Sunil Kant Munjal: ‘Serendipity Arts Festival must continue to question our role & civic responsibility’

Sunil Kant Munjal, chairman of Hero Enterprise and founder patron of Serendipity Arts Festival.

It’s a muggy December morning at Kala Academy Goa, where Sunil Kant Munjal, chairman of Hero Enterprise and founder patron of Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF), has just launched a new platform, the Serendipity Exchange for the Arts (SEA). I tell him he's no less than Amitabh Bachchan or Shahrukh Khan, and he lets out an 'oh, dear, that sounds ominous'. Then I spell the reason, that I've been pursuing him for an interview since a longtime, but Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai. Munjal can't resist a hearty laugh.

Moments later, he's all serious talking about his baby: the SAF. He throws light on the ninth edition of the festival this year, an annual fixture on Goa’s cultural calendar, about the new endeavours that the Serendipity Arts Foundation will be undertaking in the near future, and the need for art, kindness, friendship and dialogue in the times of wars, genocides and strained and adversarial political dialogues.

At Serendipity, he says, the aim is to “make access to quality arts available to as many as possible, to experiment and push the boundaries of the arts, to see how we can fold it into our lives, which is why the scope of the festival is across all art forms. We try to make it as experiential as possible.”

“There is a fair degree of messaging in all of the programmes, projects and performances and this is what we believe is what the world needs now and is somewhat missing. Things like kindness and friendship, relationships, families, the impact of separation, because we are seeing a world that is highly strained and getting fractured. The political dialogue across the globe has become strident, very adversarial and is getting very personal. So, we are attempting to see if we can get a platform where more people can come together,” he further adds, “two people together is always better than one, and two people can have a conversation.”

Munjal also mentions BRIJ, a new initiative that Serendipity is launching “as a comprehensive art and culture institution being set up as a physical campus in New Delhi. This will be a unique institution which will focus on all aspect of every art form in one campus, we want it to be an instigator for the kind of emotions and feelings, and to be known among many in the world so that we help build those connections.”

Edited excerpts from an exclusive interview with Sunil Kant Munjal:

Mr Munjal, how do you define art?

I don’t like to define art. It’s not a restrictive term. It is reflective of life. It is as wide as our life is, and it is both learning from life and informing our decision-making all the time. Because if you see successful leaders around the world, they always have the right brain and left brain functioning together. And the arts help us, as does science and technologies and maths, in better decision-making, better understanding of humanity and people’s emotions, and therefore, the ability to be successful at whatever you choose to do and whatever you choose to be.

Could you tell us about the first memory you have with art?

Okay, that’s a very difficult question because this goes back a very, very long way for me. I have both been involved with and very interested in the arts from a pretty young age. I think the first early memories I have is of some very senior significant artists coming and performing in our home. We’ve had Alla Rakha come and perform in our home. We actually had Zakir Hussain visit our home as a little kid along with his father. We had Ravi Shankar come and perform in our home. And we were very, very young at the time.

Post that, I think, the other interesting initiatives that I remember were what I saw in my school. We had a wonderful music school and a great art school. We had some very significant arts teachers. [Painter] Sudhir Khastgir was an art teacher in our school. [Painter] Rathin Maitra was an art teacher in our school. [Ashok] Bhowmick was an art teacher in our school. So those are the early ones that I can remember.

You mentioned Zakir Hussain and we just lost him. What does a personality like Zakir Hussain, and his death, mean for India and for the arts?

Actually, this is a very big loss for me. He was a friend. He was a wonderful individual. Last year at the [SAF] festival, the first opening night performance was actually done by Zakir. And, sadly, exactly one year later, on the night of the 15th [December], when the performance was on, we actually heard that he is in hospital and very, very unwell. And, sadly, the next day, we lost him. He was a very unique individual at a very young age. He used to say that his father said to him, ‘don’t do what I have done, do different things.’ And he said, that drove me to be experimental. His father was a legend, Alla Rakha was one of the best we’ve ever had. Zakir, from a very young age, started experimenting, going beyond the norms of what the traditional typical tabla performance was. He also experimented with combination of different music. His tie-up with [guitarist John] McLaughlin, et al, is very, very legendary. His ability to replicate other instruments on the tabla itself was unique.

