India, March 8 -- There are moments in history when art steps quietly out of the studio and into the making of a nation. In 1938, in the village of Haripura in Gujarat, such a moment unfolded when Mahatma Gandhi invited artist Nandalal Bose to visually shape the environment of the Indian National Congress session.

The result was the now iconic Haripura Panels - luminous images of farmers, potters, musicians, craftsmen and women at work. They were not portraits of heroes in marble but of ordinary people whose labour, dignity and rhythm of life seemed to embody the moral centre of the freedom movement.

Nearly nine decades later, the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Mumbai returns to this moment with a major exhibition, 'Colours of...