CLITORIDECTOMY? BY DAVID OE SOUZA The recent censorship of an exhibition does not bode well for art Tits, Clits n Elephant Dicks might seem like a controversial title to an art exhibition, that it survived eight days without event might have driven San­jeev Kandekar and his simu­lacrum into oblivion, that he is now the subject of this article he has to thank Pushpa Vitula. But there are larger issues in­volved. Did Sanjeev set Pushpa up? As in the perfect crime? How to disagree with a point of view is a mature 'civilised' conversation. Is it appropriate to run to the police or a thug political outfit when you dis­agree with what is art or not in an art gallery? Can one person's claim that something is offen­sive stop others who might or might not think the same way? How are my civil liberties hon­oured if yours, a day earlier, pre­vents my seeing and deciding for myself? Don't art galleries have committees that decide what is appropriate to show in their spaces? Do you run to the police if you did not like the syllabus that your child in school is subjected to? When the police or political parties become arbiters of art and de­cency you have the beginnings of fascism. If you took down a book be­cause it contained offensive material to someone, anyone, there would be no library in the world with a single book on its shelf, the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible and the Koran among other holy texts included. Shakespeare, during his life­time, must have faced criticism as well as acclaim; then came Thomas Bowdler who pub­lished a censored edition of Shakespeare's work so that it would be considered appropri­ate for children. In all proba­bility when you buy the com­plete works of Shakespeare for your children today it will be the original as offensive as the bard wrote them. Lewis Carroll (Henry Dodson) wrote Alice in Wonderland. Chances are that if you read the classic 10 or more years ago it would have had two chapters missing, as the publishers then thought them inappropriate. Today Alice is the complete unabridged book. Would you gift this 'perverted' children's book to a 12-year-old? Gandhi wanted to have the temples of Khajurao cov­ered as he thought they were obscene. Every generation, every culture, every religion as indeed every person has its own personal range of the ap­propriate and the offensive. A photograph of a beautiful pair of breasts could, in many cultures, be considered porno­graphic, however a caption at the bottom - 'Early examina­tion can prevent cancer' - may then seem like an appropriate medical statutory warning. When dealing with the is­sues of censorship it might be interesting to point out the work done by the anthropolo­gist Margaret Mead in the sem­inal book, Growing up in Samoa. Her thesis is that adolescent stress is a function of urbannf; and not of adolescence per se. If the birds and the bees, sex and sexuality were just process­es with concomitant pleasures and frustrations rather than tit­illating merchandise that make the cash registers ring, our ado­lescents who grow into censor­ing adults might have a differ­ent take on the world and all that's in it. Helmut Newton's sharp, strong nudes in stilettos were a constant source of irritation to feminists of his day, who la­beled him 'Porno chic' till thily caught up with his oeuvre and then just called him chic. The list is endless. Don't we say things, wear things, see things, hear things our parents might have been shocked by? They have all be­come par for the course. Is this all degenerate? It might be ret­rograde to think that. It's a case of the transferred epithet - the idiot box; it all depends on the idiot this side of the box. Photographer David DeSouza Artists Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar's controversial exhibition, Tits, Clits n Elephant Dicks Mumbai Mirror, August 8th 2006