Contemporary painting and Indian politics

[ramana]

Bodhi et al, We need to summarize this issue and put it on a blog and scribd type of site. Its getting tiresome to hear the same tripe all over again.

A summary should include what is Hindu art? What is the modern/Bombay school of art? Who are its luminaries? And why is it repugnant? A 20 to 30 page PPT would do.

[Guest]

Frankly surprised at Ms Jain's tone there.

The 'Husain a Muslim' section of Elsts article reads more like a lament on what Hindus orgs did or didn't do. Why's it ignored the fact that Husain a Muslim wouldn't dare draw a picture or even a caricature of Mohd... let alone nude or otherwise. Also, Husain a muslim removed from his own movie a song that hurt Muslim sensibilities.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Indeed, now that Hindus themselves allege blasphemy, no one comes out in solidarity with them.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Memories a bit spotty for me but during Setu issue didn't some Muslim orgs come out in favor of Setu issue?

[dhu]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->3] <b>What does Koenraad mean when he calls Krishna a “deified hero.”</b> I do hope you realise that he is saying that the Mahabharata is not Itihasa, but mythology! And when he says that at the “very least that the epic story (abt Draupadi’s disrobing attempt) teaches is that ancient Hindus were not so carefree about nudity after all” – he IS being offensive, and he must explain WHO said that Hindus were carefree about nudity.
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Elst has introduced the Christological dilemma with regards to Krishna. The problem he is struggling with is specifically a Christian theological problem. It is not generalizable to Dharma in the least; Indian discourse is not concerned about these types of theological dilemmas. Philology is the mechanism for transforming the traditions into such a variant of Christianity. There is no dearth of jokers who swear by this theological philology. When their conclusions are challenged, they resort to ad hocs like "are you challenging the law of sound changes".

[ramana]

One key insight to understand Western critiques is they look at the world thorugh their own social structures and then thru Christian framework. This is what we came to conclusion yesterday in a talk. So it colors all their views even if they profess ot be not normatizing.

[dhu]

Tomorrow they will say they understand "Brahman" because the root Brah comes from x and it is cognate to x in Swahili. Or that they "know" tapas, because tapas is heat and everyone knows heat "corresponds with" a churning in the mind. and so on. But experience of Brahman is so powerful that even in the theological language of English, it does not make sense to say that "I believe in Brahman"!!! Anyone so declaring will be immediately declared as a joker among the Dharmics. For the Dharmik, to "believe" is just making a pompous statement and it does not correspond with experience.

[Capt M Kumar]

PANAJI: Goa State Museum officials will meet later this week to decide whether artist M F Husain's painting titled "Standing Buddha" should
continue to be displayed, after a right-wing Hindu group sought its removal.

Goa Museum director Radha Bhave said that she would be meeting higher officials later this week to decide on whether to continue the display of the oil painting which shows a white bull against a vividly coloured backdrop.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/ci...how/4882219.cms

[agnivayu]

Maybe the Hindu Groups can be helpful in "Motivating" the director.



<!--QuoteBegin-Capt M Kumar+Aug 12 2009, 03:51 AM-->QUOTE(Capt M Kumar @ Aug 12 2009, 03:51 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->PANAJI: Goa State Museum officials will meet later this week to decide whether artist M F Husain's painting titled "Standing Buddha" should
continue to be displayed, after a right-wing Hindu group sought its removal.

Goa Museum director Radha Bhave said that she would be meeting higher officials later this week to decide on whether to continue the display of the oil painting which shows a white bull against a vividly coloured backdrop.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/ci...how/4882219.cms
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[agnivayu]

Right on. The Christo Westy's have everything based on belief rather than practice and experience.


