Aesthetics...

Museums and Art galleries all across the world house many works of art, famous, infamous, or even relatively obscure ones as well. Certain art galleries in the modern times have come to be known as centrepieces housing the most extraordinary forms of art, like the Uffizi and the Louvre.

I often marvel staring down at a print of famous works like the Mona Lisa or trying to figure out the message Picasso tries to convey through his Guernica. But off late I have started to wonder at why these pieces of art strike me as something majestic, curious, and beautiful. When I listen to music especially the classics by Chopin, I can say with surety that Chopin has a sense of subtlety and calmness that I often find rejoicing. This is the nature of music, one can say for sure what sounds are soothing and what sounds are not. But as I have pondered over applying this analogy to the question of how can someone can say a piece of art is beautiful or not, the thought of art being a field that is truly unique and in no ways can be generalized has to become appealing to me. Consider this for example- Suppose that you are given a problem in physics. While there are numerous ways of carving a path to the solution, there is only one correct answer. This is certainly not the case in art. Nobody can say that this is ugly or this is beautiful.

It is famous quote that beauty lies in the beholder’s eyes. It is very true. But it is this same that confuses me. Since ancient times people all have continued to appreciate works of art, like the works of Michelangelo, or the frescoes in the Vatican, art is something that continues to display a polarization that somehow shouldn’t be there and which most certainly goes directly into the quote at the beginning of this paragraph.

So then what is it that can be considered as “ugly” or “beautiful”? Is the statement about the ugliness, itself redundant, by the true meaning of beauty?

We Indians have failed ourselves

India fought her colonial masters for over two centuries before she could breathe in the chilly airs of freedom on the early morning of 15^th August, 1947. Over 60 years have passed since then. We are now the second fastest growing major economy, have the presence of major of the global brands and have the World’s largest cinema and of course a rapidly growing middle class whose demands are driving a major part of our economy. But we have failed.

Despite all our economic wonders and miracles, we have failed to change socially. We have failed to evolve our mindset. When the whole world revers a painter like MF Husain (note- That’s how he wanted his name to be spelt, at least respect this wish of his), what do we Indians do- we send him death threats, violate his art in exhibitions. Of course there were only few people who acted like hooligans but we all failed him and all others when it came to upholding the concept of Right to Freedom, something we fought our colonial masters for. I am not putting light on the fact whether Husain’s works were ethically right or wrong, I am questioning the way we treat anyone who doesn’t fit the bill of our “moral standards”. The way he was treated and hounded out of his own country was horrible to say the least.

Not just MF Husain, even others like Taslima Nasreen, Subhash Mukhopadhyay. While many know of Taslima Nasreen, not many know who is Subhash Mukhopadhyay. He was a researcher who due to constant government interference in his work, restricting and humiliating him, committed suicide. He was one those few researchers who were working on developing a method for in vitro fertilisation or better known as “test tube baby”. He did succeed eventually but he was just late by around a month- a team in Britain succeeded earlier. Instead of fame, he found hell, courtesy our non-repentant society. The government ostracised him and his work and didn’t allow him to attend conferences where he could publicise his work. The British scientist who led his team in developing the technique first in the world was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010. Fine we all commit mistakes- even a developed country like UK wasn’t immune to such behaviour. Alan Turing, the father of computation greatly aided allied efforts during World War II by helping in decrypting a lot of German codes. He was a war hero and instead of being awarded for his services, he was arrested. Why? He was a gay and during that time homosexuality was illegal in UK. He eventually died, and its not clear whether he committed suicide or was killed due to poisoning or not. But in the recent past a petition asking the government to apologise for its post war treatment of Turing attracted a lot of attention and finally Gordon Brown the then PM of UK, in a press conference apologised and accepted that the government’s behaviour concerning this matter was wrong. Can’t our politicians especially those from the CPI (they were the ones whose government treated Dr Mukhopadhyay in such a brutal manner) spare 5 minutes and accept that what they did was wrong and they feel sorry about it?

Why have we Indians become a nation where freedom exists on the papers and walls and only within our homes? Why have we become a nation of hypocrites who can’t seem to accept other perspectives and other opinions? We are a very diverse nation, agreed. But why can’t accept others, not matter how different they might be from us? Why do we have a habit of hounding out everyone who doesn’t agree with our “moral standards”? Why have all of us forgotten that we are the land where sages wrote Kama Sutra? Why have all of us failed the likes of Mukhopadhyay who just want to do what they wish to do?

We all wonder why do so many scientists go abroad to do their work, it is because we inadvertently hound them out. If Mukhopadhyay had done his work somewhere else like in US, he would have been honoured and not treated the way he was here in India.

For those of you who’ll be saying is that I am talking about the past and not the present- the government and the judiciary are thinking about censorship in internet. Why is this even happening? I agree there are a lot of posts which are demeaning towards certain someone and also there’s a huge swathe of age-inappropriate materials. But the job of monitoring children is of their parents and not of the government and the courts. Once a person is over the legal age, he/she has every right of exercising his/her right to freedom. It isn’t the job of judges and the government to tell us what we ought and should do. We certainly deserve to be held responsible of a crime we commit, but reading or commenting something on the internet is certainly not a crime.

Please let us grow up and become more accepting of differences around us. After all we are not China or North Korea.