Indian Interests

[Manishw]

M F Hussein dead! That hater of hindus, the traitor of India, the religious bigot, the descreator of hindu revered figures.The two timing taqqiya bigot is dead. My condolences to the p-secs

[Vikas]

Good riddance. May few more of these two timing religious bigots join him in this journey upwards.
I pray and hope that all these Londonistan hiding Anti-Indian scum meet their maker sooner than later and get buried there and never get to touch the sod of India.

[Shrinivasan]

Good riddance, which is worse, Muslim pestilence like MFH or Hindu idiots like Arundati Roy & Diggi Raja? jury is still out.
Diggy Piggy make Arjun Singh looks like a saint!!!

[SaiK]

Lets see who does he paint in Jahannum!!

Hellfire probe should find him paint 72 halals

[Venkarl]

Lets see who does he paint in Jahannum!!

He'll paint pindaliyon ka goodawali hooorrrrrr..now the question is which hoorrrr? deep down busy hoorr?? or the one waiting with her hand on his shoulder??

[Manny]

My hatred is reserved for the leftist sekularists of India. Not Hussain. He was ok. He did what he had to do.

In principle I am a libertarian. Everyone has a right to give offence to another as long as its not physical. So if the same thing was an issue here in the US, I would say, he has every right to do it, paint Hindu godessess in the nude, as much as others have a right to paint Mohammad in the nude or worse

But in India, the right to free speech is restricted to not give offense to religion or religious sentiments

Section 153A of the penal code says, inter alia:

Whoever (a) by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, promotes or attempts to promote, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, or (b) commits any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquility, . . . shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.[3]
Enacted in 1927, section 295A says:

Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of [citizens of India], [by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise], insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to [three years], or with fine, or with both.[4]
[edit]


Under that restriction, the gall of these leftists to call any Indian who appeals to the law for justice as hatemongers is one of the cruelest and incedious things done by these lefty sekularist buggers. These lefties are the anti Hindu bigots in my book. They are worse than any Islamists. They are immoral and evil.

[abhishek_sharma]

Good riddance!

[ramana]

A couple of X-Posts...

M.F.Hussain is dead. Please see the following articles:

ARTISTIC FREEDOM AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

OBITER DICTA ON ARTISTIC FREEDOM AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

DECCAN CHRONICLE APOLOGISES - HUSSAIN DOESN'T!

M. F. HUSSAIN – SECULAR HOLY COW OR MARKET-DRIVEN PEDDLER?

I have listed them in the chronological order in which I published them.

and

We must all thank Dr. Mrs. Hilda Raja for her courage in showing up M. F. Hussain. I am sorry for my earlier omission of this in my list of posts on India's most celebrated dauber.

A CATHOLIC DEFENDS HINDU DEITIES!

[Arjun]

My hatred is reserved for the leftist sekularists of India. Not Hussain. He was ok. He did what he had to do.

In principle I am a libertarian. Everyone has a right to give offence to another as long as its not physical. So if the same thing was an issue here in the US, I would say, he has every right to do it, paint Hindu godessess in the nude, as much as others have a right to paint Mohammad in the nude or worse

But in India, the right to free speech is restricted to not give offense to religion or religious sentiments

Section 153A of the penal code says, inter alia:

Whoever (a) by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, promotes or attempts to promote, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, or (b) commits any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquility, . . . shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.[3]
Enacted in 1927, section 295A says:

Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of [citizens of India], [by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise], insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to [three years], or with fine, or with both.[4]
[edit]


Under that restriction, the gall of these leftists to call any Indian who appeals to the law for justice as hatemongers is one of the cruelest and incedious things done by these lefty sekularist buggers. These lefties are the anti Hindu bigots in my book. They are worse than any Islamists. They are immoral and evil.

Manny, I am cross-posting your post in the liberalism thread.

Frankly, I too have no problems whatsoever with MF Hussain's paintings and would not have found them offensive. But the more germane issue is that liberalism cannot be one-sided - the same standards should apply to art on Mohammed or for any other religion in India.

[ramana]

X-posted from IF

Posted 25 May 2007 - 05:20 PM
This topic should go into the India and Modernism thread. Ravi Verma's paintings are like the paintings of 18th century artists while MFH's are like scrawls of the Western modern painters. These are similar to caveman scrawls.

So Indian art also has traveled the path from form to formless that Western European art has traversed. However WE art origins are from Christianity and the pathway is by artists rebelling against the Church imposed barriers. MFH is a Muslim painting Hindu gods and godesses and how is that modernity? What is he rebelling against in Hinduism? He already rebelled by becoming a Muslim. This is what I said earlier that Indian modernist painting is a fake culture as it is really well planned attack on Hindu religion using modern discourse and media.

Hinduism does not have the normative strictures that the Church or Islam has imposed on its followers on art and culture. So I submit that Indian modernist painting is a pseudo-art form to attack Hinduism.

Religious icons painting was the first schism of the Christian Church. During the Middle ages in Europe painting etc died out from its Greek and Roman antecedents and was confined to illustrating books (illumination). Painting picked up during Reformation, Enlightenment and has led to the post modern age.

I always had this hunch about MFH's paintings that they were odd in the Hindu/Indian mileu but till last year couldnt put a finger until I studied the Evolution of Western Art and its relationship to the various reform movements in Western Christianity.

