Art attack

Mumbai, like great cosmopolitan centres anywhere in the world, was a city where artists sang, danced, painted and wrote with abandonment, where art was shaped in the crucible of liberal values. Those who differed with them on what constituted art, were free to express their criticism through public debates, newspaper articles and books. Thus, art and art criticism grew apace, deepening and widening popular cultural consciousness. There were moments in the past, where the language of a dramatist like Vijay Tendulkar, for instance, was found to grate on the ears of polite society, but Tendulkar was always free to defend his right to write as he did. Similarly, painter J.H. Ara8217;s famed representations of female nudity raised eyebrows but there were thousands in the city who rushed to his defence.

This valuable heritage is threatened as never before 8212; not by the ordinary people of Mumbai, it must be emphasised, but by a lunatic fringe. What is particularly galling about the recent spate of incidents, rangingfrom the Shiv Sena8217;s disruption of Pakistani artist Ghulam Ali8217;s performance to the Bajrang Dal8217;s storming of eminent artist M.F. Husain8217;s residence, is that they seem to have had the overt or tacit support of the political masters of the state. After all, little else can be expected when Udhav Thackeray, the son of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, regularly gives vent to all manner of ill-informed opinion holding visiting Pakistani artists guilty for the sins of that country8217;s regime, or when the state minister of culture and censor-at-large, Pramod Navalkar, spends his time looking for the faintest hint of vulgarity in a pop song or in the lines delivered of popular plays. If self-appointed guardians of public morality like Navalkar really want to protect the honour of the women residing in Mumbai, surely they would be more usefully employed in policing the actual crimes against women that have consistently been on the increase in the city?

Fortunately, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee minced no words incondemning the recent disruption of Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali8217;s programme by Shiv Sena activists and rightly observed that such aberrant behaviour always has a negative effect on the bilateral relations between the two countries. His remarks are significant in that the coalition partner of his party in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena, had earlier justified the action publicly. There is little doubt that Vajpayee would have responded similarly to the brazen attack on Husain8217;s home, even though some of his own partymen had organised a similar attack on this artist8217;s work at a Delhi art show not so long ago. By arresting 26 Bajrang Dal activists who took part in this vandalism, the Maharashtra government has, at long last, displayed some sense of responsibility as the guardian of the state8217;s law and order. It must now follow up on that action by coming down just as hard on those involved in the Ghulam Ali incident. The message sent out must be unequivocal: art criticism must be left to qualified art critics,not rabble-rousers with nothing better to do.