INDIA
Official Country Name REPUBLIC OF INDIA
Languages REPUBLIC OF INDIA
Population 1,296,834,042
Median Age 28.1
GDP Per Capita US $7,200
Source: CIA World Factbook
Total Value of Art Exported (UN Comtrade Database 2018) US $140,432,947
Arts Funding (Culture) US $424,347,000
Art Programs (University Level) 105
Student Enrollment 55,830
Source: Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Human Resource Development, AAP (non-official)
Museums Exhibiting Contemporary Art 14
Contemporary Art Galleries (Commercial) 111
Contemporary Art Spaces (Nonprofit) 23
Art Foundations (NGO + Private) 48
Source: AAP (non-official)
Amid protests by artists, writers, and civil activists who lent their voices to the “Artists Unite” movement, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the May general elections, entering their second term of governance. On August 5, Prime Minister Narendra Modi furthered the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda by revoking article 370 of the constitution, which had given autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir for more than 70 years. The government divided the region into two states and put them under a state of emergency for over two months as violence flared. In a landmark ruling on November 9, the Supreme Court of India announced that Hindus had the right to rebuild a temple on the disputed land in Ayodhya that was the former site of the Babri Mosque, destroyed in 1992 by Hindu extremists, and that land for a new mosque should be found elsewhere in the city. The BJP government has also commissioned a 221-meter-tall bronze statue of the Hindu god Ram for the city.
The country’s most prominent institution, the three-city mounted a seminal exhibition of modernist painter Prabhakar Barwe, “Astitva” (6/13–7/28), in New Delhi; select paintings and sculptures by A. Ramachandran (4/26–6/12) and colorful, abstract