<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Jul 31 2009, 11:35 PM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Jul 31 2009, 11:35 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Tomorrow they will say they understand "Brahman" because the root Brah comes from x and it is cognate to x in Swahili. Or that they "know" tapas, because tapas is heat and everyone knows heat "corresponds with" a churning in the mind.  and so on.  But experience of Brahman is so powerful that even in the theological language of English, it does not make sense to say that "I believe in Brahman"!!! Anyone so declaring will be immediately declared as a joker among the Dharmics.  For the Dharmik, to "believe" is just making a pompous statement and it does not correspond with experience.
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[Husky]

Communist Kerala rag "mathrubhumi"
http://haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?P...192&SKIN=B
<b>Protest this heinous denigration of Lord Ganesh by Mathrubhumi</b>
18/09/2009 07:30:44 hindujagruti.org

<img src='http://haindavakeralam.com/HK/uploadedfile/cartoon189200971331613.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Cartoonist Unnikrishnan has drawn a cartoon of Sree Ganesh regarding Swine Flu issue and published it in website of Matrubhumi Printing & Publishing Co. In this cartoon mouse is telling Ganpati, " I don't want to take risk. Precaution is better than cure."  This cartoon was uploaded on 20th August 2009 and can be viewed on following link:<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The moonjoor is wearing a face mask and significantly there's the label "Ganapathi Chaturthi".

One of the comments:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->ANAND
18/09/2009 18:22:28  Hey Hindus U Wake Up !!!!
Anti Hinduism is the Hidden agenda of Mathrubhumi and Malayala Manorama dailys and many other newspapers of Kerala. They use the Hindu names as the authors of their Anti Hindu articles. Common public think that they are Hindus. But they are Christians or Muslims renamed as Hindus. Beware of this. We are getting cheated!!!<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Maybe the brazenly anti-Hindu cartoon will make all the newspaper's Hindu readership realise its anti-Hindu nature and permanently boycott it, thus sinking it.

[agnivayu]

Has there ever been a depiction of Jesus or Mohammed in India in a mocking fashion?
As far as I know the answer is no. The Christo's and Islamo's control the Indian government in my opinion (even though a few bureaucrats are Hindu, the top leadership is all Christian right now and Arab Oil money controls the politics in favor of Islam)


I want to see Hussein and the other dude who wants to attack my religion paint Prophet Mohamed naked, let's see how long the Islamo-terrorists let him live then.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-agnivayu+Sep 25 2009, 11:45 AM-->QUOTE(agnivayu @ Sep 25 2009, 11:45 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Has there ever been a depiction of Jesus or Mohammed in India in a mocking fashion?

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Wiki on Chandramohan and image here
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"A huge Christian Cross where Lord Jesus Christ was shown with his penis out on the Cross, his palms and feet hanging from the two sides and the bottom of the Cross, respectively. Semen was shown as dropping out of his penis into a real toilet commode placed beneath the Cross. The toilet contained fishes." However Fine Arts Faculty members claimed that liquid depicted is not semen but "body fluids".<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Ironically those shouting from roof top on M F Hussain's right of expression weren't so forgiving of Chandramohan.

[agnivayu]

Jesus is less violent than Allah. I think after the Danish cartoon incident, everyone seems scared to showing any of the Muslim characters.



<!--QuoteBegin-Viren+Sep 25 2009, 11:31 PM-->QUOTE(Viren @ Sep 25 2009, 11:31 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-agnivayu+Sep 25 2009, 11:45 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(agnivayu @ Sep 25 2009, 11:45 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Has there ever been a depiction of Jesus or Mohammed in India in a mocking fashion?

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<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wiki on Chandramohan and image here
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"A huge Christian Cross where Lord Jesus Christ was shown with his penis out on the Cross, his palms and feet hanging from the two sides and the bottom of the Cross, respectively. Semen was shown as dropping out of his penis into a real toilet commode placed beneath the Cross. The toilet contained fishes." However Fine Arts Faculty members claimed that liquid depicted is not semen but "body fluids".<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Ironically those shouting from roof top on M F Hussain's right of expression weren't so forgiving of Chandramohan.
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[Husky]

Previously it was Santa Sonia dressed up as Durga, now it's a depiction of Rahul Gandhi as Vishnu by Express.
http://haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?P...612&SKIN=B

Someone should get Rahul drunk, get him dressed up as Mohammed, snap some shots of it and post it all over the web. I'm sure he won't have much time for more such antics after that.
Oh, I do so like my idea. If only it was feasible.

[ramana]

A book review in Telegraph Kolkota. Might be useful to understand the Indian scene.