I will give quick overview but you need to dig deeper. In the beginning of the Christian West art was frowned upon. The depiction of images was not allowed. In fac tht issue of icons caused the big split between Roman and Orthodox Church. Gradually in the Middle Ages books started coming with illustrations (called illumination). Somewhere in the early part of the 11 century they started drawing images of the Madonna etc. Soon an art form developed and with reforms in Church it lead to more art. What you will come across is that modern art is a protest against the Church as the European Intellectual evolution happened.



The parallel is that MFH is attacking the Hindu domination of the Indian culture just as Picasso et al have protested the dominance of their cultures. And those who support him also share his views.

No Picasso et al did not register their protest as you are saying. Protest can come from within otherwise its an attack.


One source is Michael Hickey's
Modern European Intellectual History
More on transformations in the art in the pre-war decades: Please take a look at the paintings by

~Renoir, at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/re ... risian.jpg (1874) and http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/renoir/terrace.jpg (1881)

~Monet, at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/monet/haystacks/ (1890-91)

~Van Gogh at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/go ... neyard.jpg and http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/go ... rceuse.jpg (1889)

~Gauguin at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/ga ... -jaune.jpg (1889) and at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/ga ... ve-moe.jpg (1894)

~Picasso at http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Moder ... OD_1.shtml (1904, 1910)

~Braques, Leger, and Piccasso, etc. (various Cubist paintings. 1907-1914) at http://www.artchive.com/artchive/cubism.html

~Kandinskii at http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/kand1.jpg (1908), http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/kand5.jpg (1909), and http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/kand6.jpg (1911)

Where is such an evolution of Indian painting? MFH suddenly emerges from late fifties with his caveman scrawls attacking Hindu domination of Indian culture. IOW he represent a fake modern and secular image of the new Indian intellectual of the post Independence age. Amartya Sen is the text icon and MFH is the artist icon of this genre.

and

Bodhi, I think what Ramana is saying is that MF Hussain is the representative in the art field of the body of the psecularists who've emerged out of the blue in the last decades. In order to both disguise and 'defend' their position of attacking Hinduism to the west and the rest of pseculardom, they are cloaking themselves in the intellectual garb that only western modern art legitimately developed and owned.

Ramana is not arguing that the western and Indian versions are comparable in any real sense, only that the Indian versions (Hussain in 'art', Amartya Sen in writings - Ramana's examples) seek to present themselves to the outside world and the mindless psecular masses as being the modernist Indian counterparts to the west. That is, I think Ramana is arguing that they want to project themselves in such a way as that they can ward off criticism by saying they are doing legitimate expressionist art with the same reasons the west had, while their real intentions of course are beyond obvious.

In this way, when Hindus then protest against MF Hussain (and Amartya Sen - and IMO Arundathi Roy, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta and the like), these people can cry to the international - actually only western - community and say how The Hindoos are being obscurantist, fundamentalist and 'fanatic', with no sense of art and no understanding of the supposedly 'worldwide' evolution of artforms. (Even though that evolution is particular only to the west and its situation, the west imagines everything it experienced is something the rest of the world also experienced/knows/should know/should care to know.)

It is precisely because these psecular Indians are mounting their attack on Hinduism in a manner that the west innately recognises and in the artform-language the west instantly understands - it is, after all, calculated to appeal to western sensibilities and the western mind - that they know the 'international' community will immediately come to their defense. And so too would the psecularists in India come to their defense, who worship everything western and imagine that Indian civilisation evolved to suddenly and magically come to the exact same destination as where the west is now.

Look at this insightful statement by Ramana:
QUOTE
MFH suddenly emerges from late fifties with his caveman scrawls attacking Hindu domination of Indian culture. IOW he represent a fake modern and secular image of the new Indian intellectual of the post Independence age. Amartya Sen is the text icon and MFH is the artist icon of this genre.
See particularly the terms 'Fake modern and (fake) secular', 'suddenly emerges', 'new Indian intellectual'.
'Attacking Hindu domination of Indian culture' explains it all. MF Hussain has applied the same kind of art-form that the west had used to protest against the domination it experienced. Because of this, appeals to the west/international audience will immediately elicit sympathy: people in the west remember how they used exactly the same artform to protest against evil christian domination in their recent past. Unfortunately, what they don't know is that they are being expressly manipulated to think that there is a parallel and to imagine that in India this same artform naturally evolved over time too - just like it had done in Europe - as a protest against domination. The reality is anything but: the situation in earlier church-controlled Europe is not comparable to Hindu India at all; and this style of art in India has actually unnaturally surfaced - or 'suddenly emerged' as Ramana explains - most opportunely. The west won't even suspect that MF Hussain and others are playing them: that such Indians have carefully selected to use exactly those triggers that Europeans and Americans will automatically respond to. Instead, for Europeans, Hussain's works would be seen as additional proof that Hindu culture is dominating India; it is a 'cry' from the world of painting, just like other Indian psecular artists celebrated in the west are understood to emit 'cries' about the same oppression in their works. For the west, all these 'indications' further underscore that secularism, minorities, freedom of expression are being oppressed and controlled in India - just like the Church had stifled Europe where it resulted in similarly articulated cries.

