1
Taboos and Transgressions
Gulammohammed Sheikh
In the land of Khajuraho and Konarak with explicit portrayals of the sexual act on temple ,t~w.tJu 2z~lt6u~ walls one would assume the prevalence of few sexual taboos. The image of the travel posters however can be misleading. The nature of sexual mores can be gauged by the curious fact that while incendiary pelvic contortions, quite unabashed in their
exhibitionisH~ s: of da~ sequences in popular movies and television, kissing on screen or in pub1ic is forbidden. It is difficult to say whether there were no taboos in ~k.Ms h..., the times of Khajuraho~Judging~y the visual portrayal, depiction of sexual play with b ~, animals, metaphoric or real was accepted, as was orgiastic sex with multiple partners; the seeming absence of homosexuality is intriguing. For that matter a highly sophisticated 'mainstream' tradition of art that remained reticent towards 'realism' and largely excluded/avoided representation of conflicts, war or murder, dissent, even aging and individualised portraiture, in any direct way, obviously functioned within a circuit of taboos and prohibitions. And if it did portray these, their absence in the studies of Indian art adds to the matter yet another layer of taboos. Of the social taboos, the most crucial were the caste taboos. So strictly did these regulate social mores that an icon-maker if he happened to be a lowly shudra --as most artists/artisans were (1)- he was forbidden the sight of the image once it was consecrated.
The circumstances of Mughal rule-from 16th century onwards -- that introduced an Asian variant of eclectic realism served to exorcise some of the restrictions cited above. Historical chronicles--in itself a new genre--and mythical tales now began to deal directly with political and sectarian conflicts and portrayed unmitigated physical violence in gory details. The 'Dying Inayat Khan' becomes an embodiment of the rare site of impending death. The Mughal atelier however veiled the portrayal of sexuality under layers of decorum and courtly discretion. Depiction of women became less visible. However, analogous to the legendary apparel of empress Noor Jehan the loving delineation of body 2
now became tantalisingly sensuous under multiple layers of transparent muslin. It is not that explicit portrayals disappeared altogether, the lavish premium the Mughals laid on personal pleasures could not have eliminated delights of erotica. The portrayal of ~ -- •~ Muhammad Shah in sexual act with his favourite courtesan is of rather late origin but it certainly indicates the presence of preceding as well as contemporary chapters.(2) More interesting however is the depiction of scandal of a Qazi' s involvement with a young boy: a painting by Prayag depicts the scene when the king and his courtiers find the two in bed. It is not difficult to see clear undertones of such practices in the portrayals of dressed up youths apparently designed as pin-ups of sorts. Persian poetry and personal memoirs are often free and frank about love between partners of the same sex. So, one way or the other, portrayal of sexuality continued, tacitly or openly, within and without the Mughal 6.-.. ~~ 11 court. But inuendoes apart, the portrayals of males with a flower in hand send signals of a ~=-" kind different from those holding swords. Nazaqat being part of a cultural etiquette, such ~ portrayals seem to mediate between gender divides.
The presence of the erotic in the schools of Rajasthan and the Panjab Hills is too familiar to be reiterated. Most unusual and moving is the tender tale of love between a hermit and a doe (the parents of Rishyashringa who was born horned), portrayed in a Mewar ·~bJMt painting( c.l650) illustrating the myth· of Vibhandaka and recalling the various versions ~ of the pre-Mughal Mirgawat sets. A gay artist could discern the presence of a ;g~~ relationship between the king and his favourite boy in a Mandi picture in the N.C. Mehta collection.(3) Sexual mores apart, representations of violence bring to mind questions M~ f pertaining this genre. The brutal killing of an unfaithful wife in a painting by Gangaram from Bikaner (c.l745) acquires its cutting edge by the sharp twist of stark-almost monochromatic-- realism in the otherwise gently stylised naturalism of the idiom of this qalam. In the bizarre scene of a sexual orgy in a harem where a "brazen couple of moderate ambiguity" engaged in "the devil-may-care freedom of turtledoves"(4) in the presence of a bevy of women and an old aging ruler, a bare-all realism wins the wager against the other-worldiness of the school of Kishengarh. 3
Further south, in the 17th century palace of Mattancheri in Cochin, Lord Shiva's union with Mohini is portrayed in a landscape strewn with coupling animals, while Parvati astride a white Nandi looks away . Considering that Mohini is Lord Vishnu in female \-0 form, assumed to distract and control Shiva's sexual prowess, the story is full of \ ~~'itrMc~ transgressive imponderables. It is probable that the physical iconisation of Ayyappa as the offspring of that union might not be recognised in the north and perhaps would be unwelcome. The magnificent scene of the labour of the four queens of Dasharatha from Ramayana, in the same palace, in majestic postures of giving birth has no parallel in Indian art. (5) Interestingly however, the scene portrays the result of the Putrakameshthi yajna that Dasharatha had performed to beget male progeny as heirs. While most genres of painting stressed male prowess and promiscuity, some continued to depict a sharing of prowess in sexual union as in the temple sculptures referred to earlier. Being on temple walls, portrayal of explicit sex remains in the intriguing and ambivalent territory of the physical and the spiritual, perhaps alternately projected in response to the viewership of the time. Significantly, however many contemporary commentators have privileged the 'spiritual' over the physical. Does that reflect an apriori moral stricture?
