Husain, Hinduism, Hindustan: Testing Tolerance

European Hindus have joined their American counterparts to fight the whiskey wars against an American manufacturer’s controversial attempt to advertise its tipple through images of Goddess Durga astride a tiger, cradling numerous bottles of booze in

her many hands.

A Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary has moved the Bombay high court seeking criminal action against noted painter M F Husain for his controversial and allegedly obscene painting depicting mother earth.
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Go right ahead and arrest the artist for showing disdain for art (effacing his paintings), for the art community (pre-selling his works to a man who knows nothing about the subject). But please spare us this baloney about Husain attacking Hinduism or Husain being a representative of secularism. Both are caricatures of a caricature.

To come to the immediate provocation against him, he has painted a nude woman’s outline resembling the map of India. Those gunning for him are Hindu Janajagruti Samiti and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Since when has India got completely enmeshed with Hinduism? I have spoken to artists and they see the female body in sand dunes, so why not the map of India? If you call the nation Bharat ‘Mata’, then she is female. And a female will have a certain kind of body, and that body will not always be clothed. If you look at the map you often see mountain peaks, gorges, valleys, lush foliage, undulating oceans.

These people who talk about their great respect for ‘mother earth’ abuse her all the time. Each time they excavate and demolish historic sites, they are committing rape; when they carry their tridents and guns, they are on the prowl. These people have no right to complain. It is better if the Hindutva parties stopped pretending about respect. They are the worst plunderers.

So leave India alone and stop riding on her back to get at the real gripes:

-Husain’s earlier paintings have depicted Hindu deities such as Hanuman, Saraswati in compromising poses.
-He has portrayed goddesses Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga, as well as Sita and Draupadi, in the nude.
-In his Ramayana series, he showed Sita clinging to Hanuman’s tail, alleging a sexual connotation in the painting.

The obvious response is that gods and goddesses are shown in far more compromising positions in temple sculptures. There is nudity, there is copulation and there is a lot of experimentation going on there. The fact is that people worship at those temples; no one wants them razed because of these depictions; no one has defaced them for this reason.

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Let us digress for a bit to the other related issue: The whiskey ad that shows images of Goddess Durga astride a tiger, cradling numerous bottles of booze in her many hands.

The Hindus are angry. If these people ought to take issue, it is with the manufacturers for getting the animal wrong. Durga is always atop a lion. To get a few more facts right, it is suggested in the ‘Devi-mahatmyam’ (Hymn on the Greatness of the Goddess) that devotees of the goddess may offer her wine and then drink it as an offering. Furthermore, she is often shown holding weapons. Whatever happened to our little non-violent minds?

The Southern Comfort guys surely knew their hands and the imagery they wished to convey was power.

Apparently, the National Council of Hindu Temples (NCHT), that claims to represent 75% of Britain’s Hindus, said it was time for Hindus around the world and the Indian government to stand up and be counted.

Why get the Indian government of a secular nation involved in this? And where are these people to stand up and be counted when it matters? Where are these Hindus when they must protest against racial discrimination in their countries of adoption? Where are they when in their home countries the name of their religion is besmirched? They are funding the Hindu jihad boxes. They are sponsoring opulent temples.

I had once walked into a store in Las Vegas and found souvenir slot machines with the face of Kali, tongue hanging out. Obviously, someone thought it looked exotic, whereas it should have been Lakshmi, if at all. There, an Indian bought that piece, fascinated by it, or merely thrilled over the fact that he could find his goddess in the US or A.

Why is it that where money, gambling and even harmful fireworks are concerned no one gets offended, but alcohol gets people frothing? What is sacred about the former, and reprehensible about the latter?

It isn’t that Hindus do not have a right and duty to protest. But there is a little problem here. When the images of gods on toilet seat covers marketed in Seattle had sparked off a fury, I saw photographs of some people burning toilet seats in the streets of India to express their anger. I must confess I found it ironical, for most of them are good old ‘squatters’ exposing their butts on railway tracks.