Meanwhile, it's all just a big lie. Only western people and their psecular enfants dans l'Inde recognise MFH's vapid pictures as art. (Whether Hussain can really draw in his secret life or not I don't know - but his public drawings are all severely pre-realistic. Since the late 19th, early 20th centuries, there were legitimate western movements that drew in purposefully unrealistic and simplistic ways to get their ideas across. MF Hussain has merely decided that he will do his damage via art and has precisely chosen to apply a type of art form that the west has an established culture and understanding of.)

The christoislamicommunists in India have strategically planned this. They know their whiny views are a minority at present - views which will take a few decades of media brainwashing to popularise in India. But, they also know they can form a majority for their position by getting help from outside India and appealing to the class of Indian wannabees.

Imagine the west as being whales, and these Indian psecularterrorists as being able to exactly mimic the whale cry for help. In this case, regular Indian psecularists are those who have deluded themselves into thinking they are whales too.
In order to demean Hinduism with impunity in India, the otherwise powerless Indian psecularists emit loud whale cries which draw the real whales by instinct who imagine that other whales are in distress. (This also immediately brings in the support of the Indian wannabees who think they're whales too and so respond to the same cries/to the sight of real whales.)
And we are stuck facing all of them now, but are at a disadvantage because we are unable to communicate in the same language to them about what's really going on.
In this pathetic analogy the chosen artform = the practiced whale cry for help.

and lastly

BTW if any one saw his scrawls of Madhuri Dixit one would puke. It was those scrawls that tipped me about his shallowness and now hypocrisy.

[ramana]

One more

We are dealing with someone who knows what he is doing. He is not under anyones control. The liberal chatteratti don't know this language of discourse. He is their voice and not vice versa. He is right that art and culture give an early preview of the trends in society. About two decades. You can see from the links I posted.
I agree with all he says about modern Indian art form in comparison to the Western art.. Indian art has leapfroged the traditional Western European art. This article fills a lot of gaps in my knowledge.
The two schools he is talking about are- British Academy (classical landscape/portrait -see Nizam's gallery etc.., painting etc.) and the Revivalist (Ravi Verma Hindu imagery type). He must have taken on the Revivalist school hence his obsession with painting deriding pictures of Ravi Verma's subjects. So what he is rejecting is the British colonial legacy and the Hindu revival movement. He is a Naya Daur/Third Way type of intellectual holding fort in the 1950s in Bombay.

So using the prestige he has acquired he uses it to attack the major religion and culture of the land. Art is his weapon while the others on the Left are still stuck in text. MFH is bent on attacking the image of Indian society.
He is not doing it from a Islamic point of view. So to counter him as an Islamist is not going to get you anywhere for he is not. He is a watermelon- green on the outside but red inside. My own textual contribution to imagery.

The difficulty of countering MFH is people dont know what he is talking about unless you go through the education about Modernism. Its amazing that in the 1930-40s there were a group of Indians who were as modern as the best of them in the West.

I think these folks are the intellectual back bone of the JNU movement

I find his Ashoka Pillar painting in the 1997 very significant.

We need to look at this issue of contemporary painting and Indian politics through the prism of modernism and India. Modernism was a concept developed in Western Europe from the 16th to 19th centuries over a period of 300 years to create a new industrial society casting of the old agrarian society. And this allowed the Western Europe to march ahead of the rest of the World. In order for Modernism to succeed there have to be at least two conditions- Independence and Innovation. All Western European countries had these two conditions.

In contrast the "Second"(Russia and Eastern Europe) and "Third" world had three handicaps- time compression, colonialism and imitation. While Western Europe had about 300 years to achieve modernism these two groups had less than a blink of the day. They moderinised by fiat/dictat as soon as Colonial rule ended or monarchies were displaced. Again there was no Independence to learn and change the tack of modernism as the two groups were dependent on the First World in political, economic and cultural ways. The third handicap is imitation. The intellectuals in the two groups are imitative instead of innovative. This is what causes the most strain as they seek to force feed an alien way over the rest of their people without giving time for the changes to take effect.
The imitative nature of modernism in India can be seen right on this thread where the artists have been accused of plagiarism and imitating thier foreign inspirations.

[chetak]

Good riddance, which is worse, Muslim pestilence like MFH or Hindu idiots like Arundati Roy & Diggi Raja? jury is still out.
Diggy Piggy make Arjun Singh looks like a saint!!!

cheenum saab,


Arundati Roy a Hindu?

Our Arundati Susannah Roy???

News to me.

Probably news to her too

[Vikas]

Good riddance, which is worse, Muslim pestilence like MFH or Hindu idiots like Arundati Roy & Diggi Raja? jury is still out.
Diggy Piggy make Arjun Singh looks like a saint!!!

Arundhati Roy is not a Hindu and rumors are (at least on Wiki till few days back) that Digvijay Singh too is a convert.

[Aditya_V]

Boss point is not being Hindu or Not Hindu. Many Muslims, Christians in India are appauled by A. ROY, D. SIngh and P-Sec Crowd antics and recognise M.F Hussain for what he was. So lets cut this line of thinking right there.

[chetak]

Good riddance, which is worse, Muslim pestilence like MFH or Hindu idiots like Arundati Roy & Diggi Raja? jury is still out.
Diggy Piggy make Arjun Singh looks like a saint!!!

