BY PROF. M. K. CHAKRAVARTI,

(Principal, The S. D. College, Beawar, Rajputana)

A modern English writer on Greek and Roman history gravely assures his readers that the capacity to strip oneself to the skin in public is a sign of culture, which the Greeks possessed but not the Orientals. Perhaps the historian felt it necessary to make this statement in defence of the nude in Greek art. But it is worth while to examine the remark in some detail.

We know that savage peoples keep uncovered many parts of their body which civilised peoples allover the world carefully conceal. It is also true that this does not necessarily make for indecency or immorality in the mutual relation of the sexes. But it must be recognised that such a practice is in the natural course of the evolution of the race, and cannot be safely grafted upon a much later stage of its evolution. That is exactly what some modern advocates of nudity in Europe and America are trying to do in the 20th century. They want to do on the individual and physical plane what Rousseau wanted us to do on the social and intellectual a hundred and fifty years ago, i.e., to go ‘back to Nature.’ This tinkering and tampering with the natural course of evolution of society is as full of danger as making rash experiments with poison upon one's body.

The English historian referred to above is wrong. The capacity to strip naked and, what is more, go naked all one's life belongs many times more to the Oriental than to the ancient Greek or the modern German. India is the home of thousands of ‘Naga-Babas’ or naked Fakirs, who go about just as Nature made them, without the least sense of shame. Women of the most refined delicacy in the world come across them in places of pilgrimage, and pass by them without embarrassment, not to speak of being shocked or set fainting. It is interesting to examine this paradox of a country where Macaulay thought that ‘Eastern jealousy’ kept the women under a perpetual veil.

The explanation of the riddle is that these naked fakirs are in many cases innocent like babies in their hearts, and therefore they neither feel hesitation themselves, nor cause embarrassment to those who see their nakedness. Every educated Hindu knows the story of the Great Rishi Veda vyas and his son Shukadev. The patriarchal Rishi wondered why the women were shy towards him, while they were quite free in the presence of his youthful son. He thought and thought and discovered to his own shame the great truth that purity of heart obviates the necessity of modesty, whereas such modesty is the natural defence of women against impurity of heart. The East has always understood all issues between the flesh and the spirit in the light of this truth.

The cultured European is a lover of the fine arts, including the art of the nude in painting and sculpture. He follows the tradition of the Greeks in these matters. Many Indians are also following in their footsteps, in this as in other fields. But the true Mussalman has no eye for this type of artistic beauty, for he does not worship the nude in any shape or form. The true Hindu does not relish the nude, nor even the half-nude, except when, strange to say, it is associated with the idea of the Mother. What is more beautiful and adorable to the child than the mother's breasts? But the Western critic regards the Hindu attitude of reverence towards the nude in art as sentimental hypocrisy or religious superstition. He wants us to banish all sentiment of the Mother cult, and look upon the nude female figure with the artist's eye, purged of all moral or allegorical prepossession, simply as upon an object of the most exquisite human beauty.

It does not concern him that such artistic detachment of contemplation is possible to very few but that it may easily become for most of us a cloak for the gratification of the carnal desires of our heart. The undraped female figure does not become any the more spiritual on account of its being impersonal or idealised. On the contrary, the female figure from which an personal associations like wifehood, motherhood, sisterhood, or daughterhood have been eliminated becomes an ideally perfect object of man's desire, however he may try to cloak the truth under plausible phraseology like ‘Art for Art's sake.’ There is no room for idealism in the primordial physical attraction between the sexes, except such as is imparted to it by socio-moral restraint which disciplines and accustoms us to look upon a woman as mother, sister, or daughter. Take away these marks of personal relationship from woman, and she immediately descends to the level of the female animal, linked to the male by the bond of sexual affinity.

The Greek artist avoided this danger by treating the naked figures as gods and goddesses to whom he owed duty and homage, and not as nameless men or women. The Hindu avoided it by regarding the naked figures of Shiva and Kali as images of his divine father and mother, and so escaped defilement. The Hindu feels no shame, however delicate his mind may be, in reciting mantras in which the forms of the gods and goddesses are described. In the case of almost every goddess there is a reference, among other things, to the beauty of her bust, and she is always conceived as young and beautiful.

The Greek sculpture, originally a form of religious expression, has lost all religious or spiritual significance for the Christian; but it is still being worshipped by him with the red roses of his heart, in the name of Art. Venus and Minerva, Cupid and Apollo are still in Christian Europe, and in infinitely larger number than in the Greek or Roman age, receiving the homage of the lustful desire of men and women. They may not occupy shrines or temples but are lovingly installed in the drawing-rooms, bed-rooms, bath-rooms, and gardens, of millions of Christian homes all over the world.

Milton thought with satisfaction that the Pagan gods became devils after the rise of Christianity and found their abode in hell. But perhaps the Puritan poet's blindness prevented, his seeing that some of these gods had escaped from hell and that all the goddesses remained in the cultured Christian homes, as spiritual seducers and corrupters of men and women. Here was a greater revenge of Satan than Milton ever imagined in his great epic.

It is true that in Roman Catholic countries the painters made a certain amount of religious use of the art of painting and sculpture, thereby carrying on the Greek, Buddhist, and Hindu tradition of Art. But in Protestant Europe, Art became to a large extent a handmaid of the manifold gratification of man's aesthetic desire. Not that it was bad, but the nude has remained incapable of any very spiritual treatment, in spite of the specious cant of the Eternal Feminine and other phrases of that kind.

A word to the women of India. Let the rising generation of women in this country assert their self-respect by demanding a complete abolition of the type of Art which flourishes by exploiting the nude or semi-nude for commercial, or so-called cultural purposes. Let our ladies make this a matter of ‘Satyagraha’ if necessary, and begin with the art-schools and art-studies of this country, and then tackle the theatres and cinemas. I am confident that they will ultimately succeed in purifying the art and literature of the country of the ugly realistic tendency which is growing apace. The pornographic fiction that is selling like hot-cakes in these days is a portent as ominous for the morals of the world as the increasing armament of the nations is for its physical existence.

Many social evils can be checked by legislation, but what force except enlightened public opinion can cope with the danger of subtly poisonous art and literature? Let not our Indian critics–the Argus-eyed guardians of the national culture—yield to the blandishment of the new Delilah of Culture seeking to enslave them, and the new Circe of Art offering frothy wine to their lips to turn them and us into swine at last.

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