The attack on pub culture by Sri Rama Sene and consequent moral policing by the so-called protectors of women and Indian culture may get some rude shock if they went back to Indian history and read books on the various dynasties of ancient India and its culture. If they have not read, I would recommend they read it now to get their facts right.



All scriptures and sculptures from ancient India stand testimony to our liberal outlook on matters of sex, dancing and drinking. Women walked around the streets topless and men accepted it as the norm. There were no untoward incidents. It was not until the Victorian era, when the British came to India that women were actually made to cover themselves up with blouse pieces. Blouses are actually a very Victorian concept. The British are the ones who made our women wear the cholis.



So, are the Sri Rama Sene asking us to follow the Victorian tradition and deviate completely from the Indian tradition?



When Queen Victoria of England in the 19th century sent her men to rule India, what they saw of the country baffled them quite a bit. There were the madhushalas (drinking pubs in today’s parlance), the Devadasi dancers (we can call it dance bars of todays), the Konark temple and the Khajuraho temple which they discovered were much more liberal than the closed outlook of the Victorian era. Our culture has always celebrated the beauty of human body. That goes back to the stone age, much before the metals were discovered. And the bronze statues of goddess Lakshmi, Parvathi and lord Shiva in the various dynasties all depicted nudity.Our women were never ashamed of their bodies and for God’s sake, we are the land of yoga. It was in fact after the British came to India that one saw the sculptures getting clothed, just as the women were. And it was Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings that depicted for the first time clothed goddesses and women. That is when the statues of Lakshmi, Parvathi and Shiva started being clothed. Whose culture are we defending? We had our own sense of morality before the British came and stamped it out.The book South Indian Bronzes, authored by C Sivaramamurty and brought out by the Lalit Kala Akademi, talks about the existence of the metal images during the years of the Pallava, Pandya, Chola and Chera Kingdoms. And these metal images certainly depict nude images of our gods and goddesses.Take a look at the material that the Government Museum, Madras, has got of 9th century AD Umamahesvara Nolamba sculpture from Hemavati in Anantapur district or the National Museum of India, New Delhi has of a late 7th century Pallava Kingdom of stone sculpture of Somaskanda. There are many such examples. References to the bronze figurine of the dancing girl, or fertility goddess, from Mohenjodaro, to the 18th century bronzes of the Vijayanagara period depicts nudity and the book ‘Masterpieces of Early South Indian Bronzes by R Nagaswamy, brought out by the National Museum, New Delhi, has vivid descriptions of the Indian culture.

DEVADASIS: The Devadasis who were dancing in the temples of South India were highly regarded and not treated as prostitutes. They preserved the Bharatanatyam, Odissi, and other temple dance forms and Indian music. The classical arts of India owe their existence to the Devadasis even today. And the Devadasis preserved our culture. Yet, the British banned the Devadasis sometime around 1926. Though the Devadasi system still exists in north Karnataka, they have now been reduced to common prostitutes with a glorified name. Women with multiple partners were not considered promiscuous in Indian culture. We had our own schools which taught the art of erotica.



The British passed the law to abolish the world’s oldest profession - prostitution. For them, the Devadasi system was a form of prostitution and nothing more. Though prostitution has not been stopped anywhere in the world, be it on the streets of Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi or Bangalore, or for that matter in any of the western countries including in England.

But when India got its Independence, we followed the British rule to the tee. May be it is time to take away that misnomer from the Devadasis. One person who broke away from that tradition of disowning the Devadasis was Rukmini Arundale who went on to form the Kalakshetra in Chennai.

Around the 13th century, just see what happened in the West. When Michelangelo was commissioned by the Vatican to create sculptures for the churches, he had actually created sculptures of nude men and women and goddesses. But the then Pope intervened and had the artists cover them up because it went against the sensibilities of the church and leaned more towards the Pagan rituals. That’s when Michelangelo hit upon the concept of covering the sculptures with fig leaves.While the western sensibility was such, look at the Indian sensibilities of that time.

KHAJURAHO: This little village of Khajuraho in central India boasts the most perfect example of Hindu architecture of the 10th and 11th centuries. The temples are equally famous, for the wide variety of erotic sculptures that adorn their walls. The stone temples are profusely decorated with thousands of examples of sculpture of the most sensuous kind portraying exquisite, skimpily clad female forms, lavishly adorned with jewellery, enacting an ancient myth. Also interesting are fascinating and amusing excerpts from travel accounts of the 19th century British and French visitors who were both amazed by the ‘wonders of the place’ and horrified by the ‘indecent sculptures’ they found in Khajuraho.

KONARK: The amorous poses that dot the Konark temple in Orissa which is the chariot of the Sun God are derived from the Kama Sutra. And yet Rabindranath Tagore wrote this of the temple: “Here the language of stone surpasses the language of man”. Konark is a 13th century temple and is also known as the black Pagoda. There is some serious reading for many to do now on Indian culture. Certainly a recommendation for the Sri Rama Sene and the moral brigade!



ramananda.sreenivas@timesgroup.com