'Mona Lisa does not smile anymore' and India n colonialism

http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/transcripts/1033.html

In rebuttal of the racial-superiority and Colonial justification arguments of Ferguson I quote from my book 'MONA LISA DOES NOT SMILE ANYMORE' (ISBN 978-81-8465-512-4)
" No human or animal desire to live in cage or chains. Would the British have swapped development at the expense of slavery under Nazis? It is the primary motive that counts, incidental outcomes there from are of no consequence. British subjugated India and sent Indians as virtual slaves to different islands—from Fiji to Mauritius, to West Indies to South Africa—to work as indentured plantation labour, they occupied an independent country and used its resources and humans in a bland exploitative manner over nearly two centuries. It is not stupid but cunning to justify robbing of freedom of other nations. No religion should make a business of distributing moral righteousness by way of force and temptation to convert. No religion should have had legions of missionary priests disembarking from colonial ships, whose life mission was to convert as many as possible. I think that the introduction of ‘missionary’ priests to convert has close links with the colonialism. Colonialism and religion worked together as a synergy to show the dominant power of the ruler. I ask why the colonizers were all Christians and not Jews, Muslims, Chinese or Indians. The justification came from the material power of the king and the Church. Christianity transformed from a religion of the poor and suffering humanity to that of rich and powerful and Colonialism was a manifestation of it."
About the 'globalization' Ferguson talks of look up the role of Church in destroying India's culture and religion and I quote from Henry James Coleridge, ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2d Ed., 2 Vols., (London: Burns & Oates, 1890), 
"These children, I trust heartily, by the grace of God, will be much better than their fathers. They show an ardent love for the Divine law, and an extraordinary zeal for learning our holy religion and imparting it to others. Their hatred for idolatry is marvellous. They get into feuds with the heathen about it, and whenever their own parents practise it, they reproach them and come off to tell me at once. Whenever I hear of any act of idolatrous worship, I go to the place with a large band of these children, who very soon load the devil with a greater amount of insult and abuse than he has lately received of honor and worship from their parents, relations, and acquaintances. The children run at the idols, upset them, dash them down, break them to pieces, spit on them, trample on them, kick them about, and in short heap on them every possible outrage."
Naill Ferguson dreams of replicating such a world. His thoughts will come to grief. No East or West should try to be the fascistic moral godfather of humanity and this applies to all--to emerging China and India, or West or USA.
For has not the West killed 70 million in II World War and this alone should be the reason enough for West or any among the Rest to not talk of civilizational superiority. One has to be wary, for Hitler was not a person but was an idea that was sold to millions of innate superiority of some in relation to the Rest.

India and Colonial yoke

http://http://www.rlsbb.com/civilization-is-the-west-history-s01e01-ws-pdtv-xvid-ftp/www.rlsbb.com/civilization-is-the-west-history-s01e01-ws-pdtv-xvid-ftp/or vijay

March 30th, 2011 at 13:28 | #11

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When words copulate with words they produce more words and a ‘factual’ but non-fecund history. But the history so encamped often leaves out the moral questions of righteousness and the ‘historian’ assumes that material winner is morally right for it is said ‘victory itself is its own legitimacy.’ I rebut lock stock and barrel Niall Ferguson’s book for presenting a fabric of fabrication. I quote but little from my book ‘Mona Lisa does not smile anymore’(ISBN 978-81-8465-512-4)
“The voyages of exploration were the dawn of Racialism and Colonialism. In the year 1600, the Indian economy amounted to 22.54 per cent of the world GDP, while Britain and Western Europe’s combined economies amounted to 21.82 per cent. By 1870, India’s share was down to 12.25 per cent, while in Western Europe it increased to 32.71%. At its prosperous best Mughal Empire produced 24.5% of world GDP in the year 1700. By the time British colonists occupied India and other nations their GDP rose to 23.8% of the world in 1870.” (page 137)