The origin of sexual closures and enclosures can be perceived in the Victorian mores introduced in the nineteenth century. The early observers, it seems found a deep religious ardour and an obsessive sense of the erotic as the driving forces behind the process of image-making in traditional India. The '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 pan-Indian 'mainstream' culture (in tune with prevalent notions of a national weltenschauung) marginalising the multiplicity of diverse cultural practices. The art schools established around the 1850s introduced academic realism a Ia the Royal Academy as the visual lingua 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 content. Isolating and priveleging 'decorative' motifs from the figural imagery 4
of traditional art the system successfully marginalised the 'offensive' tcons of the heathen, 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 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. This gave rise to a pretentious morality which, while inducing a censorial suppression instigated titillation of the kind that the contemporary film and electronic media embody and disseminate today. It is tempting to read a metaphor from this attitude, that caused the veritable castration that obliterated the portrayal of genitals, even of animals during the Victorian period. The painters were now at pains to invent poses of animals that concealed their sex.
The twin legacies of art school art figured in different cultural constituencies. One stream produced an art for mass consumption combining the desires of a vast majority of the growing middle class with the morals of puritan Victoriana. A recipe of clothing gods, goddesses and mythical beings in theatric costumes offered to solve the question of an acceptable representation of the religious and the sexual, while it simultaneously mooted the political motive of cultural nationalism. The subsequent industry of popular ephemera, vastly aided by the growth of Hindi cinema culture added volatile, even bizarre imagery to insinuate the erotic through subterfuge of garments. It also sold the religious in different guises. And political expression proliferated in the making of \( mega-hoardings and cut-outs. The art school-circuit on the other hand continued with its 60'\A.c~ vapid exercises 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 \"'JtiJX 'MA ~~~ celebration as was the case with traditional practices). Painter .F.N Souza was expelled I 1979. The virtual absence of religious content in art had the simultaneous effect of leaving the numerically small community of urban modern 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. In the nineteenth century, with the traditional systems in disarray after having lost their patronage, the venue had shifted from the court to the market place. The role of Ravi Varma and his contemporaries in the third quarter of the century is significant, equally, for the process of dismantling the tradition as in building anew by breaking the taboos of rj [L.f .... using the medium of oil and devices of illusionism. The unprecedented popularity he kAxlw\ ~, ~ achieved as an individual professional can be realised through his success in offering a 'realistic' physicalisation of mythic imagery as an alternative to the sexuality conveyed so far through other modes. Being used to the gestalt of investing personal emotions into an otherwise 'incomplete' image,(6) the viewer now inserted all his notions of sexuality into the physicalised imagery. This produced startling results. The oil paintings and oleographs especially of gods and goddesses, that Ravi Varma and his peers produced subsequently, broke all conventions ofthe painted pictures and erased memories of their traditional prototypes from the popular psyche. The breaking of taboos against naturalism affected the creativity of the last miniaturists in a special way. Robbed of patronage and direction, they tried illusionistic means and methods in a souvenier picture-genre of the ethnic tribes and types of India to lure the British and the new Westemised customer. What emerged in the process was symptomatic of their condition. It was typified by the gradual distortion of limbs and at times shrinkage of extremities of the figures they painted - especially hands, the emblems of their manual creativity - perhaps out of fear of the foreshortening they were unable to cope with. The exotic coalesced with vulnerability, even a kind of weakness, to make the genre pictures a saleable commodity among the new and nameless patrons--inscribed with the politics of colonialism. 