Artistic Freedom

''When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
There was no one left to speak out.''

Confessed prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Pastor Martin Niemöller

Creativity is the supreme art. The pursuit of art, thus, is mostly a singular journey at the conceptual as well as the practical level. Art is the making of the new and the artists despite all the commercialisation around ‘create’. ‘Creation’, as art never has a precedent, a legacy or tradition in the normal sense of the term. Even if there is a tradition, it exists not to be followed, not to be learnt and copied but to be experienced and felt only to ‘recreate.’

Art is an effort, an attempt to come to terms with the various component parts of countries, memories, histories, families and gods. Art is an experience for the artist and its connoisseurs, and even for those who ‘hate’ it. Hate is not the right term to be expressively involved to art. An effort and especially a creative effort should be only appreciated. But of late, what we have seen in recent times is that some vigilante extremists are trying to determine and control the dimensions of art. Be it the unnecessary controversy around Prof. Shivaji Panikkar , the attack on Taslima Nasreen by followers of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) in Hyderabad in August 2007, the furore raised on the issue of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who caricatured Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban or Haji Yaqub Qureshi , a minister in the then UP government announcing Rs 50-crore reward publicly, on the head of Danish cartoonists are all vigilantism.

Agreed it was not for art’s sake. It was uncalled for, deplorable and done with a vicious motive. But, it is also true that such violent reactions, somehow, undermine the spirit of creative urge of all the stakeholders. In any case, there will always be a section ready to misuse things created with the best of intention.

The society needs to look for ways to control over-assertion of any short of identities. At the same time overreaction ought to be discouraged for both are forms of radicalism and hence dangerous. What was done to Maqbul Fida Hussain is condemnable. The way an artist of his stature has been forced out of the country is a loss for the tradition of art in this country. Equally condemnable is the ostracising of Salman Rushdie whose writing promises a whole new era in English language and literature.

The impact is for all the reasonable persons to experience. The impact has been disastrous. Creation has got ‘ideology’. Art has become ‘political’. Love for art is being subjected to the whims of collectivism . ‘Individualism ’ has suddenly become a bad word. The expression of feelings is being subjected to hooliganism. It has suddenly got ‘national’ and ‘ethnic’ colours. Suddenly artists being attacked have got media attention. Suddenly a few artists are being blamed for being insensitive and hurting sentiments. The alarm bell is for there to pay attention to. The way not only extremists but also the so called rationalists are taking extreme positions are both detrimental to the cause of institution building.

If all this is not enough we need to revisit the last line of Martin Nimoller’s confession. Otherwise art will be tied either to art galleries who are guided by business considerations at the end of the day or to ideologies. In its existence since times immemorial the love for art was probably never guided so ‘consciously’.

Salman Rushdie once commented, ‘to say that beyond self-exploration lies a sense of writing as sacrament, and maybe that's closer to how I feel: that writing fills the hole left by the departure of God.’

I don’t want that hole to be determined or defined by anyone else.