I have no great understanding of art and I am not competent enough to judge merits of a painting or piece of art but the nonagenarian painter has been putting up many Muslims in the dock again and again.
Whether Saraswati, Bharat Mata and other goddesses have been painted nude in the past and sculpted in temples in India for centuries is not an issue with me.
In a pluralistic society, we have to draw a line somewhere. We have to be more respectful to the religion of the other though we may be slightly less reverant towards ours.
That is the concept of ‘waza-dari’. A Hindu may say Rama but I will write and say Ramchandra ji or Lord Rama. So is expected of a Hindu to be respectful to Islam.
It is here that MF Husain’s brush makes things complicated. He has a Muslim name. He should be responsible enough. In the past he has erred and apologised. Again he has done and apologised.
If you are such a great artist and value freedom of expression, don’t apologise to anyone. You are not  living in penury and can leave this country if you want. But you keep doing the same mistake again and again.
I strongly condemn your paintings. All the time Indian Muslims are told that they don’t come out openly and condemn acts of blasphemy, heresey when it concerns the other communities, I do that, In my humble, small way.
Adnan (www.indscribe.blogspot.com)
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Sudie… Something’s wrong here! You & I are agreeing too much!
Your first para is bang on. “In a perverse logic they are much closer in thinking to the fanatics in other religions in their thought process than they are to their own religion”: I have tired of saying this to two fanatics (call themselves smartopinion & modern mullah) in various discussions on Mutiny, but to no avail. No one seems to be able to get thru to these jokers. Is that why they’re called extremists?
(Second para, I don’t understand very well.)
As for the Bharat Ratna, shouldn’t Tyeb & Varma quailfy before Husain? Anyway, that’s kinda off topic.
Sri… tricky area really. Freedom of speech is required & must be defended. But if it was that sacrosanct, then Libel wouldn’t be legally defendable. I think we should rename it to “freedom to speak the truth”. Anything else is not worth hearing.
As for religion, unless we’re a patient, classy, educated nation, we don’t have a right to discuss it. We have to earn the right to do anything in life.
The way freedom of speech and libel are reconciled is that while freedom of speech is a fundamental right, it does not free the person from the consequences of his/her speech. If you indulge in slander or libel, you face the consequences of the speech, though the speech itself is a protected right. Similarly, one is free to say something that is fraudulent, but one is not free from the consequences of committing that fraud.
One reason we are discussing this issue for such a long time is that there are double standards amongst many of those who claim to stand for free speech. They stand up for the right of M.F.Hussain to paint whatever he wants to paint, as they should. They have my support for that. But at the same time, they are happy to restrict the same free speech when it comes to Rushdie or the Danish cartoonists. India was amongst the first countries to ban the Satanic Verses, and there wasn’t any protest from many so called liberal intellectuals and wholehearted support for the ban from some of them. I find the Danish cartoons distasteful, but the same principle as the one applied to Hussain’s paintings should be applied to them too.
I condemn MF Hussain. An old man like him having hots for Madhuri! Shame on you Hussain saab.
To 1conoclast,
Libel and slander are the falsifaction (either explicity or implicity) of truth that is provable or reasonably provable (i.e. credible evidence for such a ‘belief’). If it proven to lead to defamation of an individual or entity then it may be punishable by law. Also, it MUST have observable damage to the supposed target of such libel/slander. Further such slander must be libicious.
To say that some are offended and therfore the work is slanderous/libelous is not good enough.
The Danish cartoons, MFH’s or Taslima’s works may seem offensive to some but for them to qualify as slander/libel would be to falsify the nature of those characters they depicted. Though these characters are BELIEVED to be GOOD by nature it does not mean there really are/were. That has to be proved with tangible evidence. Since the nature of those characters may not be assessed as proven or reasonably proven to be true by a reasonable person to exist or have existed in the manner they are believed by the people offended by such expression, they cannot constitute slander/libel.
So India should allow publication of all such expression including the Satanic verses, MFH’s paintings, Taslima’s work and the Danish cartoons, Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion’, pornographic movies (regulated properly) etc.
The main reason the Indian SC restricted the publications of some of the above stated is that it would disturb ‘public order’.
My view is that ‘public order’ is more disturbed by overly display of ‘religiousity’ than by the publication of such forms of expressions, albeit these being fairly controversial.
The wikipedia offers a wealth of information on “Freedom of Speech” versus “Defemation by libel or slander”.
Once these concepts are understood clearly (or say reasonably clearly) they really do not seem to contradict each other.
Arvind Pradhan…
Noble stand. I don’t understand how my m$#$@%!*@^g with Madhuri in mind (as a 20 year old) is better than an old MFH’s openly evincing his awe of her beauty & art. (Moderator, please don’t edit this comment at least! I’m making a point & this discussion is about freedom of speech.)
I didn’t see you condemn Shammi Kapoor when he openly had the hots for Noami Campbell. Or Raj Kapoor who did such beautiful things with his heroines.
Care to elaborate?
Sri… not sure I understand.
Am totally nonplussed about this: “Since the nature of those characters may not be assessed as proven or reasonably proven to be true by a reasonable person to exist or have existed in the manner they are believed by the people offended by such expression, they cannot constitute slander/libel”.
I’m totally Eh?
To 1conoclast,
What I meant was – it is libel only when whatever whatever is stated falsifies something is provable as being true or is ‘reasonably’ provable. ‘Reasonably’ provable are statements as ‘Shah Jahan loved Mumtaz because he built the Taj for her!’. There is no clear evidence, say like a ‘personal diary’, to say he built the Taj for her because he ‘really’ did love her but would a reasonable person doubt that? If anyone were to come out with a statement say the Taj was really not build the in memory of Mumtaz he could be charged with Libel unless he can substantiate his claim with evidence to the contrary.
Thus to prove something is ‘libelous’ requires a rather ‘large’ burden on the plaintiff (the sueing party) to prove that charge.
Sri…
Ah…!
Do you have a website/blog?
To 1conoclast,
I don’t have a website/blog.
You should. Need sane voices to be heard. All we hear these days is right-wing propaganda!
I’m glad to hear views similar to mine from Sridhar & Sudie. I find this attitude of using censorship to protect all religions dangerous and stupid. Freedom of speech is most important for a democracy, because a democracy without freedom of speech is essentially mob rule, jiski lathi usi ki bhains and we’ll all be reeling under the moral policing of religious extremists. Multiculturalism and plurality need to be understood as a union of all our cultures, not the negation of everything that each of them is against.
I think that the most logical argument I can think of is that when someone is offended, let the offended party take recourse to lawful action. Saraswati, Jesus, Mohammed & Allah are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. If you think that the lord of this universe can punish crimes or insults you have a very low view of your god. Let sinners reap their punishment for blasphemy in the afterlife. Who are you to decide that what Hussain or Rushdie did is wrong or right?
Learn to live and let live and leave the judging and punishing to god.