6 In contrast, the artist of rural India who had evolved a mode of circumventing the authority over the centuries- invented ingenious ways to deal with colonial power shifts. The rural muralist- take the case of the Chandod murals (c.1782) in Gujarat- turned Ravana' s army into .firangi soldiers with rifles in the war scenes of Ramayana. He also continued to make his brazen choices, depicting Hanuman urinating upon a yajna performed by Ravana' s brothers for his victory-to upturn the taboos of elite traditions. The itinerant scroll painter of Bengal, when rendered jobless, in the 1~ century, chose cheap newsprint to paint with quick and sparing washes of water colour, with an eye to hasten production in competition with prints and to save pigment to sell the product cheap. In the process he not only invented a gestalt of blank areas of paper to evoke ambivalent spaces but also turned the rationale of illusionism upside down by using cast shadows on both sides of the contours of the image. Most interestingly, the subtle subversions of the iconography of colonial academicism brought forth images of conflicts - of mores, eastern and western; of scandals that were traditionally barred. Other transgressions like bringing divinities at par with middle class mortals are replete with bawdy humour. In one instance the holy familiy of Shiva seems to be on a picnic like any middle class family outing, another shows him doped, oblivious of his tiger-skin slipping down his waist ! (7) The articulation of the empowerment of woman as icon by bringing the courtesan-housewife and goddess on an axis of equality is outstanding. The question of figuration in Islam that is periodically raised is of complex origin and t1 _a t\CNW. 'l4 import. (8) We are aware of the forms of protests and vandalism of earlier as well as of ~JAGt'\A~o.r- contemporary times. The bigoted owners of a set of Hamzanama (1562-77 A.D. .) folios '-P (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) have irreparably effaced limbs in the depiction of all living images, whereas the Arab illustrations of Maqamat-al-Hariri ((in the Hermitage in St Petersburg) have escaped with an emblematic pictorial slashing of the necks of figures. It would not surprise any one if there are more extreme instances than these. Whereas it is difficult to comment on the bonafides of injunctions in Islamic theology against depiction of living beings, it is equally difficult to understand why great traditions of figurative painting, of both secular and spiritual persuasion (9) practiced in 7 Islamic societies, are being disowned to project an ideology of abstraction represented by calligraphy and architecture alone. These great traditions can be understood as the paintings of the magnificent folios of the Tabriz Mi 'rajnama, the Tahmasp Shahnama, the Siyer-i-Nebi , the Akbarnama etc. or images by Bihzad, Sultan Muhammad, Mir Musawwir, Aqa Miraq, Mir Sayyid Ali, Mehmed Siyeh Qalem and scores of other, mostly Muslim artists commissioned, painted and savoured within an Islamic ambience. Would the injunctions have been as cardinal to those cultures as they are claimed to be today? It seems the phenomenon of strictures is of later, perhaps nineteenth century origin and belongs to orientalist politics. With the onset of Islamic studies in the West, pursuits of colonial societies in defining Islam's identity as opposed to other faiths, and a general amnesia initiated by the writing of new histories have contributed to the forming of stereotypes. Arguably it also springs from the mode of cultural studies based on scientific disciplines - besides political expediencies - that define identities by isolating them, to make them look unique, singular and pure. Art historical ideals also prized an exclusive 'national' and sectarian weltenschauung. Mixed or eclectic traditions and phases were considered 'developing' and purer phases were the fruition, assuming that all _ traditions followed a single mode of evolution and common objectives. This appealed to the colonised populace of emergent nation-states for a 'purer' self-identity under 'nationalist' or sectarian nomenclatures. It is however important to remember, in the context, that these traditional systems- especially eastern- were suspicious of singular ideals of uniqueness, individualism and originality that has guided the 'mainstream' Western view of reading history since the Renaissance. These traditions worked more effectively on systems of continuous overlaps - of the individual/collective, sacred/secular, originality/sharing, unique/common. The fact that Islamic societies from Tunisia to Afghanistan and Azarbaijan to Yemen represent an enormous variety of cultures, underlines the point.