Amusing Ourselves to Death: Effects of TV on our lives

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Amusing Ourselves to Death


"Neil Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which
totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from the vision offered by
Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into
bliss and voluntarily sacrifice their rights. Postman sees television's
entertainment value as a "soma" for the contemporary world, and he sees
contemporary mankind surrendering its rights in exchange for entertainment.
(Note that there is no contradiction between an intentional "Orwellian"
conspiracy using "Huxleyan" means, which is an argument advanced in the
later book The Unreality Industry: the deliberate manufacturing of falsehood
and what it is doing to our lives by Ian Mitroff and Warren Bennis (New
York: Carol Pub. Group, 1989). Postman evidently did not disagree, since he
provided a blurb for this book.)

The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his
argument(s), is that "form excludes the content," that is, a particular
medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Rational argument, an
integral component of print typography, cannot be conveyed through the
medium of television because "its form excludes the content." Because of
this shortcoming, politics and religion get diluted, and "news of the day"
is turned into a commodity. The presentation most often de-emphasizes
quality; all data becomes burdened to the far-reaching need for
entertainment.

Postman objects to the presentation of television news as it is conveyed in
the form of entertainment programming. He cites the inclusion of theme
music, the interruption of commercials, and "talking hairdos" as the basis
for his argument that televised news is presented so that it cannot readily
be taken seriously. Postman further examines the differences between written
speech, which he argues reached its prime in the early to mid-nineteenth
century, and the forms of televisual communication, which rely mostly on
visual images to "sell" lifestyles. He argues that politics has ceased to be
about whatever ideas or solutions a particular candidate may possess, but
instead whether or not they come across in a favorable way on television.
Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this", which indicates
a complete absence of any connection between one topic and the next. Larry
Gonick used this phrase to conclude his Cartoon Guide to (Non)Communication,
instead of the traditional "the end".

Postman also examines the relationship between learning and television. He
acknowledges that school curricula are integrating television and computers
into their classrooms with increasing frequency. He argues that these uses
of media do not equip the student with the ability to question the nature of
media; they merely provide the student with study guides that are amusing
and entertaining--something that Postman argues is fundamentally against the
process of learning. Postman draws from the ideas of the media scholar
Marshall McLuhan- slightly altering McLuhan's aphorism "the medium is the
message" into "the medium is the metaphor"-to describe how oral, literate,
and televisual cultures radically differ in how information is processed and
prioritized. He also argues that different media are appropriate for
different kinds of knowledge. The faculties necessary to sustain rational
inquiry simply are not normally encouraged by televised viewing. Reading, a
prime example cited by Postman, is a subject of intense intellectual
involvement, at once interactive and dialectical, unlike television which
limits involvement to passivity. Moreover, as television is programmed for
maximum ratings, its content is determined by commercial feasibility, not
critical acumen. Television in its present state, he says, cannot sustain
any of the conditions needed for honest intellectual involvement and
rational argument.

Given this analysis, Postman regards television as a useful entertainment
medium, but questions the efficacy of its use in such intellectually
demanding areas as political argument, education and the news. He also
repeatedly states that the eighteenth century was the pinnacle for rational
argument, truly being the Age of Reason. Only in the printed word, he
states, could complicated truths be rationally conveyed. A striking example
Postman gives: that the first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have
walked down the street without being recognized by the average citizen, yet
all these men would have been quickly known by their written words. However,
the reverse is true today. The names of presidents or even famous preachers,
lawyers, and scientists call up visual images, typically television images,
but few, if any, words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively
consist of carefully-chosen soundbites."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

Sheen vs. Richards Divorce case

Sheen vs. Richards, Blow-by-Blow
Their Divorce Is One of Hollywood's Ugliest Ever
By SHEILA MARIKAR
May 27, 2008


More than two years after filing for divorce, the battle between Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen has only become more bitter.
richards sheen
Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen are embroiled in a no-holds-barred custody battle.


Richards, 37, and Sheen, 42, have been fighting over the custody of their daughters, Lola, 2, and Sam, 3, since April 2006. Sometimes they praise each other's parenting to the press. Other times they accuse each other of sending vile e-mails and indulging in underage porn.