Arundhati Roy is not a Hindu and rumors are (at least on Wiki till few days back) that Digvijay Singh too is a convert.

Such scum are quite capable of that also so as to better lick the roman and eytalian feet that kick him.

[Atri]

there are many more converts like these in spokesperson panel of INC.. inside, I don't know...

[RajeshA]

Much better would be to portray Diggi as not just a converted Muslim, but rather a converted Islamist doing major Taqqiya!

[Vikas]

OT.... and DS used to considered as an able administrator while he was CM of MP for straight 10 years.
Is this How Gods destroy those who are blot on the nation.

[Aditya_V]

OT.... and DS used to considered as an able administrator while he was CM of MP for straight 10 years.
Is this How Gods destroy those who are blot on the nation.

He never was, he just had benovalent Media Coverage especially in the Delhi Based Media.

[ramana]

Pioneer, Op-Ed by Ashok Malik


Vanvas from Ram's India

EDITS | Saturday, June 11, 2011 | Email | Print | | Back


Vanvaas from Ram's India
June 11, 2011 12:47:55 AM

Ashok Malik

In the end, Husain lost to the mob. The gutter rhetoric on the streets kept him away from India. But the anti-Husain constituency has won a pyrrhic victory.

There is something downright disquieting about intellectual sensibilities in India. Even in his death Maqbool Fida Husain, India’s best-known contemporary artist, has been subjected to abuse and only grudging praise from the Hindu Right. A BJP spokesperson argued Husain “should have come back, respected the law and people’s sentiments and merged his breath and body with Indian soil”. Instead, he got “got distanced from Indians”. For good measure, “his caricature of Durga and Bharat Mata was obnoxious and unacceptable”. It was unnecessarily convoluted phraseology, out of place at the time of departure of a titan of Indian creativity.

On Internet forums, the criticism of Husain was far worse. He was labelled ‘anti-Indian’, ‘anti-Hindu’, ‘anti-national’ and all the favoured cuss words of the Internet Hindus — a shorthand phrase for those who, while representing a minority of Hindus on the Internet, make up perhaps the most bigoted social media community anywhere on Earth.

It was left to Balasaheb Thackeray, chief of the Shiv Sena, to bring closure that was appropriate: “MF Husain was as strong-willed as he was fantastic. There are differences over his art, but he did not give up his obstinacy … An artist has his peculiar style, and Husain pursued his modern style wilfully. He only slipped up on the depiction of Hindu gods and goddesses. Otherwise, he was happy and content in his field. If his demise is a loss for modern art, then so be it. May his Allah give him peace.” {Bal Thackery was slamming the guy and this fool thinks he was praising him faintly!}

The Shiv Sena founder’s nephew Raj Thackeray, who now leads a breakaway party, was even more forthright: “He was an asset to the country. His passing should put an end to all the controversies surrounding his paintings.”

{This is incorrect. His work lives beyond him and now that he is dead will get proper critique and judged for its merits or demerits de-linked from MHF's religion and leanings.}


Husain was not perfect. The films he made were an embarrassment. It was sometimes felt he courted controversy as a sort of publicity tool. His eccentricity was both genuine and on occasion cultivated. When he walked into a club barefoot, he knew what he was doing: Aiming for the next morning’s headlines.

{Make up your mind!}

Even so none of this is unusual. Creative people anywhere, artists and writers, actors and even television anchors — 9.00 pm generalissimos for instance — often acquire affectations and mannerisms or merely say, draw and write things to attract attention to themselves and their craft. It is possible Husain’s recent problems lay in one of these experiments having gone horribly wrong.

{No kidding!}

That aside, his choice of refuge from India was decidedly strange. Dubai and Qatar were scarcely domains of free expression, even if Husain made them his home. If he had migrated to, say, Paris, India’s embarrassment would have been much more acute.

{i]{That region is the right place for it harbors Indian criminals and shelters them with visas and police protection. It exploits Indian lobor. If India were more developed economically no India would go to those places. I worte after he took up Qatari citizenship that Indian elite were flummoxed at his choice. I was not for it showed the true roots of his denigrating paintings of Hindu religious icons. It was Islamist pure and simple. He was a reverse water melon. An Islamist masquerading as a Communist/Leftist protestor. }[/i]

However, the anti-Husain constituency has won a decidedly pyrrhic victory. It kept him out of India but invited ridicule upon itself. By reacting churlishly to the great man’s death and refusing to acknowledge he had been punished much more than his so-called sin merited, the extreme fringe of the Hindu Right — its influence largely limited to the Internet — has isolated itself even further.

{In whose eyes? Eyes of deracinated wannabe Wasterners?}

Why didn’t Husain come back to India and submit himself to court scrutiny? Why didn’t he answer his opponents from behind a courtroom post? The questions may seem disarmingly simple. Yet those who ask them — people such as the BJP spokesperson who now stresses Husain should have “respected the law and people’s sentiments” — are either innocent of the fundamental decency of a democracy or are plain disingenuous.

The hate-Husain brigade filed some 900 cases against him. Could a man past 90, past 95 when he died, be expected to run from one mofussil court to another, up and down the country? If India’s most famous artist had actually subjected himself to this torture, his health and mental peace would have been shattered. More than that Indian democracy and commitment to artistic liberty would have come out looking like a caricature. Paradoxically, in not coming back to India, Husain did the Hindu right a favour.

