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Two sets of abstract line drawings on paper were made by the Pahadi Korwa, an Adivasi community of central India, as part of separate collection and documentation projects — the first led by Indian artist and critic Jagdish Swaminathan in 1983, and the second by French poet Franck André Jamme in 1996. The Korwa drawings, as they are now known, have attracted artistic and scholarly interest for their script-like visual qualities and the circumstances in which they emerged.

The Pahadi (Hill) Korwa are a distinct sub-group of the Korwa of central and northeastern India, who belong to the Munda ethnic group; they are a designated Scheduled Tribe, and further classed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG). Most live in the Vindhyadri mountain range that cuts across Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, in the Raigarh and Surguja districts respectively. Historically they were known to be skilled hunters and also foraged and practised shifting cultivation. In modern India, the livelihood of many Pahadi Korwa depends variously on small-scale settled agriculture and livestock rearing, and the foraging and sale of produce and firewood from forests, while others are landless labourers often subject to exploitation and marginalisation.

Untitled; Aitara Korwa; Central India; 1983; Felt tip pen on paper; 75 x 55.6 cm. Image courtesy of Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru

Making of the drawings

In 1983 Swaminathan, then the director of Bharat Bhavan, organised a visit to the Pahadi Korwa in Surguja and Raigarh as part of the institution’s drive to document the cultural production of Adivasi artists in the region and collect artworks for its museum Roopankar. The initial team........

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