Thursday, March 4, 2010

Made in India/Sent from India

Japanese invent a wire, which is visible when zoomed by thousand million times under a microscope. Japanese sends the wire to Russians; Russians punched two holes into the wire. Americans received the wire from Russians and put screws into the holes and dispatched the wire to India. India after thinking hard over it, figured out, “let’s put the stamp of Made in India”.

Here we are talking about a joke, depicting the creative and scientific prolific levels of India and its public. India has been a land of superachievers, dreamers, sleepers, brainers, inventors, discoverers with the caveat. Yet we never try to harness our potential and instead trying to figure out the eventualities of sticking the Made in India label. Do we need to tell the world about Made in India or be shunned like China and forced to label, Assembled in China.

India is traditionally a conservative nation and economy. That’s why we can count our superachievers on fingers. Its not a magical figure or much boasting about our Indian brains and upbringing. A billion people considered to be richer in glory, history, culture, brain have little to show than the Made in India tag. Yes, we do know that in itself is an achievement.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was the winner of Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. He was humble and able to acknowledge his alma mater in India and his Indian upbringing. But the fact is he was part of the brain drain, as we prefer to refer it. The brain drain process enabled him to win a Nobel Prize. Har Gobind Khorana (won Nobel Prize in 1968) openly digressed his Indian roots and would talk about his frustration of not being allowed to perform experiments as Professor in Chandigarh. V.S. Naipaul is awarded Nobel Prize, he is PIO (People of Indian Origin) and given a dual citizenship after achieving the laurels globally.

Do we recognize talent only after the world applauds? Do we possess the sensibility to stick Made in India label is a question to be asked? At the same time, when we have dreamers, achievers, we are shunning them. Salman Rushdie (a Booker Prize Winner) exiled in America. It was another question in his case, as to prove the secularism and the solidarity of Hindus towards Muslims, it was thought in best interests to ostracize Rushdie, himself a Muslim for his views on Muslims.

Now India has proved to the world its secular culture and democratic attitude. So why has M F Hussain been living in exile in Middle East and embraced the citizenship of Qatar. Why India as a nation fails to provide protection, ironical, when it likes to take all the names Indian, who have made India proud by their hardworking and dedicated attitude working/researching abroad?

Our very own Indian Picasso is living in exile in Qatar and has now embraced the citizenship of Qatar. Isn’t apathy on our end that our Picasso, in his nonagenarian stage of his life, is fighting for an identity? Some say countries are highly technical lines drawn on paper. I say, why don’t we talk about nations. A nation is a process, a thought process, an ideology, a sense and style of living. Some people say an artist knows no boundaries. Here we have trapped our secular mindset and unable to provide protection to an artist. A Govt. reserves the Right to perhaps BAN the work of an artist for hurting and inciting the community beliefs and sentiments. But then shunning them away, aren’t we encouraging Talibanization of our freedom and secularism.

The only consolation that we Indians can provide to Hussain is protection to his ART after his dies. I am anticipating something of this will happen after he dies. Like Hussain says, forget providing protection to me, they can’t even protect my art. A road, a by-lane, a memorial, an art gallery will be named after him after he dies. That is how we refer to the process of making of a nation and the label, “MADE IN INDIA” or “SENT FROM INDIA”.

One of the Controversial paintings of M.F. Hussain.
A nude woman spread over the map of India (in red colour)
Perhaps he wishes to say, India is on fire and bleeding and we have a nude woman guarding us. Do we need protection from this nude woman, who is herself looking for cover?
It may mean something derogatory as protestors had anticipated.

The real issue erupted due to the above painting or I’d say the label. We have Khajuraho, we have Kama Sutra, our Gods and Goddesses, married, remarried, as they said sambhog is the most essential element for the existence of a human being. Nudity is not about good or bad, it’s just these days; we have such lovely and wonderful clothes/accessories, that nudity is being referred to as a taboo. In Stone Age, Aryan or whatever, our Gods only had animal skins or some metal objects to cover their bodies.

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