The Spread of Freemasonry in India

The history of Freemasonry dates back several hundreds of years. Recently, the credit for introducing India to the freemasonry cult goes to writers like Dan Brown and Ashwin Sanghi. The Freemasons belong to a secret society right from the period of King Solomon. They are often compared with the infamous Illuminati group which is believed to be trying to dominate the world. What is the aim of Freemasonry? The Freemasons pledge to be good citizens by practicing the highest moral and social standards in friendship, charity and integrity. They try to encourage their members or brethren to serve their own community in order to exemplify that they are a society of upright men. They are believers in one God or ‘Father of Universe’ and they go by the motto of ‘brotherly love, relief and truth’. Freemasonry came into India through the British and the Scots. The Grand Lodge of England elected a Grandmaster after a meeting of London’s local lodges in 1717. A united constitution was then drawn up and came into recognition by all the lodges there. The Worshipful Master was elected in a democratic tradition. He was then authorized to select his team of officers, starting from Senior Warden, Junior Warden, Senior and Junior Deacon, Inner Guard and Outer Guard (Tyler). In 1729, a petition was proposed by few brethren in India to set up a Grand Lodge in Calcutta. A Provincial Grandmaster was appointed to oversee Masonic activity in India and the Far East in 1728. It took the next forty-seven years for an Indian to become the first Mason. He was Umdat-ul-Umrah. He was followed by P.C. Dutt. Eventually, the Grand Lodge of India was born in 1895. Since then, Freemasonry did grow in India and one hundred and twelve years later, there are 380 lodges in 140 locations all over the country. There are about twenty thousand Freemasons in India. In Hyderabad, Freemasonry started in October 1988 with the lodge meeting in the upper storey of the existing Goshamahal Baradari. This building was used prior to this event as a military barrack. This was the birth of Lodge Hyderabad, Lodge Deccan and Lodge Morland. In 1912, The Nizam of Hyderabad, Asaf Jah VI, Mahboob Ali Pasha granted a sum of Rupees ten thousand to create a nucleus fund for building a Masonic temple and this work was carried out by Right Worshipful Brother Terence Keyes, the British Resident in Hyderabad.

The Art Story of John Constable

He was an English painter. He was born on 11th June 1776 in East Bergholt, Suffolk, England and died on 31st March 1837 in London. He revolutionised landscape painting of the nineteenth century along with J.M.W. Turner. His paintings had a far reaching impact on European art, especially in France. He turned away from the idealised landscapes that were an expected norm during his times and preferred realistic depiction of the natural world around him through a close and keen observation. He is remembered for his pastoral images, in and around Stour Valley. He is also remembered for his portraits that are more than hundred in number. He has left behind a large number of preparatory sketches that were often completed in oil. He experimented in these sketches with a free style of representation which allowed him to capture the effects of elementary changes in the countryside quite spontaneously, which he was able to transfer to the finished works. At close observation, his sketches are actually impressionistic, carrying less detail than his display canvases. The bottom line is that he managed to depict the scenery, which he captured in a realistic manner. Constable said, “Landscape is my mistress, ‘tis to her that I look for fame and all that the warmth of the imagination renders dear to Man.” Constable used colour more than what his contemporaries did. He wanted to reflect the hues that he would find in nature. He is recognized for his addition of pure white highlights that represented the sparkle of light on water. Constable was always fascinated by the changing patterns of clouds and light and he wanted to capture these moments in his oil sketches. He worked with loose and large brushstrokes to represent an overall sense of what he actually observed and experienced. His work can actually be described as a precursor to the Impressionist art that followed three decades later. He abandoned the conservative and invisible brushstrokes that were expected in Academic art of that period. He decided to apply paint in a large range of ways that included even a palette knife to give his canvases an imperfect and textured finish that went on to boost their realism. Dedham Vale (1802) is one of Constable’s first major paintings. He was only twenty-six when he created it. This painting illustrates his commitment to his keen powers of observation of nature by the details rendered of the sky and the trees. Your eye is led through the painting from the foreground along the river route to the distant town of Dedham Church, which forms a focal point for this work. The trees on both sides of the canvas form a central focus of this image. These experiences may have formed a crucial part of Constable’s childhood. He made another painting in 1828, twenty-six years later and called it `The Vale of Dedham’. He included few figures in that painting. He made another masterpiece in 1821 - `The Hay Wain’. This is perhaps his most celebrated work. River Stour is depicted in it as it divides the counties of Essex and Suffolk. The cottage of Willy Lott stands to the left. The cart is standing in a small pond. The image displays serenity by means of the colour palette. The blue of the sky is reflected in the tones of the water. The terracotta of the house is reflected in the harness of the horse. The green of the vegetation in the meadow also stands out. Hay Wain is glorifying nature without much exaggeration. Another noteworthy masterwork of Constable is his `Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ of 1837. This is the last of his large six-foot canvases and he considered it as his finest work. The sky is depicted as a violent one and the rainbow adds to the drama. He used the rainbow effectively in another great work of his - `The Stonehenge’ of 1835. It is a symbol of hope in the Romantic Movement for painters. Constable wrote, “Nature, in all the varied aspects of her beauty, exhibits no other feature lovelier nor any that awakens a more soothing reflection than the rainbow.” The rainbow helps in heightening the drama in the blustery sky. Constable is known for realistic depictions of the natural world. He rejected the styles that were contemporary in his days for landscapes, stating that “the vices of the present day are bravura; it is an attempt to do something beyond the truth.” He created his own distinct style of representation that was based on transferring what he saw amidst nature as truthfully as possible to a canvas.