ABHAY SARDESAI : THE FREEDOM TO READ, WRITE, PAINT, AND CREATE ART, IS FUNDAMENTAL TO OUR self-definitions as writers and artists. When there are attempts at rabble-rousing by manufacturing bogus public hurts, by creating false fears of contamination and injury, and by disallowing the free movement of a broad-minded tradition, we realize that these are attempts at imposing thought-controls, at putting curbs on our freedom to imagine.

Rashmi Poddar: I agree but I have always had an issue with freedom without accountability. I often find myself defending a work of art that is really not a work of art in any sense of the term. And then I feel angry with myself for having to defend it because we have to stand for artistic freedom. Much as one respects M. F. Husain, one can’t love all of his work. Why do some people seem to court trouble?

Abhay Sardesai : Shouldn’t we grant the artist the benefit of doubt? Of course, there might be artists who might want to sensationalise their artworks to garner publicity. But, don’t you feel that we need to look at ourselves as part of a larger ‘imagined community’ – of people who make art and respond to art? One of the biggest positive fall-outs of the S. Chandramohan incident was the banding together of artists, critics, writers, and journalists, across personality-centred and institution-centred camps.

Rashmi Poddar: I was not in town when the S. Chandramohan issue flared up. But, I do think that there is a problem with accepting state funding and then telling the state to go jump. How many artists are really responsible for the society they live in? Do they believe that they live in a rarefied world?

Zehra Jumabhoy: But how many people feel that they have such a responsibility? Are we being fair to assume that only artists should feel it?

Shilpa Gupta: Art functions within a class system, especially for those of us who are functioning in a white cube. We have to admit this.  And we also have to analyse who walks in to see our works in air-conditioned spaces.

Abhay Sardesai: Do you all think that the market is cocooning artists by granting and approving their membership of many conveniently contradictory worlds?

Shaina Anand: Artists did walk out of their “air-conditioned spaces” to come together for S. Chandramohan – without even seeing his work. Why don’t we stand up for film-makers in the same way we stood up for him? If we had come together for Sanjay Kak, we would have at least been able to see a different version of the events in Kashmir, which is usually treated as only an India-Pakistan issue. We should have had a chance to see Jashn-e-Azadi, if only to criticize it.

Abhay Sardesai: Censorship cuts short the life of a text. It is a way in which a government tells its citizens that it has more collective intelligence than them and can decide what’s good for them. Is that what you mean?

Shaina Anand: Yes. It removes the text from the public sphere and from public discourse. We need to find a space where such a public discourse can reside – because it is important.

Rashmi Poddar: But, you are not taking into account the intention of the artist.

The Panel                  Rashid Rana                    Shilpa Gupta                 Rashmi Poddar

Shaina Anand                Abhay Sardesai              Rehan Ansari                Zehra Jumabhoy

Shilpa Gupta : There should be space to say we don’t like S. Chandramohan’s work or Jashn-e-Azadi. But, we ought to get an opportunity to see the works at least.

Rashmi Poddar : I am not denying that. But, I am asking about the artist’s responsibility. I saw Jashn-e-Azadi and wished the film-maker had behaved with more responsibility. He jeopardized a great opportunity to get Kashmir back into the sphere of public discourse. That is what made me angry, because I agree with what you are saying. Now, Rashid, I have a question about Veils. How difficult has it been to exhibit it?

Shilpa Gupta : Talking about the responsibility of the artist, Rashid, would you put up Veils as a public art project?

Rashid Rana : I come from Pakistan where we are constantly being subjected to censorship – self-censorship more than state-censorship. Veils was never intended to be shown in Lahore. It was made for a limited audience. I wanted to show it in Karachi, so we showed it in a room within a gallery that was not open to the media. At Art Basel, everyone was interested in it, but no one wanted to buy it because they wondered what a Muslim coming to their house would think. This was after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. It was put in the Christie’s Hong Kong Auction, and at the last minute, it was pulled out of the catalogue, thanks to some Obscenity laws in Hong Kong.

Shilpa Gupta: Do you think that because we show in white cubes, it allows us a certain amount of license?

Rashid Rana : Yes.

Abhay Sardesai : Pakistan has had four dictators: Yahya Khan, Ayub Khan, Zia-ul-Haq, and, now, Musharraf. As a Pakistani artist, who has an international presence, how do you find exhibiting in Pakistan different from exhibiting elsewhere? Do you, as an artist, prepare differently for different audiences? And how does the location of an art show determine what the artist wants to exhibit?

Rashid Rana : I address this problem in much of my work. In I Love Miniatures, I gave people what they expected from a Pakistani artist – with a contradiction attached. The issue is not only one of censorship. It concerns the audience as well. I make a work and then see where and when I can show it. But, I believe that images have a life of their own and they change with time. In India, at least, there is some kind of a consensus as to what is tolerable. In Pakistan, we lack even that. And that’s where self-censorship comes in, because there is no sense of surety as to how people will react.

Abhay Sardesai : How have artists responded to Musharraf and to the Emergency? I heard Salima Hashmi was behind bars.

Rashid Rana : Musharraf gave us so much freedom when he came to power. We only realized that something was afoot six to seven months ago; we realised with a shock that he was not so different from Zia, after all.

Rashmi Poddar: Yes, but even at the inauguration of the National Art Gallery in Islamabad, he said to artists that they should temper their work.

Rehan Ansari: Musharraf said that artists should be responsible. He meant it differently from everyone in this room, but he did use the same term.

Shaina Anand: I’d like to explain what I mean when I talk of responsibility. That’s because so much of the work I do is completely ‘grey’, like laying my own cable networks, collaborating with piracy operators, and the like. In India, it is easy to do this. In one project, we took permission to use electricity in Bandra (West) and then exceeded the limit to include other areas. The project looked innocent, it looked Utopian, but it was quite subversive. An artist must take the responsibility for the consequences of her work. This responsibility comes with political awareness. The artist must stand up if there is public outcry.