Inside the just-opened art district at the Mandu Festival, the bristles of local artist Rajendra Yadav’s brush swiftly enveloped a wooden panel with the intricate patterns of Gond art. “For our tribal community, painting is a celebration of life,” says Yadav, whose works at the festival’s art district pointed to a changing direction in tourism strategy for Madhya Pradesh.
For a society reeling from the catastrophic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, rewriting of programming by the Mandu Festival to include a tribal art that celebrates life provided the much-needed relief. “This edition of the festival is a…