India’s PM Narendra Modi is currently visiting the US. I had my own run-in a few years ago with repressive Hindu nationalists such as Modi, over this image I published of the 16th century Hindu mystic Mirabai. Surprise, surprise– the dialog wasn’t about how significant or powerful the image is!
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| “Mirabai Writes a Tale” |
Mirabai, a luminous poet, is well-known today in Indian culture but almost unknown in the west. Like the Buddha, she left a pampered life as a royal princess to go into the wilderness seeking the Divine. Legend says that she (as well as other women mystics for the bhakti sect) would wander naked through rural villages singing her songs of praise to the god she calls Giridhara. Though no one can know her motivations for sure, obviously she had a profound impact. I am living proof, as through the mists of history she has inspired me like no other person! In Hinduism I have found great examples like hers in the historic record of appearance of the radical sanctity of the human body.
So it is with sadness that I find it is Hindus who object to this image, on the grounds that nudity = degradation. Fear of the flesh is nearly universal among Western religions, which have covered the body out of fear of its beauty and power, so this is no surprise. But how can genuine illumination come alive in a place where fear and depravity rules? How can ugliness be transformed into beauty? Unlike reading illiteracy, which can be cured with simple education, this kind of cultural illiteracy can only be cured form the inside out. The ability to care or to see beauty comes not from encouragement (though that helps) but from a deep gratitude and joy from within. Like life itself, no one can give it to anyone else!
These Hindus want me to disappear this work because they can see nothing but depravity in it (actually, they petitioned me to take if off the internet, by reproducing it in full!) I find this tragic (and all too common!) and I do feel sorry, but no one else can help them. All of us must find beauty by coming alive– or not– on our own.
