Shekhawati Region

¤ The Picturesque Beauty of Shekhawati Region

Shekhawati is simply beautiful. Every street, house and wall has the stamp of an artist's imagination in paint. Wherever you cast an eye, frescoes smile back. The plethora of these murals comes rather as a surprise in a land which is traditionally known as an 'impoverished corner of an arid land'. But then the whole of Rajasthan, which is partly sandy and partly rugged and blessed only in a few places with a lake or a patch of green, is an exercise in colour. Colour which is the everyday life of the people. Colour which the people live in to counter that of the semi-arid scrub. Colour that people give to their surroundings… You just have to visit Shekhawati to believe what a riot colour and imagination can create together, the Shekhawati which is Rajasthan's very own Open Air Art Gallery.


¤ Shekhawati Lists on Tourist Itinerary

In spite of being this exotic visual treat, Shekhawati, for some strange reason, did not figure in the tourist itinerary until the early 80s. Important guide books like Eustace Reyolds-Ball’s The Tourist’s India (1907) and Nagel’s more ambitious India: Encyclopaedia-Guide (1977) conveniently left out this paradise of paintings. It was only after Francis Wacziarg’s and Aman Nath’s discovery that Shekhawati began to be taken seriously. Wacziarg is a French businessman and an Indophile, while his friend Aman Nath a writer and graphic designer. In their peregrinations through the country, the two young men had stumbled upon the Shekhawati frescoes and decided to expose them in a photographic essay, The Painted Walls of Shekhawati (1982). It was only after that Shekhawati began getting the attention it so much deserves.


¤ Formation of The Region

Shekhawati is a blanket name to describe the three districts of Churu, Jhunjhunu and Sikar, the mural rich areas. The name derives from Rao Shekha, a member of the Kachhawaha family of Rajputs who ruled Jaipur for centuries. In the 15th century, Shekha conquered a considerable territory in this northeastern part of Rajasthan. This, retained and extended by his heirs, the Shekhawats, came to be known as Shekhawati, literally the 'Garden of Shekha'. The region came under the purview of the larger Jaipur State. The allegiance, however, was not always a peaceful arrangement, and the later generations fought against their cousins to break away.


¤ Main Attractions

Shekhawati has the greatest concentration of painted forts, chhatris (cenotaphs), temples and havelis (mansions) in the country. In fact, this is also the largest collection of murals in the whole world. The earlier frescoes in this colourful fantasy world were financed by the Shekhawat Rajputs and later the wealthy business class of the Marwar region – the marwaris – patronized the art. Apart from adding vitality to the flat landscape, the frescoes are an interesting documentation of the history of the region. Some of the flourishing towns were Sikar, Ramgarh, Fatehpur, Lachhmangarh, Churu, Mandawa, Jhunjhunu, Nawalgarh and others. Although the idea of frescoes might have been imported from the splendid Fort-Palace of Amber, which was in turn influenced by those of the Mughal courts, it reached a completely new form in the hands of the artists of Shekhawati, where the west fuses with the east and mythology is at peace with cars, aeroplanes and balloons.

After the reign of Rajputs, came the British. The latter patronized their own kind of trade which required the marwaris to rush to fresh pastures like Calcutta and Bombay. Thus the beautiful Shekhawati towns gradually came to be abandoned. It is only in the last two decades that the Shekhawati region acquired a fillip, with its art being the central focus. and the children of the house of Shekha are now back, opening their dusty family castles and turning them into hotels.