THE KAANTIAN TWIST!!

Dear All,This is in continuation of my earlier posting about the incident at theMS University at Vadodara and the relevant sections of the Indian PenalCode.It is one of the wonderful properties of South Asian subcontinental lifethat reality is always better adorned than fiction would have it.And so it is that along with Mr. Niraj Jain, (a purported Bajrang Dalleader who also contested the Vadodara civic body elections on a BJPticket), the other guardian of public morality who protested against theart student Chandra Mohan's work in a departmental exhibition at theFine Arts Faculty at MS University Baroda happens to be a pastor withthe Methodist Church, most appropriately named the Rev. Emmaneul Kant.See, a report on the Vadodara incident in the Vadodara City page ofIndian Express 'BJP Men rough up fine arts student'(Express NewsService, May 9) athttp://cities.expressindia.com/archivefullstory.php?newsid=235608&creation_date=2007-05-10

Apart from the fact that this incident shows a beautiful secular synergybetween majoritarian and minoritarian interests (thereby confusing allthose who spend most of their time worrying about majoritariancommunalism, especially when it comes to the province of Gujarat), therehas to be adequate recognition, I think of the magical facticity inknowing that a protest against a work of art is being led (at least inpart) by an Emmanuel Kant.For all those familiar with the Vadodara pastor's distinguishedKonigsbergian philosopher namesake, Emmanuel (or Immanuel) Kant's'Critique of Judgement' (a book that continues to be influential enoughin discussions of contemporary aesthetic practice and thought to be seenhovering around the curatorial mandate of Documenta 12 and other seriousmatters like a spirit that got stuck in limbo after a mistimed seance),the delicate ironies of this haunting of the Vadodara controversy by theghost of Kant cannot be escaped.In his Critique of Judgement,(and I quote, for the sake of convenience,from the excellent, online entry in the Internet Encyclopaedia ofPhilosophy) http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kantaest.htmKant can be found paraphrased as saying :"through aesthetic judgments, beautiful objects appear to be 'purposivewithout purpose' (sometimes translated as 'final without end').
An object's purpose is the concept according to which it was made (theconcept of a vegetable soup in the mind of the cook, for example); anobject is purposive if it appears to have such a purpose; if, in otherwords, it appears to have been made or designed. But it is part of theexperience of beautiful objects, Kant argues, that they should affect usas if they had a purpose, although no particular purpose can be found."Now a Kantian, confronted with Chandramohan's work, Jain & Kant ledprotests, and the sections 153 and 295 of the Indian Penal Code, wouldnot be in any position to wriggle out of the problem of 'aestheticintention'. If Chandramohan is an artist, his work would affect us as ifthey had a purpose, even if no particular purpose were to be found.The only legal solution available under the Indian legal system, in myopinion, is for Chandramohan to say that he is not an artist, but a mereimpostor, and that his work, is not purposive, or intentional, but themere outpouring of a distracted, and demented mind. What I amsuggesting, is the insanity defence, as used in a murder trial.In other words the - 'My Lord, my client was not of sound mind, he didnot know what he was doing, when he shot the plaintiff's aged mother'maneouvre.If Chandramohan is an artist, then the courts will look at intention.And as in a murder trial, the calibration of intention can lead to adegree of dimunition of a sentence from homicide to manslaughter, butcannot do away with the fact of the offence.I say this neither to attack Chandramohan's work, nor to defend hispractice (although I have no doubt in my mind that the freedome ofexpression is a higher good than artistic quality or religioussensibility). I say this only to underscore the problems of aestheticintention, ethical conduct and legal judgement that this case seems tohave thrown open, perhaps at the instance of the long neglected spectreof the venerable I(E)mmanel Kant