What is obscene about art?
When we have laws against obscenity, then we certainly need courts’ interference. But it’s meaningless to have a law against obscenity. What is obscene to you need not be obscene to me.
MF Hussain is the Indian painter notorious for painting Hindu Gods and Goddesses in the nude. This has, naturally, offended millions of Hindus leading to several court cases against him in India. Fearing Hindus, he has fled to and settled in Dubai. The High Court rightly decided in this case that Hussain’s paintings are not obscene. Indeed, Hussain claims that nudity in his paintings depict purity.
The testing point for our purpose is not the intention of the artist, or freedom of expression. While the former ought to be irrelevant, freedom of expression should be absolute except for propagation of hatred or violence. The point is, why modern Hindus are so tetchy when it comes to Hinduism. Offended by nude imagery, offended by names of characters in the lesbian film “Fire” being Sita and Radha, and by a number of other trivial matters.
Are we offended so easily today because of our turbulent history? Where Muslims marauded our temples and defaced our sculptures, where the British considered our timeless civilization barbaric and outlawed many practices? Is it history that has upped our guard? In which case, considering we are a free country once again, we can allow freedom and tolerance to flourish again. As we did in ancient India, where the freedom of artistic expression was superior to modern times anywhere in the world considering the pictures below.
Or are we offended because we have imported western Victorian prudery into our ethos?
Either way, when many of us talk of the purity of ancient times, one of the least things we can do is to allow freedom of artistic expression and try a new perspective to view things that might otherwise offend us. What say?
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Comments
Well, let art be for art’s sake, if the recent paintings have depicted any problem, then so be it. lets also understand that in a country like ours its also the freedom of speech that is important, and with the media around, it makes the job of the people easy, but on a personal note, there is nothing wrong with art, nudity is art is always pure art, we need to evolve and that would take some years as we are predominantly not used to nudity as art culturally!!!! but then this from a country that gave us the Kamasutra and Paintings of Lord in unusual fashion gives me jitters
[...] previously argued advocating absolute freedom of expression in art. But when religious imagery is used to convey a social message, responsibility is important to [...]