Besides, these are the same people who pee in the open, sometimes against temple walls, who display calendars and pictures of the deities in shops selling everything conceivable and concealable. Why, even the so-called middle-class and intelligentsia get excited over Raja Ravi Verma’s buxom ‘devis’ and stud-like ‘devtas’. It is garish and gauche, but it is considered art.

Then you have that prize catch of Khajuraho and the Kama Sutra. We even make them into our tourist attractions. We berate the ‘regressive Victorianism’ that the British introduced in our wonderfully open society.

If you have no problem flaunting what you’ve got, then you have to understand that the others will want to join the bandwagon.

You want to promote yourselves as liberal creatures and then you get into a tizzy over trifles, when it is trifles you are happy advertising. A levitating Maharishi becomes worthy enough because The Beatles gave him some kick-ass devotion; a Swami Ramdev, who has been exposed recently for keeping bones and skulls in his ayurveda unit, has become a hip, much-in-demand- by-celebs godman. On a TV programme where he was ‘pitted’ against an audience, he ended up with applause and the wily anchor added to the fan following. The message being given out is that you criticise anything Hindu and you are anti-national. This man has the audacity of talking about representing Indian values.

Recently at Shravanbelgola, where a huge statue of Lord Mahavira in the buff is displayed, there were thousands of worshippers and the event was inaugurated by the President of India.

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Is there a connection with what Husain does? Art gallery owner, Dadiba Pundole, reacting to the controversy, said in an interview, “Mr Husain is intelligent enough to know what is artistic and what is not. He doesn’t do anything to upset anybody or to court attention. He paints what he likes, just as a poet writes what he feels. He doesn’t need to justify himself to anybody. The so-called protests are born of ignorance and the urge to comment without understanding.”

I do not think that is the issue at all. This is the Hinduisation of India. And M. F. Husain is very much a part of this charade. He is using his canvas/temple to pay obeisance. His dancing in the aisles in tune with the jhatkas of a film star in a rotten Hindi film finds realisation in at least one goddess image of Shakuntala in the visually and metaphorically brilliant Gaja Gamini.

He paints elephants to worship Lord Ganesha. For all this, he is put on a ‘dharmic’ pedestal by the liberals as a paragon of secular virtue.

Why is this necessary? Why does he have to be validated by some members of the majority community? Why do the very same people who talk about artistic licence feel the need to corroborate it? Where are they when a cross-cultural marriage in a village results in death? Where are they when child marriages take place? Where are they when devdasis are sold in the prostitution racket? Where are they when widows go through hell in the holy Varanasi? Where are they when hundreds of middle-class Muslims study, work, socialise with non-Muslims? Do they talk about the secularism of these ordinary folk?

By making an icon of one who is at best lampooning a cuckold role to the hilt, they are paying lip service to their liberalism and giving a back-handed compliment to the tolerance of the ‘majority of Hindus’.

Bringing such discussions about the charitable majority into the open only connects the Bharatmata and goddesses issue. They are not the same.

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Husain is only a modern-day Gandhi. He has used the prototype of the naked fakir and transformed it into Sufi charlatan. He makes a mockery of poverty by going around unshod when he has shoes that cost Rs. 5 lakh. He too is experimenting with the truth; if Gandhi tested his powers of abstinence by sleeping with virgins, Husain by painting nude goddesses is testing his ability not to be titillated (ironically, both end up playing to the gallery and titillating others). He, like Gandhi, wants to hold on to his religious identity and yet pander to the baser instincts of an audience that will react – either sharply or slavishly. He has merely contorted his old poster-art model to make the goddesses articulate outside of the framework, so to speak. This is deviously whetting the appetite. He is marketing religiosity even as he twists it.

He even went ahead and depicted Mother Teresa in a Paithani sari. Unfortunately, the criticism was that such a raiment denoted wealth, something the Mother was not associated with. That was not Husain’s intention. He wanted to convert her into an indigenous goddess untainted by Vatican canonisation.

M. F. Husain will never get arrested. His masters will bail him out because they have already bought him. They are tolerant as long as he paints in the hues they approve of.

They are all paeans to religion. Therefore, he has no business to be called secular. I don’t think this form of national integration is a good idea, anyway. Keep your gods to yourself. The moment you start slobbering over mythology you cut yourself from reality.