I remember, many years ago, when we launched a new model of the motorcycle, and one of them became one of the largest selling motorcycles, we subsequently invited him (Zakir) to do a performance called Drums of India and he played the sound of a motorcycle starting off on the tabla. He was a very fascinating individual. As for his coming to SAF last year, I met him in London at some public event and said, Zakir bhai, you have to come for the festival. It took him two minutes [to agree].

His death is a big, big loss, not just for the art world, not just for the music world, not just for India, not just for any of us, but for the world. He was truly special.

But at the same time, life has a circularity to it. The day before that, December 14, was also the celebration of the centenary of Raj Kapoor. Raj Kapoor was a true complete entertainer who took Indian entertainment global. His name, his brand, his songs used to be played in all across Eastern Europe, in Russia, in Afghanistan, in South America, in Japan. We have all of the flavours of life at one time, at one place. Which is why it is important that the Serendipity Arts Festival continues to focus on celebrating life, questioning ourselves and also giving out the message of better behaviour of ourselves and questioning our own role and our civic responsibility.

So, art must respond to the social and political rifts in the world?

Arts must reflect everything. Actually, arts, in many ways, is a complete comprehension of civilisation and society.

The business community sort of forms a bridge between the political class and the artists by funding and fostering the arts. Are there budgetary allocations for the arts and artists in the real sense?

There are budgets for the artists. There’s a department of Arts and Culture. There are many institutions which are owned or run by the government and many private institutions that are also supported by budgets from the government.

How do artists keep making art in times of wars and genocides in the world right now?

The artists have a unique perspective which they convey through their art. And you’d see two things happening with the arts. One is artists will reflect what they see, the good and the bad in society, which you see in their works. Second, many artists tend to influence what happens in society as well through their work. And we have seen this, right through history. For hundreds of years, this has been happening. The artists being almost recorders of history and also impacting society in many different ways. And so is the case even today. I would not say that artists are not affected by the wars. I think they are. Some of that gets reflected in their work, which is why it is important. Today’s world, which is getting fractured, is pulling apart, many more arguments are happening today, countries have skirmishes, countries are at actual wars. The global geopolitics itself have become strained. Conversations are pulling away and trade wars are going on. I think the world needs a balm, it needs some recipe which will help us reduce the tension and bring us closer.

Which is why we have launched this platform called the Serendipity Exchange for Arts (SEA) to, at least, get the artistic community across the globe together on a platform to interact with each other, to exchange ideas, to share research, to do residencies together. If nothing else, just to become friends. Because, I think, that’s what we need more and more of in the world today.

This is the ninth edition of Serendipity Arts Festival. What triggered you to start this festival in 2016? How is it bigger and better this year?

There was no one trigger to start this festival. We have been involved and engaged in the arts for quite a while. When we set up this foundation, as I said, we had set up one 25 years ago in Ludhiana and that only pertained the performing arts. We, as a family, had moved to Delhi. So many of my friends used to keep asking, why don’t you do those events and programmes in Delhi? And my view was that Delhi is a big city. It has theatre and all kinds of performing arts and visual arts and everything else available. But when we looked around, we actually found there were missing pieces. Access to the arts was highly limited. There are a large number of people who cannot access the arts, cannot go to art shows, cannot go to theatres, etc. So, one of the objectives was to make access easier to quality art. Second was to make art more engaging, make it more experiential, which is why this festival comes with workshops and conferences, not just the ability to see but the ability to actually engage and interact with the art and artists. So, that makes it a truly experiential festival. And that was part of the trigger.

And you’re right, the festival, over a period of time, has got bigger and better every year. Actually, it’s not just this year. The distinction is not between only last year and this year. We’ve grown the scale of the festival, but we’ve also grown the quality of the festival. We have much more international presence, we have much more engagement with those who are normally excluded. So, it’s also a very inclusive festival. It’s a highly accessible festival.

The government of Goa has been a great partner of ours, giving us all of these facilitations. And many of the heritage buildings that we use actually belong to the government. So, it’s not only the government. Goa is a partner; the people of Goa have become a partner. In fact, they own this festival. It is there’s, it’s become a people’s festival. In some sense, the objective is to reach out to communities and create an ability for them to both enjoy, interact with and learn from the arts.

Can you give some example how the community is involved in this festival?

