Saffron vs white: Why Kolkata’s Academy of Fine Arts is in the colour war

A roughly 200-square-foot room at Kolkata’s Academy of Fine Arts has become an unlikely political battleground. Over about a month, the former ticket-counter space went from its earlier terracotta appearance to saffron, then white, and back to saffron. The latest repainting was carried out by BJP workers in the presence of actor and BJP MLA Rudranil Ghosh, a day after theatre practitioners had painted the structure white. What began as a dispute over a wall has since become a contest over political symbolism in one of Kolkata’s most recognisable cultural spaces.

Why did the colour become political?

The first saffron coat appeared on July 6, after the BJP came to power in West Bengal. Theatre personalities objected, writing to state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya and asking that the Academy be kept outside partisan colour politics. Bhattacharya subsequently distanced the party from changing the colours of public buildings, saying it was not part of the BJP’s agenda. The issue might have ended there—had the colour not returned as a political question.

On August 11, theatre workers and group-theatre practitioners painted the disputed structure white, saying they were restoring the space after the earlier intervention. Within 24 hours, BJP workers returned with saffron paint, this time led by Rudranil Ghosh. The sequence transformed what was initially an act of symbolic assertion into an action-reaction cycle between the BJP and sections of Bengal’s theatre community.

Who is really fighting over the wall?

The competing claims reveal the deeper politics. Ghosh argued that saffron was the structure’s original colour and accused CPI(M)-linked theatre groups of attempting to retain political influence over the Academy. Theatre personalities, meanwhile, have questioned the attempt to impose political symbolism on a cultural institution. Trinamool Congress MLA Kunal Ghosh also entered the dispute, arguing that even the previous TMC government had not attempted to impose its signature blue-and-white colour scheme on the Academy.

That matters because the BJP’s position itself appears divided: its state leadership has publicly rejected 'colour-changing politics', while a BJP legislator and party workers have actively reclaimed saffron on the ground. The dispute is therefore not simply BJP versus Left; it also exposes the tension between institutional restraint and symbolic political assertion within the new ruling establishment.

Why does the Academy matter?

Because this is not an anonymous government wall. Founded in 1933 the Academy of Fine Arts has been embedded in Kolkata’s artistic ecosystem, housing galleries, theatre and public cultural activity. Its auditorium became particularly associated with the city’s group-theatre movement.

That history gives the colour fight its ideological charge. Bengal’s cultural institutions have long been spaces where political identities are produced, contested and performed. The Left’s decades-long relationship with the state’s theatre and intellectual culture is now being challenged by a BJP that has entered government and is seeking a new cultural vocabulary for Bengal.

What does the colour war signify?

The paint is therefore the least important part of the story. The real contest is over cultural ownership and political visibility. Saffron is being asserted as a marker of a new political order; white is being used as a rejection of partisan appropriation; and the counter-repainting itself becomes a performance of resistance.

The Academy’s wall has become a small canvas for a much larger transition: as Bengal’s political power changes hands, so does the contest over who gets to define its public culture. The question is no longer merely what colour the wall should be. It is who has the authority to decide what Bengal’s cultural spaces should represent.