Skip to main content

Contemporary Durgas


Durga Vahini, reportedly a women's wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, is objecting to the art exhibition going on at Delhi Art Gallery.  The current Durgas think that the paintings on display in the Gallery demean women.

Below is one of the paintings/sculptures exhibited at the gallery.



And below is one of the sculptures from Khajuraho temple.



When are the Durgas going to demolish the Khajuraho temple, the sculptures in Ajanta and Ellora caves, and many other works of art belonging to the country's past which is usually glorified in our history books?


Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. AmitAagFebruary 5, 2013 at 12:32 PM

    Lovely art!
    Nice post!
    Relevant question!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Easwar ArumugamFebruary 5, 2013 at 1:15 PM

    Nice artistic work. i agree with you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:13 PM

      When politics enters, art acquires many meanings which are not dreamt of by the artist!

      Delete
  3. Vishal RathodFebruary 5, 2013 at 3:00 PM

    A good thought with a meaningful question . Thanks for sharing .

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sunil DeepakFebruary 5, 2013 at 5:57 PM

    I hope that these Indian talibans don't take it one day as their life's mission to destroy heritage of Khujaraho and Konark because "it is against Indian culture"!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:15 PM

      This is exactly what I fear too, Sunil ji. Perhaps, our country is getting a bit too religionised!

      Delete
  5. mandakolathurFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:08 PM

    You do not need to go to exotic places to see erotic art in temples, Matheikal. You send the Durga Vahinis to Kanchipuram, that holy town not too far from Chennai and I will shock them. It should be the same in Madurai, Tiruchirapalli, Srirangam ... no temple artist was devoid of human urges to showcase his, what we call pornographic talents!

    I may be wrong, but the first photograph, I remember to have read or seen in an article about historic sculpture, recently found somewhere in Kerala.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2013 at 6:19 PM

      Yes, I too have seen such works of art in many temples.

      I'm really not a connoisseur of painting and sculpture. Sometimes I too wonder where lies the difference between art and pornography.

      What I find more detestable is when the so-called guardians of culture and religion choose to attack some and leave the others...

      The present art exhibition of the nude and the naked in the Delhi gallery has paintings and sculptures from olden periods too and from other places as well. Even Ravi Verma's paintings are there. So the present one must be the same as the one you're referring to. I took it from the website of the Delhi Art Gallery. I don't visit art exhibitions, in fact.

      Delete
  6. Deepak KripalFebruary 5, 2013 at 7:51 PM

    Very relevant question.. i don't know the answer.. but i don't like this hulla baloo created over such issues. most are politically motivated.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 5, 2013 at 9:33 PM

      Every religion has such groups, unfortunately. Look at what they did to the 3 girls in Kashmir. Vishwaroopam. And now, Mani Ratnam's Kadal is facing the Christian ire...

      Delete
    2. Deepak KripalFebruary 5, 2013 at 10:06 PM

      Really.. this is sheer non sense. I wonder how much time people have got for these worthless activities. This world is strange.

      Delete
  7. chetan desaiApril 20, 2013 at 9:52 PM

    I dont think there is any explicitly sexual depiction in Ajanta and Ellora caves!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousMarch 6, 2015 at 12:51 AM

    Apparently those people in those times were not so afraid of the body and the nature of humans as much as today society is. Sex is natural. Priest and people who denounce that art just taking the human mind away from what is natural and present everywhere. the more this is oppressed the more it will be in your face because its natural to be natural in the whole universe. Why don't they cover the statue of David since his penis is showing? You body is your spirits only vehicle, why would it want to hide it?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...
11 comments
Read more

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...
11 comments
Read more