It was in 1894 when famous Indian painter and artist Raja Ravi Verma, also regarded as the father of modern art in India, established his lithographic press in Girgaum, Bombay. In September of the same year, the chromolithographs of goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati were launched. Expensive and exclusive pieces of Verma’s art started to circulate with the calendars. Coming of the print culture popularised Verma’s paintings of goddesses Laxmi, Saraswati and Krishna and made gods accessible to familiar people.

Around the start of the 20th century, Calendar art in India focused on Religion, landscapes, Patriotism and Film-advertisements. The popularisation of calendar art helped bring a sense of cultural integrity and nationalism. Calendar art became a robust political-cultural tool to put subliminal thoughts of ethics, culture, religion and nationalism in the minds of the citizens of young India through images. Apart from Verma, works of other artists like S.M. Pandit, Hem Chandra Bhargava, B.G Sharma, Yogendra Rastogi and J.P. Singhal also became popular.

Besides being easy access to dates and events in the 20th century, calendars also became visual artefacts depicting people’s popular culture and daily lives through popular graphic symbols. Scenes from Ramayana, Mahabharata, or other Vedic texts like lord Ganesh with Riddhi & Siddhi or the famous image of young Krishna with mother Yashodha often inspired the iconology used for the calendar. These scenes were thickly influenced by ideals of upper castes, numerically a smaller section of the society who possessed expanded command of the print culture and visual arts, and so do even now.

Calendars, postcards, stamps, and hoardings are visual pieces that can be translated politically and culturally. Their iconologies and graphics give away the popular Brahmanical culture and substantially lack representation from the subalterns (or Dalits). Around this time, a need to assert a Bahujan identity arose amongst the ‘so-called’ lower castes. This call for equal representation and voice required a cultural revolution which led the entire society towards an anti-caste consciousness. One way of doing this can be rejecting the Hindu gods of the calendar and substituting them with ‘Dalit Nayaks’. This follows what Dr Ambedkar talks about in his work ‘Buddha and Dhamma’ on the Dalit-led cultural revolution.

Kanshi Ram to Mayawati: The Dalit Nayaks

Kanshi Ram, a charismatic Bahujan leader from the Ramdassis community (the largest Scheduled Caste community of Punjab) who was affectionately referred to as ‘Saheb’, established the Bahujan Samaj Party in 1984 and swept giant wins in Uttar Pradesh soon after hitting polls. But Kanshi Ram’s pursuits were not merely political, for he understood Bahujan upliftment as a cultural revolution. His most significant success was, thus, in creating an integrated Bahujan consciousness in North India by uniting various SC, ST and OBC communities under one political and cultural fighting unit.

Kanshi Ram’s effort to create a popular visual culture of the Bahujan in India led to Mayawati’s first big launch of a ‘Bahujan Calendar’ in 2014 on her birthday, who joined BSP under the mentorship of Kanshi Ram. Subsequently, the party kept launching and distributing these calendars on festivals, occasions, gatherings, Jayanti’s, etc. Another vital effort to produce ‘counter visuality’ against Brahmanical religion came from Prof. Ramvilas Bharti of the Bahujan Kalyan Parishad, who launched his Bhaujan Calendar in 2014 in Uttar Pradesh. The calendar starts on 14th April, the birthdate of Dr Ambedkar. Important days like Jayanti of Jyotirao Phule, Birsa Munda, Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram and other historically important dates are marked with much attention, unlike the Islamic, Gregorian or Hindu Tithi calendars.

Sooner, other independent publishing houses like the Samyak Publication, Dalit Dastak, Forward Press, Dhamma Prakashan, etc., also started printing different kinds of Bahujan calendars (tabular, digital, wall-hanging, pocket-size).

Printing Bahujan Calendar: The Samyak Prakashan

Samyak Prakashan is a North Indian publication house awarded thrice as the best stall at International Book Fair. The house started publishing calendars in 2006, marking the golden jubilee of Babasaheb’s conversion to Buddhism. Their calendar celebrates one Bahujan icon every month.

In 2021, the house launched the ‘Jai Bhim Calendar’ with blue-coloured nameplates and figures of Tathagata Buddha, Guru Raidas, Kabir, Phule and Ambedkar on the cover page. This calendar was more refined and depicted a larger-than-life image of Dr Ambedkar, with paintings based on the life events of Dr Ambedkar like the presentation of the final draft of the constitution, Ambedkar reading the paper ‘Janta’, 1952 image of Ambedkar leaving for Columbia University, etc. The house later went on to start a series of Dr Ambedkar calendars.

Sociologist K. Kalyani, in her research paper ‘Resistance in Popular Visuals and Iconography: A Study of Dalit–Bahujan Calendar Art in North India’, states that the prime aim of Samyak Prakashan was to produce art images that lead to the re-imagination of popular religion and for this 300 authors were deployed. The Bahujan calendar printed by the organisation marks Diwali as ‘Deep Dan Utsav’, celebrating the completion of 84,000 Buddhist Stupas by King Ashoka. A similar instance of reviving Dalit spirituality is seen when Dussehra is renamed to ‘Ashoka Vijayadashami’ (as practised in Buddhism).

Bahujan Calendars of the 21st Century: The Buddhist Influence

Bahujan Calendars of the 21st century are greatly influenced by Navayana Buddhism, which got popularised after Ambedkar converted to Buddhism on 14th October 1956 in Nagpur. Most popular around Dikshabhumi (Nagpur), Chaityabhumi (Bombay), Navayana Buddhism (or the Neo-Buddhism) is based on the ideals of Humanism and thus counters the position of Dalits in Hindu religion.

Iconology of these calendars includes the Peepal tree, Panchsheel (five coloured flags), Ashoka Pillar, Bodhisattva tree, and Buddha with open eyes as a sign of enlightenment instead of closed meditating eyes. The visuals also include portraits of celebrated Bhaujan leaders like Phule, Ambedkar, and Birsa Munda. Religious information on the Hindu Panchang is replaced by quotes or information on historical events of the Dalit liberation struggle. Calendars thus make historically important dates become part of the collective memory of the masses and are cultural sources to revive and re-memorising Dalit-Bahujan history of the country.

Ambedkar, in the calendars, appeared as a highly educated man in a blue suit and tie, sometimes with the Constitution in hand. This imagery iconoses Ambedkar as a ‘cultural assertion’ of Dalits on Brahmanical structures. In some artworks by P.B. Ramteke, known for his work on human figures and political sketches in India, Ambedkar has been shown with a compassionate gaze related to neo-Buddist ideals.

Now, Bahujan Calendars are under circulation at minimal or no costs, even on e-market platforms like Amazon and Flipkart. The calendars’ visuals aim to create standard, popular and new images of Dalit spirituality in India. Bahujan calendars claim the space of religion by producing a ‘counter visibility’ in favour of the Bahujan community and redefining religion, its Nayaks and its customs.

These calendars appealed to a section of the society that could not relate to the Verma’s gods and goddesses. Bahujan Calendars also created common visual and numerical memories about the long history of Dalit oppression. It would be safe to state that these calendars strengthened the making of a conscious Dalit community and subsequently enhanced the spiritual language of the Dalits.