arise only from opulence. It grows from insight, imagination and a deep cultural memory. These virtues have defined the hill principalities for centuries and continue to give Guler its quiet, enduring strength.

(The writer is an animation designer, children’s book illustrator and screenplay writer.)