Much of their mud has been slung through the media, which is now playing an even bigger role in their saga. "It's Complicated," Richards' reality show about the trials and tribulations of parenting in Hollywood, premiered last night on E!.

"She is out there bringing the issues up again by appearing on TV; he should understand at this point that any communication with her has a risk of going public and that's true for her too," said Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred. "Obviously, it's the divorce from hell. This is divorce wars, and I hope the children are not the losers."

On the level of Paul McCartney versus Heather Mills and Mick Jagger versus Jerry Hall, the Sheen-Richards headlines have run the gamut from sad to malicious to just plain weird. Sheen accused Richards of asking for his sperm; Richards called said sperm "prostitute-tranny infested." Sheen claimed Richards calls him for no reason; Richards said Sheen sent her a text message telling her to "get cancer" and "rot in hell."

Deejaying with rocket science:Mark Branch,

The Science of Deejaying
Rocket Scientist Discovers a Formula for Hip-Hop
By REBECCA LEE
May 23, 2008


No one ever said deejaying was rocket science, but for Washington D.C., native Mark Branch, the two are more closely related than one would ever imagine.
The inspiring young man who is both a NASA engineer and a DJ.

By day, Branch works as an aerospace engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., supervising electromagnetic compatibility and susceptibility tests on instruments for the Hubble Space Telescope.

"What I specifically do is simulate the electromagnetic environment of space," he said. "It's very technical."

By night (and on weekends), he trades in his suit and pocket protector for two turntables and a microphone to become DJ Scientific -- one of the D.C. area's hottest deejays, spinning beats for members of both the NFL and the NBA, as well as celebrities like Beyonce, Diddy and LL Cool J.

While Branch, 39, admits that his dual interests are counterintuitive, he insists that his love for both space and hip-hop are linked by science.

"There's actually a science in deejaying," said Branch, who graduated from Morgan State University in Baltimore, where he enrolled in the NASA engineering program with a concentration in physics. "You can cut and scratch -- the sounds that you hear when somebody is cutting and scratching, if you slow it down, you can promote certain principles like pitch and frequency and force. And the speed at which you do this [cutting and scratching] produces a certain sound."

His passion for science and music began at an early age. An Army brat growing up in Greensboro, N.C., Branch's fascination with magnets and electricity got him thinking about science as an occupation. In high school, Branch was a member of the "High IQ" team and the National Honor Society, and he even played bass in the orchestra. He says he used music as a way to break free from the nerd stereotype and get in with the popular crowd.

For many of his NASA co-workers, it is difficult to picture "quiet" and "businesslike" Branch as the flamboyant, outspoken DJ Scientific. But despite this dichotomy, NASA has put Branch's dual interests to work, sending him out to speak to children, in particular African-American boys, about his love of rockets and rap beats.

Oscar winning film director and actor Sydney Pollack dies of cancer at 73 in Los Angeles

Director Sydney Pollack Dies at 73 in Los Angeles
Oscar winning film director and actor Sydney Pollack dies of cancer at 73 in Los Angeles
By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES May 26, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press


The Academy Award-winning filmmaker has died at the age of 73.

Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay who achieved commercial success and critical acclaim with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama "Out of Africa," has died. He was 73.

Pollack died of cancer Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, said publicist Leslee Dart. Pollack had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago, said Dart.

Pollack, who occasionally appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better. A tip of the hat to a class act," George Clooney said in a statement from his publicist.

"He'll be missed terribly," Clooney said.


Last fall, he played Marty Bach opposite Clooney in "Michael Clayton," a drama that examines a law firm's fixer. The film, which Pollack co-produced, received seven Oscar nominations, including for best picture and a best actor nod for Clooney. Tilda Swinton won the Oscar for supporting actress.

Pollack was no stranger to the Academy Awards. In 1986, "Out of Africa" a romantic epic of a woman's passion set against the landscape of colonial Kenya, captured seven Oscars, including best director.

In accepting his Oscar, Pollack commended Meryl Streep, who was nominated for best actress but didn't win.

"I could not have made this movie without Meryl Streep," Pollack said. "She is astounding — personally, professionally, all ways."

Over the years, several of his other films, including "Tootsie" and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" got several nominations, including best director nods.

