Parodying many clichés around the romantic figure of poet Jaromil, in 'Life is Elsewhere', Milan Kundera, narrates an anecdote where the poet is called to read poetry in a Police Academy. It is a comment on the status of artists, writers and poets in a civilised society. The artist must always seek approval of bureaucracy or aristocracy, whatever be the case. He must conform to their ideology to practice art, or remain inert. The artist can have a license to create ideas, but not ideology. If he fails to do so, his art dies for lack of support and recognition. Or, is viewed as a weapon of destruction, from which the society must be protected. Mere words or pictures acquire the status of nooks.
In March 2010, Jafar Panahi, the Iranian film director who won coveted awards at The Cannes, Venice and Berlin Film Festivals for films like The White Baloon, The Circle and Crimson Gold was arrested for being a vocal supporter of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Mousavi. He is believed to be held at an undisclosed location since then on charges not yet disclosed. Jafar was denied permission to be a jury at Berlin Film Festival. The simple, humane statements of his films are viewed as " spreading western propaganda" by the Iranian government.
Salman Rushdie, who had to go underground for a decade ( 1989 onwards) after the publication of The Satanic Verses which displeased faith of a few to the extent that it resulted in a fatwa on his head and killing of two of the translators. Rushdie has written extensively with great insight on the subject. Using the metaphor of a whale, inside whose belly a writer can sit and ignore the reality of the world outside, he writes, "…politics and literature, like sport and politics, do mix, are inextricably mixed, and that that mixture has consequences." He later adds in the same essay titled 'Outside The Whale' in Imaginary Homelands," If writers leave the business of making pictures of the world to politicians, it will be one of history's great and most abject abdications."
Back home, Safdar Hashmi, an important voice in political theatre was killed in 1989, while performing a street play, Halla Bol. His street theatre group Janam was a strong voice of cultural resistance against authoritarianism. During Ghaziabad municipal elections, at Sahibabad's Jhandapur village, (near Delhi), the troupe was attacked by political hoodlums of the ruling party for speaking out disturbing facts. Hashmi succumbed to his injuries the following day. Two days after his death, his wife Moloyshree Hashmi, went to the same spot again, with Jan Natya Manch troupe and defiantly completed the play. This triggered coming together of the artist community in India who demanded right to free speech and protection for creative expression under Sahmat foundation.
Sometimes, the roles are reversed though. When firebrand Trinamool Congree president, Mamata Banerjee picks an artistic brush to aid party fund, buyers end up losing three crore rupees for what they are made to accept as art. It is a different matter that in a state that claims to be high on art and outspokenness, cartoonists and graffiti artists are feeling throttled. "Caution translates into boring and unimaginative graffiti, " says Lahiri, the famous cartoonist from Kolkata, West Bengal. Political conformism has taken away the edge, before drawing every line, now the artists have to think, who all it may 'offend.'
In March 2010, Jafar Panahi, the Iranian film director who won coveted awards at The Cannes, Venice and Berlin Film Festivals for films like The White Baloon, The Circle and Crimson Gold was arrested for being a vocal supporter of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Mousavi. He is believed to be held at an undisclosed location since then on charges not yet disclosed. Jafar was denied permission to be a jury at Berlin Film Festival. The simple, humane statements of his films are viewed as " spreading western propaganda" by the Iranian government.
Salman Rushdie, who had to go underground for a decade ( 1989 onwards) after the publication of The Satanic Verses which displeased faith of a few to the extent that it resulted in a fatwa on his head and killing of two of the translators. Rushdie has written extensively with great insight on the subject. Using the metaphor of a whale, inside whose belly a writer can sit and ignore the reality of the world outside, he writes, "…politics and literature, like sport and politics, do mix, are inextricably mixed, and that that mixture has consequences." He later adds in the same essay titled 'Outside The Whale' in Imaginary Homelands," If writers leave the business of making pictures of the world to politicians, it will be one of history's great and most abject abdications."
Back home, Safdar Hashmi, an important voice in political theatre was killed in 1989, while performing a street play, Halla Bol. His street theatre group Janam was a strong voice of cultural resistance against authoritarianism. During Ghaziabad municipal elections, at Sahibabad's Jhandapur village, (near Delhi), the troupe was attacked by political hoodlums of the ruling party for speaking out disturbing facts. Hashmi succumbed to his injuries the following day. Two days after his death, his wife Moloyshree Hashmi, went to the same spot again, with Jan Natya Manch troupe and defiantly completed the play. This triggered coming together of the artist community in India who demanded right to free speech and protection for creative expression under Sahmat foundation.
Sometimes, the roles are reversed though. When firebrand Trinamool Congree president, Mamata Banerjee picks an artistic brush to aid party fund, buyers end up losing three crore rupees for what they are made to accept as art. It is a different matter that in a state that claims to be high on art and outspokenness, cartoonists and graffiti artists are feeling throttled. "Caution translates into boring and unimaginative graffiti, " says Lahiri, the famous cartoonist from Kolkata, West Bengal. Political conformism has taken away the edge, before drawing every line, now the artists have to think, who all it may 'offend.'
No comments:
Post a Comment