LINK

<img src='http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091120/images/20bookleft1.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Venus and Adonis

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->READING IMAGES 


<b>Word, Image, Text: Studies in literary and Visual culture: Edited by Shormishtha Panja, Shirshendu Chakrabarti and Christel R. Devadawson, Orient, Rs 445</b>

There has always been a close relationship between literature and the visual arts — a relationship not well explored. The editors of Word, Image, Text: Studies in Literary and Visual Culture deserve praise for venturing into new areas, for extending the study of literature beyond the written word and to the image — that in painting and sculpture. <b>The four sections in the book, “The Renaissance in Europe”, “Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, “The Indian subcontinent” and “Art and Philosophy” put together 13 articles that explore the close relationship between the written word and art at different points of time as well as in different locations.</b> The book encompasses “…not only the literature and art of Europe from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries”, but also <b>“…includes an examination of the art and literature of the Indian sub-continent”, </b>to quote from the preface.

The area covered by the book is vast, but within that area it takes up selective topics. The first section on Renaissance in Europe is this reviewer’s favourite, as it takes up a period marvellously rich in all the arts — a richness that the articles succeed in conveying. <b>Shormishtha Panja sensitively compares Shakespeare’s word picture in “Venus and Adonis” to Titian’s paintings, Venus of Urbino and Venus and Adonis, as well as to Giorgione’s Dresden Venus. She also compares Shakespeare’s poem, The Rape of Lucrece, to Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia, and to other contemporary representations of the poem. The comparison is enhanced by the photographs of some of the paintings taken up in the book. Without the illustrations, the representation would not have been satisfactory.</b>

The second section focuses on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe. <b>The neo-classical age was marked by a response divided between nostalgia and hope, between idealism and realism. The juxtaposition of patrician and plebeian perspectives led to the coining of the phrase, “the world of coffee and the world of gin”, which indicated the literary, cultural and aesthetic divide of the age.</b> One would have liked the introduction to this section and the last section, “Art and Philosophy”, to be a little more elaborate.

The section on the Indian subcontinent is different from the first two sections. <b>To quote from the introduction to this section, “South Asia is presented here as a continuing cultural space despite wild discontinuities of time.” John Lockwood Kipling’s illustrations of India are taken up by Christel Devadawson with a few accompanying visuals. It is a very interesting article in an age when Rudyard Kipling and his characters have regained popularity. This section also has an article titled “Representations of Nature and Time in south Asian Sculpture: Lord Gommateshwara and the Fasting Buddha”. The writer, Vincent Villafranca, is a sculptor, and one finds his perspective on Indian sculpture interesting.</b>

The interrelationship between literary and visual forms of autobiography is taken up by Loris Button, a practising artist, in the concluding section on art and philosophy. <b>He finds that the written language is a more dominant discourse. He provides a visual response in a series of self portraits, titled Facing Time. He says, “Facing Time can be seen as a visual response to the issue of describing identity in contemporary culture by the means of using physiognomy…” One remembers the self portraits by Rabindranath Tagore.</b>The book is very readable and thought provoking. It should be of interest to students of literature and to lay readers.

PURABI PANWAR
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Good review. Might try to contact the reviewer.

[ramana]

Partha Mitter, "The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922-47"



Reaktion Books | ISBN: 1861893183 | 2007-11-15 | 256 pages |

“

The tumultuous last decades of British colonialism in India were catalyzed by more than the work of Mahatma Gandhi and violent conflicts. The concurrent upheavals in Western art driven by the advent of modernism provided Indian artists in post-1920 India a powerful tool of colonial resistance. Distinguished art historian Partha Mitter now explores in this brilliantly illustrated study this lesser known facet of Indian art and history.

[dhu]

[url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8521000/8521936.stm"]Kipling's Indian legacy[/url]

But Mr Adiga said that Kipling had a "deep love" of India's forests and that his jungle tales presented a picture of "a part of India that is now quickly vanishing".

