HVK Archives: Husain's goddesses and social contract
Husain's goddesses and social contract - The Observer
P P Bala Chandran
()
May 6, 1998
Title: Husain's goddesses and social contract
Author: P P Bala Chandran
Publication: The Observer
Date: May 6, 1998
Husain thrives as much in other people's intolerance as in his
genius to generate such intolerance.
Long before Jean Jacques Rousseau gave it a name, humanity had
entered into a social contract within itself for the general well-
being and peaceful coexistence of its members: the abiding spirit
of the contract being 'give and take' so that we all survive.
That was the beginning of the state.
Under the contract, the members of the community forsake certain
individual rights to partake of certain collective privileges,
the prime privilege being the survival of the community. The
terms of the contract applied equally to the artists among the
hunters and the hunters among the artists.
In the distant age, it was easier to identify the rights to give
up and the privileges to expect, because there were few humans
and fewer issues to arbiter. He among the humans with artistic
inclination drew his gods and goddesses without making any
special effort to disrobe them, primarily because there was no
robe to disrobe: and also perhaps, it didn't get him any extra
bone for the dinner.
The artist who disrobed the gods did not get stoned or lanced,
either, by his neighbouring caveman, primarily because the
neighbour had more pressing things to do, but also because there
was no 'your god' or 'my god' but only 'our god' between the two.
Then we became 'civilised' and got our separate gods. The social
contract was suitably amended to include a few more dos and
don'ts like 'you don't molest my god' and 'I don't molest yours',
etc.
Even the amended version of the contract was meant to be applied
equally to those who must disrobe other people's gods as a matter
of habit and m the name of freedom and also those who kill or
burn for their gods' textiles, again as a matter of habit and in
the name of faith.
And yet, there were occasions when the contract was respected
more in breach, when the votaries of the freedom of expression
(read the right to disrobe other people's gods) clashed with the
votaries of faith (read the right to kill or destroy those who
disrobe their gods). And whenever it happened, the streets were
filled not with disrobed gods and goddesses, but with dismembered
men and women, each such occasion thus making an extra layer of
argument in favour of upholding the social contract.
If this is an undying legacy born with the civilisation, this is
an undying debate too - freedom versus faith. Whether a certain
individual or individuals gifted with certain uncommon talents
such as painting (things the majority of ordinary folks are not
gifted with or cannot afford) can function outside the provisions
of the social contract: whether they can seek immunity from the
provisions of the contract in the name of their special gifts. In
other words, whether there should be two classes of citizens in
the same society, one with special gifts who can flout the
contractual obligations of the society and the other, the citizen
class, with no special gifts and therefore no special rights,
including the right to defend his faith without being branded a
communalist.
Nobody is barbarian enough to suggest that the right to defend
one's faith should, extend to pathological or incendiary levels.
That belongs to the realm of insanity which we will come to in a
moment.
The debate, in this context, is whether Maqbul Fida Husain, a
highly successful artist, whose cult status among the gallery
files and millionaire housewives went up with each million he
earned at the auction centres, has the artistic freedom to paint
Hindu icons in the nude.
The question is academic and so must the answer. And the academic
answer is that he does have the artistic right to paint anybody
he can get inspired by god, human or the holy ghost: and he can
paint it in any way he likes.
But unfortunately, things are often not as black and white as the
answer seems. Because as John Donne said no man is an island. M F
Husain and his company of connoisseurs are not alone in this
country. India is not just a few cocoons of sanitised men and
women: it also has millions of unlettered, unwashed people who go
barefoot out of necessity and not, like Husain, out of fad: who
cannot understand, much less afford to buy, Husain's horses and
maidens. They are people who can, nevertheless, get hurt when
their favourite gods are undressed by someone who, they are told,
is doing so out of reverence for the same gods.
Undress someone you revere! That is a logic they don't
understand, like they don't understand why a man who earns
millions, who drapes himself In the finest of linen, who is so
careful about his hair and beard, should go barefoot. To feel the
pulse of the earth he walks? But then he only walks on the
marbled slabs of galleries and auction centres.
There is another logic, equally weird, that they don't
understand. They are told by the same sanitised men and women
that Husain had drawn, in the past, their favourite gods and
goddesses in clothes (thank you) and therefore he had the right,
as a flavour in return, to disrobe them this time - like a hero
who saves a damsel in distress and then asking her to undress for
him, by way of saying thank you, perhaps.
We are told by the same ladies and gentlemen that hi a country
that inherited Kamasutra and the erotica of Ajanta and Khajuraho
there is no need to feel offended by Husain's nude Saraswati or
Sita. But then, ladies and gentlemen, Ajanta and Khajuraho
happened a thousand years ago when the social fibre was not as
tenuous as it is now, when communal virus had not eaten into the
vitals of the society as now, when nobody talked about 'my god'
and our god but only about 'our god': and, not to forget, when
an artist's worth was not measured in terms of money.
It is either hypocrisy and cowardice or downright ignorance that
begets such logic: the kind that we saw when a Mumbai journalist
called Gandhiji a bania bastard during a television interview.
The programme was taken off the air and the journalist
ostracised. Not a squeak of protest from any of these so-called
liberal intellectuals. One kind of freedom of expression for
Husain, another kind for the unglamorous journalist?
Now to come to the lunatic fringe. The vandals who destroyed the
paintings in retaliation are no different from the Nazis who beat
up one another's Jews. The only way to deal with them is to
either treat them as patients or lock them up as criminals.
Unfortunately, M F Husain cannot be accorded the same treatment.
Because he enjoyed the licentious immunity of an artist, who
thrives as much in other people's intolerance as in his own
genius to generate such intolerance.
But remember, if your faith cannot survive a collision with
heresy it is not worth many regrets. Hinduism has been hit by
million of heretic meteorites which could only dig up craters as
shallow as Husain's paintings.
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