The cry-baby Hindutva brigade — the type the members of which post replies on Internet forums using pseudonyms because a deep-seated inferiority complex prevents them writing under their real names — will no doubt point to Salman Rushdie, The Last Temptation of Christ, the Danish cartoons episode, The Da Vinci Code. The defensive (and defeatist) contention would be that if it is fine for (some) Muslims and Christians to take offence too easily, then it is fine for (some) Hindus to take offence equally easily and copy those they claim to loath.

{All those people criticised or depicted their own religion. Rushdie criticised Islam and got a Shia fatwa. Dan Brown mocked Roman Catholics. He didnt eget any stricture. Hussian however mocked Hinduism. If he had mocked even once Islam, I will grant him his liberal status. The reason why DIE support MF Hussien is he was doing their job for them. In other words his attack were their attacks. Plain and simple. Hence the empathy for their foot soldier!}


This is flawed logic. For a start, no seriously democratic country — other than India — has placed prohibitions on almost any of the artistes or works of creativity cited above.{Note selective creativity. BTW India banned Salman Rusdie's book Satanic Verses, in case the writer is too young to know! And India censored Da Vince Code.} Second, the international assault on Rushdie was led by a crazed Ayatollah in Iran. Does the Hindu Right see itself in the same league? Third, state-specific restrictions and clumsy attempts to censor films like The Da Vinci Code are abominable, but do not constitute the systematic targeting of a venerable artist by manipulating and misusing the Indian legal system.

In the end, Husain lost to the mob. The gutter rhetoric on the streets — now adopted by the Internet Hindu on Twitter and similar networks — kept him away from his beloved India (and make no mistake he loved this country deeply).{Which India did he love? The muslim India of the Bahmain kings?} It gave the mob an inflated sense of its strength. Today, more than ever before, books, films and paintings are subject to clearance by arbiters who cannot rise above the lowest common denominator. Politicians attempt to justify this by citing “people’s sentiments”. What they mean is the noise of the rabble.

Of course, this rabble is not exclusively Hindu. Even so the competitive hysteria of Hindu and Muslim self-appointed censors is nauseating. The banning of The Satanic Verses in 1988 and the driving out of Husain constitute the bookends of an extremely disturbing period in India’s democratic discourse.

Husain’s death so far away from India, and the fact that he has been laid to rest in distant London{Its free will. he wanted to be buried in London. Does the author propose re-burial in Mumbai or Hyderabad?} — rather than amid the smells and sounds of the Mumbai he so cherished — shames us all. How different is it from the British Government sending Bal Gangadhar Tilak to far-off Mandalay simply because it considered his ideas and writings dangerous? Can disagreement with an artist’s sense of graphic description — and that right to disagree is no doubt legitimate — lead to such extraordinary expulsion? Can the land of Lord Rama be blasé about Husain’s vanvaas?

These are troubling, even poignant questions. I suspect they won’t get answers; they will meet still more Internet Hindu poison.

malikashok@gmail.com

I think the poor writer should have him self checked into therapy for above article is full of hyper ventilation and imagined liberalism. Not only that he has got his story wrong.

It was Ram who went into vanvaas, where Ravan abducted Sita.
MFH derogatory depiction of Sita is a similar act of intellectual abduction.

Unfortunately the writer is not even fully Macaulayised. Only half baked.

[ramana]

B Ramanji coveys his displeasure at the NDTV mis-protrayal of MFH's art

Open Letter to Ms Barkha Dutt, NDTV

I do feel strongly on the way you and many others have been projecting the tragedy relating to the death of Mr. M.F.Husain, the world renowned painter, away from his homeland in the wake of the controversy over his hurting the sentiments of mIllions of Hindus of the country by depicting in his paintings certain figures close to the hearts and minds of the Hindus in a manner considered objectionable by them.


2.While the Hindus had every right to protest against this, I had always condemned the way sections of extremist Hindus had organised a witch-hunt against Mr.Husain on this issue, thereby forcing him to seek exile.


3. At the same time, I had also held that Mr.Husain was the original sinner in this avoidable controversy and could not escape a major share of the blame for igniting the controversy and generating the resulting ambiance of intolerance in the Hindu community.


4. Fairness and a sense of balance demanded that if we have to recover from the after-effects of this tragedy and leave its unsavoury memories behind us, the entire issue should be discussed in a fair and objective manner starting from the original sin of Mr.Husain and the subsequent sins of commission and omission by all those who have had a role in this tragedy---Mr.Husain himself, his supporters, his critics and detractors and the Government.


5. I notice that instead of doing so, since his death, the whole issue has been sought to be projected as if Mr.Husain was the unfortunate victim of the cussedness of a section of the Hindus who are sought to be blackened, demonised and made to seem the tormentors of Mr.Husain without highlighting that the tragedy started with the original sin of commission of Mr.Husain.


6. You in your individual and professional capacity have been taking an active part in the national debate on this issue. You have every right to do so. I have already tweeted to you during the course of the day my admiration for the courage of your conviction on this issue. I have been struggling with myself since last night in an attempt to take a detached view on this subject so that my differing views on this subject did not come in the way of my precious friendship with you which I value.


