“गोदना पेंटिगं से पहले गोदना जानो, ये हम सब का गहना है, सब पीछे छूट जाएगा, बस ये ही साथ ले जाएंगे हम” [Before knowing about the Godna painting, learn about Godna /Tattoo, this is our jewelry, everything will be left behind, only this we will take with us]

~ Local Women Artists of Dusadh Community

This was one of the most impactful things I heard from the local Godna artists during my masters dissertation fieldwork in Bihar in 2020-2022; the way they talked about Godna, the tattoo that was embedded over their bodies, hands, forehead, and neck, and their association of Godna/tattoo with jewelry that will be carried forward even after death. The women of the Dusadh community, of Bihar, India, see it as jewelry. This is so because sometimes due to lack of money, women can only use Godna as jewelry, or sometimes women believe it to be permanent, jewelry that will be there even after death.

When asked about the tattoos they shared; “हमारे पास कहा, कभी कोई गहना रहा है, गरीब लोगों का गहना यहीं है, कुछ भी गुदवा लो” [We never had any jewel, this is the jewel of poor people, you can get anything tattooed], “कहते हैं गोदना नहीं होगा तो औरतें सुंदर नहीं होती, यह गोदना हमें सुंदर  बनाता है” [It is said that if there is no tattoo, then women are not beautiful, this tattoo makes us attractive] Savita Devi (50), local Dusadh artist

Almost every Dusadh woman had a Godna tattoo over their body, which created curiosity within me to know more about this. When asked, the artists recommended learning more about Godna as a tattoo before leaning of its newer forms as paintings, tracing the journey from body to paper. Most artists also shared an essential note of how Godna as tattoo and Godna as painting signify the prominent caste system in society as well as resistance to caste oppression. Women from the community shared: 

“यह तो सभी औरतों के शरीर पर होते हैं, बड़े लोग जैसे गहना पहनते हैं, हम यह पहनते हैं 

ये तो ठप्पा है, दुसाध होने का पहले तन पर लगा दिया था, अब हम इससे पेंटिगं करते है”

[It is on all women’s body, we wear it like high-class people wear jewelry. This is a stamp, of Dusadhs, earlier it was applied on the body, now we do painting with it]

Vrinda Devi, a Godna tattoo artist for thirty-five years in Madhubani, shares that it is believed that Krishna first started the practice of tattooing Radha while writing his name on her back and hand. She also talks of how the ink for Godna was made, which involves a process of lighting a lamp and adding mustard oil to it, which tribal communities used to make. For tattooing, seven needles were tied, and different types of patterns were engraved on their skin. 

There are many associations of the tattoo practice that sit on the intersections of mythology, caste, class, and imperialistic powers. According to the Gond tribe, a tattoo is a black dog with no shadow that no one can trace. It is believed in the Bhil community that Godna gives  freedom from many types of physical ailments, and the body becomes healthy. According to the Moghia community, it is a sign of good fortune and a symbol of happiness for them; not only this, but it is believed that this tattoo also protects them from black magic and ghosts.

It is believed that the Godna tattoo practice was “adopted by the imperial power in the provinces, particularly in Bihar and Bengal, to mark the bodies of prisoners, and had an indirect impact on the local configuration of power, signifying the dominance of the upper-caste”. Historian Clare Anderson also indicated that lower caste/class, illiterate women used to get tattoos by imperial authorities.

In Bihar, “tattoo as a caste-marker” is also seen as a ‘protection’ for women by “de-glamourise women so that they can evade the eyes of influential sex predators.” Among Maithil women, it was considered auspicious to have the husband’s name, the picture of the deity, and other figures carved on the hand in the form of tattooing. It is also believed that the association of tattoos is from Manu’s casteist codes. He directed women from the Dalit community to tattoo their bodies, prescribing them as demeaning. But the journey from body to canvas has also signified resistance and reclaiming of the art and body.  

For the Jitwarpur Dusadh women, this tattoo on the body was transferred into the paper by Channo Devi, who is also considered the first who drew Godna hence called Janamdata (one who has given birth) of Godna. The national awarded Dusadh women shared “पहले तो गोदना सिर्फ देह पर करते थे, चानो मां ने ये हमें सिखाया और फिर ये गोदना हमारे शरीर से पेपर पर आ गया” [Earlier, tattooing was done only on the body, Channo maa taught us this and then this tattoo came from our body on paper].

Drawing Godna in paintings came about because the women from the Dusadh community were told not to draw any theme on Rama or Sita. So they used their Godna in paintings instead; one of the women from the Dusadh community shared, “अब राम सीता तो बनाने देते नहीं थे, ये गोदना तो हमारा था, इस ही को पेंटिगं में बना दिया” [Rama and Sita were not allowed to paint, this tattoo was ours, so we used it in our painting].

Godna art carries the connotations of the primordial essence and expression of unselfconscious and timeless community life. Through this art, the women painters show their lives in their community. When the Mithila paintings were transferred into paper from the wall, upper-caste women got an immense chance to rise to new economic and social spaces, but the Dusadh women were left out. Despite trying to use that opportunity to showcase their talent of art, by drawing Rama and Sita they found themselves excluded and restricted. 

But these women went ahead and began to paint on paper their oral folk tales, and aesthetic traditions, in addition to tattoo symbols. The assertion of Godna painting challenged the social hierarchies of the Mithila region. “Dusadh’s growing self-confidence and an assertion of a new-found community Pride.” The portrayal of their local deities like Raja Salhesha, Chauharmal, Rahu, and others can manifest Dalit movements. This “deliberate projection of Salhesha attempts subverts the dominant discourse” (Rekha 2010). 

One national award recipient of Godna art shared, “हमने राम को बनाना छोड़ दिया, हमारे भगवान है

उन्हे दिखाएंगे पेंटिगं में” [We have stopped making Ram, we have our god, we will show him in our painting]. As Y.S Alone says,

“caste life narratives are typically regarded as literary work, but they have also become subjects of visual language, wherein the experience of caste life becomes a means to create visual metaphors as potential critiques of the hegemonic and the normative in dominant Indian society.”

The Dusadh women captured the oral histories of their cultural deities into paintings, not just their local deities but also started portraying grand traditional gods as a form of resistance to the notion of social segregation of god and goddess. In this way Godna is a form of deep community record and resistance. Not only as art of the body, believed to be jewelry that will travel with Dusadh women in death, but also as art on canvas, to remember the assertions of oral histories and community pride.