We’ve discovered Akshita Chandra by chance. An extraordinary visual designer from Mumbai whose Being Cenzitive collection of interactive design caught our attention (and our imagination)
Akshita speaks about the numerous censorship various Indian government entities have issued against the freedom of choice for the young people of India and the marginalized groups. Today we reproduce and re-post some of her fantastic work.
1. Being censorious and censorship are regarded as two different terms. People have a right to be censorious – they comment, oppose and even condemn. But not threaten, destroy or burn. Is politics of sentiments enough to censor, curtail freedom of speech/artistic expression?
Celebrating the celebration of sexuality in the cultural past of India, viewing it through the lens of censorship on grounds of obscenity, ‘Being Censitive’ tries to explore what is considered to be obscene and what is acceptable, highlighting the struggle between people and censorship/moral policing.
Taking Khajuraho Temple as my representative case, the artworks try to create a dialogue between the past and the present with illustrations directly inspired from the temple art of Khajuraho which are then juxtaposed with a few recent examples of censorship/moral policing to comment on the same.
Temples are seen as an extremely pious place, and nudity and sex has been associated with irreligiousness and guilt. It is this juxtaposition also that I wanted to bring forth in the project.
2. Lingerie clad mannequins on display in Mumbai get banned.
“Mannequins displaying two-piece clothes or other lingerie are corrupting the minds of people and are against the morals of the society.”
– Rita Tawade, BMC
3. “Sex education will pollute young minds and hence must not find space in the improved and ‘Indianised’ education system that the government wants to introduce.”
– Dinanath Batra, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti
4. Beating, slapping and bashing of the couples by the Shiv Sena on Valentine’s day.
5. Clothed cleavages blurred out on Romedy Now since they were too ‘obscene’.
6. Enacted in 1860, Section 377 of the IPC criminalises “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.“ Punishment may extend to life imprisonment.
“I invite the gay community to my yoga ashram and I guarantee to cure them of homosexuality.”
– Baba Ramdev
7. Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s woman wing, Durga Vahini marched and protested against the exhibition, ‘Naked and the Nude’ in Delhi,demanding for a complete ban.
“It is an exhibition that is derogatory to our cultural values and portrays women in a very obscene manner. Some perverted people are trying to justify it, saying that ancient statues gods and goddesses used to be nude but that is different. In today’s society we cannot justify such acts.”
– Vinod Bansal, VHP
8. After the launch of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Union culture and Human Resource Development ministers have pledged to launch a countrywide movement to rid the nation of sanskritik pradushan(cultural pollution).
“We will cleanse every area of public discourse that has been westernised and where Indian culture and civilisation needs to be restored – be it history we read or our cultura lheritage or our institutes that have been polluted over the years. Cleansing exercise will involve school curricula, art and cinema, science and technology and libraries”
– Mahesh Sharma, Union Culture Minister.