“If I had to choose between an erudite Aristotle and an unknown ‘soulless’ black slave I would choose the latter. The ascendancy of the West was on a heap of bodies of slaves and trampled humanity through colonization.” (page 135). what I wrote in my book Mona Lisa does not smile anymore (ISBN 978-81-8465-512-4) on the “ascendancy of the West on the bodies of the Rest” would never have the kind of audience, the media, Harvard tagged Professor can muster. I am from the ‘Rest’, I am an Associate Professor in Delhi university and to get newspapers and media to just read and review what I write in the book is akin to a beggar seeking the attention of an Emperor.
I do not have access to big media houses, no media would have time to meet me while my own county’s journalists are talking and writing gloriously about the ‘West and the Rest’ as a great work of history. Though it is another matter the facts mapped on our psyche and on the bodies of our forefathers altogether offer different reasons for the rise of the West.
The complete lack of moral unease of subjugating so many and killing so many through slave shipping, indentured labour, Colonization and a Church that helped in these grand ventures of the West is what Ferguson’s book tries to white wash. The writings of likes of Ferguson are unabashed neocolonial drivel in the garb of (partisan) academics of the West. His arguments smack of blatant superiority of the West and in a subtle whisper of ‘Christianity’ and by implication inferiority of the Rest. But so much is historically dark and gory under the white loaded brush of West that Ferguson can not whitewash it, even with the biggest brush.

My book is about the morals of the West when Portuguese put Indians on stake under Inquisition in Goa, it is about the Colonial Jizya tax imposed by the British on Hindus, it is about 30 million Indians who perished under British Colonialism engineered famines and above all my book is about Humanism of India against the atrocities of the West of the time on the Rest. I am the blood and gene of the Rest. My maternal grandmother Subhadra Devi valiantly fought against the Colonial Portuguese seeking their eviction from Goa. (Charles Dellon in his book Inquisition of Goa (1687) has this to say about Indian prisoners of Inquisition “Some of these poor wretches …were so pressed by hunger as to be compelled to devour their own excrements” (page 28) quoted by me in my book at page 113.

The question is not of the West or the East it is of respecting the truth of the suffering of millions across continents. I end this honest though frail of glory missive with the last sentence of my book, “The wealth of Europe was founded on colonization, slavery, pain and suffering and this is no good a reason for Mona Lisa to smile.”

Prof. Viktor Vijay Kumar
Truth is humble like Gandhi but lofty in ideal

'Mona Lisa does not smile anymore' vs 'The West and the Rest'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/10159147http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/10159147When words copulate with words they produce more words and a 'factual' but non-fecund history. But the history so encamped often leaves out the moral questions of righteousness and the 'historian' assumes that material winner is morally right for it is said 'victory itself is its own legitimacy.'
I rebut Niall Ferguson's book for presenting a fabric of fabrication. I quote but little from my book 'Mona Lisa does not smile anymore'(ISBN 978-81-8465-512-4) 
"The voyages of exploration were the dawn of Racialism and Colonialism. In the year 1600, the Indian economy amounted to 22.54 per cent of the world GDP, while Britain and Western Europe's combined economies amounted to 21.82 per cent. By 1870, India's share was down to 12.25 per cent, while in Western Europe it increased to 32.71%. At its prosperous best Mughal Empire produced 24.5% of world GDP in the year 1700. By the time British colonists occupied India and other nations their GDP rose to 23.8% of the world in 1870." (page  13 7)It is not essential to pick and choose examples that fit a prefixed thought structure. More important is do you see the 'other' humanity with same eyes as you wish to be seen.



"If I had to choose between an erudite Aristotle and an unknown ‘soulless’ black slave I would choose the latter. The ascendancy of the West was on a heap of bodies of slaves and trampled humanity through colonization." (page 135)
It is not essential to pick and choose examples that fit a        .    
important is do youSEEthe 'other' humanity with same eyes as you wish to be seen.
In Dresden as I stood in front of Otto Dix Triptych War, I could see the futility of the great ascent of the West in the hanging flesh from dead putrefied soldiers. Do not forget the ascent of the West culminated in 70 million dead. No Mr. Ferguson we do not desire such ascent either for West or East for that matter to humanity in general.
Viktor Vijay Kumar

'Mona Lisa does not smile anymore' replies to Niall Ferguson in Guardian Newspaper

http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/10159147http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/10159278

How West butchered the Rest--'Mona Lisa does not smile' replies

A question to Niall Ferguson-- did slavery and Colonialism of 'Christian' West not devavour the Rest?