7. Somehow, our differing views and perceptions on this subject have created a deep feeling of discomort in me which I have not been able to overcome and which, I feel, I will not be able to overcome however much I might try.


8. I, therefore, decided during the course of a long walk this evening that I should openly express to you my inner torment on this issue and mark a distance from this friendship in the interest of my peace of mind.


9. My affection and steadfast support for you will remain unchanged and the positive and wonderful impressions that I have in my mind of you as an individual and as a professional will remain unaltered.


Take care.


B.Raman,10-6-11

Read the comments and debate....

[ramana]

Suraj paschim se nikala!

[brihaspati]

Lekin shaam ho gayi!

[Rudradev]

Actually, one of the arguments being repeatedly peddled in defense of M F Hussain clearly demarcates where genuine secularism ends and where pseudo-secularism begins.

The argument is that Hindu religious figures have been depicted in the nude (or semi-nude) form many times over the centuries; therefore, Hindus have no basis for taking offense when Hussain paints Hindu goddesses in the nude.

This argument is anything but secular. It is premised on the idea that, if the pretext for "taking offense" can be justified by reference to centuries-old religious doctrine, then the "offense" taken is somehow legitimate. For example, Muslims are justified in taking offense when Mohammed is depicted in pictures or illustrations, because the Quran forbids this; but Hindus are not justified in taking offense at their deities being depicted in derogatory ways because nothing in their scriptures specifically prohibits such depiction, and because there are cases of "similar" depiction to be viewed in centuries-old temple art.

This is nothing but an affirmation of the idea that religious texts like the Quran or the Bible provide reasonable justification for taking offense, and a selective victimization of the Hindu for not having similar proscriptions of intolerance to point to in his own heritage!

How "secular" is that?

[posted this comment on Raman's blog]

[ramana]

Its no just now. Jingoes were active for sometime.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... sibilities

Freedom to offend religious sensibilities

April 15, 2010



The playful "Naad Swaram Ganeashayem" painting by M.F. Husain is classic subterfuge to portray Hindus as religious chauvinists (Rekha Basu, April 7 column). Perhaps, your readers could have been better informed if some of Husain's paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses that have aroused so much anguish and, unfortunately, anger among Hindus were to be actually published in your esteemed newspaper.

Husain's "apology for any offense" notwithstanding, his morbid proclivity to paint Hindu deities, specifically, and repeatedly - in explicit nudity (including bestiality) is not only offensive, but vile and meant to demean and provoke Hindus.

As a non-observant Hindu, I fully support the secular ethos of India where the government and the people, including Hindus, must support and defend all forms of freedom - including the freedom to feel numbed and nauseated by such paintings. But for all its democracy, the government of India routinely bans books like "The Da Vinci Code," "The Satanic Verses" and has hounded Taslima Nasreen out of India - currently under death threat from Islamists - to ensure pandering to religious vote banks. No "tolerance" and "underpinnings of our freedoms" there.

Hopefully, Husain can now use his long-lost artistic freedom in Qatar, a Muslim monarchy, to continue his passion for painting nude religious icons - a nude Mohammad, for instance?

- Reggie

[ramana]

Inspiration for MF Hussien's Horses genre of paintings:

Kandinsky's Man on a Horse also called Lyric:

http://www.art.com/products/p10049128-s ... -horse.htm


When I showed my kid MFH's horse painting he said he saw some before painted by Kandinsky.


For those interested refer to my early post on European intellectual history posted above to know who is Kandinsky!

[Altair]

2011 is going great for Indians! first the cricket world cup, then Osama getting killed near Islamabad and now MFH dead in the kafirland! wahhh!! mazaa aa gaya!! Inshalla we will see dismemberment of pakistan by year end!

[Prem]

Lekin shaam ho gayi!

Kanhi duur jub din dhal jayee
Desh ki bahu , Swiss account milaye
Account milyae orr Khush hoye jaayee
Phir bhi kuffar Khyalo me har pal pal
Durr lagge Kanhi RD/Annah na ayye !!

Kanhi to accounts Macau khole jatte
Kanhi kabhi khole Swissland me Khatte
Kaun janne UPA ke bhed yeh gehre
Janta ki awaz sunne na yeh behre .

Kabbhi nahi insse terrorist pakkre jaatte
Ooppar neeche Congres se Dawood ke Naate
Yeh nahi aapne, kambhakht sarre neta yeh parai.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmYT79bYIQw

[ashish raval]

Well m.f. Hussein is not Titan of creativity. He is product of so called pathetic incompetent and directionless world of modern art where a junk from a famous person suddenly acquires meaning and many stupids indeed believe in these junk stories behind artwork. The so called modern art is an bubble of money making like property bubble where few galleries collude with artists and wealthy people to make money. The is no art in modern art. I would challenge any artist in the world who can make works like Titian, leonardo, Michael Angelo or biggies of renaissance era. If you see the enormity and creativity of those era, these modern artists are peanuts and not even in class of trainees. I have heard lot of arguments about era, time, people yada yada. Don't buy any of them. All crap to suit business purposes. Only a few of them are good like war haul, lucian Freud, Jackson pollock etc. India has not produced any one of those biggies, it has only produced so called followers and Hussein was one of them. Anyway there is a saying in a barren land even a cactus is a leader of trees. No one except few even knows who Hussein was till 20 years back when India started to open up to the world art Market needed so called picasso's And they found Hussein as convenient man. Funny world of art.

