[Reader-list] Hussain's art and Danish cartoons

[inder salim]

What a lucid piece of writing on the issue of depcition in  Art ...

But the quetion, i beleive is still open to intrepretations.

First of all, i beleive, Karl Marx was, perhaps the first person who
overwhelmingly expressed a need to talk about the ills of society with
an urgency never seen before. It just happened that one of the
culprits was 'the sacred' of the religion at that time. Religion is
still the opium of th masses,and  therefore, we often tend to give
vent to that in day to day usuage of  language through jokes and
other such queerish behaviours. Expression through art is also part of
that day to day living.

Not because of great Art, but one can always some humour in Danish
cartoons and Hussain Drawings, for example,  but people miss the
point, because we tend to see what we are told to see, only.

yes, almost four to five thousand books have been written on Dr. Iqbal
and Islam, but only one or two on his poetry.

Yes, saying anything against the self appointed religous elites can
bring death sentence to you. This practice is as old as times. Lot of
Scientists had to suffer in the past for the very reasons, Mansoor
Hallaj was killed for uttering Ana-al-Haq ( i am the God ).

So there has been a constant struggle between the what is perceived
good for society and what is actually happeneing in the society. It is
different matter that there are millions of followers of Mansoor, who
are believers of Quran even, but those who killed him were not even
true believers of Prophet even. That applies to beleivers of Lord Rama
even,

I beleive, the question of representation was more interesting in an
era of Rennisance when photo-realism in art was seen next to Real, but
with modern ways of depicting things was seen as a radical shift from
that. Most it is about form, and if you see some meaning in it, it is
at your own peril.

The society is perhaps trained to see meaning in everything, perhaps,
because Art has not happned to most of us. Now how to blame artists
for that ?

and if we  believe, that society can do without such aritsts then i
think we follows a Stalin who banished all the artists from Russia who
were not good to the nation at that time.