India has the oldest surviving religion of the world and a billion plus population being moved by it in search of the material and spiritual. The 'Reniassance' led by Papal authorities encouraging and actively canvassing slave trading, and Colonialism  of all non-European cultures was the bane of humanity and Humanism.
Later the onslaught of proselytizing 'Christianity' subsumed under Rome the singular right to be 'Christian Church'. Even now the Christianity is projected as a Western religion, which is not true--neither Jesus nor the earliest practioners were Western. It was the Byzantium and the Eastern Church as also the Syrian Christians and other Eastern strains that propagated Christianity as non-racist. But the dominance of Roman Church  (and later Anglican Church in Colonies like India) brought about a racial stranglehold of Christianity and it did not dither in making  Western White 'Christian'  Man as  a model of the 'Humanity' while helping to decimate other cultures in Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Africa.
I rebut Niall Ferguson's

Civilization: The West and the Rest

  self-gloating Western superiority hereunder from my book Mona Lisa does not smile anymore (ISBN 978-81-8465-512-4)


"The voyages of exploration were the dawn of Racialism and Colonialism. In the year 1600, the Indian economy amounted to 22.54 per cent of the world GDP, while Britain and Western Europe's combined economies amounted to 21.82 per cent. By 1870, India's share was down to 12.25 per cent, while in Western Europe it increased to 32.71%. At its prosperous best Mughal Empire produced 24.5% of world GDP in the year 1700. By the time British colonists occupied India and other nations their GDP rose to 23.8% of the world in 1870. "
It is clear West climbed over the bodies of the Rest to attain material surpluses that through Cos like East India Company ushered in development of West from the loot of the Rest.
The complete lack of moral unease of subjugating so many and killing so many through slave shipping, indentured labour, Colonization and a Church that helped in these grand venture of the West  is what Ferguson's book tries to white wash. The writings of likes of Ferguson are unabashed revival of Colonialism in the garb of  (partisan) academics of the West. His  arguments smack of blatant racism.  But so much is dark and gory under the white loaded brush of West that Ferguson can not whitewash it.

Black Mona Lisa painting  by Viktor Vijay

Why God is Woman in Hinduism--the art of India

Faith rightly placed is a great saviour, but housed in perverted heads it brings about hatred, destruction and mayhem. When we hate others under the canopy of religion, race, gender, caste, creed, we walk a path to hell. I wonder if woman ever fought wholesale in the name of religion. Mostly they create and nurture life--Give birth, suckle and bring up the babies. This fact was well appreciated by our fore-fathers and fore-mothers  in prehistoric periods. The  Mother was God for the life could be created only by her. Hinduism being an ancient religion with direct and continuing link with human prehistory has elements from the ancient world and belief that God is feminine. .
As I travelled in search of the art and wisdom of India in its temples and customs strewn across the country, I found exquisite gems of a philosophy and art that can not be appreciated unless one surrenders the blinkers and regimented toxicity of thought and attitude towards the celebration the feminine in
Hinduism. I tried to work out the proportion of female figures on temple walls I found they outnumber male images in some cases by 80%!!
If one knows about the original Khasi inhabitants of Meghalaya, one would be familiar with the matriarchal society that flourishes there.
 A goddess in reclining birth giving posture  found on many temples is called Lajja Gauri. I saw a 5th century example of it in Badami in Karnataka. The Face is generally covered in a round flower shape and her legs drawn up in the birth giving posture. The caves of Badami are famous for excellent art of Badami Chalukyas and painted caves with images from Hinduism and Jainism from 4-5th  century. The dancing Shiva  in the first cave is a sublime example of the spiritual art of India. The graceful dance postures is what in all probability encouraged the development of Nataraja image of Shiva. Below the caves as you enter the precincts there is ASI Museum that has this beautiful Lajja Gauri sculpture. there are other very good examples of Indian art and its spiritual reach.
Women held in high esteem nurtured a religion with very little violence and hatred and war-mongering destruction. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism are as such the religions of peace.



Ranakpur Jain temple  Rajasthan sculpture of  dancing goddess

In my book Mona Lisa does not smile anymore I have used the images of goddesses  that stood for God as a feminine Eternal.

The Art of India

Hinduism has one of the  longest continuing history of the faith of mankind. The practices of Hinduism so  freely demonized by the Colonists and the proselytizing Christian padre were drawn from the Nature. We know that the earliest religions of humanity were Nature based. The missionaries--the militant, business trading and property owning Jesuits included-- indulged in  marketing a much younger Christianity to the grand old man--Hinduism. They held the beautiful hybrid forms of gods and goddesses to be 'Monsters'. Partha Mitter in his Much Maligned Monsters discusses the roots of the perversion of European mind from the time of Pliny about India's culture, religion and people.

