Column

One of the few saving graces of our near-decrepit nation is the sanity of our higher courts. Once you get to a High Court or Supreme Court, you are very likely to encounter a reasonable and fair judgment. So it was no surprise that this week the Delhi HC quashed three criminal cases against MF Husain, 93. Anything less would have been shocking. Earlier, the Supreme Court had stepped in when the police had rushed to confiscate the property of this 'proclaimed offender', after a network of litigious Hindus and vandals who hate his nudes drove the artist out of the country. Besides, the Hindu Personal Law Board had offered Rs51 crore for his head, and a Muslim Congress leader offered Rs11 lakh to the ‘patriot who chops Husain’s hands off.

“A painter has his own perspective of looking at things and it cannot be the basis of initiating criminal proceedings against him,” ruled Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, adding a curt reprimand: “A host of ignorant people are vandalising art.” The paintings in question, including Husain's nude Bharat Mata, reflected India's ancient tradition of eroticism in art, he said, the artist did not intend to insult Mother India. And to put said ignorant vandals firmly in their place, Justice Kaul quoted Pablo Picasso: “Art is never chaste — where it is chaste, it is not art.”

This judgment is particularly impressive because of its common sense approach (“A painter at 90 deserves to be at his home — painting on his canvas”), insight (“our culture breeds tolerance both in thought and in action”) and wider vision (“It's very unfortunate that the works of many artists today who have tried to play around with nudity have come under scrutiny”). Attacks on art by blinkered fundamentalists are rising.

Last year, painter Jatin Das had to put up an ‘A’ rating sign outside his exhibition at Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery to warn against his ‘bare figures’. And artist Jehangir Jani had to remove two explicit exhibits and cover the rest with fig leaves at an exhibition. Exactly one year ago, Chandramohan, an art student of MS University, Vadodara, was attacked and jailed for ‘obscene and offensive’ art submitted as part of his final examination. In 2006, artists Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar were booked by the Mumbai police for obscenity after someone complained about their art show, ‘Tits, Clits and Elephant Dicks’. Having confiscated the works, the diligent cops marched to the JJ School of Art to figure out whether these were indeed obscene. In 2000, offended sarkari babus removed from an exhibition at Delhi's NGMA Surendran Nair's painting Icarus, showing a bare-bodied winged man on the Ashoka Chakra. But no artist has been harassed as much as Husain, who has been relentlessly targeted since the 1990s.

Earlier, even if we were personally shocked, we didn’t attempt to censor art. This freedom nourished fantastic irreverent artists like Bhupen Khakhar, who explored taboo subjects like homosexuality and sectarian themes. Art has always pushed the boundaries of politeness — and whenever anyone has tried to shackle that freedom, our courts have stepped in, and freed us again. Like when, in 1954, Akbar Padamsee’s painting of a naked couple, with the man's hand on the woman's breast, was considered obscene. The police confiscated it from an exhibition and arrested Padamsee. But the court ruled that art exhibited in an art gallery could not be deemed obscene.This precedent makes prosecuting Husain, or young Khandekar and Narkar, quite pointless. As our society turns increasingly intolerant, our courts should forcefully reject such cases of prejudice. And save us some time, money and embarrassment.

The writer is Editor, The Little Magazine.
Email: sen@littlemag.com