“India almost got the assignment better than any other,” Karan Johar mused to WWD the day after his Met Gala debut. The Bollywood filmmaker spent Monday evening on the Metropolitan Museum’s steps in a dramatic Manish Malhotra creation drawn from Indian classical paintings. Also on the red carpet: a reigning maharaja and three women from India’s biggest business families. The Indian contingent’s looks read as a direct celebration of craft and art — ones that read “Fashion Is Art” most literally. If Johar gave the night its verdict, his designer gave it its thesis. “When I heard fashion is art, the first word that came to my mind was artisans,” Manish Malhotra told WWD. “It was the right place to give credit to the people who work behind all of it.” It was the line the rest of the Indian contingent’s looks would also argue. Designer Manish Malhotra wearing a cape featuring sculptural figurines of artisans he has worked with for decades.…