Art for art’s sake is useless: Katju

Poetry of Keats,Eliot are useless as they serve no social purpose beyond providing entertainment.

Press Council chairman Justice Markandey Katju said art for art’s sake is useless for a country like India and the need of the hour is to encourage art with a social purpose.

There are two types of art and literature. First,art for art’s sake and the second,art for social purpose. The works meant only to please and entertain people not to propagate social ideas are useless in a poor country like India, Katju said after releasing a book ‘Aadhe Teerche Raste’ by Urdu writer late Dr Mohammad Hasan.

He said in a country where farmers commit suicide and 47 per cent children are suffering from malnutrition,the poetry of Keats,T S Eliot,Tagore and Kalidas are useless as they serve no social purpose beyond providing entertainment.

Art and literature should serve the people and help them in their struggle for a better life by arousing emotions against oppression and injustice, Katju said.

He said the constructive poetry of Maxim Gorky in Russian,Premchand and Kabir in Hindi and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay and Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali are relevant in the modern age.

Endorsing Urdu literary works,Katju said,Urdu is the literature of protest,voice of heart and 90 per cent Urdu poetry are constructive.

He said the greatest poems in the world are available only in Urdu.

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