Reclaim the female gaze Hussain from the front stall

A not-so-clinical rethink from a feminist perspective on Hussain's condemnation and exile, and the Hindu goddesses on his canvas
Pallavi Paul Delhi

The last late night show. A forgotten, mossy, single-screen theatre. The burgers are too oily here and the popcorn never warm. A balding carpet smells of wood, spit, chips, sugar, plastic and hands. The man sitting behind me snores a musical snore, with high and low notes in place. In the corners some heads move involuntarily to a rhythm which bodies of lovers instinctively recognise, from other films seen in other rooms filled with blue, gauzy light.

 Everyone else is watching with rapt attention, the terribly overplayed drama of a good-hearted practising Muslim in search of a man who can not only solve all his problems but also those of the rest of the world - the one, the only, president of the USA! 
Killer story, for the 'sensitive types' and the 'liberal upwardly mobile republics' of the PVRs. But for the last show, single screen, front row  scum? Really?

As my stomach growls, something that my best friend once said suddenly hits me, "I can't believe how everyone can sit in a dark room and watch something in complete silence!" All these people could have been anywhere, doing anything - eating dinner (it's past 11pm), sleeping (barely at day break, overcrowded, rickety buses take workers to far away factories),or simply talking! Instead, they are here. Getting sucked deeper and deeper into this dream, where prices start at Rs 30 onwards. Unlike the multiplexes.

These dreams on a single screen, I realise in a flash of clarity, make the poorest sit closest to them, appearing even larger than the promised 70mm. Dreams that try to overpower and numb imaginations lest they start inventing dreams of their own; dreams in which presidents don't matter and disability doesn't have to be extraordinary. The rich, in contrast, get to sit at a considerable distance. Distance that gives them 'perspective, judgment, taste and understanding'. All this, so they can tell 'serious' from 'mass', 'cinema' from 'entertainment'.

The fun obviously is that this no fun, top down, set in stone blueprint is violated left, right and centre. Those meant to be overpowered and intimidated stand up and hoot, whistle and howl, critique and love, embrace and reject, laugh and cry, do everything that disrupts the judgment of those watching from the balconies above.

These lines between front stalls and balconies which can tell the good from the bad, the desirable from the acceptable, are lines that can be used to understand most discourse about art in public spaces. Who can talk and who can't, who can understand and who just can't, who can attack and who must defend?

In this respect, the most interesting and contemporary is the debate around MF Hussain. 

Widely discussed, defended and attacked, his artistic work has become one of the axes on which the tolerance of the Indian State and civil society can be graded. As Monica Juneja writes in Reclaiming the Public Sphere: Hussain's portrayals of Saraswati and Draupadi, "...the arguments and positions advanced in this debate have tended to posit a series of oppositions - between the freedom of an artist and the 'sensibilities' of a community, between virtue and obscenity, between an elite of the intellectuals and the 'common man', between a harmonious composite definition of 'Indianess' and a homogenising exclusivist definition that represses all strains of cultural plurality..."