This comes in the wake of Mallika Sarabhai's 'Dance to change the world' performance(?) at TED India, Mysore.

I find the plot (a curious perversion of the ahalya-gautama episode), the characters and the message conveyed to be assumptive, offending, incoherent and obnoxious.

Two very obvious things:

a) Archaic stereotypes: The thread-wielding oh-so-evil Brahmin, the perverted god(s), the innocent victim and the dearth of ethical constructs in our jurisprudential dogma.

b) Propaganda: The core-issue of the talk is about Rape. Well, if this really was the case, I don't think it would've been against the spirit of art to narrate the same incident and convey the same message without all the silly branding, negative stereotypes, hyperventilating histrionics and hateful bias.

This isn't new. I've seen endless feminist ranting about the manusmRti, the sIta-rAma episode and more. Mallika Sarabhai's on-stage antics themselves seem to be a hack-off from Sunita Namjoshi's "Feminist Fables".

What's also obvious is a lack of balance and a sense of fairness. Surely, there can't be perceptional equivalence on the subject of parallels between Muslims in India, Aborigines and Blacks. The truth is that it was the Indian majority that bore the brunt of Islamic hegemony while the aborigines and the blacks were indeed the victims of supremacist racial oppression. History doesn't speak half-truths (Unless it's written by Romila Thapar and her Marxist ilk)

What is further vague, is the depiction of the issue as being directly related to Indian culture and it's portrayal as being misogynist by nature. Yet another half truth (or is it a quarter?), for a major part of India encompasses a culture that is far more reverent of it's women than any other cult with semetic roots.

Surely, wouldn't political correctness be a constraint to portray women's rights as prescribed by the sharia'? or the more ancient Semitic prescription that decrees the woman as 56% of a man by quality?

There's a tendency to equate western social freedom of the modern age to it's cultural roots. Coupled with a one-sided perspective of our own cultural ethos and a restricted sense of western feminism with delusional advocacy on it's global applicability, it takes no more than a Mallika Sarabhai (or worse) to grain prominence as a liberal intellectual.

What however is not realized and is constantly abused is the tolerance that is more resonating of our culture than silly propaganda. Breaking the rule is not a sin to the extent there's almost a tacit approval for irreverence to tradition and cultural dogmas. This has bred our rich diversity - be it Music, dance, literature or spirituality.

Take Indian Classical Music for instance: The Hindusthani flavor of North India has freely adopted Persian, Sufi elements into it while also evolving internally into a plethora of not-necessarily hierarchical gharanas. The far more conservative South Indian Karnataka Classical Music has led it's own path, creating new rAgas, adopting rAgas from it's north indian cousin and even adopting western influence.

The permissiveness of this irreverence and rebelliousness isn't the purpose of this principle of tolerance or the art itself. The real motive is to breed unbridled, unconstrained creativity with as few temporal limitations as possible.

It wouldn't be surprising to conclude that our art, it's creative and cultural objectivity shares a coherent bond with truth. I'd fall short of saying that this is a valid aesthetic generalization across all cultures and art.

Venturing back to Mallika's claim of using art to change the world, There's but a smell of valiant hypocrisy to it. What kind of art espouses a preconceived agenda? what kind of art breeds so obvious a bias? what kind of art be so hollow, distorted and disfigured by design? What kind of art is this that reflects and nurtures such null-brained creativity?

Be informed, that like any other neo-sensation (albeit for an Indian flavor), Mallika Sarabhai features on the fanboards of many western audiences and (not to mention) Indian sycophants. Sometimes, it feels like it's just a cultural gap too big to mend, especially in the absence of honest openness.

Mallika Sarabhai is not alone. The glowing world of art is home to many slaves of various propagandas. There's no dearth of lunacy (The Mallika kind) It's impossible to truthfully appreciate art that doesn't appeal to one's creative corner. Adulteration and art just don't go together.

It's a tendency that doesn't spare even the best. S L Bhairappa raises some provoking questions on Islamist hegemony in India in his book 'AvaraNa'. The book is perhaps amongst the finest, in terms of a politically incorrect expose that speaks out against the propaganda of revisionist history, communism and more. However, it couldn't be helped feeling at one point or the other that the creativity plays second fiddle to the preconceived agenda.

For all the political, academic and historical enlightenment the book provides, it's certainly not in the same class a parva, gRhabhanga, dATu or nAyi-neraLu (or many others) which leaves you spellbound contemplating various permutations and combinations of interpretations. As I mentioned earlier, the urge to set one's creativity to play second fiddle to agenda never spurs true creativity.

Mallika Sarabhai is a an excellent but dangerous example of the consequences of the liberty of thought, and it's abuse.