Sunil Sethi: Art: Licentious or unlicensed?

AL FRESCO

Is Indian art licentious, or merely a licence to print money? It is right in your face these days, mostly for the wrong reasons. Recent attacks on the art world reflect growing suspicion and intolerance on the part of small groups about an activity that, in recent years, has gained considerable currency among a wider public""currency in both senses of the word. First, the income tax authorities raid a number of artists, art galleries and curators in Delhi and Mumbai. Then, Hindu zealots barge into the prestigious arts college at MS University in Baroda, objecting to artworks displayed by students as being "offensive". An undergraduate is carted off to jail amid protests by both the student and teaching faculty that leave the campus paralysed. And the sad and sordid saga of India's greatest living modern artist, the 92-year-old M F Husain, now forced to live in Dubai, continues. A magistrate in Haridwar orders his property to be attached in Mumbai because the artist failed to respond to a summons. Cultural policing is acquiring virulent new forms at the precise moment (the nation state's 60th anniversary) when a reappraisal of its modern cultural history is the strongest.

Superficially, the above incidents may not seem connected but, of course, they are. If modern Indian art were a matter of a few artists eking out a hard living on the margins, filling dusty garrets with forgettable canvases, and if students from remote parts of the country were not particularly desperate to gain admission to art colleges, and if Husain was an anonymous old man, all would be well. The income tax raiders would be hitting on politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen (the acknowledged "corrupt" class), the VHP brigades would be targeting romantically involved Hindu-Muslim couples and the Haridwar magistrate would be just another law officer ending his days in oblivion.

Twenty or thirty years ago such incidents were rare. There was the occasional political flutter, for example, when Husain painted Mrs Gandhi as Durga astride a tiger during the Emergency. But, generally, invading parties of I-T officers, goons and policemen wouldn't have known where to find an art gallery or art college. The big buzz about Indian art has changed all that dramatically. Everyone wants to be part of its success story, including vice vigilantes eager to make up for lost opportunities.

The three letters in "art" now spell money, and often, a combination of cash and celebrity, which in India's new age of metro-materialism, is readily translated into media hype. Some of the stories of the riches in art are true: art by big names fetches astronomical prices at galleries and auctions at home and abroad, top drawer artists are deservedly rich, and the futures market looks good. The number of visible young artists has grown as exponentially as art galleries. Established art colleges can't cope with droves of aspirants seeking careers in art. Objects of desire, art and artists, once obscure, are now eminently collectible, moving from the fringes to occupy a central position in mainstream culture.

A robust economy and an emerging class of educated homeowners, with wall space to fill up and wallets to support their taste, have helped create the appetite and market for modern art. As in any popular traded commodity there are bound to be allegations of money laundering or parking illicit cash. But the rule of the free market is transparent regulation to encourage fair trade. Income tax raids by an opaque bureaucracy won't solve the scam. Several weeks later we have no news about what the I-T teams found in art gallery owners or artists' homes.

And the attackers in Baroda's art college have also fallen silent after being driven out. In any democracy matters of taste""what is licentious and what is not""are regulated by consensus. The view of teachers, students, administrators and the public at large, even in Narendra Modi's Gujarat, has to prevail.

As for the blunderbuss magistrate in Haridwar who attached MF Husain's property, he would be best advised to take a holy dip.