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Arts student Chandra Mohan jailed on charges that his paintings hurt Hindu and Christian sentiments was granted bail today. The 22-year-old Hyderabad artist is a final year student of Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Vadodara. Chandra Mohan, was on a fellowship from a Hyderabad -based art gallery to pursue his Master's in print making University. He is a bachelor in fine arts from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University.

I had been restlessly waiting for my credit card to be delivered. I always become a bit uneasy when the expiry date of a card draws near and the new one is yet to find itself in my hands. So I was. I mean, my being uneasy. When the doorbell rang the other scorching afternoon and I peered over the parapet to see a man who could only be a courier deliveryman, I was more than relieved. Phew! There comes my Standard Chartered Bank card. But it didn’t. Not that noon at least. With an air of...

When the protests against the Mohammed cartoons were raging last year, many European publishers had asserted that the freedom of expression precludes the right to insult. The arguments were clouded in a situation where not being seen as anti-Islamic was taken to be the politically correct stand to take. So, irrespective of what you believed was right or wrong, you had to tow the line of political correctness and denounce the Mohammed cartoons. The point here is not about the cartoons, but that...

Updates (not in any particular order): MSU V-C seals Fine Arts dept: (May 11) Taking moral policing to a new level, Vice-Chancellor of the prestigious Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Manoj Soni, today ordered the fine arts department to be sealed after defiant students put up an exhibition of Indian erotica to protest the arrest of one of their fellow classmates on Wednesday. The fine arts department, known the world over as a cradle for art expression, has never seen interference from any...

It was a dank wintry evening of November 1993 and we had had our fill of Bengali sweets. My girlfriend and I were stepping out of a confectioner’s in Gol Park when I noticed a lanky, slightly slouching, man on the pavement managing to fish out a cigarette from one of his overloaded trouser pockets. He had a weatherbeaten look about him. He lit the cigarette and let a disinterested gaze swoop over the teeming. He could do so, for he stood tall enough, albeit with that unmistakeable slouch. But...

This incident is an ironic way, a combination of some of the incidents documented on this blog — protests against obscene paintings, arrest warrants, vandalism, et al. On Wednesday, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists stormed into the exhibition hall of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Vadodara's MS University and vandalised the paintings by a final year student. The student, Chandra Mohan, who had displayed his paintings for critical evaluation by his teachers for...

The Supreme Court Tuesday stayed an order by a Haridwar court directing the Mumbai police to attach his property. A bench headed by Justice BN Agrawal also issued notice to advocate Arvind Shrivastava, who had complained about the alleged obscene depiction of Hindu goddesses in Husain's paintings, on the artist's petition seeking the transfer of the matter from Haridwar to Delhi. The court of Special Judicial Magistrate KS Shukla in Haridwar had ordered police to attach Husain's property in...

He has the knack for doing so. Only this time he has been declared a "proclaimed offender" or repeatedly ignoring the legal summonses from a Haridwar court and not appearing in the case. The case, this time, relates to his alleged obscene depiction of Hindu goddesses in paintings. The court ordered the Mumbai police to attach Husain’s properties. On Sunday, the Mumbai police started out on the needful by pasting a notice on the door of his flat at Jolly Makers-III building in Cuffe Parade. The...

So it is. One was wondering when the self-appointed moral cops would be raiding a pub. One does not have to keep wondering. Activists of a hitherto unknown Karnataka Yuva Vedike went on a rampage Saturday night at a popular pub to express their protest against the "pub culture." These marauders barged into the Athena pub located in the plush Leela Palace and ordered customers to leave the premises. They then went around damaging property and threatening those seated inside. These knowledgable...

The controversy over the Madhya Pradesh minister's patronisation of a bunch of dancers from a state's tribal area is still raging on. The Congress is calling the dance vulgar, while BJP leaders are describing the folk dance as a symbol of the Bundelkhand culture. While the dance generally performed by women of the Bedia community on festive occasions includes suggestive moves, it has always been taken as part of the local culture. But as the Indian Express reported: [ Link] Finally, someone...