Whither creative freedom?
MITA KAPUR
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The recent uproar over the paintings of eminent artist M.F. Husain and student Chandramohan only reaffirm that answers must be sought not by judgemental, political and religious sentiments, but by debate and discourse.
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Photo: PTI
An atmosphere of constraint: A protest against moral policing.
WHAT would have passed off as a quiet art show for internal assessment by a post-graduate student, Chandramohan, of M.S. University, Vadodara, has exploded like a minefield. A debate over art, what it should be and what it shouldn’t be has emer
ged, which is healthy since it’s a sign that democracy is a living process in our country and is not just about following a manual of instructions.
What has also emerged is that we are replaying colonisation in a revival of Victorian Puritanism, which the British happily left behind, as some self-righteous moralists have taken it upon themselves to protect the moral fabric of our society.
The student’s work showed Hindu icons, which were labelled ‘obscene’ and ‘offensive’ to public religious sentiments. We are back to the basics again. Art may be good or bad, right or wrong, the artist has the right to express him/herself and you have the right to see or not to see it. Art makes us transcend barriers. It shakes us from our habituated conformities to sit up, take notice, think out of the box –— it makes us grow by outraging us. At least all meaningful art does that. If art was only meant to comfort, its purpose would be lost.
Poisonous process
Artistic freedom and its expression can’t be violated. A painting can’t be taken off the wall nor can an artist be put behind bars for his artistic expression. Let culture contest culture, let artistic freedom not be suppressed because there comes a point and it comes soon enough, that any such interference with freedom of arts becomes an attack on the life of a society. If we kill the right of creative expression by an individual, we begin a slow poisonous process of annihilating that individual, it’s like miming capital punishment.
Physical attacks and arrests are not only despicable but also equally morally and legally questionable. Who appointed the so-called cultural police? What degree or qualification do they have to do what they did? Couldn’t they have resorted to the simple old-fashioned way of talking to the artist and the teacher in charge?
Yes, we can debate over it; we have the right to protest if we don’t appreciate it but for that right to be put to constructive use, the way of telling must rise over violence to enable that very protest to become an answer in itself. That is the true liberal spirit of democracy. When the British banned Sharat Chandra’s Pather Dabi for its revolutionary views, he wrote an open letter to Tagore expressing the need, not for violent reactions, but for initiating a discussi
on: “Don’t kill the ideas, let people decide whether they like those ideas…”
Artistic expression is individualistic; it seeks to disturb the monotony of type, slavery of custom and tyranny of habit. But it is also relative. Hindu activists overwhelmingly supported “The Face of Terror”, Kailash Tiwari’s exhibition at the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, because it featured Muslims as terrorists. The hypocrisy embitters most of us because, in the past, Tiwari led protests against Husain’s depiction of Hindu gods and goddesses. What ever happened to mutual respect, decency and the enormous sense of responsibility that should come with such freedom?
Art cannot be a propagandist’s tool. There has to be a clear line separating the two precincts.
If the students of the Art Faculty of M.S. University put up an exhibition of ‘Erotica in Indian Art’ as a silent protest, they were doing the right thing. By tracing the presence of the erotic through Lajja-gouris of El
lora, images of Khajuraho, Ragamala paintings from Rajasthan, they were stating the obvious: that the sensuous was inextricably interlinked with the austere and contemplative part of Hindu world view. Shutting down this exhibition added to the injustice. Perhaps we should then expect those hegemonistic and right wing fascists to destroy Khajuraho and Ellora as well.
Politics and art
Where does this lead ‘Art’? Are we not politicising it? Or is Art always and already political? “All of us crying war but we should also see that parameters are drawn so that it doesn’t happen again. What are ‘we’ going to do about it? This is a platform for advocacy, not activism. I do condemn the act but I also feel that when people are using sacred icons, some thought and sensitivity should be there. I’m not saying show copulating couples on the road in the name of artistic license; a limit has to be there within a civil society. I support Husain completely,” said Dr. Alka Pande, Consultant Arts Advisor and Curator, Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre.
There seems to be an unhealthy and virulent pattern of vandalising artistic expression. Have not Anand Patwardhan, Sheba Chhachhi, Surendran Nair and a few others suffered such attacks?
We could choose whether we wanted to read Satanic Verses or not, the fatwa on Rushdie was only another euphemism of religious fundamentalism suffocating an artist’s right to create. M.F. Husain has been systematically harassed
by the so-called cultural police. This inverted morality pops its ugly head up like a fake formula. We saw it with the Gere-Shetty blow up too. If this continues, we can see the birth of yet another minority: of artists. Because these are not just attacks on individuals, these are selective attacks on Humanism, Liberalism, Rationalism, Secularism….
“Let the public critique the art, not the police,” Dr Pande stressed.
“Why is the whole philosophy of tolerance missing, within art and outside? Why can’t it escalate along with the auctions and the money? In a democracy, public involvement is a must. The need for a pro-active movement has arisen, this hysteria will give rise to a kind of maturity,” said Saba Hasan, an artist.
Space for discourse
Art is not meant to just look charming over your sofa, it is a space for debate and discourse for presenting philosophies, taking them forward, ensuring cultural exchange and evolution. There will be voices of dissent, there is no right or wrong. Artists making powerful work can’t be banned. The need is to engage in a debate to resolve cultural conflicts.
“Artistic license doesn’t mean you hurt people, but you also don’t suppress ideas,” said Saba, “we have to move into zones of coalitions to discuss our work, we should be answerable to ourselves and in the larger arena. Right now, either it’s violent or there is none at all; there is no sustained engagement or questioning.”
While artist Subodh Gupta supported freedom of expression, he emphasised, “As an artist he’s free to do anything. If it was wrong, it was an exam and only his teacher had the right of access to his work. A school is a place of learning, an artist experiments and grows, tries to go beyond what he has learnt. ‘They’ need to be arrested, not the artist. It’s your mind’s doing, where do you see nudity in the female form in Husain’s abstract lines?”
Move through the history of mankind, you find that an artist is always an outsider, a non-conformist, a rebel. He forces society to look at itself and come to terms with its thoughts. People are scared of facing such thoughts, and this kind of mass lynching of the artist is an effort to purge themselves of all such disconcerting sub-conscious processes. We hate most in other people what we recognise as hateful in ourselves, it scares us and we attack the creator.
Art should have the power to affect and challenge our usual modes of experience. We also need to understand that sometimes we are shocked by the unfamiliar and the cure may lie in greater exposure and newer experience. In 1999, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, faced closure because of British artist Chris Ofili’s painting had people throwing elephant dung at a picture of Virgin Mary and it was written off as “sick stuff”. The closure was called “totalitarian and fascistic” by the artist.
A constant discourse is essential, answers must be continually sought but not by judgemental, political and religious sentiments.
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