Pollack's movies frequently had some of Hollywood's top actors: "Absence of Malice" with Sally Field and Paul Newman, "The Yakuza" with Robert Mitchum, "Three Days of the Condor" with Robert Redford, and "The Firm" with Tom Cruise, among others.

Dick Martin Dies at 86.

Dick Martin of 'Laugh-In' Fame Dies
By BOB THOMAS,
AP
Posted: 2008-05-25 10:29:52
Filed Under: Star Obituaries, TV News
LOS ANGELES (May 25) - Dick Martin, the zany half of the U.S. comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died. He was 86.


TV funnyman Dick Martin died on Saturday at the age of 86, following a long battle with respiratory troubles. During his 50-year career in television he appeared on dozens of sitcoms.
Martin, who went on to become one of television's busiest directors after splitting with Rowan in the late 1970s, died Saturday night of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, family spokesman Barry Greenberg said.

"He had had some pretty severe respiratory problems for many years, and he had pretty much stopped breathing a week ago," Greenberg said.

Martin was surrounded by family and friends when he died just after 6 p.m., Greenberg said.


Jim Hager, May 1: Along with his identical twin brother Jon, he formed a musical comic duo that shot to fame as original cast members on the hit show 'Hee Haw' in 1969. The 66-year-old collapsed while in a Nashville coffee shop.
"Laugh-in," which debuted in January 1968, was unlike any comedy-variety show before it. Rather than relying on a series of tightly scripted song-and-dance segments, it offered up a steady, almost stream-of-consciousness run of non-sequitur jokes, political satire and madhouse antics from a cast of talented young actors and comedians that also included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley and announcer Gary Owens.

Presiding over it all were Rowan and Martin, the veteran nightclub comics whose standup banter put their own distinct spin on the show.

Like all straight men, Rowan provided the voice of reason, striving to correct his partner's absurdities. Martin, meanwhile, was full of bogus, often risque theories about life, which he appeared to hold with unwavering certainty.

A new book on Sistine Secrets

The Sistine Secrets
Forbidden Messages in Famous Frescoes.
What Secrets Might Be Hidden in the Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling?
By RALPH AVELLINO, JENNA MILLMAN, DANIEL HUYSSEN and ALI SARGENT

For centuries, people have traveled to Rome to visit the Sistine Chapel to stare up at Michelangelo's stunning ceiling.

According to Roy Doliner and Rabbi Benjamin Blech, authors of "The Sistine Secrets," Kabbalah is the key to cracking the code to many of Michelangelo's hidden messages, including those in the famous panel "The Creation of Adam."

To most, the frescoes represent familiar stories from the Old Testament -- "the Creation of Adam," "the Temptation of Eve" -- and define the way many imagine these characters, even if they've never set foot in the chapel. But there are those who look at the 500-year-old frescoes and see something different.

"[The ceiling] has so many layers of meaning upon meaning, and most of it, if not all of it, is from the Jewish tradition," said Roy Doliner, a Vatican tour guide.

He and Rabbi Benjamin Blech, associate professor of the Talmud, Yeshiva University, have written a book, "The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican."

They say that Michelangelo embedded powerful and even dangerous messages in the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, that he encoded these messages using his knowledge of mystic Jewish texts and that he intended some images as insults to the pope.

Kabbalah the Key?

The authors feel that Michelangelo would have been exposed to Jewish teachings in Florence, while living in Lorenzo de Medici's household.

Medici was the powerful leader of Florence, and used his influence to bring many great thinkers and artists to his city. Some of them studied the Zohar, a book at the center of a form of Jewish mysticism called Kabbalah.

According to Doliner and Blech, Kabbalah is the key to cracking the code of many of Michelangelo's hidden messages. But their first clue didn't come from an art historian. Rather, it came from a tourist from Indiana who looked up at the famous panel of "The Creation of Adam," and was reminded of something else.

Many Influences, Many Interpretations

How about the fresco of Adam, Eve and the serpent in the garden? Most depictions of the Garden of Eden show an apple tree, but not on the Sistine ceiling. Blech and Doliner believe Michelangelo was inspired by Jewish texts that say the forbidden fruit is actually a fig.

"I think this is one of these powerful proofs that not only did Michelangelo know Jewish texts, but he felt it important to incorporate the ideas of these texts into some of these frescoes," said Blech.