There was a similar sentiment expressed by the insurrectionist John Brown (Harper's Ferry). Paraphrasing.. On the way to the gallows, when asked what he thought of America, Brown replied, "its countryside is very beautiful." In this case, excessive focus on the natural is a way of avoiding confrontation with the native people (ie whites). Kipling is probably a similar case. Of course, John Brown was militantly anti-colonial and Kipling the exact opposite. But John Brown was situated in the successfully appropriated territory and Kipling in the contested colonies.

[dhu]

[url="http://http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Aboriginal-leaders-Russian-ice-dancers-routine?urn=oly,221290"]Aboriginal leaders: Russian ice dancers' routine still offensive[/url]



a comment:

Why is this so offensive? What's wrong with Aboriginal dances? The beheading of a family of eight in Iraq, now that's offensive!

[ramana]

After MF Hussain took Qatari citizenship it shocked a lot of his 'secular' supporters in India. Spuring an multi-religious contry like India for a monolithic Qatar was a slap on the afce of his supporters.



Swapan Dasgupta writes in Telegraph



SENSITIVE BLACKMAIL ]

SENSITIVE BLACKMAIL

- In the past decade, India’s threshold of tolerance has dipped

Swapan Dasgupta





Earlier this week, a newspaper in Delhi published a telling cartoon that drew many a snigger: a figure fully veiled in black with the simple caption: “Qatar Mata by M.F. Husain”.



The apparent absurdity of India’s most famous artist relinquishing his Indian nationality for the citizenship of Qatar, a place where he claims “no one controls my freedom of expression”, has disappointed many of his ardent supporters who had faithfully backed him against militant and litigious groups. In turning his back on “my motherland” because “India doesn’t need me” and “no one came forward to speak for me”, Husain has handed out an unqualified victory to those who feel that free speech and expression cannot include the right to offend. That Husain abandoned India for an Emirate that is devoutly Islamic, conservative and doesn’t remotely qualify as a democracy has only compounded the problem. Lacking political perspicacity, Husain has unwittingly added a new adversary to his list of tormentors: Indian nationalism. The price of Husain’s paintings will not fall because of this new twist to the controversy, but it is possible that the next attack on an exhibition of his paintings in India will be greeted with indifference, not outrage.



The upholders of intolerant democracy have already drawn their own perverse conclusions from the successful hounding of Husain. Last Monday, there were violent demonstrations by militant Muslims in Karnataka against the publication of an article in a local newspaper attacking the veil by the exiled Bangladeshi author, Taslima Nasreen. The article, an unauthorized Kannada translation of an article that had been first published in the Outlook magazine three years ago, was subsequently deemed by the Karnataka government to be “provocative” and the newspaper regretted its publication. Like the Left Front government, which bundled Taslima out of Calcutta after an outbreak of sectarian hooliganism, Karnataka’s Bharatiya Janata Party government pursued the line of least resistance. It bought peace by capitulating to the intolerant.



From a media perspective, there was nothing wilfully provocative in a publication reprinting Taslima’s critique of the burqa. In the past few months, the issue has been debated globally in the context of the French ban on outward religious symbols, including the burqa. Earlier, Britain was drawn into controversy following the insistence of the then home secretary, Jack Straw, that the burqa should be discarded by those who wished to meet him at his constituency surgery. Last month, the Election Commission in India informed the Supreme Court that the burqa was a “religious custom” and not an integral part of Islam and, as such, Muslim women must have their faces photographed if they wanted to enrol as voters.



From a purely journalistic perspective, Kannada Prabha wasn’t being wilfully provocative in proffering Taslima’s feminist critique of Islamic theology to its readers. The issue was topical. The only lapse was a copyright violation, an offence that doesn’t warrant a riotous mob.



The issue, it would seem, wasn’t what Taslima actually wrote or whether she erred in her understanding of Islamic theology. In a television programme recently, the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen member of parliament for Hyderabad, Asaduddin Owaisi, went apoplectic over Taslima’s “blasphemy” and questioned her very right to be in India. Like the occasion when the MIM proudly disrupted a public meeting in Hyderabad where Taslima was present and even tried to assault her, the idea was to inform the government that any accommodation on her asylum application would invite Muslim fury.