inder salim


On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 10:38 PM, Sarang Shidore
<sarang_shidore at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sonia and others -
>
> It is instructive to compare the issue of the destruction of Hussain's art  with the ruckus over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet that roiled much of West Asia and Europe a couple of years back. I have struggled with this issue for some time now. Back then, I had penned the following piece, which I'd like to share with this list. I intended the piece to be reflective in nature, and though I do draw some firm conclusions on the matter, I remain open to other viewpoints.
>
> Sarang
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> There are 3 components to this debate:
>
> 1. One is clearly freedom of speech. We all agree that this is a key value in a democratic society. It is also clear that some sort of democratic society is now a universal ideal in the 21st century.
>
> 2. The second is the concept defamation or libel. If I write something nasty about X, then in some cases X can sue me for libel. Wikipedia quotes the definition of libel under the English common law tradition (which is followed in the US and also in India) as:
>
> libel is a malicious defamation expressed either by writing or printing or by signs, pictures, effigies or the like; tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue or reputation, or to publish the natural or alleged defects of one who is alive, thereby exposing him to public hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy; or to cause him to be avoided or shunned or to injure him in his office, business or occupation.
>
> Furthermore, in some systems of jurisprudence, libel must also be accompanied by a malicious intent, i.e it has to be shown that
>
> the defendant made the statement with "malice", meaning either believing it was false or with "reckless disregard" for whether it was false.
>
> Therefore a criticism made in good faith, even if it cannot be proven is true, may be permissible.
>
> Libel laws apply only to individuals. This is because the Anglo-Saxon tradition of modernity generally does not recognize group rights, only individual rights. (One exception I can think of is that of a Corporation. A Corporation is treated as an individual under the English/US sytem. This is because these systems have origins in capitalist thinking and are heavily weighted towards protecting property rights - sometimes more than individual rights!)
>
> The question is - can/should libel laws be applicable to groups?
>
>  Anglo-Saxon law generally does not bar "group slander". There is no recognition of the concept of "group libel". Thus I can draw a cartoon in an Alabama newspaper depicting African-Americans as savage baboons. I can  write an article denying the Holocaust and calling Jews "crooked-legged seducers of Aryan women" in the New York Post. It is not illegal to do so in America. (Unless I burn the flag, of course ;-)) However, it is a crime to deny the Holocaust or glorify Hitler in Germany. In Italy it is a crime to defame the Pope. It is now a crime in the UK to say something that is hateful towards a religious or ethnic group. In Pakistan slendering the Prophet is punishable by death. In India wearing a bikini with the national emblem or the flag is subject to imprisonment. It seems that there is a precedent in many societies for group symbols to be "protected" from certain kinds of speech.
>
> Legal codes of many traditional, non-western societies aren't like Denmark or Maine. Democracy, when it comes to these societies, is often configured along group rights more than individual rights. Can I draw a cartoon in Chennai depicting Brahmins as snakes? Can I go to Bihar and write an article abusing Yadavs as thieves? Can I call Gujarati Muslims "Babar ki Aulaad"? I don't know if it legal to do so in India, but it seems that several non-western societies are generally leery of such "rights", even if the law doesn't specifically address them (In any case, most law in non-western societies is a derivative of colonial law).
>
> To conclude, global practices seem to recognize *some* sort of group libel. This concept is the weakest in the UK/US and the strongest in some non-western societies. It is not uniquely clear what the right balance is for all societies, or even if there ought to be a universal standard for the same.
>
> 3. The third component, and in my opinion the most overlooked one, is the issue of the power dynamic in a society. Example - a US university campus. When I see a table in the Student Union that says "National Association of Black Accountants", my reaction is one of benign support, even empathy. If I turn the corner and see a table labeled "National Society of White Engineers", I don't think I would stay on that campus for too long (neither would any of my white American friends). Under legalistic definitions of free speech, surely this should not matter. But it does. Because the African-American is seen as a historical victim of severe discrimination, and is seen as suffering from the effects of it to the present day. Speech here is a symbol of power. There is and *should be* a different standard for judging the speech related to a disempowered minority as compared to a empowered majority.
>
> If I, a Hindu, paint a nude Sita sitting in Bombay then it is not the same as if I, a Hindu, paint a child-molester Prophet Mohammed sitting in Bombay. This is not a case of Muslim-pandering, but a case of using my empowered status as part of a majority community to target with hate-speech, with full malice and no basis in truth, the minority community, which by every socio-economic standard is disempowered in India. The same goes for gender issues. There is a qualitative difference in me drawing a cartoon depicting a Hindu widow as a lecherous bitch who deserves to die as a sati, versus one depicting a Hindu male as domestic abuser and male chauvinist. The former is dangerous and needs to be combated immediately. The latter is stupid and immature, but does not reinforce existing structures of oppression in the society.
>
> Now, applying all of this to the Danish cartoons:
>
> The cartoons are legitimate by the standard in 1).
>
> They are blatantly inconsistent with 3), because Muslims in Europe are truly, to use a colorful expression, "beggars at the gates", disenfranchised in many, many ways. Thus a  Danish (incidentally, right-wing) newspaper pretty much run and staffed by white Danes was well and truly using its position of power to target a minority community with hate speech. (if the Danish paper had depicted a Hindu as a consummate thief, then this would also clearly have fallen under the same category.)
>
> As far as 2) goes the verdict seems ambiguous. However, because the cartoons were clearly not serving a public interest, were depicting/implying falsehoods (Mohammad was not a terrorist, the implication that all Muslims are terrorists is false), and were clearly done with a malicious intent, to me they fail the standard.
>
> I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that a legal analysis of the cartoons proves that there are serious grounds for an offense under hateful incitement under any reasonable standards. Moreover, they were politically reprehensible acts in a time when tensions between many Muslims and the West is intense and serious international fault-lines exist over Palestine, Iraq, and Iran. It is a potential war and peace matter between nations. The major coverage of this incident reflects this fact. One would expect an editor of a supposedly enlightened society like Denmark to have known better.
>
> Sarang
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> You are welcome to critique the works of the artist and what you perceive to
> be the motives that drive her/his art.
>
> But why is it that you feel the need to defend the right to destroy that
> art?
>
>
>
> On 8/25/08 8:44 PM, "Prabhakar Singh"
> <prabhakardelhi at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> The work of art is for the consumption of people but it should not consume
> the
>> consumer itself.The artist should know it very well.He should not try to
> play
>> with their faith just for his/her cheap fun.An artist who is not
> sensitive to
>> emotions and faith of the people at large is not an artist at all.Art is
> not
>> an end in itself.It is for the people and for the good of the society.
>> Prabhakar
>>
>>
>>
>>
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