Perhaps Michelangelo was inspired by another artist. Almost a century before Michelangelo finished the ceiling, another great fresco painter named Masolino da Panicale painted Adam and Eve beneath a fig tree in the Brancacci chapel in Michelangelo's hometown Florence.

Schuyler found a different reference to Jewish mysticism in the temptation panel and published her findings in an article titled "Michelangelo's Serpent With Two Tails." She believes the serpent is really Lilith, Adam's first wife. She points out that Adam and this female serpent look like twins, which is how Lilith is described in Kabbalah.

The authors take Michelangelo's purported interest in Jewish tradition one step further and claim that Michelangelo painted the figures from the Old Testament to urge the church to embrace the Jewish community.

A cleaning of the frescoes in the 1980s revealed details that had been obscured for centuries. Doliner and Blech believe that some are secret messages. They point to the yellow circle on Aminidab, who Christians believe is an ancestor of Christ.

"This is one of the most important indications of Michelangelo's true feelings about the Jews, and a major idea he wanted to get across throughout the entire chapel," said Blech.

The yellow marking is also known as the badge of shame, which Jews were required to wear by law. It dates back 300 years before Michelangelo's day, and can be likened to the yellow Star of David from Nazi Germany.

The authors interpret this image as a condemnation of the church's attitude toward the Jewish community. Doliner says the artist was asking: "This is one of the ancestors of Christ, the Lord of your religion. And this is how you treat the people of your Lord?"

Although some art historians support the authors' observations, they draw different conclusions. Lev insists that one can't "separate the painting of the chapel and this great vision of man, from the context in which it was painted, which is of course a Christian context -- the pope, this court, the New Testament and Christ."

Blech points out that none of the figures on the ceiling are Christian, suggesting that Michelangelo was straying from traditional Catholic iconography.

"By emphasizing only Old Testament figures in the entire ceiling … what he was trying to say was why we have ignored our true roots."

But not all of the figures are from the Old Testament. Next to the Jewish prophets, Michelangelo painted five pagan sibyls from ancient Greek mythology. Scholars in Renaissance Italy were looking outside the Christian world to bolster their theology. Even in the papal court, theologians were exploring other philosophical and religious traditions.

Despite the unorthodox influences, which he acknowledges could be reflected in the panels' details, Wallace says Michelangelo was a devout Christian.

"Michelangelo does nothing but become more and more profoundly Christian all through his life," Wallace said. "However, this is the moment of exposure to the world of pagan antiquity … which is not in any way contradictory, but complimentary to a Christian theology."

Arnold Nesselrath, curator of the Vatican Museums, dismisses the Kabbalah references.

"Well, we have all to remember that this is the palace chapel, the main chapel of the Vatican palace, and whatever Michelangelo is painting here had to be discussed with the pope and his advisers."

The authors of "The Sistine Secrets" claim that Michelangelo was furious at Pope Julius II, who commissioned the work. Michelangelo was a sculptor, not a painter, and was angry to put his sculpture career on hold to paint frescoes. They say that anger caused the artist to paint hidden references to the corruption of the papacy of his time.

"All these things upset Michelangelo very much. My own personal feeling is that Michelangelo had to get this off his chest," Blech said.

Scholars agree that the patron and artist had a rocky relationship.

Michelangelo's earliest biographers reported that he threw planks down from the scaffold when the pope tried to sneak a peek at the unfinished ceiling. They also wrote that Julius beat Michelangelo in public. But Wallace believes he would have gotten over it.

"[Michelangelo's] enormously ambitious," Wallace said. "The pope is giving him an opportunity to create one of the greatest works of art of all time."

He concedes that Michelangelo was resistant and even resentful at the start of the project, but does not believe these feelings continued after he began to paint. His patron was the head of the church and "that's plenty to keep you working."

But the authors contend that there are insults in plain sight. They point to the fresco of the Prophet Zachariah, which they believe is a likeness of the pope. Could Michelangelo have been so angry with Julius that he would paint an obscene hand gesture into this panel? Blech says one of the putti is doing the Renaissance equivalent of giving the pope's portrait "the finger."

"There's no doubt about it," he said. "This little putti, this beautiful little angel, is giving the finger not to Zachariah, but to Pope Julius."

