(Radha Benod Sharma after being attacked in Jaipur- source net)
Suddenly we all will now speak about intolerance. In the
second consecutive year once again the miscreants have hit the Jaipur Art
Summit, a low key art expo which has been taking place in the illustrious Pink
City, Jaipur, Rajasthan, citing obscenity in one of the paintings displayed
there. If last time it was a flying cow done by a young artist Siddharth
Kararwal, this time it is Radha Benod Sharma, an Indian artist who has been
living in London for the last eighteen years and trying to do all what he can
to help a few struggling young artists in his home state as well as in West
Bengal, not only by funding their art activities but also by promoting them in
the shows presented by his own organization. The allegation against Benod
Sharma, the artist raised by a woman activist from the hitherto unheard of Lal
Sena is based on a work where he has
painted a half nude reclining woman at the lower left foreground of the painting.
As all of us have seen it in the news channels, the alleged obscenity
in the painting slowly gives way to a generic allegation about the artist who
in the process of saving his painting from the aggressive woman activist ‘violating’
the modesty of an ‘Indian’ woman by pushing her away with his elbow. This
blurring of the boundaries of two different allegations, one, of the
aesthetical obscenity and two, the modesty of a self righteous woman, is far
more dangerous than the original content and context of the said vandalism.
Here we see the unfortunate scene where the artist is forced to justify his art
and act (of painting as well as pushing the woman) by brining the ancient
Indian aesthetical history that includes Khajuraho sculptures. It is so sad to
see an artist suddenly turns into a culprit and has to stand before the media
to justify his painting as well as the painterly effort.
(moral police in argument with the artist)
Today’s Indian Express reports that the woman who had not
only raised the alarm but also acted upon it by taking law in her own hands is ‘missing’,
that means as the heat had been turned upon her by the Rajasthan Police she
went underground. The reports followed after today’s newspaper stories also say
that no action has been taken against the culprits. Some of the news portals
even gave the picture of the other vandalisms that had happened against Hussain’s
paintings at the Gufa Gallery in Ahmadabad to illustrate the present issue in
Jaipur with a definite aim to incite the feelings of the intellectual,
aesthetic and the secular communities/people in the country. If we are not
discerning, we would fail to see the truth. First of all we have to see that
unlike Maharashtra and Gujarat where vandalisms against art had happened before,
the Rajasthan administration led by the Chief Minister Vasudhararaje Sindhia
reacted to the incidents immediately first by shunting out the Police men who
roughed up the artists last year and then openly regretting on the unfortunate incident.
This time too, Rajasthan Police instead of accusing the artist or the art
summit, put the blame squarely on the woman and her outfit for taking law into
her hands. This is a commendable thing that we should not fail to notice.
My heart goes out to Radha Benode Sharma who had to face
this indignity and also to the organizers of the Jaipur Art Summit. Jaipur is a
city besides its historical flamboyance and related touristic attractions of
late has become a brand in its own by hosting the world famous Jaipur
Literature Festival. A series of small scale art and culture festivals
including the Cartist Art Festival and Residency and the painting of the metro
stations in the city with the tribal art of India (done by tribal artists and
local artists together) have attracted more art people to the city. The artists
living in the city and the galleries operating from there also have to be lauded
for their efforts to make the historical Pink City more contemporary than
before. But at the same time, we should not create a negative feeling about the
city because a couple unfortunate incidents happened there in the same venue
and within the same context. A conspiracy angle is always possible and also it
is easy to connect with the right wing fundamentalism within our country.
(Moral police force proudly displaying their game of the day)
However, I would say, it is easy, yes it is easy to connect
this vandalism to the right wing fundamentalism in our country. But think
again. If we see the whole thing as somebody’s conspiracy to gain local fame
and political mileage, then we understand that it is a one off incident, not a
norm. Yes, it had happened last year too. But that does not mean that there is
a pattern always. If we think calmly, we can see that the miscreants could
strike only at a weaker target. If the same lady had gone to the Jaipur
Literature Festival after carefully reading one of the latest releases and
created a ruckus there for the obscenity/a scene involving nudity in that
particular piece of literature, she would have been immediately thrown into
jail because an attack on a world famous program which has already become the
prestige of the state would have been scarred the reputation of the state in
turn reflecting upon the inability of the authorities to curb such stray
incidents. Compared to this we all know the Jaipur Art Summit is a weaker
target. But attacking even a weak target like this, they know would create
ripples in the country. They were looking for a cheap mileage. The miscreants
would not have touched the same painting had it been in the India Art Fair in
Delhi, for it also is a cash rich and powerful platform patronized by the rich
and affluent of the country.
I have to say that in the city of Jaipur, people who are involved
in the art scene are aware of the lurking danger. In the beginning of this
year, when I was curating the Cartist project in the city, the organizer
insisted that a Hanuman carrying a the hill image painted by (with no nudity,
no bad implication, nothing, a popular image of Hanuman) the Mumbai based Raj
More should be removed because he thought the miscreants would attack the
project as a whole. Though the artistic stubbornness won in the battle of
nerves with the organizer, there was a palpable tension when the car on which
the image was painted, was displayed in the city. I also faced the ire of the fundamentalist
of the local kind in Pune in 2015, where the head of the Pune Biennale and
myself as the project director of it were heckled and the painting done by
Manil-Rohit of Delhi was taken to the Sivaji Nagar Police station. Unlike in
Jaipur, we became the butt of ridicule not only by the miscreants but also by
the Police force. Unfortunately, the Pune Biennale organizers did not display
courage to go public about it and draw people’s attention. I consoled myself
and the artists by saying that the organizers had to survive in their city to
which I was an outsider.
(a foreigner trying to protect the work from the moral police woman)
If I had insisted it would have become a national issue. But
I did not because I knew that it was a part of the ongoing intolerance. We have
not been hearing such things for a long time now. The country’s attention has
turned to nationalism and other issues including the demonetisation. The
incident in Jaipur should be condemned. But if we make it a part of the
intolerance debate, then unnecessarily we will be giving more mileage to the
miscreants than to the real issue. There should be a total sensitization in the
country towards art to which there should be measures taken up by the
governments irrespective of their political agenda and ideological leanings.
When we hear some random woman or man judging a work of art it sounds more
obscene than the obscenity that they allege the work of art in question has.
Hence, there should be a model code of conduct for the Police men and the party
workers of all kinds where it should be categorically said that the judgement
of a work of art is to be done by the qualified people. If someone oversteps
this, they should be given exemplary punishment and I am sure Indian
authorities are not that bad that they couldn’t see the absurdity of such
vandalisms. Let us divert our attention towards that than celebrating this
issue and asking the governments to be answerable to it. Just treat it as a law
and order situation and be vocal about the value of aesthetics in public life.
To do that the artists themselves have to go beyond their market values. They
should become philosopher kings of their own worth.
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