(IO) In India some of the most evocative portrayals of religious imagery are made by artists who are not known to be adherents of those faiths. The exploits of a legendary character 8 Hamza, believed to arguably be an uncle of the Prophet, were painted at the court of Akbar by a majority of non-Muslim artists. One of the finest sets of the Bhagavatapurana - extolling the glory of Lord Vishnu - was painted by a Rajasthani Muslim, Sahibdin. The Jaina community, having refrained from a number of manual practices, left the making of their icons and painting of holy texts to the expertise of non-Jainas. Similar examples of such practices are known in other traditions elsewhere. R. Ettinghausen refers to paintings of Christian subjects on the ceihng of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo by resident Arab artists. ( 11) This reinforces the view that commissioning options were based on professional rather than sectarian considerations. It can perhaps be argued that a pervasive sense of the sacred enabled the artist to approach the holy image with a degree of respect if not reverence, whether he belonged to the faith or not. It was culture rather than religion that defined the sacrosanct, and the parameters of adherence and transgression. The response of emperor Akbar, under whose patronage there emerged one of the most inventive schools of plural ethos, when faced with injunctions against the portrayal of living images, is worth recalling. What he said was to the effect that the efforts of artists struggling to breathe life into the painted imagery brought them closer to the mystery of creation and hence to the Creator. Sadly, there are few takers of his advice today. The sacred has become a preserve of the orthodox and the secular is shorn of spirituality. In India, contemporary art has displayed a remarkable candidness - on the sexual and religious front since the seventies in particular. Jogen Chowdhury's Ganesha brings to the fore a repulsive corporeal physicality and sexuality in the traditional image of the god of good fortunes invoked at the beginning of every function, commenting squarely on the makers and users of the idol, rather than the icon itself. Laxma Goud flaunted brazen depiction of genitalia springing from everywhere in vegetal or animal forms - in his vividly rendered etchings. In the past, F.N. Souza had played with highly provocative portrayals of women. Jeram Patel's obsession with phallic forms gave the sexuality of genitalia a cultic stature. Bhupen Khakhar has been explicit in the portrayal of homosexual themes, sometimes interpreting myths like that of Yayati that dealt with a 9 son's offer of his youth to his aging father, to radicalize their meaning. Vivan Sundaram has made bold political statements on events like the demolition of Babri mosque in his recent installations. Nalini Malani brings feminine consciousness to myths and contemporary narratives to construct compelling multiple scenarios. Sets designed for the production ofHeine Mueller's play on the Medea legend engaged political metaphor in the passionate account of the colonisation of the woman. Even the Bahuroopee images ofK.G. Subramanyan are not without transgressive intents. All these and other works that challenge existing taboos have not attracted resistance or critical response from the social or public fora as yet, partly because contemporary art activity - being a minority phenomenon which functions within an exclusive circuit of art schools, galleries and museul')1s has rarely come under the scrutiny of the majority populace. 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 coincided the rise and ascension to power of the ultra-right forces ofmajoritarian denomination with its agenda of cultural nationalism. Is it incidental then that a gun-toting Durga image of Arpita Singh--with its veiled political hint-reproduced in Desh, a popular Bengali journal aroused 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; that the ~0 J.A(M/\ w)\t;; room displaying his 'Man with Five Penises' in a joint show of Dutch and Indian artists ~~\!t b~CI? at the National Gallery of Modem Art in New Delhi was closed midway; and that a ~J ~ painting by a Dutch artist with an 'offensive' graffitto was attacked and later removed T l \A ~ ,. .• }?'fA ~~~ from the same show? The example of M.F.Husain is far more striking . It is no >'2. \ exaggeration to say that no other modem Indian painter has risked a direct dialogue with the majority middle class culture as M.F. 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 actress Madhuri Dixit as archetypal Indian womanhood. The constant use of religious myths and themes drawn from various traditions, chiefly from the Hindu pantheon are indicative of his other concerns. His 10 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 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 through a media-hype. His public performance of painting and then effacing images of goddesses in the presence of an audience--invoking the practice of ritual immersion of sacred effigies (12)-invited criticism even from amongst his fellow artists. 