He says that the ceiling is full of insults and that the hand gesture is seen again in the fresco of the Cumaean sibyl.

"It happens a second time," he said. "Twice, that's a statement."
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/Story?id=4767118&page=1

THE SISTINE SECRETS: MICHELANGELO'S FORBIDDEN MESSAGES IN THE HEART OF THE VATICAN, by Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner; HarperOne, 336 pages, $26.95.
-------------------------------------------------------

M.F. Husain Contoversy

Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 11 :: May. 24-Jun. 06, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents





CONTROVERSY

Different strokes

PARTHA CHATTERJEE

The M.F. Husains of India are in danger because the people who wish to control their destiny are devoid of creative imagination.

SEBASTIAN D’ SOUZA/AFP

M.F. Husain at the inauguration of his exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Mumbai in January 2004.

THE trouble with being an out and out artist like Maqbool Fida Husain in a bigoted, largely feudal country like India in the 21st century is that there will always be a small group of people, acting on behalf of their interested masters, who are ready to find fault with anything you do. These people of necessity will have to belong to right-wing religious outfits. In Husain’s case, it has been the satellite organisations of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal, and the Rashtriya Swayamswevak Sangh (RSS) and even the Shiv Sena, the Mumbai-based party founded by Bal Thackeray on strict communal lines.

M.F. Husain, 92, India’s most charismatic artist, has been living in exile in Dubai ever since Hindu fundamentalists filed cases against him in Indore and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Pandherpur in Maharastra, Rajkot, Gujarat, Haridwar, Uttarakhand and the State of Delhi and many other places in India for painting “Bharat Mata”, or the mother-of-the-nation, in the nude. One must risk being called a bore for saying time and again that ancient Hindu, Jain and Buddhist sculptures have depicted various deities in the nude as have the more recent though pre-modern schools of miniature painting, which have exquisitely rendered examples of Radha and Krishna making love.

Husain does not have much of a choice. He shuttles between Dubai and London, where he also has a home, and to other places in Europe. What is incredible is that the lower courts everywhere allowed specious charges to be filed against him. After all, the judiciary at all levels is expected to be fair, responsible and well informed. It cannot rely on sophistry and say that any citizen in a democracy is allowed to bring a law suit against another and that there is the law to decide on the worthiness of the case and to decide one way or another in favour of the plaintiff or the accused.

The other excuse offered, though not so readily by the so-called progressives planted amongst the more enlightened citizenry by the BJP and its agents, is that the legal machinery is so burdened with cases that it takes years to come to a decision on any single one. How then can the courts in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Delhi be expected to arrive at a decision on charges pending against Husain? No one has even bothered to say that the charges against him are frivolous and communal in intent and therefore malicious. The constant refrain is that Husain saab has hurt Hindu sentiments by painting Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude.

The only reprieve for him was the recent order of the Delhi High Court quashing the criminal proceedings initiated against him at three different places.

The truth of the matter is that the average Hindu, by birth or faith or both, is too busy struggling to earn a living to bother. As for the nude deities in ancient Indian sculptures, either he or she does not care about them or has come to accept them as a natural part of his consciousness. His/her relationship with god is very much like that of astrologer and client. Since there is neither equity nor justice in the world he/she inhabits, it is only god’s throw of dice that can sometime be relied upon to keep starvation at bay or protect the dignity of the wife, daughter or any other member of the family.

The vociferous claims of the Hindu upper class – which holds the reins of political and hence financial power despite being a minority in the Hindu community – to be the voice of downtrodden Hindus are entirely false and laughable. The BJP, Bajrang Dal, VHP and the Shiva Sena are upper-class and upper-caste Hindu organisations. Their hatred for Husain is because of his religion and is thus wholly illogical and irrational.

Class has as much a contentious role to play in 21st century India as religion. The fact that Husain overcame the limitations of a poor economic background to fight his way to the top in the world of art and stay there has riled his detractors no end. For them, it was as if a Dalit had become the Prime Minister of India.

The analogy is not as far-fetched as it sounds. It was after all caste that led to the formation of a party like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu where the Brahmin hegemony had not only garnered all the privileges for itself but also treated the so-called lower castes with contempt.

