MF Husian’s troubles seem to be increasing by the day. The latest one is over Bharat Mata. In protest against those protesting and acting against MF Husian, I have decided to put up an image of the ‘offending’ Bharat Mata painting. I urge all bloggers to do the same if you want freedom of speech preserved in India. (From here.)
Also see this statement.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
I wonder, Shivam, how people not agreeing with the prevalent or inherent notion of Indian nationhood will respond to your suggestion of putting this painting on their blogs. Freedom is speech is important, but some people may just prefer freedom. Take the nudity out of Hussein’s paintings, and they will become the celebration of the same nationhood that the right in India is so proud of.
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It may not be ‘offending’ to you when a painting is claimed to be that of Bharat Mata. It is possible that you may not have any feelings towards the concept of India as Bharat Mata.
But consider honestly. Would not it be ‘offending’ if such a painting is shown as that of your own mother or wife or daughter?
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I feel Hussain has not committed anything wrong.
Its those ‘self-appointed Moral-Police’ who have no knowledge about India’s mythology or history, but claim themselves as ‘Defender of Hindu Tradition’
I feel shame from them. History will give befitting reply.
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Mr Chet (I’m making assumptions about your gender. Forgive me if they are ill-founded),
Literally speaking Bharat Mata is Shakuntala (I hope you are familiar with the story of Shakuntala and Dushyant) who is half human (born of a perpetually power-seeking yogi named Vishwamitra – no mitra of Vishwa in any ordinary sense of the term) and half apsara (born of a woman condemned to eternal youth and beauty for the gratification of the visual pleasure of higher and yet higher gods and envious goddesses) who is admitted to the Indralok temporarily but isn’t allowed a permanent abode as she is not only not a goddess but essentially a seductoress and therefore morally problematic. This mata of Bharat is recognized by Dushyant as his own only after she gives birth to a SON. This miraculous recovery of memory is riddled with all kinds of problems. She is dislodged from the forest, she is thrown out of the city and she remains suspended in a liminal space between the heaven and earth. What is this eternally dislodged Bharat Mata Mr Chet?
I do not wish to drag you back to our erotic temple art – there are after all any number of perverse moneybags funding such orgiastically sacred architecture – but look closer home at the popular calendar art since the time of Raja Ravi Verma and his seductive see-through portrayals of woman’s body that attained pan-Indian acceptability. Go to the redlight area of Kolkotta where the effigies of Durga are sculpted to the the last genital cut before they are clothed and put on the scared pedastals in our pandals. Ignorance, Mr Chet, they say, is bliss. And you are so patriotically blessed!
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The issue here is I believe that of freedom of expression. However, we cannot have double standards in protecting this freedom. I dont recollect Indian bloggers going ahead to put Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons on their blogs ?
Why this selective protection ? All artists are equal, but some are more equal than others ?
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good.
But if you are honest and true supporter of freedom of expression, put Mohamemd’s cartoons also here and post satanic verses as well.
paste why gandhi should be kileld by Godse.
Are we true propnents of freedom of expression or merely puppets of gangs of mao, marx macauley and Mohammed the 4 gangs busy in eliminating civilisational values originated from soil of India.
Do we want to see our civilisation in Museum on line with Greeks, Egyptians and Roamns? If not, let’s be honest. Allow Hussesin but allow salman Rushdie and mohamed’s cartoons as well. This is the real and equal opportunity for freedom of expression.
I cahhlenge you to put Mohammed’s cartoons available at http://www.faithfreedom.org if you are truly supproter of freedom of expression.
Otherwise you are a mere hypocrat an agent of gangs of mao marx macauley and mohammed.
Let the people see your honesty?
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Anonymous Coward and Jay Sharma are quite conscientiously arguing that if Talibans can bring the mountain sculptures of Budha down at Bamian in the name of religion, they – the Bajrangis and VaHaPa-ites – should also be allowed to not only destroy the paintings of Husain and the works of sophomores at Vadodara’s MS Univ but also be allowed to commission the mutilation of the bodies of such artists as may, in their perception, have deemed to offend their religious sentiments.
That’s an interesting point but very selectively and conveniently applied by these amenisiac ideologues of the saffron brigade against a few cultural markers they find offensive and outrageous. Going by their own logic, they should first attack some of their own ancient temples, burn some of their own classics from Rig Veda to Kalidas’s Meghdootam, destroy much of their own folk culture for celebrating the body so irreverently. I wonder where the A Cowards and J Sharmas would hide were they to stumble upon the description of the post-ashwamedh yagna rituals conducted at Ayodhya in Valmiki’s Ramayan in which the victorious horse is made to copulate with a certain someone from the clan before being killed and eaten up in a feast by an entire gathering to mark their conquest of the world?
Why drag Islam (or even Sikhism) into the debate? These religions do not address the questions of bodily desires unlike in Hinduism and the pagan ritual where there is a large body of pictographic and literal references available to relate to as a historically identifiable tradition. These religions have always as a credo eschewed references to modes of sexuality as a creative principle of life. There is absolutely no reference in these religions to even obliquely invoke such representations. So your arguments about Danish cartoons and the rest are nothing short of insidious attempts at scoring a perverse point. What is worse is that you do not even feel uneasy indulging in such communal nit-picking. I used to think it was childish but no more. It is menacingly fascistic.
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Correction: the Kalidas text, I wished to cite, is not Meghdootam but Raghuvansham.
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Actually, both Anonymous Coward and Jay Sharma do raise pertinent questions about how free one should be able to express themselves and if this freedom should extend to include insulting the customs and beliefs of others.
If artist expressions contrary to one religious system is permitted then such like expressions contrary to other religious systems should be allowed also and viewers allowed to judge for themselves. Otherwise selective discimination is simply a blatant form of (perhaps malicious) discrimination.
So Panini Pothoharvi and others whom share you views, does this mean you agree artists such as those who recently defamed Mohammed (pbuh) in Europe (and also those with unordinary views on other religions such as Christianity – which is often ridiculed also(sadly)) should have every right to be allowed to express themselves as MF Hussain does?
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