One of the dominant beliefs in Hinduism comes from the Mother worship practices common to all ancient faiths. Marija Gimbutas  did extensive research on Mother Goddess in Europe. In India Hinduism is replete with woman images of gods. Here I give you an image from the  8th century temples  of Ossian 75 km from Jodhpur in Rajasthan. She is the goddess of fertility.                      .

Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art decides to cover the art of 1.25 billion people of India---thank You Noah Becker

Victor Vijay 21 March at 10:16

Thank u Noah. But u know as well a I that two swallows do not make the summer. Change and be inclusive if u want to be really
"magazine of contemporary art'. Set up infrastructure in India like you have in Europe to explore what new distances Indian art is measuring with its ancient walking feet.
regards,
Viktor Vijay

Noah Becker 21 March at 10:28 Report

thanks Victor we would need a few months to do that and also a bigger budget.

Victor Vijay 21 March at 12:14

Noah Becker your brief missive delights to no end, not me but India and many more!!
Those who float free in ether become the universe!! I appreciate your world view on art and wish a new dawn for Whitehot Magazine.
I am sure you will create an inclusive world of art, culture, socially-shared-spaces. In doing so your Whitehot Magazine will be first in the world to do it, others may emulate you in creating a United Nation of Art n Culture
Black Mona Lisa thanks U ,
regards and kudos for ur project,

Viktor Vijay

Reply:

Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art

A message to Editor,

Noah Becker Visual Artist | Musician | Writer| Editor, Hello, I am impressed by your extensive and multifarious talent in creative arts--words, images and music. Your White Hot Magazine is I may say a bit dusty though with colourful plumage. You have such wide ranging coverage on West but another part of earth and India with 1.25 billion people has been in the forefront of art, culture and civilizations. Unfortunately the Western canon of art  and aesthetics applied to India regarded the arts and culture of this ancient land as accolyte and subsidiary to West, which in any case is not true. Indian aesthetics is based on different foundation than that of West. To totally ignore the arts and culture of this great land is I think a glaring omission and than not to have an Indian or Eastern point of view on arts would as it has, make your otherwise good magazine, incomplete and lopsidedly West dominated and focussed. regards, Viktor Vijay Artist

India crest of civilizations and leading economic superpower

Today like other days I woke up late and I ran through newspapers with my mandatory two cups of tea. Being  Sunday there are more serious writings to go through. As I shuffled pages of The Times of India to main Sunday articles I saw Minhaz Merchant's four-book review. The first book deals with West and its professed self-delusion of  grandeur and superiority vis-a-vis the rest of the world. The book written by Niall Ferguason is appropriately arrogantly called 'Civilization: The West and the Rest'.  I will juxtapose Merchant's unbiased analysis in a while, but let me give you what I have to say on West in a single but similar sentence  "Renaissance West butchered the Rest"
(Page 93 Mona Lisa does not smile anymore -the story of fake Humanism of 'Reanaissance' Europe in relation to arts of India). Merchant counters (Page 19 Title: What's the Big Idea Sunday Times of India 20th March 2011) Ferguason's Western superiority through "science,medicine,consumerism, competition, property rights and work ethics" with the real causes known to all of us as the profits of blood and tears of "The Rest" from  slavery, colonization, indentured labour, bringing diseases and deceipt from Europe to decimate the body and the spirit, art and culture, society and civilizations, intellect and wisdom, philosophy and spirituality. How people suffer from the racial grandeur of West is still beyond understanding. More than 30 millions killed by British-manufactured famines in India do not make for the glory of 'medicine' as the cause of West's upstart upstaging the Rest. About competition, British factory cloth was forced on Indians and killed millions of weavers through unemployment, the colonists forced the farmers in Malwa central India with very fertile grains and cotton growing black soil to cultivate poppy and forced  at the point of barrel of gun  the  Chinese to legalize the opium imports from  British colony India. What colonialism did to art and culture of India I have discussed in great detail in my book.  "The Mughals rejuvenated arts and culture of India while Portuguese excelled in conversions, Inquisition and atrocities on Hindu, Muslim and Jew populace." 

(page 159 from Mona Lisa ...)

It is not very surprising the kind of propagandist writings keep emerging from accolytes of West, but I have predicted in my book the new emerging horizons under a fresh sun and it is The Rest and not the West that will shine the brightest. 
Thank You Minhaz Merchant for removing the wool from the eyes of those who put wool on their own eyes in the first place.

Creative Dilemma of artist

What I see is not what is

Then what shall I create with my paint brush?

A form, a feeling, a presence, a negation, time, or its annihilation?