To digress for a moment with purpose, it is important to remind oneself that in 2002 the Sangh Parivar used starving tribal people to kill over 3,000 Muslims during the pogroms in Gujarat. Only about a third of the assailants were bona fide party cadres, the rest were tribal people desperately short of cash. It must be remembered that Muslims were killed because they refused to be deprived of their right to earn a living. In a documentary done by Ruchira Gupta for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), a Hindu Gujarati villager declares on camera, “We will kill them economically by not allowing Muslims farmers to sell their fruits and vegetables in the village haat.” One may ask how all this connects up with the Husain affair? It does in more ways than one.

The BJP and its supporters regard art in all its modern manifestations as a liability. The number of people in the Hindu Right, which is fascist in outlook, who hero-worship Hitler is not funny – they are of the view that art can serve only one purpose – ideology. There is room in their ranks for a Leni Riefenstahl (the woman who made two immensely visually impressive documentaries for Hitler, The Triumph of the Will and Olympiad, which extolled the virtues of Nazism) but not for a Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Ram Kinkar Baij, Sailoz Mookherjea or M.F. Husain.

Fascism shuns individuality. Fascists feel confident only in groups. There are no great flights of the imagination for them – artistic, scientific or both. They feel intelligence must be applied for a pragmatic purpose – to ensure material well-being but not much else. There is no adventure or romance there though the American brand of fascism available, courtesy George Bush and company, makes claims to the contrary.

Even though such assertions are fallacious, let them be for the moment. What place is there in L.K. Advani’s or Murli Manohar Joshi’s scheme of things for a Husain? What does Narendra Modi think of him? Perhaps nothing personal, but they may hate him for denying the BJP the desired political mileage.


The Indian state is indulging continuously in chicanery vis-a-vis the respective roles of the executive and the judiciary. The classic examples are the cases of Husain and Dr. Binayak Sen, a widely respected medical practitioner in Chhattisgarh incarcerated without trial for the last one year for allegedly aiding and abetting naxalites. Dr. Sen has rendered service to poor and needy tribal people in Chhattisgarh, a state carved out of Madhya Pradesh on November 1, 2000.

Chhattisgarh’s economic history has always been a troubled one in which the tribal people have been ruthlessly exploited right from the beginning. It is for them literally a question of where the next meal is going to come from. It is only natural for them to support the armed struggle of the naxalites against the state. But a distinguished doctor, Sen, mingling with them can only be seen by the state as treachery. He has, after all, studied in the best schools and colleges in the country.

The Christian Medical College in Vellore, an elite institution of the country, takes great pride in his achievements, as do the tribal people of Chhattisgarh. What does Dr. Sen do? He goes and promptly betrays his class. So what if 14 Nobel Laureates from the world over, including Amartya Sen, plead for his release and protest against his unjust and unlawful detention?

The government can always give the farcical, even bizarre excuse of the executive not interfering with the functioning of the judiciary. But is it too much to expect the judiciary to perform in a free, fearless and unbiased manner? Is it unnatural to expect it to be secular, meaning worldly and completely free of any kind of religious bias? In the cases of Dr. Sen and Husain, dangerous precedents have been set. One has dedicated his life to serving the suffering and the downtrodden and the other to bringing joy and beauty into the lives of people with his paintings and films. Husain’s GajaGamini with Madhuri Dixit and Meenaxi featuring Tabu are sparkling celebrations of womanhood. Both Dr. Sen and Husain are guilty of bringing hope into a dark world.

In Indian society and so politics, religion is quite literally the opium of the masses. When individuals turn up to contradict this belief, they challenge the status quo.

Indian society has, well before the communications revolution, thrived on the maintenance of the status quo. The upper classes, regardless of their political loyalties, are all united in protecting fiercely what they consider their birthright, chief amongst them being the control of the natural resources of the country and financial and political power. It is of no consequence to them that more than half the Indian population goes to bed hungry. However, the presence of people who might educate them enough to inspire resistance against exploitation or, equally important, open to them the aesthetic possibilities of the beauties of the world is very naturally seen as alarming.

The Binayak Sens and the M.F. Husains of today’s India are always in danger because the people who wish to preside over their destiny are mediocre and entirely devoid of creative imagination. It is not nature or the arts as such that inspires them but crass materialism and wanton hedonism.•