Shivam ji, can you please provide the link to the article in question. I cannot find it on your blog.

A lot has been written on this representation problem by great writers like Barthes or Susan sontag. Who knows if they come to such a stupid conclusion even a fter reading these great authors.

a quote from Marcel Duchamp comes to my mind.
‘ One can not understand the image if the eye is incapable of tears
( the quote almost reads like that )

Mr. Jay Sharma, the world/earth is suffering in more ways than one, please have a second look at what is happenning around us. So cool down…

But I must absolutely insist upon an artist’s right to be transgressive – what is human creativity without transgressions – regardless of how tyrranical the state is and how compliant and frightening the executioners (the authorities – the ACPs and the VCs) and how murdrous the vigilante fascists (the Bajrangis and their ilk) acting on behalf of this irreparably malignant state.

I am afraid I cannot agree with you when you make a distinction between the ‘discourse’ of resistance and the ‘language’ of resistance. The two are inalienably linked and reflect the intensity of ‘passion’ and ‘reflection’ with which you are able to decisively steer an important act of resistance away from mere ‘strategic’ compulsions.

(However, this is not to say that their cultural registers expunge all irreverent references. Follow their music and poetry and you would find hugely transgressive spaces… It is another matter that we choose not to look at them in our unbridled desire to pan everything Islamic.)

The same, however, is not true of the rich and vibrant tradition of visual representation in Hinduism unless, of course, Hinduism embarks upon a negation of its own past and enjoins artists to desist from such representations in future. The question, however, is who will issue such an injunction without erasing the past histories and practices of Hinduism! For, there exists a large body of pictographic and literal references which continue to be invoked and related to as historically identifiable traditions; and, such invocations are not merely restricted to representational art but are in fact part of the day-to-day process of the lived as a form of ritualized practice. For better or worse, we continue to celebrate and apotheosize the yoni and lingam in a highly fetishized form of puja-paath. Unlike certain other religions Hinduism has always invoked modes of sexuality as a creative principle of life. There is absolutely no reference in either Islam or Sikhism to even obliquely encourage such representations.

So your arguments about Danish cartoons and the rest are nothing short of insidious attempts at scoring a perverse point. What you are pleading for, Mr J, is not the freedom of expression – that is only a masquerade – what you are asking for is the exact opposite: an end to the tradition of visual representation relating to Hindu mythology and religion. In order to achieve that you are falsely pleading for, in fact obscenely insisting upon, a pictographic representation of Hazrat Mohammed and publication of the cartoons ridiculing the prophet. You want to kill one tradition through sectarian censorship and invent a new divisive one.

What is worse is that you do not even feel uneasy indulging in such communal nit-picking. I used to think it was childish but no more. It is menacingly fascistic.

Thank you for your comments on my text on Kafila.org. I have very little reason to disagree with you on this issue. I think that all views (including those that I hold, or agree with), and all things sacred, ought to be open to criticism, even to ridicule. I am quite prepared to defend acts of speech or expression that offend people who are not Hindu or Indian or both.

Actually, I happen to have written at length on the Mohammad cartoons, and my position is not one of agreement with those who called for bans against the cartoon images, either in India, or eselwhere, even though I thought personally that the images were in bad tase.

I am not in a position to judge the quality of the images or works that have been created by the Chandramohan who has been arrested in Baroda, as I have not seen them. But I would defend his freedom to make them, even if I did not personally value them in aesthetic terms. Even if I disagreed strongly with what they represented. The true test of a belief in the freedom of expression consists in accepting the freedom of those whom you dislike or disagree with.

I have always been against any ban, including the ban on the Mohammad cartoons, or on Satanic Verses. I have myself downloaded and distributed copies of Tasleema Nasreen’s book ‘Dwikhondito’ when it was briefly banned in West Bengal at the urging of some Muslim clergymen. I have spoken publicly on these issues. For instance, I have spoken against the ban on Satanic Verses in a public forum on censorship organized by the Campaign Against Censorship in Jamia Millia Islamia university, some years ago.

I find it interesting that you are quite prepared to assume that you know what my position on these matters is without bothering to actually find out what I have written, or spoken.

Please do try and educate yourself in future, and do not try and jump to conclusions so quickly and easily. You could end up doing yourself damage.

best

Shuddha

Anyway, it is rather tempting to to use one stick to handle one particular bunch in Gujarat. Perhaps you could take the trouble to read the following article by Ranjit Hoskote. He makes the distinction between hinduism and hindutva rather clear towards the end.
Best
A.

Hindu Sacred Art Offends Self-appointed Custodians of Hindu Culture

Ranjit Hoskote

In a grimly ironic turn of events following the 9 May arrest, without
a proper warrant, of Chandramohan, a final-year fine arts student at
the M S University, Baroda, the self-appointed custodians of Hindu
culture have now demanded the closure of an exhibition showing the
vital role of the erotic in Hindu sacred art.

Earlier today, 11 May, students of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the M S
University put up an exhibition of reproductions of images drawn from
across 2500 years of Indian art. In a silent protest against the
brutality with which their fellow student has been treated for
exhibiting works that BJP and VHP activists claim are offensive and
obscene, the students put up pictures of the Gudimallam Shiva, perhaps
the earliest known Shiva image, which combines the lingam with an
anthropomorphic form; a Kushan mukha-linga or masked lingam;
Lajja-gouris from Ellora and Orissa, resplendent in their fecund
nakedness; erotic statuary from Modhera, Konark and Khajuraho; as well
as Raga-mala paintings from Rajasthan. All these images, among the
finest produced through the centuries in the subcontinent, celebrate
the sensuous and the passionate dimensions of existence – which, in
the Hindu world-view, are inseparably twinned with the austere and the
contemplative.

This treasure of Hindu sacred art did not win the favour of the
establishment. The Pro Vice Chancellor issued a verbal request that
the exhibition be closed, which the Dean of the Fine Arts Faculty, Dr
Shivaji Panikkar, ignored. A written order followed, and was similarly
ignored. The Pro Vice Chancellor then arrived at the venue,
accompanied by some members of the Syndicate of the University. They
requested Dr Panikkar to close down the exhibition, then ordered him
to do so. When it became clear that the Dean would not bend to their
will, they had the exhibition locked.

It appears that the champions of a resurgent Hindu identity are
acutely embarrassed by the presence of the erotic at the centre of
Hindu sacred art. As they may well be, for the roots of Hindutva do
not lie in Hinduism. Rather, they lie in a crude mixture of German
romanticism, Victorian puritanism and Nazi methodology.

What happens next? Will the champions of Hindutva go around the
country destroying temple murals, breaking down monuments, and burning
manuscripts and folios?

Those broad minded propnents of freedom of expression shoyld paste Mohamemd’s cartoons as well the way they are pasting vulgar paintings of bharatmata.

Are we really honest or merely puppet of certain vested inteersts whose sole aim is to crete inefreiority complex about everything Indian and greatness fro everything foreign.

If we are really honest and courageous, we should publsih satanic verses and Moahmed’s cartoons as well.

you can get them from http://www.faithfreedom.org very easyly.

Please show the courage. use one stick to handle all. You selective preaching only to followers of Indian civilisation is the lifeline of fanatics and they very rightly convince their follwoers are able to convince that look freedom of expresiiojn means `abuse Hindus and Indians’ and that’s why satanic verses is banned but `o hindu awake’ is not. Mohammed’s cartoons are banned while MF Hussein’s paintings not. Savarkar is banned while iqbal is not.

let me see if there is any honest intellectual in this forum or all are merely agents of gangs of Mao, marx, macauley and Mohamemd the four gangs busy in destroying their own culture and civilisational values.