Herald, Panjim, 21 Aug 2009
Bans and court orders are now passé – intimidation is a better strategy to impose your worldview on society, says VIDYADHAR GADGIL
THE BIGGER PICTURE
The latest attempt at cultural censorship by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) and the Sanatan Sanstha (SS) – demanding that artist Subodh Kerkar cancel his exhibition of Lord Ganesh pictures, and its campaign against him and the Marathi daily Lokmat for a cartoon ‘denigrating’ Swami Ramdas, the seventeenth-century Maharashtrian saint and contemporary of Shivaji – has firmly drawn the battle-lines between those who believe in freedom of expression and those who would like to constrain cultural and social expression within the narrow straitjacket of their obscurantist agenda.
The pictures of Ganesh drawn by Kerkar are a playful portrayal of the popular Hindu God in a variety of poses. Kerkar himself has been at pains to clarify his stand on the issue: “There is absolutely no intention of hurting anybody’s religious feelings. My drawings are my offerings to Shree Ganapati and no kind of insult is intended … If some people’s feelings have been hurt by these drawings, it only shows their narrow-mindedness and fanaticism.”
The allegation that Kerkar and Lokmat have ‘denigrated’ Swami Ramdas is even more bizarre. The cartoon in question is a genuinely funny comment on cultural censorship. The seventeenth-century Maharashtrian saint Samarth Swami Ramdas is traditionally depicted (including on the covers of his popular Marathi books like ‘Manache Shlok’ and ‘Dasabodh’) wearing a caxtti. The cartoon shows an artist standing before an easel with a canvas of a man wearing a suit, and telling his friend, “Of course this is a drawing of Swami Ramdas. I have dressed him in a suit to avoid hurting anybody’s sentiments.” To find such humour offensive is to extend ‘narrow-mindedness’ and ‘fanaticism’ to ridiculous extremes.
Coming hot on the heels of its demand to remove M F Husain’s painting ‘Standing Buddha’ (which the Samiti itself admits is unexceptionable) from the Goa State Museum, the HJS’s latest demand is so unreasonable that it has, for once, united a wide range of citizens in Goa and prompted them to speak out against such egregious cultural censorship. But there are yet those who dismiss the HJS’ campaign as palpably silly (which it is) and consider speaking out against it to be a mistake, as it gives organisations like the HJS (particularly its fraternal organisation, the Sanatan Sanstha) the publicity they crave and furthers their agenda. But such a view betrays an ignorance of how such organisations operate, and how they succeed in imposing their agenda and vision upon society through systematic intimidation of all opposition.
The HJS is perpetually in campaign mode in its main areas of operation – Goa, Maharashtra and Karnataka – and is indefatigable in its efforts to hunt out and eradicate anything that offends its narrow view of Hinduism. A random sample of alleged ‘denigrations’ of Hinduism from the website of the HJS at http://www.hindujagruti.org/ includes the films Kambakht Ishq, Slumdog Millionaire and The Love Guru; portrayals of Hindu deities in advertisements; and various painters, of which group Subodh Kerkar is the latest member and M F Husain the most illustrious. Ten minutes on the website of the HJS would lead any reasonable person to dismiss the whole caboodle as nonsense and a waste of time – and that is where the reasonable person would be making a serious mistake.
In the course of its campaigns, the HJS uses every means possible to ensure that anything it considers offensive is changed or removed as per its diktats, and it meets with remarkable success in its efforts. When faced with demonstrations and agitations, theatres and art galleries make the changes that are demanded rather than live with the implied threat of ‘retaliation’, and the HJS website reports numerous ‘successes’, with changes made and apologies tendered by film-makers, print media publications, art galleries, and even the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The India Art Summit, reportedly the country’s largest art fair, cited ‘security reasons’, this year (for the second consecutive time), and did not include a single painting by M F Husain, though he is probably India’s best-known painter. Neha Kirpal, Associate Director of the Summit, says that according to her information, “in the last four years, nobody has done any show of Mr Husain in the country.” There is no need to get the government to ban Husain’s works or to get the courts to rule them objectionable (which contention the Delhi High Court dismissed anyway, while exonerating Husain of charges of obscenity and disrespect to religion). The atmosphere of intimidation that has been created ensures that Husain is blocked out of the country’s cultural landscape. Such cultural censorship, without any reference to governments and legal process, is an even bigger blow to freedom of expression than any ban could ever be.
In Goa, the HJS has organised ‘Dharma Jagruti Sabhas’ in the recent past, as part of its stated agenda of “creating awareness amongst Hindus”. Apart from the usual suspects from the BJP, these Sabhas have been attended by politicians like Transport Minister Sudin Dhavlikar of the MGP. The dividends to the HJS have been rich. In 2007, the HJS organised photo exhibitions on Kashmir all over Goa, including one at the government-run Kala Academy. These exhibitions demonised Muslims, and the mobilisation by the HJS around these exhibitions was so virulent that it should have been prosecuted under the provisions banning hate speech. No such thing was done, and ‘secular’ Congress Chief Minister Digambar Kamat actually had the gall to visit the exhibition in Panjim and convert it into a photo-op.
In 2008, the HJS demanded that an award-winning 1966 film ‘Through the Eyes of a Painter’ by M F Husain be withdrawn from IFFI and, on the advice of the Goa government, the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF) promptly did so. Fortunately, protests by the film fraternity, including luminaries like Shyam Benegal and Adoor Gopalakrishnan, forced a red-faced DFF to screen the film, but not before the damage was done by demonstrating exactly whose writ runs in Goa. During the recent Assembly session, the HJS organised a demonstration in Panjim against temple desecrations, which blocked traffic on one of the Mandovi bridges for hours and featured banners showing a Catholic priest and a Muslim moulvi presiding benignly over the destruction of a temple. No action is reported to have been taken by the police.
Citizens who speak out against the communal agenda of the HJS and the SS receive a barrage of hate mail and threatening calls for their pains, from people claiming to be associated with these organisations. Police complaints – for, inevitably, ‘hurting religious sentiments’ – are filed frequently. Numerous activists from human rights groups and rationalist organisations have also had defamation cases filed against them for speaking out against the HJS and the SS.
While the current imbroglio over the Husain painting in the Goa State Museum and the campaign against Subodh Kerkar has created a welcome unity among citizens in Goa in opposition to the activities of the HJS and the SS, unless the government shows some spine and takes efforts to discharge its constitutional duty of protecting freedom of expression, Goa’s vibrant cultural landscape will inevitably turn into an arid desert, with the HJS and SS succeeding in imposing their agenda and vision on society.
As they have in the Subodh Kerkar case too…
Statements supporting Kerkar have been issued, public meetings held in his support, reams of newsprint have been expended on defending him and excoriating the HJS, and the issue has become a cause célèbre in artistic and journalistic circles. But make no mistake about it – despite all this, the politics of intimidation has proved effective. The bottom line is that an exhibition that was slated to run for 11 days will now run for just two days. And that is a victory for the HJS and a defeat for all those who believe in freedom of expression.
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