A form limits, a feeling is transient, a presence and its negation is but an illusion,

Time they say is circular so I catch not its strands

excerpts from MONA LISA DOES NOT SMILE ANYMORE

(page 14)

Contemporary Art

excerpts book Mona Lisa does not smile anymore

" No Indian artist with professed influence of Indian philosophical thought has caused a stir in the world. Many migrated to West or studied and stayed there but none could touch the pinnacle; is it the hegemony of the West or the quality of art that is in question? Rather I have a question namely is the art market able to separate wheat from chaff? Whether the high prices created by the market a touch stone of the real worth of art works? Is in a society so full of scams and manipulations a ‘price’ is really a price at which transactions take place and whether the ‘experts’ really able to gauge the artistic worth of a work of art. Have we been able to create a holistic, universal expression drawing on Indian philosophy, religion and thought? May be the heritage is too heavy with past and the artists are not able to wrench themselves away or be free from its overpowering impact. The weight of so much of knowledge from the past, the imagery, iconography, the narratives, the philosophy and above all the inability to look at all this from today’s vintage point could probably be possible reasons of Indian contemporary art and artists denied to make a grand entry on world podium. The art that is being created is cocooned and in the absence of good institutional infrastructure is difficult to screen for its true artistic worth. Quite a few are dealing in pleasing decorative figures that have vanished almost half a century earlier from world art. Both in form based and abstraction some remarkable art is being created often and include works of artists who do not know to use marketing instruments. Collectors are no longer impressed by the poverty of an artist; to be good, the artists must have plush studios and designer clothes, and only then the art is rated ‘collectible’. Like Bombay masala movies people at the lower rung of art appreciation want works to decorate their houses, villas, factories, ranches, offices. They want not creative works of art, they want pleasing pictures—pictures that don’t raise uncomfortable question about life, existence, humanity and future. Others want paintings to satisfy their need for religious images of gods and goddesses"

Mona Lisa does not smile anymore--book on Indian art

excerpts from the book, "To paint appearances is to miss out on inner kernel of the world. Increasingly the commercial industrial thought and technologies have spilled over into art domain ; replication of apparent with digital manipulation and, camera use has taken over from the inner creative well of humanity. The technologies are not the blood and marrow of humanity, instead the direction, freedom, the vision from within are the structure of human enterprise. To abnegate the world of stockappearances we need to have inner spiritual cues. Not the knowledge of the external but the saturating unitary experience of the inner. In my art I work with chance and attempted negation of conscious, well planned, control of the artistic expression. I surrender so the Light will shine on creativity. The joining of Chance as a higher order of things with a consciousness that comes from within and transforms our ‘seeing’ is what my art is about. I call it Chance-Consciousness Art or Chancon.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=81536&id=598216960

Why Picasso has his finger on the 21st century's pulse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/9875527

read in the Link my comment on the art of Picasso in Guardian U.K.

Global, Indian and Western contexts in Art

No present art is isolated from its social, cultural, religious, historical milieu. In my book Mona Lisa does not smile anymore I have compared Indian art with European art in a-historic context. The reason I choose to be a-historic is that there are certain underlying tendencies in art that are like a milling stone and do not float in the current of time. Art of any time proclaims to be an advancement over earlier period and it announces itself modern, rooted in present and carrying futuristic vision. Art does not solve problems of the world but it definitely emerges from the problems of the globe. Europe had through time subjugated and subsumed the individual will into a mechanical systemic impersonal Will. The very power of State challenges the freedom of art artists and people of society. The individual angst of artists because of such regimentation affected deeply the art of modern times. The alienation, loneliness, isolation, separation, denial of freedom, routines and segmentation of humans is reflected in the birth of Expressionism and Existentialist philosophy and literature of Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Sartre, Camus, Andre Gide, Alberto Moravia.

India in contrast always had a social order where shared life, time, religious practices, innumerable festivals, community dinners, singing dancing and music and a collective sharing in community life. This has a far reaching and positive influence on the life and expectations therefrom. The modern and the pre-modern in life and in art in India exists without and apparent contradictions. The process of solving the opposition between the modern and pre- modern is rather slow in Indian art and life. This on account of a different point of view about time.

These are important questions that have to be answered in the context of global art and in understanding modern and present art practices from India, Asia, Europe and USA. The question I deal with in the book Mona Lisa does not smile anymore.

Movie-Mona Lisa does not smile anymore.wmv

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