[Reader-list] Husain Exhibition Attacked in Delhi

[Vedavati Jogi]

beautiful piece of writing chanchal!
accept my hearty congratulations for that.
i find these liberals, secularists etc. more dangerous than muslim extremists.
and i am very happy that nowadays many 'communal' voices are being heard on readers list which was once dominated by 'seculars'
 
vedavati

--- On Wed, 8/27/08, chanchal malviya <chanchal_malviya at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: chanchal malviya <chanchal_malviya at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Husain Exhibition Attacked in Delhi
To: "A Khanna" <A.Khanna at sms.ed.ac.uk>, "Prabhakar Singh" <prabhakardelhi at yahoo.com>
Cc: reader-list at sarai.net
Date: Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 12:03 PM

Dear Khanna,

1. There are people in this world who are not ready to take the positive side
of their own identity. There are people who would love to rape their own mother
and motherland. And there are some people who even protect their intention as
personal attitude. Great. Not to say anything to them.
2. You telling that motherland is a metaphor and nothing else explains in
itself what you feel about India. I am sure such person also feel the same for
their own mother and sister. And I have written earlier that such person would
not come to protect their mother also, what to say about the broader concept of
motherland.
3. As far as Hinduism is concerned, it has to be recognized through the text
only. It cannot be recognized at least now by actions of people. Because India
is more Islamic and Christianized than a Hindu country. Of course, people like
you are a part of it. Hinduism is a mere subject of attack in India. What I told
about Hinduism is exactly what is HInduism. And why Hinduism, this word came
into existence only when other Religions forced it upon the people of Sanatan
Dharma. 

I know you will not be able to understand the difference between Dharma and
Religion. For you and Gandhiji both are same. But Dharma means Righteous duty
and Religion is what you all are talking about. Hinduism is science and teaches
righteous duty in scientific manner. World outside India is recognizing this,
but our Indians will understand it only when a 'Gora' will come and say
and that also when he is ruling us. Sorry.

Sex is a power of nature that is to be won by human through various
methodologies described in Hindu text. And that is an important step towards
Self-Realization. Attempt is that only. Women taking bath nude didn't cover
their body when Sukdeva (son of Veda Vyas) crossed them, because they knew that
he is a child in his nature on this matter. But they immediately took cover when
Veda Vyas crossed. 
There are many stories where Saints are being enticed by Apsaras for sex. And
the theme of all story is same - sex is a very powerful natural factor. And
winning over it is the biggest win in life. 
If sex would have been so prominent in Hindus, we would have found Hindu
society also marrying multitude of women. 
Please do not try to put Hinduism under charge, for this. 
I have already told you the meaning of Deities, and yet you do not understand
and ask me stupid questions.

Unlike Islam, where one is allowed to marry as many as they like as per their
capacity and in addition keep as many women as their right hand posses (Hindu
women) for sex. It is unlike Christian where sex and love are the same thing. 

M.F.Hussain is a gift of Islam. So, he will see even his motherland only with
his Madhuri attitude. No, he is seeing India nude with his Islamic attitude. He
has seen Madhuri also with his Islamic attitude, though film stars have a
different life style and we may not be protective of them in this matter. 

It is so simple, if M.F.Hussain is so clean, let him paint his mother. Or if
you or the protector of M.F.Hussain has so large heart, please send a photograph
of your mother to him and ask him to paint her nude. Let me see, how many of you
are not of double standard. 
Either you all are in favor of Darul-Islam, or you are abusing your own
motherland by supporting bloody Hussain.




----- Original Message ----
From: A Khanna <A.Khanna at sms.ed.ac.uk>
To: Prabhakar Singh <prabhakardelhi at yahoo.com>
Cc: chanchal malviya <chanchal_malviya at yahoo.com>; inder salim
<indersalim at gmail.com>; reader-list at sarai.net
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 3:36:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Husain Exhibition Attacked in Delhi

chanchal, prabhakar, Everyone Else,

there are three issues i'd like to reflect on in light of your rather  
rabid postings on the issues of the attack on M.F. Husain's  
exhibition. Apologies for the rather long posting, i do hope some of  
you will find it interesting.

