Nudity isn't obscenity, it's just art

Islamic Culture

04 Jun 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Nudity isn't obscenity, it's just art

By Shashi Tharoor   It is not often that an individual judge in our country wins the plaudits of the artistic and creative community. But that is what Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul of the Delhi High Court has just done. His landmark judgement of May 8, upholding a number of petitions submitted by the great Indian painter Maqbool Fida (M F) Husain, not only ensures that justice has been done to an authentic national icon, but contains observations that are both refreshing and true about the role of art in our society — observations which i hope will guide our national discourse on this vexed subject in the future.  Readers of my earlier columns on the subject will recall the outrage i had expressed about the harassment of the 92-year-old Indian artist by malicious lawsuits seeking his prosecution for allegedly having offended the petitioners' notions of morality by the use of nudity in his art, particularly in paintings of Hindu goddesses and in the depiction of the contours of India in the shape of a nude female figure. The piling up of a number of cases — motivated essentially by anti-Muslim bigotry — had driven Husain into self-imposed exile in Dubai and London and deprived India of a national treasure. Justice Kaul's judgement has now disposed of several of these cases in a learned, closely-argued and meticulously-footnoted ruling that bears detailed reading and extensive citation.  Justice Kaul begins by quoting Pablo Picasso: "Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art." Recalling the richness of India's 5000-year-old culture, the judge adds, "Ancient Indian art has been never devoid of eroticism where sex worship and graphical representation of the union between man and woman has been a recurring feature. The sculpture on the earliest temples of (the) Mithuna' image or the erotic couples in Bhubaneshwar, Konarak and Puri in Orissa (150-1250 AD); Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh (900-1050 AD); Limbojimata temple at Delmel, Mehsana (10th century AD); Kupgallu Hill, Bellary, Madras; and Nilkantha temple at Sunak near Baroda (are examples of this)... Even the very concept of (the) 'lingam' of the God Shiva resting in the centre of the yoni, is in a way representation of the act of creation, the union of Prakriti and Purusua. The ultimate essence of a work of ancient Indian erotic art has been religious in character and can be enunciated as a state of heightened delight or ananda, the kind of bliss that can be experienced only by the spirit."  The judge goes on: "Today Indian art is confidently coming of age. Every form of stylistic expression in the visual arts, from naturalism to abstract expressionism, derives its power from the artist's emotional connection to his perceptual reality." Describing the nude as a "perennial art subject", the judge observed that some paintings have been called 'obscene', 'vulgar', 'depraving', 'prurient' and 'immoral' — but it was important to look at art from the artist's perspective. As a judge he had to balance "the individual's right to speech and expression and the frontiers of exercising that right" — to prevent a "closed mind" becoming "a principal feature of (our) open society" or "an unwilling recipient of information" from enjoying a veto over others' rights to the same information.  25 May 2008 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Columnists/SParochialism is shredding social fabric of our metros