On the outskirts of Delhi in the solitude of the farm estates region nestled amongst fuchsia bougainvillea and treetop canopy is the Tantra Foundation of India. Founded in the early 1980s it is also the residence of the Tantra Foundation Library. Housing a special collection of over 7000 books and rare archival primary documents, focused specifically on the literature of the Tantras. In addition, it’s home to original art works from all parts of India in multiple traditional styles from Kalighat to Chitrakathi to Phad paintings and contemporary Tantra-inspired pieces, along with a collection of copper engraved yantras used for classical Tantra meditation.
The foundation and library were founded by Professor Dr. Madhu Khanna, a world- recognised Shakta scholar and Tantra Art expert in both ancient and contemporary works. Both created to preserve and celebrate the creative genius of Indic and Agamic heritage. Yearly, the foundation hosts lectures on a variety of topics and teachings related to Tantra.
It also publishes books focused on Tantric study. Titles such as, by Indian Tantra scholar from Varanasi, Shitla Prasad Upadhyaya, the ‘Diksha-prakasha’, and others, along with the ‘Meaning in Tantric Ritual’ by University of Oxford eminent scholar Alexis Sanderson and an Indian edition. Plus, the foundation focuses on illustrious revised editions of ancient texts like the ‘Thirty Minor Upanishads’. Also, they collaborate with other institutions addressing important modern-day issues and how ancient wisdom is more-than-ever relevant today, for example, guidance on how to manage environmental concerns, as explained in “Ecological Insights in the Atharva Veda and their Relevance Today.”
Madhu Khanna received her doctorate in Tantra Studies from the University of Oxford in the early 1980s, under the supervision of Alexis Sanderson, a world authority today on Tantric Shaivism. As a longtime Shakta and Sanskrit scholar- practitioner she, teaches, speaks and writes on a number of Tantra related focuses. She’s been a busy scholar- practitioner for four decades. She’s highly-recognized worldwide and a well-seasoned teacher. She’s an expert on Shakta Tantra and author of ten books and many scholarly papers.
To share a few, to help understand the scope of her life work and depth of wisdom, and that of the Tantra Foundation and library here are some of the books that are now classics and important throughout the world: ‘Yantra: Tantric Symbols of Cosmic Unity; The Tantric Way’, co-authored and translated into five languages with twenty reprints, Studies on Tantra in Bengal and Eastern India, and the ‘Śāktapramodah: Of Deva Nandan Singh’, a text focused on the ‘Daśa Mahāvidyās’, the Ten Wisdom Goddesses, and more. With two more books forthcoming, soon to debut.
Her papers and articles included in anthologies cover Tantra Arts and devotional Devi Yoga: “Yantra and Cakrā in Tantric Meditation”, “The Journey of Goddess Tārā-Adoption and Adaptation of a Buddhist Goddess in Hindu Tantric Worship”, “The Kālī Yantra- The Changing Iconography of Goddess Dakshina Kālī in Bengal”, “The Concept and Liturgy of the Sri-Cakrā Based on Sivananda’s Trilogy”, and ” The Making of Tantric Rādhā: A Reading from the Krsnayāmala” and more.
For many years Khanna was the Director at the Center of Comparative Religion, at the Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi in India. Thereafter she was the prestigious Tagore National Fellow at the National Museum in Delhi, and key educator-speaker for the Tantra art exhibit at the British Museum “Tantra: Enlightenment to Revolution”, and curator of “Tantra on the Edge” at the Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) in New Delhi, India.
The “Tantra on the Edge” exhibition was accompanied by the award-winning, first-of-its-kind book Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations & Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art written and compiled by Khanna on Indian contemporary Tantra Art visionaries and their respective bodies of artworks. Published by the well-established Delhi Art Gallery, founded by Ashish Anand, who has the largest collection of contemporary works on Tantra.
Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations & Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art, won the 2024 Oxford Bookstore Art Book Prize. The comprehensive tome showcases Tantra-rooted paintings grounded in the soil and soul of India. Self-reflective, modern-day artists who’ve created for years on the margins of the mainstream art world; who now finally are receiving their due credit for their modern model of artistic indigenous expression yoked in Yoga and Tantra tradition. Each artist’s art collection sharing their unique inner journey. A collective artist revolution sparked by Ajit Mookerjee’s Tantra art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London in the 1970s. A show which influenced artists worldwide from Japan, the United States, England, and the Continent to explore new horizons of the potential of human energy and its relation to consciousness.
Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations & Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art, won the 2024 Oxford Bookstore Art Book Prize. The comprehensive tome showcases Tantra-rooted paintings grounded in the soil and soul of India. Self-reflective, modern-day artists who’ve created for years on the margins of the mainstream art world; who now finally are receiving their due credit for their modern model of artistic indigenous expression yoked in Yoga and Tantra tradition. Each artist’s art collection sharing their unique inner journey. A collective artist revolution sparked by Ajit Mookerjee’s Tantra art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London in the 1970s. A show which influenced artists worldwide from Japan, the United States, England, and the Continent to explore new horizons of the potential of human energy and its relation to consciousness.
Khanna’s aim of Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations & Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art is “to bring these modern Indian artists to the center stage” and “to counter the paradigm of Eurocentric modernist art in India.” Because from a lifetime of academic study and practice in the Tantra sphere with ancient Tantra arts and contemporary works of Indian artists she became aware of “the challenge for Indian artists was to find an alternative through which they could relate to an Indian ethos that simultaneously reflected an international art idiom.”
