Paintings of Hindu gods by ‘Picasso of India’ seized for being ‘offensive’
The Delhi High Court on 20 January permitted police to seize the paintings after a lawyer named Amita Sachdeva complained the artworks – featuring Hindu deities Ganesha and Hanuman alongside nude female figures – “hurt religious sentiments”.
In an X post on 13 December, Ms Sachdeva said she had taken photos of the “offensive paintings” at DAG, New Delhi (formerly Delhi Art Gallery) and filed a police complaint on 9 December after “researching past FIRs against MF Husain”.
Maqbool Fida Husain, dubbed the “Picasso of India”, was one of South Asia’s most renowned artists but no stranger to controversy, repeatedly accused of obscenity by Hindu groups for painting deities in the nude or with nude figures.
The paintings ordered seized by the court were part of an exhibition titled Husain: The Timeless Modernist, featuring 100 “pivotal works that reflect his powerful interpretations of Indian life, culture, and modernity”. It ran from 26 October to 14 December.
“The most revered entities of Sanatan Dharm, Hanuman and Ganesh, were insulted in the paintings,” the lawyer claimed. “This is obscenity. It is a deliberate and malicious attempt to insult Hindu deities. Thousands saw our deities…they were made objects of ridicule.”
https://www.the-independent.com/asia/ind...85494.html
The Delhi High Court on 20 January permitted police to seize the paintings after a lawyer named Amita Sachdeva complained the artworks – featuring Hindu deities Ganesha and Hanuman alongside nude female figures – “hurt religious sentiments”.
In an X post on 13 December, Ms Sachdeva said she had taken photos of the “offensive paintings” at DAG, New Delhi (formerly Delhi Art Gallery) and filed a police complaint on 9 December after “researching past FIRs against MF Husain”.
Maqbool Fida Husain, dubbed the “Picasso of India”, was one of South Asia’s most renowned artists but no stranger to controversy, repeatedly accused of obscenity by Hindu groups for painting deities in the nude or with nude figures.
The paintings ordered seized by the court were part of an exhibition titled Husain: The Timeless Modernist, featuring 100 “pivotal works that reflect his powerful interpretations of Indian life, culture, and modernity”. It ran from 26 October to 14 December.
“The most revered entities of Sanatan Dharm, Hanuman and Ganesh, were insulted in the paintings,” the lawyer claimed. “This is obscenity. It is a deliberate and malicious attempt to insult Hindu deities. Thousands saw our deities…they were made objects of ridicule.”
https://www.the-independent.com/asia/ind...85494.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
