1

Taboos and Transgressions : Cultures at Crossroads

Gulammohammed Sheikh

J.ci.V.'/ (¢d.d ~ '1 . . 6-d The image of Indian art has remained more or less unchanged ever smce observers m the G~.>~ k.h~'~o nineteenth century began to articulate their responses. Its religious ardour and an

obsessive sense of the erotic appeared to them the driving forces in the process of image- 'a9.. making in traditional India. 'Pagan' -looking icons aroused a puritanical aversion

towards the heathen, and the explicit sexuality of the sculptural imagery seem to have outraged Victorian,._ votaries of moral decency-both among the British and the newly- educated Indian elite.The emergent nation-state after the transfer of power from the East

India Company to the British government produced the concept of a 'mainstream' culture

(in tune with prevalent notions of a national weltenschauung)-marginalising the 3~ ,,multiplicity "" of diverse cultural practici s. With an agenda of creating a new class of Indians ('Indian in colour and race but British in taste and manners'),the newly c established art schools in the 1850s introduced academic realism a Ia the Royal Academy

as the~isuallingua franca (around the period when artists in France rebelled against their

variant of the same) and sought to introduce a mode of representation free of religious,

erotic and political conte5.Isolating and priveleging "decorative' motifs from the figural

imagery of traditional art the system successfully left the 'offensive' icons of the heathen

out, f simultaneously dividing art and craft in a hierarchical order. Nudity was permitted

so long as it encouraged scientific enquiries , thus converting a nude 'life study' model

into a still life object. (Colonial powers often strike at sex to curb the potency of the 2

subject race.) Ironically this non-sectarian, a-political and de-sexualised model of art

education--successfully replicated for use on a pan-Indian basis- has been conveyed

through the years of independence.

The twin legacies of art school art figured in different cultural constituencies. One stream

produced an art for mass consumption combining desires of a vast majority of growing

1• , • , ,.,., , , middle class with the morals of puritan Victoriana. A recipe of clothing gods, goddesses 1 1 I I ('cv a<.:'' r· I--... • • •r r • I) and mythical beings in theatric costumes offered fto solve the question of an acceptable 1 • < rl, r• ·- . :, ,.. ~ c- t; c..., • representation of the religious and the sexual , while it simultaneously mooted a political ~~O~r ~ ' jt_ r; .~ motive of cultural nationalism. The subsequent industry of popular ephemera, vastly

aided by the growth of Hindi cinema culture added volatile, even bizarre to insinuate the . ~:-.;~rotic through subterfuge ofgarme~ . It also sold the religious in different guise~jd political expression proliferated in the making of mega-hoardings and cut ~~~ The art school circuit on the other hand continued with its vapid exercis~t until the winds of

modernism began to blow through its citadels. Representation of sexuality appeared as a

form of protest against taboos (rather than a celebration as was the case with traditional l'l. practices). Painter .F.N Souza was expelled from the art school for making a nude self-

portrait in the late forties. But apart from a litigation about obscenity in late fifties four

decades of independence however escaped the ire of the moral police despite far more

explicit erotica displayed in the work of Souza,Laxma Goud etc. Even a striking image

of Ganesha full of transgressive attributes failed to arouse moral or sectarian indignation I when displayed in a public gallery in 197~ The near-absence of religious content in art

had the simultaneous effect ofleaving the numerically small community of urban modem 3

artists out of the sectarian divide.In fact the community appeared like an extended family

in which every one knew each other. The political content in art remained somewhat

limited-even the seismic events of the Partition are portrayed only in stray instances.

The situation however has changed substantially since the eighties. With the beginning of

the process of economic liberalisation, the subsequent entry of international auction

houses and growth of a domestic art market, a middle class curiosity was aroused by

media reports in the rising prices of modem art.This has corresponded with the rise and

ascensionr to power ofthe ultra-right forces ofmajoritarian denomination with its agenda

/ • #J-1" of cultural nationalism. Is it incidental then that a gun-toting Durga image of Arpita .. , J . .,. ("' 1 1 ~~ "' /'~ · !>' · , Singh-with its veiled political hint-- reproduced in a popular Bengali journal aroused r'/-"' \Lf angry protests? Or that a private gallery in Bombay thought it prudent to show Bhupen