There is an eerie similarity between the threats to and disruption of exhibitions of Husain’s paintings and the fury directed at Taslima. It didn’t require the exhibition of Husain’s so-called “obscene” and “offensive” paintings for the religious vigilantes to take offence; even his other paintings have been rendered objectionable. Nor did it require Taslima to start a fresh controversy. I am informed that even her non-proscribed books weren’t on offer in this year’s Calcutta Book Fair. The messages were common: neither Husain nor Taslima were acceptable in any form.



Salman Rushdie suffered a similar plight even after his Satanic Verses was peremptorily banned by Rajiv Gandhi’s government, a decision that triggered a chain of events that led to Ayatollah Khomeini’s murderous fatwa. He was denied a visa to visit India for nearly 12 years because the authorities feared that his mere presence would trigger violence.



Over the years, successive governments have fallen back on the plea that freedom of expression in India is not unfettered but circumscribed by concerns of morality and public order. In short, there is no automatic right to offend. India’s secularism, it has also been maintained, doesn’t imply indifference to faith but equal respect for all faiths. There is a corresponding, if somewhat over-simplistic belief, that the great religions are not in the business of offending non-believers.



In theory, there is nothing hideously objectionable to citizen’s rights being qualified by the realities of India. Even in the West, where personal freedoms tend to be more uninhibited, there have been concerns over paedophile literature and hate speeches. The Pope has made it his business to protest against a proposed Equality Act in Britain that makes homosexuality a legitimate lifestyle choice. A few years ago, the revisionist ‘historian’, David Irving, was jailed in Austria for his denial of the Holocaust. At present, a prominent Dutch politician is being prosecuted for allegedly making hate speeches against Islam.



Despite the periodic indignation over assaults on common decencies, it is worth stressing that the intellectual climate in the West is relatively unfettered. Though ‘moderate’ and ‘middle of the road’ views are often given top billing, there is enough space to accommodate both dissent and offence. Martin Rowson, a cartoonist for The Guardian, was recently in India lecturing on British humour. His audiences were quite stunned by the British success in ensuring that almost nothing remained sacred. This, it was generally agreed, would be completely unacceptable in India.



Indian society is innately reverential and is unduly cautious in challenging conventional wisdom. Yet 60 years of a democratic Constitution should have witnessed a steady expansion in the lakshman rekha of tolerance, and more so because the Hindu ethos is inherently accommodating and non-doctrinaire. The founding fathers who agreed on separate civil codes believed that an initial confidence-building gesture to India’s largest minority would make them more responsive to liberal and secular principles.



Precisely the opposite has happened. The growth of political Islam from the 1970s has seen a regression in Muslim social attitudes and the post-9/11 world has contributed to a back-to-basics radicalism. The attempt by liberals to accommodate minority concerns while simultaneously promoting Hindu liberalism didn’t yield the necessary results. Minority cussedness prompted a fierce Hindu political backlash that, in turn, hardened Muslim attitudes even further. The opening up of the economy and the rise in prosperity did help shift the focus from the overweening preoccupation with sectarian concerns, the defining hallmark of the 1990s, but there was no automatic drift to a more open society. In the past decade, the threshold of tolerance in India has been lowered considerably — thanks in no small degree to the takeover of the internet by competitive extremists. ‘Sensitivity to faith’ has come to mean accommodation of organized blackmail.



The successful anti-Husain and anti-Taslima protests have to be seen in the context of a progressive shrinking of the enlightened public space. India imagined it would be a world player on the strength of its ‘soft power’. Today, that power is being steadily undermined by the clash of rival ghettos. The nonsense has gone on far too long and has touched dangerous heights. It’s time the country extends democratic rights to those who offend fragile sensitivities.

Can some one dig up the cartoon Qatar Mata that Dasgupta alludes to?



I will be pilloried for saying this but accepting Qatari or some other fundoo citizienship was what I thought MFH would do. I was always under the impression that his attack on Hindu icons was due to his inherent Islamism and not any radical modernism. The evidence is he alwasy clothed Muslim and Chritian icons in chaste clothing while depicting Hindu incons in a negative manner. In this very thread we have examples of how he treats themes from various religions.

[Husky]

^ Important.