First, a rather obvious contestation relating to Chanchal's gratuitous  
offer to speak the 'truth' of 'Hinudism', and more broadly, the
 
aggressive claim of Hindutva forces of a monopoly of what the terms  
'Hindu' and 'Hinduism' may mean. More particularly, this is a  
contestation of the place of sexualness and eroticism in them. What  
makes it possible for the claim to be made that 'sex is not erotic in  
hinduism' on the one hand, and the demeaning of artists who brought  
out erotics in sex as 'failed' Hindus? What exactly is the fear of the 

erotic? Why are these strange people trying to cleave eroticism away  
from the lives of 'Hindus'??

Surely you are aware that there is a diversity of practices,  
festivals, mythologies, political economies, cosmologies if you like,  
in different parts of the country and in different communities in the  
same regions, that may lay claim to the name 'Hindu'. This is even in  
the face of colonial, and more recent hindu fundamentalist, attempts  
to reduce this diversity into a rather boring, often  textual,  
normative frame. Chanchal offers, in other words, one peculiar vision  
of some 'pure' or 'original' 'Hinduism' as though it
exists in texts  
(particular ones that by perhaps little more than historical  
serendipity, and sex anxious coloniality, came to be seen as  
containing the 'truth' of 'Hindu culture'), rather than in the 

embodiment and practices of people. chanchal's vision, of a “faith  
(not religion) that talks about winning over the senses (particularly  
sex)” is one that, for the large part, stands miles away from various  
realities, practices and beliefs of those who consider themselves  
'Hindu'.

In my travels around India researching sexualness and eroticism I  
encountered a confounding multiplicity of festivals, rituals,  
identities and idioms in which eroticism, desire and sexualness are  
central. Way too many of these take place in temples, way too many of  
these are central to local religious practices, and the logics and  
experiences of faith, way too many of these lay claim to being  
'Hindu', for me to accept chanchal's description of Hinduism as an 

achievement over sex. Or of the Lingam as light. (is it just me or  
does this sounds closer to a Victorian Christianity? – a reading of  
colonial anxieties around sex race and gender into the truth of the  
self?)  So chanchal, unfortunately yours is one peculiar vision of  
'hindu', and a pathetically unimaginative one at that. It sounds to me 

like the collective voice of a masculinist upper caste that is yet to  
come to terms with (or even recognise) the damage done to it through  
the colonial experience and one which clings to rather fragile stories  
of the self. And it is unfortunate that the political economy of  
Hindutva allows such a vision so much importance today. (Let me  
clarify that i am not particularly invested or interested in  
reclaiming Hindu from the bare teeth of the aggressive masculinist  
claimants. But i do want to point to the right of others to do so.)

The second interesting point in the postings is the tension around  
nudity. Nakedness. Such a beautiful experience. Do you not love the  
human body? Do you not love your own selves? Is it a fear or disgust  
with the self or some other trauma that brings about such anxiety  
around nakedness? But ofcourse this is not just the representation of  
the naked human body that seems to have caused this anxiety – it seems  
to be, more precisely, that you necessarily see sexualness and  
eroticism in the naked human body. But hold on, it is not just  
sexualness and eroticism of the naked human body that has caused this  
anxiety, it is a very particular nakedness – the nakedness of  
'Motherland India'. Because, the problem with 'perverted
Husain' is  
that to him “Mother Indian and Madhuri are the same” – therefore,  
actually its alright for him to paint Madhuri, in fact you probably  
sat at the edge of your seat, enthralled as many of us were, as  
Madhuri oh so sensuously thrust her beautiful breasts forward,  
inviting you to a world of phantasmic pleasure, nevermind the  
performance of outrage at the LYRICS of Choli Ke Peechhe (and i'm not  
talking merely of pleasure for the male gaze of Masculine Men. I for  
one, wanted to be Madhuri). Its the nakedness of Mother India, or  
Motherland India that caused anxiety. So lets face this ponderous  
image of a naked, sexualised Mother India head on. There are two  
things that i find fascinating here.

