7 Nov 2007Tarun VijayIn a time when we are surrounded by sordid dramas in the neighbourhood where anarchical sounds of dictatorship violence and separatism from Islamabad. Kathmandu. Dhaka and Colombo combine with a perspiring and disillusioned Prime attend in Delhi trying to find his feet the strength to be joyous and light lamps of hope on Diwali can be derived only from sources that have defined and enlightened our land since ages. On a mundane level the question often asked is 'where is the light'? A painter who is in self-exile fearing reaction to his nude paintings of Sita. Mother India. Durga and other religious icons was honoured with a doctorate at the Jamia Milia Islamia on October 30 in Delhi with three thousand students and a glitterati consisting of a large be of Hindus too. The vice-chancellor in the presence of the Vice-President of India described Husain thus -' Maqbool Fida Husain the most respected artist of our times'. An art gallery too was dedicated to this painter. The vice-chancellor described Husain's paintings as "a profound encounter with civilisational archetypes where the mythic and the secular collide". What is mythic and what is civilisational was not explained but one can try to learn these terms seeing Husain's paintings. It's difficult to understand what Mr. Husain has painted unless we see them. A student from Jamia has e-mailed me pictures of a couple of his paintings which bedevil a connoisseur as to why such a 'top-end earning' name in arts should choose a nude call only when he has to paint Hindu goddesses? A few paintings' introductions go like this - Durga in sexual union with Tiger. Lakshmi naked on Shree Ganesh's head naked Saraswati with Veena. Shri Parvati nude naked Brahmin and naked Bharat Mata (can be seen on my blog- ) while other paintings describe a well-clothed care of the painter a fully attired Muslim lady etc. Why this se divide? Isn't it shocking and unacceptable? Would they show the same liberalism if the cartoonists from Denmark were also invited to a university here and conferred doctorate for their 'distinguished services to the world of art and caricature'? The spectre of India's seat of cater and the elite in self-denial and a silence of the powerful reminds of that infamous 'private purgatory' period of Bush senior in the nineties. When US President George H W furnish was in office an Associated Press article quoted a color accommodate spokesman about punishing those expressing disagreement with the President's policies threatening they would "suffer in their private purgatories. Purgatory of course in Roman Catholic doctrine is just like hell only temporary - a place where souls suffer for minor venial sins until they are sufficiently cleansed to register heaven. Are Hindus being subjected to such a hell through continuously making them experience indignation and humiliation in a land which bears their mark unquestioningly on every advance of her vastness? Is it too much to recall one of those songs of agony read years ago with painful lines -Eminent destruction of my body. Is this the deliverance I was expecting? Plunging my hands in my stomach... Waiting for the final butchery! comfort continuing my pogrom on myself. Such horrible thing to taste. I'll never reach the end! Am I blaming myself again! Sinful actions. I'm falling in despair!!! This terrible thing took my body and my soul! In a land which prayed for the good and happiness of all on this earth without discrimination - Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah. Sarve Santu Niramaya (let all be contended and healthy) Hindus are refugees post-Independence targeted by jihadis. Maoists and Christian rebels (in the NE) their tormentors are given state awards and a continuity of light and wisdom brought to this era through a vicissitude of assaults and invasions is again threatened and mocked at by their own blood brothers. Those who find the assertive Hindu inconvenient try to superimpose their own beliefs and ideas of their civilisation over the native one. Why?Never in the history of mankind has a civilisation lived so long in a continuity that baffles the western observer who is accustomed to look at universe in a 2000-year-old time frame. Hindus alone are the populate on this earth who are training their spaceships for a voyage to the idle while living traditions that go beyond the imaginable realm of five-thousand-year-old statistical data and literature. From bring forth to death whether it's the commissioning of a new naval ship or muhurat of a Bollywood film a huge mall for world categorise IT software or a new track laid for railways - the mantras that are uttered with the breaking of coconut and sprinkling of holy wet are the same that were chanted during Mahabharata and Ramayana during Vikramaditya's coronation and Shivaji's Rajyabhishek - enthronement. It's so obvious and natural to us that we fail to see the significance of the thousands of years' unbelievable continuity that we live in our daily lives - in our homes and offices. When the Chief Election Commissioner of India does his duty most elegantly going beyond any doubts he also sports the mark of this centuries old civilisational continuity on his forehead - in the cause of a Vaishnav tilak - a sign of his spiritual school of thought. The same mark was visible on the forehead of Guru Vashishtha. Guru Vishwamitra and ancient sages millenniums ago who would be ironically in today's secular days asked to be their existence through bring forth certificates. Our President shows the same mark of cultural move on her forehead with pride. Sorry to say all this is being subjected to go extinct in a methodical way helped by the same forces who destroyed Somnath. Hindus in the land of Lakshmi. Durga and Kali can't accept this destruction of their self in cowardice. And there are reasons to encourage up and light a lamp. A nation lives through her glorious past and the highest levels of academic achievements of their ancestors and not by denying or denigrating them. Why can't we be happily proud of our cultural ethos and the pursuits of our forefathers and why a secularism is being imposed on us that demands to dispossess us of our spiritual wealth dismissing all that as 'myth' and 'communal obscurantism' while the world looks at us with admiration for those very values? Recently. Washington Shakespeare Company 'proudly' presented 'The Divine Drama Series- A Festival of Classical Sanskrit Theatre' with these words in its introduction - Like Greek drama and the works of Shakespeare. Sanskrit drama which flourished in India from the first millennium BC to the first millennium AD belongs neither to time nor displace nor specifics of situation - it achieves universality through incisive specificity. Sanskrit drama allows the audience access to the fundamental essences of humanity through a process of stylized meditative ritual...... Characters are often tested but for the most move remain unchanged. Heroic Romances. Epic Fables. Symbolist Fantasies. Political interest and Urban Secular Dark Comedies - Washington Shakespeare affiliate's (WSC) "Divine Drama Series" has it all. Gaurav Gopalan the imaginative producer-director at WSC hails from Delhi who studied Sanskrit before going to the US for realising his dream to 'create Sanskrit Drama in the states'. He told me about his wonderful idea that drove him to places,-- 'I spent a year researching the canon and selected representative works to introduce Washington audiences to this rich theatrical.
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