| Description | The Famine Scrolls Collection comprises 8 large scrolls and 6 smaller scrolls commissioned to illustrate selected episodes of early modern famine as part of the AHRC project "Famine and Dearth in India and Britain, 1550-1800", led by Professor Ayesha Mukherjee (PI), University of Exeter, and Professor Amlan Das Gupta (Co-I), Jadavpur University. They were created by traditional scroll painters from Naya Village in West Bengal. The artists were Dukhushyam Chitrakar, Rahim Chitrakar, Rahman Chitrakar, Rabbani Chitrakar, Ushiara Chitrakar, and Jahanara Chitrakar. The collection also includes a copy of "Famine Tales: A Graphic Anthology" (Jadavpur University Press, 2023), edited by Ayesha Mukherjee, Abhijit Gupta, Sujit Kumar Mandal, and Shrutakirti Dutta.
The scrolls include:
- Bidrohi Captain Pouch [Rebel Captain Pouch]
- Chhiattor-er Monnontor [The Bengal Famine of 1769-70] (in 2 parts)
- Kangal-er Gaan [Penniless Songs] (6 individual scrolls)
- Mundy Shaheb-er Golpo [The Tale of Mundy Sahib] (in 2 parts)
- Shekkhopir-deshe Durbhikkho [Famine in Shakespeare-land]
- Phullara-r Bhoj [Phullara's Feast] (in 2 parts)
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| AdminHistory | The Famine Scrolls are an example of Patachitra. Patachitra, or pats, are scroll paintings from West Bengal. Historically, pats were cloth scrolls on which stories were painted as a sequence of frames. The artists (known as Patuyas, or Chitrakars) would travel between villages performing their scrolls, singing while unfurling the Patachitra, in exchange for goods or money. The modern Chitrakar community are mainly located near the patuya para (scroll painters’ locality) of Naya, in West Bengal.
The Famine Scrolls are part of "Famine Tales", which was based on the outcomes of the AHRC project "Famine and Dearth in India and Britain, 1550-1800", led by Professor Ayesha Mukherjee (PI), University of Exeter, and Professor Amlan Das Gupta (Co-I), Jadavpur University, Calcutta, which created a searchable web-database containing c.750 texts in 10 languages, enabling exploration of the cultural histories of famine and dearth in early modern India and Britain. Using material from this publicly accessible database and the British Library's collections, the follow-on project "Famine Tales from India and Britain” enabled the modern re-appropriation and narration of selected episodes of early modern famine and dearth, to engage new audiences and participants from rural and urban creative industries, as well as academic communities in India and Britain. The intense and resonant stories of these famines past are relevant to communities afflicted by dearth today, and are worthy of dissemination to a wider public.
The famine scrolls were painted and narrated by the traditional scroll painters and singers of Naya village in West Bengal, whose work has attracted international attention. The patachitrakars (scroll painters) of Naya performed the stories in villages and fairs in rural Bengal. The project culminated in exhibitions and performances in Calcutta, Exeter, and London. The narration, painting, and performance processes were documented in film, and made available in the projects video and photo collections. Exeter's Digital Humanities team and Jadavpur's School of Cultural Texts and Records, who collaborated on the original project, created high quality images of the scrolls and graphic work, which were displayed on the project website, along with introductory information, film documentation, and accounts and photographs of the performances and exhibitions. Jadavpur University Press published a book containing all illustrations, poems, and an introduction entitled 'Famine Tales from India and Britain: A Graphic Anthology' in January 2023.
The project website can be found at https://faminetales.exeter.ac.uk/about [accessed April 2024]
High-resolution digitised images of each scroll can be accessed at https://faminetales.exeter.ac.uk/collections/ [accessed August 2026] |