First, the Motherland is a metaphor. A very powerful metaphor  
admittedly. But a metaphor nonetheless. India is experienced as many  
things, and through many metaphors – a place, sometimes a 'people', a
 
postcolonial nation state, a geographical entity with multiple and  
complex cartographic existences, a cricket team, a zone of intense  
gastronomic density, a colonising force, an a series of competing and  
collaborating political economies...But India is not simply a woman.  
And Kashmir is not the head of this woman (as we were unfortunately  
taught in school in the 80s). The power of this metaphor is truly  
fascinating.

But how does one strip a metaphor?? This must be one hell of a  
brilliant painting! (on which note, are there any weblinks to images  
of this painting? If someone knows a link i implore you, please share  
it on this list). If it is true that this painting has managed to  
actually bring this metaphor into an embodiment, and then brought out  
an eroticism in it (rather than what it seems like, the attackers not  
having even really seen and experienced the the painting) then what it  
has done is expose Mother India as a metaphor, and weakened the power  
that 'she' wields. Brilliant. The second thing is of course that once  
we see Mother India as a metaphor into which we are constantly  
investing a sense of reality, the metaphor becomes a contested space.  
And perhaps this is what is creating anxiety for the likes of  
prabhakar and chanchal?

So lets look at what it is about the stripping of this metaphor that  
has gotten them, and the attackers of the exhibition so aggressive?  
What is the power of this metaphor? One of prabhakar's email hits the  
nail on the head. “If some artist in the name of art paints your  
mother nude and displays it in art galleries and exhibitions to public  
how would you feel and how would you react?”, s/he asks. A similar  
point is made by chanchal when s/he says “I am sure, a person who  
paints his motherland nude, must have done much more nonesense (sic)  
to his mother and sister”. This leads me to understand that the  
anxiety over the depiction of Mother India in such a way that she may  
be seen to be sexualised, as erotic, is actually an anxiety around the  
possibility that heris mother is sexual, or has an erotic side to her.  
Is it scary, prabhakar, chanchal, for you to imagine that your mother  
may be a sexual being with erotic desires, and with a body that is her  
own, and which can be naked? Is it a fear of this possibility that  
evokes in you, such strong emotions when you see (or perhaps hear of)  
what some artist has done on a piece of canvas with paint? Is it this  
fear that you will allow to dominate your very imagination of the  
Nation of India? Freudian psychobabble, in other words, offers itself  
up tantalisingly here. Is their Hindu nation structured around an  
Oedipal anxiety over desire for the mother? (ugh!)

The troubling effect of this is of course the denial in nationalist  
discourse of sexualness or rather the right to sexualness of women, as  
after all, the big obligation on the good woman is to become the  
mother of (male) children. This justifies mechanisms of regulation  
over women's sexualness, and the meting out of punishment and  
exclusion to those who fail to live within these boundaries, or  
transgress them at will. The protests against the film Fire being a  
case in point. But how does a woman become a mother (over and over  
again, atleast until she begets a Son), when she is bereft of  
sexualness? Is this an imagination of immaculate conception, or, a  
belief that the only form of legitimate sex is heterosexual rape? The  
point here is that if the metaphor of the Motherland and the lives of  
women must feed into each other, the demand for the recognition of  
sexualness and women's right to sexuality must also address the  
sexualness of the metaphor of Mother India.

This brings me to my last point. I was brought up with a sense of  
patriotism, stories of the freedom struggle, stories of the success of  
Big Nehruvian development and images of Mother India. In fact i  
sometimes still experience a sense of nostalgia for that heady emotion  
of being part of that particular 'something bigger'. (yes, i cried  
when i watched Rang De Basanti). I have, in other words, experienced  
the power of Mother India, and surely all that investment by the state  
into making sure that this experience marks my psyche forever entails  
me to owning the metaphor. I claim the right, in other words to invest  
this metaphor with things. If i bring my travels around India to bear  
on this, i'd say 'Mother India', to me, is one hell of beautiful,  
sensual, sexual, erotic figure, a polymorphous queer body, who laughs,  
flirts, makes love, has soul-baring intense sex. Oh, and, sigh, S/he  
also makes steel.


Love,

akshay

-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.


_________________________________________
reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
Critiques & Collaborations
To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in
the subject header.
To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>