The scourge of the headline hunters On Saturday, a viewer filed a police complaint of obscenity against an erotica art show at Mumbai's jehangir Art Gallery. The provocatively titled show may be over but the standoff between art and the moral police is here to stay BY Pritish Nandy Yesterday when I wrote for this paper, praising Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar for putting up a hrave if not exactly criti­cally commendable show of their work at the Jehangir Art Gallery, little did I re­alise it would raise a red flag to the city's moral custodians. Within hours of the newspaper hitting the stands, they had scampered out of their filthy rat holes and, despite the nagging rain and flood­ed streets, turned up at the Colaba police station to file a FIR against the artists, demanding the show be taken off. This is the power of the media. It was possibly for this one moment of glory that psychologist and yoga teacher Pushpa Vidula had waited all her dreary life. Like other moral cops before her, whom I shall not name because every time we name such people they get yet another incen­tive to go out and play moral cop again, harassing individuals, artists, writers and society in general under the pretext of the public weal. Like bounty hunters, these are headline hunters. They believe that this one shining moment of fame will redefine their puny, meaningless lives and for one full day or more they will be­come part of public discourse and debate. And, if they are lucky, the media atten­tion and its internet archiving will en­sure their footnote in history books. Pramod Navalkar even made a politi­cal career out of it and got a full time job as a minister in the State cabinet to ha­rass young lovers and intimidate free thinkers. What a pompous moral cop was doing in a government run by remote con­trol by a one-time cartoonist with a such sharp sense of humour beats me. But I less of such curious contusions are po­litical alignments formed. Over the years, Navalkar must have single-handedly de­stroyed all goodwill that the Maharashtrian art frat felt for the Sena. It was he, in fact, who opened battle against ob­scenity in public spaces, a euphemism for harassing young couples in parks and creating this preposterous divide in art between the obscene and the rest. It was actually his way of collecting headlines and staying in the news since he had no other claim to fame. In fact, Navalkar was not alone. Nor is Pushpa Vidula who visited the gallery to give sound bytes to media after filing her FIR at the Colaba police station. Every terrorist recognises this power of the me­dia and exploits it. In Kashmir and As­sam it is a well known fact that terrorists never strike on a newspaper holiday They know their heinous acts will get no cov­erage. Now of course, with the advent of electronic media, that window of relief has also been shut. You have coverage 24/7 for every act of lunacy, stupidity, crime, harassment, tyranny The media is as hungry for news as headline seek­ers are for headlines. This is the trying yin-yang of our times. Every idiot wants to inscribe his or her name if not in his­tory at least in digital archives and in­ternet blogs. So artists, painters, writers, film makers, playwrights, everyone is easy meat. A gigantic media machinery gives every headline hunter a shot at in­stant stardom. Be it a moral cop or a sui­cide bomber, it's the one chance life gives you to be famous-for all of 24 hours. What is suffering as a consequence of this is intellectual and artistic discourse. Every attempt to steer such issues to­wards an intelligent debate ends up at nought. For intelligent debate suits no one. Not even the media, who are always desperate to grab the extreme image. So where does it end? In the mindless van­dalising of art, note Husain. Or in tar­geting a writer for assassination, note Salman Rushdie. Or in the ostensibly sim­ple but equally dangerous act of shutting down a play or an exhibition of paintings or snipping a film or banning a book in the name of obscenity All, in different ways, legitimising the role of the van­dal-and the State-in a space till now out of bounds for them. In fact, there's a brilliant High Court judgment, in the case of Akbar Padamsee, where the court has decreed that the police cannot enter an art gallery and shut down any show. This freedom may have once in a while been misused-all freedoms are-but it has certainly created some of the finest art, literature, cinema, theatre of our time and history will judge which was more important, the freedom or its misuse. I have no doubts in my mind. Nor should any civilised Indian. But then, those who forced Khandekar and Narkar to shut down their show yesterday may have an­other point of view. So did Hitler. So did Aurangzeb. Luckily, there is still the judiciary around and causing contempt of court can be a serious matter. Can the police act on a single complaint of obscenity and shut an art exhibition? . Technically the police can act on a single complaint. However, in the context of various decisions of the high court relating to freedom of ex­pression in the field of art, the police ought to have been a little more cir­cumspect before asking the exhibi­tion to be shut down-more so where there were contrary points of view as to whether the exhibits were in fact obscene. The high court has categori­cally held that since art exhibitions are meant for those who voluntarily step into the gallery to view them, they do not constitute a violation of obscenity under the IPC. -Counsel Amit Desai Do you think the show should have been shut by the police? An installation from 'Tits, Clits n Elephant Dicks', the show by Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar Porn in the USA How Does America Handle It? In New York, a photograph by con­troversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, of a tied and bound penis was not censored in the art gallery it was featured in. But thousands of miles away in Hawaii, artwork by Daria Fand depicting a nude woman on a cross was banned. The Britney Spears exhibit The first amendment in the US Con­stitution allows for freedom of ex­pression, but there are limits. When the court must make a de­cision in a case of freedom of ex­pression, there are two considera­tions. The first is "content neutrali­ty" which says the government can­not censor a form of expression be­cause one or even many people are offended. The second consideration says the government can censor the expression if it has or will cause "di­rect and imminent harm" to the well-being of society It seems though the offense of one person is enough to censor artistic expression in one famous case. In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered a nude bronze statue of a woman holding a torch, named 'Spir­it of Justice', to be covered. The De­partment of Justice spent $8,000 on curtains to hide the statue he felt un­comfortable speaking in front of for press conferences. Then there was the case of an en­tire 60-piece art show being forced to end one month early because of one portrait entitled 'Bush Monkeys'. It was a portrait of President Bush made from a collage of monkeys and swamp scum. But take Britney Spears. A sculpture titled 'Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston' that shows a nude, pregnant Spears on all fours, lying a on bear-skin rug ran for the full two weeks. tnn Akbar Padamsee | artist In 1954, when I was 26 years old, I was 1 arrested for a pair of paintings called The Lovers. It was my first show and the whole experience was a shock. Someone complained to Morarji Desai, the then home minister, and I was arrested. In both paintings, the man's left hand was on the woman's right breast. One had both of them in the nude, in the other only the woman was in the nude. The court case that followed took about nine months. The judge asked me why I had depicted the lovers in that particular manner. I told him that only a lover can touch a woman there. He noted and quoted my response. Later, I gifted one of the paintings to the friend who had arranged my bail, and the other was bought by Pheroza Godrej. The circumstances last week were different, but I suppose artists have to live with such reactions. Dadiba Pundole | pundole art gallery A t a mentally provoking show like this, there a\\s bound to be discussion. What I don't understand is if you don't like the show why don't you do an about turn and leave? If you are going to complain about it, you are obviously very interested in it. The artist is a thinker and his works, which reflect the society he is living in, have to be understood. I am not familiar with the internet-the theme of the show-so I spoke to the artists and read the introduction, and then the works made more sense to me. Neville Tuli | osian's auction house Sometimes we have problems with custom O officials when we import paintings with nudes. Once an Osian representative asked an officer why he was not letting nudes into a country famous for Khajuraho. The officer replied, 'Sir, when Khajuraho came into being we could not do anything about it, but we can do something about these paintings.' Once we respected the-fearless mind in this country. Today there's a new insecurity to the Indian psyche which wishes to pander to the lowest common denominator, mostly for political gain, i This is a very dangerous stage and has to be tackled with more love, respect and knowledge for the arts, and with intellectual debate. Those who forced Khandekar (above) and Narkar to shut down their show yesterday may have another point of view. So did Hitler. So did Aurangzeb. Times of India , August 8th 2006