[Varoon Shekhar]

Also, nude depictions of Hindu deities in temples were often about the 'many-sidedness of life'. They were not meant to titillate and certainly not for commercial reasons.

[ramana]

Pioneer Book Review:

Doyen of Urdu poem
June 13, 2011 8:15:05 PM

Madan Lall Manchanda

Mirza Farhatullah Baig
Author: Mohammed Sohail Anwar
Publisher: Kitabi Duniya
Price: Rs 100

In his introductory note to the book, Mirza Farhatullah Baig, the author points out that the Mirza occupied a distinguished position as a humour writer among his illustrious contemporaries — Rashid Saddiqui, Pitras Bukhari, Kanhaiya Lal Kapoor, Shaukat Thanvi and Azeem Beg Chughtai.

The book has three sections: The first is about the Mirza’s life story, his place of birth, upbringing, education, employment, marriage and even progeny. The second part of the book focusses on the art of humour. As for the third, it assesses the Mirza’s art.

Mirza Baig’s leading position among the literary stalwarts of the first half of the 20th century owes it to his mentor, Maulvi Nazeer Ahmed, who gave Urdu its first famous novel, Ruya-e-Sadiqa.

Baig, however, wasn’t a full-time Urdu writer; he taught at a high school and worked as a translator. In the 1930s, he was posted as a Sessions Judge and later became the Registrar of the Hyderabad High Court.

Such was his love for Urdu poetry that he wrote Delhi Ki Aakhri Shama to lighten the last lamp of Urdu poetry and to honour and immortalise the Urdu poets of the last days of the Mughal empire.

The book is worth a read, particularly for those who love Urdu and its literature.

[ramana]

X-post....
"Theo_Fidel"
-------------
It is this sort of pandering that the US does that continues the problem. Just look at how insane the article is. Goes on and on about how Pakistan is India obsessed. How did they become that way. Surely Amriki weapons and money had nothing to do with it. Or that we had creeps like that Robin bird who pushed the Kashmir is TSP agenda. Or that we have Panda giving to Nuclear Weapons to 'level' the playing field. Or that it was the British who encouraged the martial races theory. Or that they created a unstable crap shoot of a country and left in 30 days flat. No, apparently they had nothing to do with it, innocent observers only.

And then it ends with India-TSP need to make peace/love in all the myriad positions. And somehow this problem is both India & TSPs fault. Stupid.

There can be no peace until TSP is fully defeated and admits it. TSP has been at war with India for 60+ years. Never stopped. Amriki would do well to demand that TSP acknowledge it has lost or further dismantling is in its future.

In the end it comes down to the same old shyte.

Only a marked improvement in its relations with India, including significant steps toward a settlement of their Kashmir dispute, will lead Pakistan to change this policy. Until that unlikely development takes place — and it has eluded the two countries for six decades — Pakistan will continue to see India as a basically hostile neighbour, and its negotiators will probably continue to believe that making India look bad is an important part of their task.

-------------------------


If you take a long and deep view of history across the continents, we see that the rise of one power leads to another power also emerging and a competetion comes about as a natural process. This is due to the ideological underpinnings of the rise of the first power. Let me give examples. Rise of Zorastrian Persia and Greek city states, Rome and Carthage., Britain and France till the Napoleonic Wars and then Britain and Germany, US after First World War and Bolshievik Russia and Maoist China till Cold War was over.

However by and large the re-emergence of India was not seen as threat by the large and distant powers for India was a non-idelogical power. So it would not alter or change the course of History.

However nearby states like Paksitan, Bangla Desh, Nepal and Myanmar to some extent were wary. And amenable to being stoked by far away powers.

While this is broadly true the US has another doctrine to prevent the emergence of any regional power any where in the world for their balance of power dogma to ensure their dominance since World War II ended leaving them as the global hegemon. A body of thinkers since the 50s from Keenan to Kissinger have said this time and again but Indian elite think this idea is confined to only the person who articulates it. It is a broad based policy that has support regardless of who is in power. This wont chnage until US changes its zero sum game mind set of balance of power.
This doctrine propels the US to support the many regional problems to tie down the emerging regional power.
Hence the support for TSP and other irritants.

The best course is to grow the economy to such heights that such offshore balncing becomes futile.

We are in the third revolution: Industrial, Services and Knowledge power.
With our manpower and intellectual prowess we will certainly prevail if we stay the course and not get distracted with the irritants.

TSchaffer is selling the old snake oil thru Hindu newspaper. Make no mistake its the same old crap only packaged better.

Anglo Saxon West promised to argandise TSP at India's cost and they are upset that India didnt fall down and submit! Even if Kashmir is given the ideology of TSP will not be satisfied. Nor will the US goal of tieing down India be realised. So forget it.