The book takes us into the Tantra art world of India, introducing the early pioneer painter, G.R. Santosh, who was one of the first to re-valorise and utilize tantric symbols in twentieth century artworks after his own spiritual quest brought him to Amarnath cave in Kashmir and a subsequent epiphany.
A realisation that directed him to leave behind Western modes of figurative expression and journey into the doors to the infinite of nondual Tantra Shaivism and explore through paint the “… metaphorical and conceptual creations… in the painterly style of modern tantric yantras.”
Yogis will be fascinated to learn about from the book one of the twentieth centuries most prominent Tantra artists, Sohan Qadri, who began teaching meditation at the Scandinavian Yoga and Meditation school in Copenhagen spearhead by Swami Janakananda. Qadri was renowned for teaching immersive meditation on Kundalini Yoga and energy arousal along with breath techniques. He was a Tantrika, experimenting and pushing all boundaries of practice and a teacher of ancient Tantra technologies, and creator of performance art and visual works. “When I start a painting, first I empty my mind of all images…I feel I should communicate with the emptiness of the canvas…I avoid the distortion created by images.” He broke new ground by eliminating symbols in favor of color drenched expanses, to move beyond symbol and cultism. He poignantly stated: “I am a tantric sadhaka first, then an artist.”
The book is the bridge to visually and philosophically learn from the creative Tantra-based prodigies of India, the likes of the fountainhead of multiple painter groups and associations and the Madras Art Movement K.C.S Paniker. Allowing us to enter into the inner world of luminary artists such as Biren De, the painter of non-figurative fields of abstract light and tantric-like shapes reminiscent of the Shiva lingam and the “subliminal depths of his consciousness for a composite ‘whole’”. Along with artist, Acharya Ram Charan “Vyakul” who shared “I am a modern artist with ancient roots,” a painter who depicts yantra patterns throughout his works. facebook.com/official.yogamag
The book is also a window into the well-known, worldwide artist, S.H Raza, of ‘Optical Tantra’ of which Khanna elucidates how this artist is steeped in the visual power of the aniconic vocabulary of Tantra art. It also explains Tantra art’s influence on the design works of famous, international treasure of Italian architecture and design, Ettore Sottsass, and his fabulous and iconic “Ceramic Yantra” pieces inspired from the triangular constructions of the Kali yantra
Gifted painter Shobha Broota, her Zen- like works of calm, scintillating, and soothing canvas of light and soft-hued tones directly transports the viewer into immersive absorption or a one- pointed focus with Shakti-red spirals and pinwheels and the singular black circle on a field of crimson recalling tantric meditative ritual.
“HathaYogini: The Victory of Woman-Goddess/Power” series by Gogi Saroji Pal challenges and confronts and rejects the submissive and powerless depiction of women. Instead, she brings to life through bold colour and strong compositional 82 The book is also a window into the well-known, worldwide artist, S.H Raza, of ‘Optical Tantra’ of which Khanna elucidates how this artist is steeped in the visual power of the aniconic vocabulary of Tantra art. It also explains Tantra art’s influence on the design works of famous, international treasure of Italian architecture and design, Ettore Sottsass, and his fabulous and iconic “Ceramic Yantra” pieces inspired from the triangular constructions of the Kali yantra. placement of women, situating females in their rightful stance as powerful, capable and more than able. The artist declaring: “Hathayogini is an empowered woman who cannot be tamed.”
Velu Viswanadhan, born in Kerala and based in Paris, whose works unearth the ancient inner genealogical and ancestral birth roots of those grounded in a nutrient-rich, earth- based color palette, the likes of healthy, yielding soil in synergy with Tantra yantra triangles. His paintings, the remembrances of his ancestors’ ancient tantric past, with use of geometric symbols. His works, the combination of earth elements and ritual diagrams.
The book is also a window into the well-known, worldwide artist, S.H Raza, of ‘Optical Tantra’ of which Khanna elucidates how this artist is steeped in the visual power of the aniconic vocabulary of Tantra art. It also explains Tantra art’s influence on the design works of famous, international treasure of Italian architecture and design, Ettore Sottsass, and his fabulous and iconic “Ceramic Yantra” pieces inspired from the triangular constructions of the Kali yantra.
Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations & Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art is a great contribution to Yoga, Tantra and timeless and time-tested traditional knowledge systems and a must read. The Tantra Foundation and Madhu Khanna’s longstanding dream is to continue to create a living museum of and laydown an international center for Tantric Studies in India from where the tradition originated. In order to promote authentic interpretations of sacred literature, art and aesthetics. “Its primary concern is to preserve, comment on and interpret the textual and visual heritage of Tantra in an idiom adapted to our times.” Tantra and Tantra Art as a transformative force of humanity bringing peace, joy, beauty and collective love. Ultimately, it’s to liberate us from the shackles of negative tropes. To allow us to reside in our innate wholeness, to meet the challenges of everyday life and to re-discover one’s spiritual potential. This book and the companion volume which is forthcoming on the Tantra Art in the National Museum New Delhi are both path breaking works. This is a book and foundation that puts Tantra on track and is steeped in timeless technologies of tradition. For the upliftment of all.
