We strongly condemn at this meeting of artists and concerned citizens the most recent attack on artists and artworks, by the vandals of VHP and Bajrang Dal, part of the Sangh Parivar, in the city of Surat.

On 29th  January, nearly 200 hundred people pushed into the new art gallery,  set up by the Surat industrialist  Praful Shah.They tore down, broke up and burnt artworks on display including two  paintings by the veteran artist, the late NS Bendre, one earlier painting of MF Husain, and damaged several others  in the assault. One  painting of the  younger artist from Kolkatta, Chittravanu Mazumdar, was forcibly taken away from the gallery.

This is one in a series of  intimidatory and violent attacks on the contemporary arts, on scholarship,  and on the culture and heritage of this country, as the recent attack on the Bhandarkar Research Institute in Pune, so tragically demonstrated. These are not any longer isolated instances of mindless groups but part of  the very process whereby civil society and our civilizational heritage with its complex structure of  spiritual relationships is being systematically communalized, vulgarized and destroyed. For this, the hate ideology being perpetrated by the Sangh Parivar and its ruling combine are squarely responsible. This has happened with crude impunity  during the last decade, beginning with the demolition of  the 16th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Its most tragic consequences have been witnessed in the state of Gujarat recently where the rule of the mob seems to have open state sanction.

We would like to put forward the following propositions with regard to the immediate incident.

The right of  freedom of expression is not simply to be seen as artists’ prerogative and thence lampooned as an irresponsible

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expression of an indvidual’s subjective perceptions of life and culture. It is a right vital for the imagination to flourish and produce surprising interpretations of  human understanding; it is even more than that the right of citizens in a country like India with its most enlightened constitution that guarantees the right of free expression as a consituent part of  citizenship. In  such a society, differences, dissent, and conflict have to be faced and resolved in a democratic way distinctly different from those adopted by fascist societies. The methods of protest in an advanced democracy like ours are manifold: the non-violent heritage of protest and added to it the legal and discursive methods that distinguish a  civil society such as ours  from brute force and fascistic coercion.

 The Garden Gallery, representing a major collection that the Shah family has built up since the last 25 years, is a gift to the city of Surat and to the people of Gujarat and may indeed be one of the very few  private collections of. contemporary Indian art to be put up for public viewing. We would hope this would become an example for  other such private institutions to come up to support  creative endeavour in the country . But this is now being met with contempt and the persons concerned are being intimidated to accommodate to the ignorance and prejudice of the vandals and their leaders whose agenda has little to do with art, artists, culture, scholarship or indeed any form of enlightened religion.