Not important:



[quote name='ramana' date='06 March 2010 - 01:40 AM' timestamp='1267819370' post='104879']I will be pilloried for saying this but accepting Qatari or some other fundoo citizienship was what I thought MFH would do. [color="#0000FF"]I was always under the impression that his attack on Hindu icons was due to his inherent Islamism and not any radical modernism.[/color] The evidence is he alwasy clothed Muslim and Chritian icons in chaste clothing while depicting Hindu incons in a negative manner. In this very thread we have examples of how he treats themes from various religions.

[/quote]But, but, but you *have* changed your position: you earlier stated that MFH was a communist with islamic appearance employing modernism to pull down Hindu society, now you know he is islamic (as in, motivated by islamism).

Here, on the first page of this same thread, you posted:

[quote name='ramana' date='26 May 2007 - 08:03 PM' timestamp='1180189540' post='69359']

[...]

So using the prestige he has acquired he uses it to attack the major religion and culture of the land. Art is his weapon while the others on the Left are still stuck in text. MFH is bent on attacking the image of Indian society.

He is not doing it from a Islamic point of view. So to counter him as an Islamist is not going to get you anywhere for he is not. He is a watermelon- green on the outside but red inside. My own textual contribution to imagery.



The difficulty of countering MFH is people dont know what he is talking about unless you go through the education about Modernism. Its amazing that in the 1930-40s there were a group of Indians who were as modern as the best of them in the West.

[...]

[/quote]

Please don't frown. It's my character: I'm trivially pedantic by nature. I have the memory of an elephant in some/irrelevant things - and that of a goldfish in all others - and can't leave well alone. (But of course, it's a very selective memory because I always conveniently 'forget'/overlook anything *I* said earlier - and will declare pompously to people too polite to correct me that "I always said so" to somehow prove I was right since the Beginning Of Time. E.g. my who-asked-me-anyway "Didn't I always say christoislamania was evil?" lecture series. When in reality I only learnt the truth about christoislamism since a number of years ago now.)

[size="1"]Bite-back clause: The above admission may never be used against me. Not in court, not in argument, not in jest.[/size]



Never mind, Ramana. I will train you to be as expert as I am in making impossible statements. The first thing you need to lose is your total innocence in erring: you must commit them blatantly and willfully. Next, you should quit making rare, minor, insignificant inconsistencies and focus on frequent, impossibly large and fundamental errors like I do. "The world is flat. Don't argue with me" type thing.

With constant practice over the entire rest of your life, you may perhaps one day reach a level, still comparing very infavourably with mine, but much improved from .... No, it's no good. I'm misleading you. You'll never get there: it's a gift only I possess.





So. Didn't I *always* say christoislamania was evil?

[ramana]

[quote name='ramana' date='26 May 2007 - 02:33 PM' timestamp='1180189540' post='69359']

We are dealing with someone who knows what he is doing. He is not under anyones control. The liberal chatteratti don't know this language of discourse. He is their voice and not vice versa. He is right that art and culture give an early preview of the trends in society. About two decades. You can see from the links I posted.

....



So using the prestige he has acquired he uses it to attack the major religion and culture of the land. Art is his weapon while the others on the Left are still stuck in text. MFH is bent on attacking the image of Indian society.

He is not doing it from a Islamic point of view. So to counter him as an Islamist is not going to get you anywhere for he is not. He is a watermelon- green on the outside but red inside. My own textual contribution to imagery.



......



...

[/quote]



Before he took up Qatari citizens ship he was able to pass of a modern Indian rebelling against Hindu religious milieu. However the nagging doubt was he was quite content painting chaste images of Mulsims (Ayesha) and Christian (Mother Theresa) icons while going overboard in depicting Hindu goddesses. Now that he has taken up Qatari citizenship where there is no plurality he has shown his true colors of being the inverse of a water melon- A Islamist masquerading as a Leftist.



So my earlier conclusions were based on evidence at that time. By taking Qatari citizenship he has shown his true nature. And this is what is causing angst in the Dilli Billi/chatterati circles that they were mistaken for so long.....



Husky, I am never afraid to change my position based on evidence and truth. I dont make flat out axioms.