[kshatriya]

Rahul Gandhi's birthday to be farmers rights day

Ghaziabad: In an effort to keep the land acquisition issue alive, the Congress on Monday announced that it will celebrate Rahul Gandhi's birthday as farmers rights day across the country.
While criticising the Mayawati government for the alleged police atrocities against protesting farmers in Bhatta-Parsaul villages in Gautam Budhha Nagar on May 7, UP Congress president Rita Bahaguna Joshi said the party general secretary's birthday on June 19 will be celebrated as 'Kisan Adhikar Divas'.
The party will try to create awareness among people about farmers' rights and advocate that adequate changes in the land acquisition law be made soon, she added.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/rahul-gandhi ... 37-64.html

[sanjeevpunj]

BR might be famous in the press, but here is a story of a saint, who was on fast for 2 months, and he died unsung,at the same hospital where BR was taken to. His name was Swami Nigamananda, 34 yrs, and he was fasting against the quarrying Mafia, whose illegal activities of encroaching on the Ganga have upset so many people.

Read on http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110614/main7.htm

[Prem]

X-post....
"Theo_Fidel"
Hence the support for TSP and other irritants.
The best course is to grow the economy to such heights that such offshore balncing becomes futile.We are in the third revolution: Industrial, Services and Knowledge power.
With our manpower and intellectual prowess we will certainly prevail if we stay the course and not get distracted with the irritants.Anglo Saxon West promised to argandise TSP at India's cost and they are upset that India didnt fall down and submit! Even if Kashmir is given the ideology of TSP will not be satisfied. Nor will the US goal of tieing down India be realised. So forget it.

Golden Words for Indian birds to make chatni or kalakand and eat every day with chai . Once the economic balance shift , we will be able to shaft any one poking in the neighborhood. Another validation to aim for 10T economy.

[pradeepe]

My hatred is reserved for the leftist sekularists of India. Not Hussain. He was ok. He did what he had to do.
...

My sentiments too.

Not seen too may of his paintings. And the few that I looked up, didn't strike me as anything to ooh and ahh about. Abstract art I guess doesnt have universal appeal. I am yet to get it.

That being said, I think the stink is not so much as his paintings of hindu goddesses in the nude. Not for me atleast. I think at best he could be called a controversy hounding idiot and at worst a callous ass for willfully hurting the religious sentiments of so many.

No the real stink is the goddam hipocrisy of the GoI (and of late I see the entire bollywood chatterati coming out in support of this ass, no suprises there I guess). Riding rough shod over the sentiments of Hindus is par for the course all in the interest of harmony or so they think. Ironically this very hipocrisy and idiotic tendnency to short change one set of people exclusively and repeatedly will force more and more radicalisation of the by nature "let it be" minded hindu people.

[SaiK]

http://www.hindu.com/2011/06/15/stories ... 172400.htm
It is going up on Terminal 3!!

ramana?

[ranjbe]

Book review of Canadian High Commissioner's book on India in The Economist. Discusses many of the issues from this thread from a sympathetic outsider point of view.

Does the Elephant Dance? Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy

ONE day India will be a great power. Its demography, nukes and growing economy make that almost inevitable. Outsiders, especially in the West, promote its heft so it can serve as an emerging rival to China. Look at the itineraries of world leaders, such as Barack Obama late in 2010, who troop to Delhi to say India deserves a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and it may seem the country has already arrived.
Yet, as David Malone clearly sets out in his brisk survey of its foreign policy, there is a long way to go before the Indian elephant is really dancing. Its international policy is still mostly reactive, incremental and without any grand vision. Its few diplomats are good, but terribly overstretched. The world’s biggest democracy is coy to the point of feebleness in promoting its values abroad. And its big but ill-equipped armed forces, perhaps the navy aside, trouble no military planners outside of South Asia.

Mr Malone concludes that India will develop no grand foreign-policy vision, opting instead for pragmatism guided by economic interest. The hunt for oil and other energy, in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, mean a greater international reach and more competition with China. India will resist Western pressure to be any sort of counterweight to the much bigger power to its east, while at the same time expanding its trade with the rest of Asia. As for promoting values, India will try to show itself as a model of rapid economic growth and tolerant democracy. The elephant’s dance will, in the end, be the great power of its example.

http://www.economist.com/node/18802750

[devesh]

^^^
what is the timeline that Malone is setting? eventually, India will understand its interests and develop a basic geopolitical vision. till how long does Malone think India will stay without a 'grand strategic vision?'

[ranjbe]

^^^
what is the timeline that Malone is setting? eventually, India will understand its interests and develop a basic geopolitical vision. till how long does Malone think India will stay without a 'grand strategic vision?'

In fact some of Malone's views are already out of date:

Yet India’s biggest weakness, as Mr Malone rightly sets out, is in its own region. The trauma of partition ensured that relations with Pakistan would long be dreadful, and India has shown admirable restraint in the face of bloody provocations from across the border. But as the local hegemon it should be doing much more to foster economic ties and stability all over its back yard. Instead relations with all its neighbours, with the exception of a couple of minnows like Bhutan and the Maldives, are mostly sour, and regional trade is pitiful

As we can see, India is making well-planned efforts to influence three of its neighbors, Sr Lanka, Afghanistan and Bangladesh through investments, aid, and closer military to military cooperation. Reading mainstream Sri Lankan newspapers, one still finds resentment against 'big brother'. On the other hand, Sri Lankans know that their future is permanently tied to India and they cannot afford to seriously annoy India, and one can be sure that Rajapaksha and his successors will ensure that this will not happen. Bangladesh is currently on the same path, perhaps there may be hiccups on the way, but as long as India keeps growing the same thing will happen in the case of Bangladesh.
This only leaves Pakistan.