Kapila Vatsyayan, living encyclopedia of Indian culture, passes away at 92

A luminary in the arena of India’s art and culture and Padma Vibhushan awardee, Kapila Vatsyayan breathed her last on Wednesday at her Delhi residence at the age of 92. An acclaimed doyen of arts, culture and civilisation, she was also the life trustee of Delhi’s India International Centre (IIC) and the academic director of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.

On her death, well-known Kathak guru and Padma Shri Shovana Narayan, who considers her as her invisible patron, says that India has lost a great mind. “We have lost a great scholar. We have lost a repository of in- formation. She was the part of that making process of the cultural scene in India. She has left her writings behind for us. She had such a sharp mind, she was always reading, looking at things with new eyes and new perspective and she was always open to new developments and researches.”

Shovana informs that during the early years of Bhartiya Kala Kendra, Vatsyayan along with Nirmala Joshi and Naina Devi were the minds behind nurturing the whole cultural scene around Delhi. “They established the cultural scene. She was the one who brought Acchan Maharaj ji to Delhi. She brought Shambhu Maharaj to Delhi. She gave patronage to the great Birju Maharaj in his early days. She was the one who put Manipuri on India’s culture map. She went to Manipur and sat there with the gurus.”

Vatsyayan did her Masters in English literature from the University of Delhi, Masters in Education from the University of Michigan, USA, and PhD from the Banaras Hindu University. Notably, she was a student of a college when very few girls went to college and that too in a co-educational institution. She had even dared the college authorities against the ban on girls talking to and mixing with boys in the college. She was a witness to the participation of college students in the freedom movement.

Vatsyayan was a prolific writer and has authored nearly 20 books and over 200 research papers and was also nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha.

During her career, she taught at the universities of Delhi, Banaras, Philadelphia and California. On behalf of the Government of India, she negotiated nearly fifty cultural agreements with other countries.

She was associated with the establishment and development of many libraries, museums and archival repositories. The blueprint she drew up, at the instance of the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, for the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) provides evidence of her vision and multidisciplinary approach.