Only savagery...

Only savages destroy art and antiquity

When Alexander the Great marched through Persia, victorious over King Darius, his men destroyed the great palaces and library in Persepolis, in a drunken show of savagery. They staggered around torching quiet wisdom and sumptuous beauty in an orgy of potent bestiality. It could have only made sense through the exaggerated eyes of liquor maddened bloodlust.

Savagery can be noble only if it is unpremeditated. Hanumanji, the loyal, ascetic and celibate monkey god must be repulsed at the recent burning of 23 works of Hussain’s art in his name. This is the typical soft target attack of the cowardly fascist coming down through the drains and sewers of recorded history and certainly not the work of any friend of Bajrangbali.

The depiction of naked womanhood, exalted in a goddess, is a legitimate conception, neither helped nor hampered by clothing. This nudity can only be perceived as a threat in faint hearts, because to the rest of us it is an image worthy of exaltation. To those of us who respect the shakti of womanhood, in a land where the yoni is worshipped formally, there is nothing to do except draw strength from a goddess depicted in any form.

Goddesses are not sexual objects of flesh and blood that we can outrage our hypocrisy over. They are founts of divine energy that the human mind gropingly gives form and substance to. What dignity can an artist steal from godhead by disrobing it? Did Pope Julius II not come to terms with Michelangelo’s conception of a naked god on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

The Mussalmans, through the ages, have refined and extended the entire field of calligraphy, permissible inside mosques. In Islam, let alone inside mosques, images of Allah, or his Prophet, in fact, the human form, including the female shape, are anathema. But the urge of mankind to embellish and exalt divinity found outlets in mosque architecture including tremendous advances in geometric design, jail work etc…. Precious jewels were embedded in the walls on occasion to add majesty. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, from where Muhammad the Prophet ascended to heaven, has a golden dome.

In contrast to these aesthetic expressions, throughout history, arbitrary savagery has had to impose itself by force of arms. There is honour in a martial sense in that. But in India today, we are witnessing a flaccid fascism that resorts to prurient mockery of the calendar-art-and-logic variety. And this type of bully picks soft targets via the back door.

This is no triumph of the lotus over the muck it springs from. What is being offered to an unsuspecting public is a poisonous cousin that attempts to reduce everything to its bestial minimum. Destroying symbols of another’s accomplishment is an impotent deed that deserves nothing but condemnation.

What does the controversy over temples and mosques in Kashmir, Mathura, Varanasi and lesser known hot-spots have in common with Ayodhya? The commonality lies in the threat of destruction and the demeaning malice that accompanies that thought process. But what bahaduri can there possibly be in bullying ancient and often revered stones as proxy for the targeted minorities?

Is such bigoted thinking not on the same train with abominations like ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe or Iraq? Such provocative ideas ignore the potential for utter outrage that can result in riots and mayhem. Pushed far enough, even a mouse can, at last, learn to roar. Did the bomb blasts in Mumbai not follow on from the destruction of the Babri Masjid? Where were the pyjama clad agents of saffron righteousness then? Should Hindu militancy not worry ( very seriously) about its ghee-fed underbelly?

Is the respite in Punjab and Kashmir to be treated as a thing of no consequence? Do we learn nothing from the tribulations of neighbouring Sri Lanka being ripped asunder in a jihad between Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Sinhalese? Not satisfied with the miracle of Indian style coexistence, savage and unthinking agent provocateurs wantonly play at shattering the calm in our body politic along religious lines.

Reasonable as these thoughts might be, I am not advocating appeasement, merely good sense. Whatever is good for the goose is indeed likewise for the gander. Having said that, it is very important to realise where it is all headed when savagery is allowed to lead the way. Dulcet toned Goebellesian logic is palavering up the intellectual rearguard. The cart and horse of Hindu assertion is tangled and unjustifiable. One rule of law is a laudable objective but so is the right to personal choice. How can selective logic be trotted out like the random killings of Jews shown in the parade ground scene in Schlinder’s List?

If we, the public, don’t watch our rears with all due diligence, we may soon be ruled, not by Ram in any kind of Rajya but by Asuras wearing Ram masks and laughing up the points of their devilish little trishuls.

The bush fires sought to be lit by cynical agent provocateurs could tear asunder the fabric of our young nation by undermining its secular credentials. Nehru said he did not want to create a Hindu Pakistan and indeed, one has only to look at the state of play in Bangladesh or Pakistan to realise that religion outside one’s home or place of worship can be a dangerous thing. As state policy, it becomes the hand-maiden of power hungry philistines no more interested in right and wrong than they are in purity of purpose.

India has done a lot better than its neighbours in this business of nation building and will continue to do so if we stick to the course chosen by our founding fathers, which of course included Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.

But there are grave threats to the national eiderdown with boorish and uncouth savages attempting to trample on the dignity and grace of a well endowed and tolerant people. Before this gets any worse, let us demand a proper accounting of the motivations involved, so that we are not consumed like so many collaborating Jews in the furnaces of our own complicity.

(1,000 words)

By Gautam Mukerji
October 28, 1996
First published in THE PIONEER www.dailypioneer.com in November 1996

Post script

Then came the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas and 9/11 and 7/7 and Godhra and Afghanistan and Iraq... Also Varanasi, Sarojini Nagar and countless strikes in Kashmir

Maqbool Fida Hussain, now in his nineties, feels safer living in Dubai. Dalai Lama, now in his seventies, feels safer living in India...

Kashmir is still burning but most, if not all, the terrorism is coming in from across the border now and very few Kashmiris see any merit in becoming part of Pakistan.

We are not popular in Bangladesh, or in Sri Lanka for that matter, but are better liked than we used to be in Pakistan, and China, and the United States... surprise, surprise!

Samuel P Huntingdon and extracts from his essay “The Clash of Civilisations” (1993) has become familiar to most armchair intellectuals, specially those who see a 100 year war against terrorism ahead...

We have learned very little from the examples set by Aurangzeb. This either makes us slow learners or wiser than we look.

In seeking affirmative action and reservations for the poor and "caste challenged" we probaly have bigger fish to fry than minorityism even if most of our minorities are nation builders we need to be proud of. Our mussalmans, more populous than in almost any other country,prefer, on balance, to be Indians and live in India rather than anywhere else, particularly Pakistan...

Through all this, savagery continues to be alive and well in 2007 but the good news is it's not winning and the way things are going for it, it probably never will.