Apparently though that is what one Pushpa Vitula had assumed when she attended a now infamous exhibit.
The moral police ensured that an art exhibition, explicitly titled ‘Tits, Clits n Elephant Dicks’, did not go on uninterrupted in Mumbai on Saturday.
Following an obscenity complaint by a woman named Pushpa Vitula at the Colaba police station, 12 policemen stormed the exhibition showcasing the works of Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar at the Jehangir Art Gallery and took pictures of the exhibits for evaluation.
Read the full report at DNA Mumbai
This whole issue is stupid at so many levels that I don’t know where to begin. Lets start right at the beginning. Ms. Pushpa Vitula decides to attend an art exhibit titled ‘Tits, Clits n Elephant Dicks’, the organizers have done a good job here. The title explicitly describes what you can/cannot expect inside, for instance, looking at the title one would not expect paintings of the Virgin Mary or any renditions of other ‘virtuous’ and chaste subjects. Undeterred by this warning, Ms. Pushpa Vitula our bold adventurer pressed on and thus in my opinion gave her consent to view any content displayed.
Lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani says: “…The lady, who found the exhibition obscene, went to view it out of free will. If she was offended, she had the choice to walk out. There is no question of conflicting rights or enforcing the law here.”
The moral police ensured that an art exhibition, explicitly titled ‘Tits, Clits n Elephant Dicks’, did not go on uninterrupted in Mumbai on Saturday.
Following an obscenity complaint by a woman named Pushpa Vitula at the Colaba police station, 12 policemen stormed the exhibition showcasing the works of Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar at the Jehangir Art Gallery and took pictures of the exhibits for evaluation.
Read the full report at DNA Mumbai
This whole issue is stupid at so many levels that I don’t know where to begin. Lets start right at the beginning. Ms. Pushpa Vitula decides to attend an art exhibit titled ‘Tits, Clits n Elephant Dicks’, the organizers have done a good job here. The title explicitly describes what you can/cannot expect inside, for instance, looking at the title one would not expect paintings of the Virgin Mary or any renditions of other ‘virtuous’ and chaste subjects. Undeterred by this warning, Ms. Pushpa Vitula our bold adventurer pressed on and thus in my opinion gave her consent to view any content displayed.
Lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani says: “…The lady, who found the exhibition obscene, went to view it out of free will. If she was offended, she had the choice to walk out. There is no question of conflicting rights or enforcing the law here.”
Source:DNA Mumbai
Now we jump forward in time to later that ill-fated day. Offended by the exhibit, she decides to go on record with her protest and runs to the friendly neighbourhood police station and registers a complaint. I can’t begin to fathom her motive(s) for doing so, maybe she thought she needed protection from the evil ways of the morally corrupt artists, I think she would have done better to go to a temple. I personally feel those who see obscenity in everything around them are fundamentally perverts themselves. Especially in the case of art where there are a number of perspectives to choose from, people tend to go with the one most reflective of their own views. Perverts can only see obscenity because that is all they are looking for. Now I’m not saying that our intrepid explorer, Ms. Pushpa Vitula is a pervert, but she doesn’t leave much room to allow for other possibilities.
Then we come to the police the self-appointed defenders of Indian morality, they made two inexcusable errors, first, actually entertaining such a complaint and finding sufficient cause to turn up at the exhibit and then by actually confiscating some pieces for ‘evaluation’. Evaluation? Am I supposed to conclude that along-with the forensic department, the police now have an art appreciation wing? What were they attempting to evaluate? From their confiscation the pieces and recording of the entire exhibit on video as evidence, it becomes clear the police have whole-heartedly embraced their role as guardians of morality.
What we have here is not just a case of a daft woman making a dumb complaint; there is a more disturbing aspect, the fact that the police seem willing to abandon their duties to the maintenance of law and order in favour of moral policing. The question is whose morals do they want us to live by? I suspect that they would lean toward the principles held by those like our protagonist Ms. Pushpa Vitula, a prospect that I fear as much as they would if they had to live by my morals and principles.
Again I have to fall back on the essential freedoms guaranteed to us in the constitution, it’s amazing how many times we have to remind ourselves of them. For an ‘allegedly’ democratic country we are unusually obsessed with censorship and show an uncomfortable tendency toward totalitarianism.
“Anyone who considers this obscene must have had their first orgasm here.”
Art dealer and collector Ashish Balram Nagpal Source:DNA Mumbai
Now we jump forward in time to later that ill-fated day. Offended by the exhibit, she decides to go on record with her protest and runs to the friendly neighbourhood police station and registers a complaint. I can’t begin to fathom her motive(s) for doing so, maybe she thought she needed protection from the evil ways of the morally corrupt artists, I think she would have done better to go to a temple. I personally feel those who see obscenity in everything around them are fundamentally perverts themselves. Especially in the case of art where there are a number of perspectives to choose from, people tend to go with the one most reflective of their own views. Perverts can only see obscenity because that is all they are looking for. Now I’m not saying that our intrepid explorer, Ms. Pushpa Vitula is a pervert, but she doesn’t leave much room to allow for other possibilities.
Then we come to the police the self-appointed defenders of Indian morality, they made two inexcusable errors, first, actually entertaining such a complaint and finding sufficient cause to turn up at the exhibit and then by actually confiscating some pieces for ‘evaluation’. Evaluation? Am I supposed to conclude that along-with the forensic department, the police now have an art appreciation wing? What were they attempting to evaluate? From their confiscation the pieces and recording of the entire exhibit on video as evidence, it becomes clear the police have whole-heartedly embraced their role as guardians of morality.
What we have here is not just a case of a daft woman making a dumb complaint; there is a more disturbing aspect, the fact that the police seem willing to abandon their duties to the maintenance of law and order in favour of moral policing. The question is whose morals do they want us to live by? I suspect that they would lean toward the principles held by those like our protagonist Ms. Pushpa Vitula, a prospect that I fear as much as they would if they had to live by my morals and principles.
Again I have to fall back on the essential freedoms guaranteed to us in the constitution, it’s amazing how many times we have to remind ourselves of them. For an ‘allegedly’ democratic country we are unusually obsessed with censorship and show an uncomfortable tendency toward totalitarianism.
“Anyone who considers this obscene must have had their first orgasm here.”
Art dealer and collector Ashish Balram Nagpal Source:DNA Mumbai
No comments:
Post a Comment