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. In the context of the recent empowerment of fundamentalist forces one wonders if such responses would have occurred in the past. Violent riots had broken out in Kashmir a few years ago over the issue of a figure of the Prophet in a school text book - while reproductions in art books carrying similar imagery, in the pages of Mirajnama, the Khamsa ofNizami etc. were openly on sale in the markets of Delhi and Bombay ! The controversy brought to the fore questions of whether an artist belonging to one 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' portrayals of divinities by the artists who belonged to the majority community escaped the ire of the fundamentalist forces.(13) This can be answered by asking another question: could the Ganesha image cited earlier be displayed in the same gallery in today's Mumbai? And the answer plainly would be in the negative. Importantly, the Husain episode is not a stray incident of a single painting or a painter as it appears at first glance 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 modem in art with the popular mass culture of the middle 11 class. In other words, the issue brings to sharp focus a new urgency to the inquiry: could traditions and cultures of collective heritage be considered a proprietary right of a ?J.t-4°/ community ? These questions are embodied in the work of several artists of the younger ~( generation like Rummana Husain, Ravinder Reddy, Atul Dodiya, Surendran Nair, ~ ~ Sudarshan Shetty and many others besides those already mentioned, who have taken a plunge to interact directly with popular majoritarian cultures. The portents for the future foretell stories of unprecedented challenges. Notes : 1] Researches of Dr. R.N. Mishra and Dr. S. Settar suggest that a large number of artists belonged to shudra caste. See R.N. Mis~ Ancient Artists and Art Activity, Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 1975; S. Settar, Hoysala Temples, Kala Yatra Publications, 1992. 2] Muhammad Shah Making Love by Chitarman c.1720-1730 in Life At Court, Art for India's Rulers ,16t11-19th Centuries, Vishakha N.Desai, Boston, 1986, p. 89,illu. 71. 3] Pahari Miniature Painting in the N C. Mehta Collection, Karl Khandalawala, Ahmedabad, undated, pl. .J. 4] India, Art and Culture, 1300-1900, Stuart Cary Welch, The Metropolitan Mnseum of Art, New York, 1985. P. 372. 5] Compare 'The Hour of Birth' from Assemblies (lvfaqamat) of Al-Hariri, Baghdad, 1237 A.D. Arab Painting, Richard Ettinghausen, Skira, 1977, p.121. Nilima Sheikh has given a markedly feminine dimension in the birth scenes of Shamiana (19%) and other pictures. 6} Most traditional paintings having excluded portrayal of emotions and portrayed faces in profile can be viewed as 'incomplete' until the viewers' gestalt invest their emotions into them and complete the faces. See Gulammohammed Sheikh, The Making of a Visual Language: Thoughts on Mughal Painting, The Journal of Arts and Ideas Nos. 30-31, December 1997, New Delhi. 7] Kalighat Painting, Jyotindra Jain, Mapin, Ahmedabad, 1999. 8} Discussed by T.W. Arnold in Painting in Islam, Dover Publications, N.Y. 1965 and Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art, Yale University Press, 1973 among others. A) Interestingly, graven image and absence of figuration has guided Jewish rather than Islamic cultures. B) Was projection of Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism in the years following second world war a phenomenon related to the Jewish consciousness/strictures? 9] Representation of holy figures including the Prophet with or without a veil can be found in a number of manuscripts including Siyer-i-Nebi (Turkish version of the life and miracles of the Prophet), 1594 AD. reproduced in Topkapi!Manuscripts, ed. and expanded by J.M. Rogers from the original Turkish by Filiz Cagman and Zeren Tanindi, Boston, 1986; Mi 'rajname,Tabriz, c. 1360-70; Jami-al-Tawarikh of Rashid al-Din, Tabriz, c.l330; Ibid, Khawar-Nama of Ibn Husam, Shiraz, c. 1480 reproduced in Persian Painting, Basil Gray, Skira, 1977. 10} The tragic irony of Bosnian identity during the recent ethnic conflict raised the moot question: in the West Bosnians were perceived as 'Muslims' whereas in the East, they were 'Whites'. 12 11] Arab Painting, Richard Ettinghausen, Skira, 1977. 12] Traditionally effigies of Durga and Ganesh and floats of Taziyas are ritually immersed at the end of the festivals. 13] By contrast, the ban on Rushdie's book comes from the community he belonged to.