Khakhar's 'Two Men in Benares' and ' Yayati' only to select viewers and that the room

displaying his 'Man with Five Penises' in a joint show of Dutch and Indian artists at the )$" National Gallery of Modem Art was closed midway and that a painting by a Dutch artist

with an 'offensive' graffitto was attacked and later removed from the same show? The

example of M.F.Husain, far more striking . It is no exaggeration to say that no other "{l_!. modem Indian painter has risked a direct dialogue with the majority middle class culture

as MF Husain has sought. He has painted images of political leaders like Indira Gandhi as

goddess Durga during the Emergency between 1975-77, represented cinema idols like I actress Madhuri Dixit as archetypal Indian womanhoo~~ The constant use of religious

myths and themes drawn from various traditions, chiefly from the Hindu pantheon are

' indicative of his other concerns. His upfront media-hyped image has given him the status

of a star, thus making the middle class recognise in his persona the presence of modem 4

art ..Husain ' s example shows how difficult it is to carry the freedom of transgressive

exercises that modem art promises into the tricky terrain of the middle class taste,

especially. when Its . proJection . . IS . t hroug h a me dIa-. hype fi'". HIS. pu bl.IC pettormance~ o f

painting and then effacing images of goddesses in the presence of an audience-

invoking the practice of ritual immersion of sacred effigies-(Traditionally effigies of I/ Durga and Ganesha and floats of Tazias are ritually immersed at the end of the

festiv1:1.--invited a criticism even from amongst his fellow arti!! They seemed to

question whether he would repeat the performance using sacred images of the religion he

belonged to. In the largely secular practice of modem art in India, this was perhaps the

first instance of an artist being identified by his religion! Later the assault came in the ~ form of an allegation of his having painted goddess Saraswati in the nude (albeit in a

drawing made twenty years ago) and the subsequent burning of his pictures in an

exhibition in Ahmedabad, litigations for blasphemy and worse, for inciting communal

violence and a general outcry against a so-called licentious use of the freedom of

expression.

The controversy brought to the fore questions of whether an artist belonging to one ~I community could take the liberty of interpreting the religious imagery of the other. Many

wondered whether it was by default or design that far more 'offensive'/ subversive

portrayals of divinities by the artists who belonged to the majority community escaped

the ire of the fundamentalist forces. (By contrast, the ban on Rushdie's book comes from

the community he belonged to).This can be answered by asking another question: could

the Ganesha image shown earlier be displayed in the same gallery in Bombay (nay,

Mumbai) today? Importantly, the Husain episode is not a stray incident of a single 5

painting or a painter as it appears from distance (or as it appeared to the editors of the

APT catalogue who attributed such a view to me despite my protestations) but involves

issues much larger than individual transgressions. It indeed foregrounds a clash of

minority and majority cultures not only in sectarian terms but also in opinion. That it is

equally a collision of the elite modern in art with the popular mass culture of the middle

class. In other words, the issue focusses upon an urgency to inquiry: could traditions and

-.I 1 \Vl ., .f ) ll . h . b 'd d f . . h f . ? ~~ " . cu tures o co ecttve entage e cons1 ere a part o propnetary ng t o a commumty . I J ..,;,, ·, p' . I. ~· ~ •• I' . ' . I I n• 1 ,, <.;', ~"~ ,,.JPyw./ .,,,,. ~, ir } -Vf' (" J ·•l- J l• li. fll ' I (1' ~- I v 11/'1' r c P These questions are embodied in the work ofRummana Husain (who sadly passed away ' I I /r \f\··r )JI I• ro-,." ··. . .•• before the exhibition opened), Ravinder Reddy and Atul Dodiya (unfortunately not I' ,..,. ~ c, I represented in the present selection) who have dived headlong in their interaction with

popular majoritarian cultures.The portents for future foretell stories of unprecedented

challenges.The effects of such portents are felt as far as the present venue of our ..... conference. The Queensland Art Gallery, I am told, took a 'policy decision ' to exclude

even a tiny reproduction of the Husain drawing of Saraswati in the margins of our joint

introduction to the South Asia section of the APT catalogue.