So you will find many of the initiatives here are Goan or Konkan, whether it’s the food in the Art Park, whether it’s some of the stuff you see in some of the handcrafted things being made available in The Alley or in Children’s Park. So many of the people in Goa actually wait for this festival and time themselves or their outings or holidays so that they are available and to participate in the festival. And the festival, by the way, while it happens only for eight or nine days for the general public, for the local communities, we have many initiatives that take place much before the festival. We have something called Serendipity Out and About that goes on for a few months before the festival. We work with over 200 of the local government schools and, this year, we’ve also added private schools. We also work with the orphanages, we work with the care homes for the elderly. We have tried to ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities. So, this truly is very much a part of people’s lives.

SAF goes to Birmingham next year, in its 10th edition. Will the Goan festival continue and why Birmingham in particular?

Very much so. Goa is, in a sense, the home of the Serendipity Arts Festival.

The idea was to go beyond where we are right now, because the response has been absolutely phenomenal, both from the local community, as I said, people from outside of Goa, but also people from across the world. We have a number of countries that have been requesting us to come in and bring the festival there and the UK, clearly, is one of our preferred locations because of familiarity, of culture, and the travel many of us already do because of the connections we have of family and friends in that place. We had planned to do this in London, when lots of friends said, you cannot do an Indian festival only in London if you’re in the UK, you have to go to other cities where you have large Asian and South Asian communities. So, that’s how Birmingham came about. And also because of the local partners that we got, the Birmingham City University and British Council are partners of ours. A number of institutions in the UK have agreed to and offered to work with us.

Is the Serendipity Arts Foundation also restoring these old heritage buildings of Goa every year where it hosts the exhibitions and events?

So, yeah, it’s not our role, it’s not our place. But when we saw the facilities here, some of the heritage buildings are wonderful, look at the architecture…stunning. But because some of these are not being used actively or some are only partially used…anything that is not used is going to degrade and depreciate. So, we offered that we will help do a restoration in some of these. We have done it in a number of heritage buildings, which have been restored by our teams. I think we’ve done six of the heritage buildings here now and some of these you can actually see when you go around the festival.

And it’s a delight to see our heritage coming alive. That’s one of the lessons and learnings from the festival that let’s not forget our past, and learn from the past while also focusing on the future.

What kind of budget goes into putting together a festival of this scale?

I’m not revealing any numbers.

There is an AI Mini Lab this year at SAF, and artists have blend physical art with Artificial Intelligence (AI). But is there a real fear in the art community pertaining to AI?

So, every phase of technology as it comes in right from the steam engine or the horse-driven car, each of them was seen as a technological change, by the way. It always creates excitement, anticipation and apprehension; all of them coming together. If you remember 20-30 years ago, there was this big fear that there will be a computer in my office and I’m going to lose my job. Many computers came, technology came, people did not only not lose their jobs. They actually found this as a tool to be much more productive. Of course, we have to reskill ourselves. I believe the same thing will happen now.

Clearly, the changes will be much more dramatic because it’s not only AI, it’s Generative AI, which, in a sense, almost has a mind of its own. That’s what the whole thing is about. By the way, you’re sitting in a room which has AI-generated stuff going on here right now. So, all these rooms in this row are all AI exhibits. And among many things, in fact, I see this less in the art world than I see in other professions: the fear that technology will take over my job or my role; it is real.

We will have to reskill. Some of the very high-end jobs and some of the very low-end jobs will get automated where machines, technology or robots will take over. But there are many more which will get created. That’s the beauty of technology. It creates a multiplier of higher efficiency and higher productivity, which therefore means many, many more opportunities. Growth in economy, prosperity in jobs. So, both of these will happen together.

Is BRIJ coming up in response to the NMACC (Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre) in Bombay?

I don’t think we’d like to compete with anyone else. The good thing right now in India is that there are many initiatives coming up in the arts, which is wonderful. MAP (Museum of Art & Photography) has set up a new museum in Bangalore. The Science Gallery has come up in Bangalore. Kiran Nadar Museum is coming up in Delhi (by 2027). And the NMACC have done a fantastic job in Mumbai. I hope we get many, many more initiatives. I don’t think anyone is responding to the other. All of them should find ways to work together, partner and collaborate. There is just so much to do. And we have the richest cultural heritage in the world. We all are saluting to that and also trying to build capabilities for the future in our own ways. Our initiative at the BRIJ (in New Delhi, by 2027) is going to be across all art forms to provide everything that is required, to grow each of them, to question each of them, to do research in every one of them. And I hope this will help to propagate the access to the arts much more.