Marketing the Negatives: New Intellectualism of Subcontinent

The Indian Subcontinent is a land of socio-religious plurality with each community having a band of fanatics and fundamentalists. The government whether democratically elected or forced upon by coups cannot ignore these varied interest groups and their views, however skewed they may be. This is the reason why Satanic Verses written by Salman Rushdie, which was alleged to have objectionable commentary on Prophet Mohammad, was banned out rightly in all the countries in the region except Sri Lannka and Nepal.
In India however the Hindu Rightwing parties had demanded a lifting of this ban saying that it was against the freedom of expression (freedom of expression is a fundamental right in India). Nonetheless the same parties demanded the ban of James Laine’s book Shivaji : Hindu King in Muslim India, which was alleged to have portrayed the Hindu warrior king Shivaji in bad light. This book too was out rightly banned in the Indian state of Maharastra.
Up till recently it is only the religious fundamentalists who had been supporting such bans while the liberal-secular intelligentsia in all these countries opposed them. But of late a new development is being witnessed. People who had been considered liberal for a long time have come out openly against certain books and art works.
In West Bengal (the part of Bengal that remained with India after partition of India) liberal writers like Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shakti Chatterjee and other liberal vanguards of Bengali culture have criticized the books written by Taslima Nasreen who hails from neighboring Bangladesh.
Nasreen was earlier exterminated from Bangladesh for her controversial book Lajja but she became the toast of the west and she was given asylum in Europe. India too had opened the doors for her. West Bengal, the centre for modern art, literature and liberal ideas had always supported her. Why then is this sudden criticism from the liberal quarters.
According to Gangopadhyay, while Nasreen’s religious ideas or her criticisms of any culture are acceptable, her book is at the end written in very bad taste. Her books which are full of sexual encounters read often like pornography and the intellectual class believes that Nasreen is in the habit of writing such deliberately candid books only to raise controversies so as to sell well.
During the past few years the western market has become quite open to books, art works, films, etc from the sub-continent. While this interest is quite welcome, the problem is that the west has stereotyped impressions about the region and it buys such works which fits into this stereotype. Many believe that books like Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss” or Arvind Adiga’s “The White Tiger” have won Booker Prizes in recent years only because they spoke about the seedy side of India; their literary values have been questioned in many forums. The west wants, it seems only something that speaks of the negative side of the region, even if what is said is more pseudo-real than real.  Even in recent sales of art works of Indian origin, many artists have complained that western buyers only go for subjects which talk about the underbelly of India.
Devajyoti Ray, one of India’s successful painters of the young generation had mentioned recently that his work on themes like Baul (name for a Bengali gypsy singer) and mother (which depicts a poor slum mother) sold mostly with the buyers from Germany, France and USA while his series on modern Indian urban women had few takers in the west. Another Indian artist of some repute, Bose Krishnamachari had complained that most of the art works that he had taken to Madrid ARCO Fair returned without sale partly because the works showed little of traditional art and more of emerging India.

The Great Censorship Culture

Stories of censorship either by the state or self styled protectors of national culture run abound in the Indian Subcontinent. They continue to haunt the liberal minded citizens of this region.

A recent exhibition in Dubai of art works of Colin David brought back the memory of one such dark phase in Pakistan. Colin David, a British by race, but a Pakistani by birth was born in 1937 in Karachi. He had his art education at the Punjab University, Lahore, when the Fine Arts Department opened its doors to male students in 1956. After taking his MFA from the Punjab University Fine Arts Department in 1961, Colin was awarded a scholarship for post-graduate studies at the Slade School of Art, London.

Colin could have stayed back in London and build up a successful career in art there but had chosen to return to his birth place and joined the faculty of the Fine Arts Department of the Punjab University. He remained there until 1964, and then joined the National College of Arts.

Colin David's Nude Study

Colin’s signature works included elements of Op art fused with portraits and landscapes in classical genre. His paintings often had a nude woman in the centre. Nudity is not necessarily linked to eroticism and Colin’s works could not be classified as erotic art. For sometime Colin did have a smooth sail as his works became popular with the art –students. But the dictatorial regime of Gen Zia ul Haq put Colin in a corner. The new military regime brought in draconian censorship laws, where women could not be shown without traditional clothes and dupatta. National policies decreed that figure studies were no longer artistically acceptable.

Yet Colin decided to stay back and exhibit his works mostly in his own studio for selected viewers. His paintings could not be sold openly and so he had to export them abroad where European collectors bought his works.

Though he had stopped selling his works in Pakistan, Colin continued to exhibit his work discreetly until 1990, when an invitation to a private viewing of work at Colin David’s house fell into the wrong hands. Shamefully, the event became a black spot in Pakistan’s art history, as a gang of young men, leaving one of their numbers armed with a gun on the doorstep of the house, burst into the artist’s home brandishing sticks. They proceeded to destroy a number of canvases, including a portrait of the artist’s young daughter.

Today none of he important works of Colin David exist in Pakistan and an entire generation of Pakistani youngsters lost the opportunity of viewing one of Pakistan’s most prolific artists.

The attack on MF Husain in India’s biggest cosmopolitan city by a band of religious fanatics brings us back to that era in Pakistan when Colin David was attacked. It seems things do not quite change in the sub-continent.