Who’s Profane? A Husain interpretation of Lakshmi
As you enter London’s netherworld - its
labyrinthine underground subway system - you will
notice large images of a Hindu deity, looking
sinuous and sensual, cavorting cheerfully and
wearing almost no clothes at all. There are other
posters nearby, of sexy women advertising
perfumes or holidays, wearing almost as little as
the god in the poster, but the god wins hands
down in attracting your attention.

More unusually, nobody from London’s
neo-hypersensitive Hindu community has expressed
any criticism or outrage over the nearly-naked
image of the Hindu god staring at almost 2.5
million commuters daily. This is surprising. I
remember last year, when Asia House - a gallery
near Oxford Street in central London - hosted an
exhibition of paintings, which included some
canvases of nude Hindu deities, a self-styled
Hindu human rights organisation (and the
so-called Hindu Forum in Britain, claiming to
speak for the 700,000 Hindus who live in the
country), protested immediately, and forced the
gallery to cancel the exhibition.

Why are the Hindu groups quiet this time? And why
were they so noisy last time? The answer is
simple, revealing, and banal: for them, the show
last year had to be opposed because the artist,
Maqbool Fida Husain, was a Muslim. But the show
this year was to be revered, for what the Sackler
Wing of the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly
is showing are the famed Chola bronzes: seductive
and erotic certainly, but presumably untouched by
the hands of a Muslim artist.

The Royal Academy has brought together nearly 40
sculptures, from India, Germany and the United
States. These sculptures are consistently
evocative, exuding virility and sensuality. You
see a divine male caressing a female deity;
elsewhere, a willowy maiden strikes poses meant
to guide the viewer towards her attract-ive body.

To be sure, the Chola bronzes are not only about
sex or erotica. The quintessential Chola image, -
of the dancing Nataraja performing the celestial
tandava nritya - personifies not only the defeat
of evil, but also the destruction of the world as
we know it, so that a new world can begin.

True, Husain has painted several goddesses in the
nude, but his works reshape our thinking about
Hindu myths, they are not lewd drawings meant to
titillate
But then Husain’s art is also hardly meant to
titillate. That’s the deep-rooted hypocrisy among
people who claim to lead Hindus - in Britain or
in India. They say they are deeply wounded when a
Husain depicts Draupadi, Saraswati or Sita
without clothes, even if the image Husain
portrays is elegant, bold, linear and sharp.
Inspired by the expressionists, Husain’s figures
are not always complete, and leave a lot for the
viewer to imagine. The Chola bronzes, in
contrast, are curvaceous and vivacious. For much
of December, they competed for attention, in that
respect, with the majestic sculptures of Rodin,
which were also on display at the Royal Academy
at the time.

Whether coincidental or by design, the
coexistence of Rodin and Chola at the Royal
Academy was resonant with meaning. As William
Dalrymple noted in an article in the Guardian:
"In Western art, few sculptors - except perhaps
Donatello or Rodin - have achieved the pure
essence of sensuality so spectacularly evoked by
the Chola sculptors; or achieved such a sense of
celebration of the divine beauty of the human
body. There is a startling clarity and purity
about the way the near-naked bodies of the gods
and the saints are displayed. Yet, by the
simplest and most modest of devices, their spirit
and powers, joys and pleasures, and above all
their enjoyment of each other’s beauty and their
overwhelming sexuality, is highlighted."

And yet, those offended Hindu leaders in Britain
have remained silent about the bronzes. It is a
tragedy of our times that Hindu nationalists have
succeeded in running a nearly decade-long
campaign against Husain and forced him into
involuntary exile, shuttling between Dubai and
London.

True, Husain has painted several goddesses from
the Hindu pantheon in the nude, but those are
bold works that reshape our thinking about Hindu
myths, revealing them in a new light; they are
not lewd drawings meant to titillate. His nudes
delineate the body in sharp lines, elevating it
to an abstract realm, suggesting the formlessness
of divinity.

This explanation, which is faithful to Hindu
philosophy, is too abstract for the semi-literate
fundamentalists who have protested against his
works and, in some cases, ransacked art galleries
displaying his art in India. There are some 1,200
cases filed against him.

Even though he does not need to, Husain has
apologised for hurting sentiments. Explaining his
motives, the painter has traced his art to
India’s millennia-old heritage in which gods and
goddesses were “pure and uncovered”.

But we live in complicated times. Instead of
celebrating the openness of Hinduism, which
should make those who claim to lead the faith
feel proud of a non-Hindu artist expressing
homage to their gods, Hindu nationalists are busy
trying to outdo other faiths, by complaining that
they, too, have the right to be offended. So if
Muslims want Danish cartoons banned, Hindus want
Husain’s drawings banned. The attention Muslims
have commanded with their protests against images
they consider blasphemous - a concept alien to
Hinduism - has left Hindus wanting equal
treatment. Don’t mistake them for being liberals.

The sacred and the profane have always coexisted
in India. As a faith, Hinduism is broad enough to
include some sects that think sex is the main way
to enlightenment, and broadminded enough to
overlook sadhus roaming around naked, their
bodies smeared with ash, during the Kumbh Mela.

Indeed, in many aspects of Indian literature and
art, nudity connotes purity and openness, not
vulgarity. Architects have decorated many temples
with nude deities. The Chola bronzes, which
depict scantily-clad Hindu goddesses are no less
divine. The temples in Khajuraho from the
Chandela period have hundreds of erotic statues.
The Gangaikondacholapuram Shiva Temple has an
almost nude Parvati, and that hasn’t diminished
her holiness. The Parshvanatha Temple of
Khajuraho has nude sculptures of the holiest of
the holies in the Hindu pantheon. And many
sculptures in Bikaner have Hindu divinities clad
only in exquisite and ornate chains, necklaces
and bangles.

For the Hindu nationalists, if Husain did any of
that, it would be sacrilegious. But when
anonymous sculptors carve such figures, it
becomes divine, even if not high art. That’s the
hypocrisy that is so fundamentally against the
Indian ethos, not Husain’s art. Husain’s art may
not be sacred, but what the fanatics are doing is
profane.