Maneka flays the BJP on MSU Case!!

MSU: Maneka flays arrests, ‘BJP offending cultural world’
Press Trust Of India
New Delhi, May 12: IN a stinging attack on the saffron opposition to painter M F Hussain’s works and to an arts exhibition in a Gujarat university, BJP MP Maneka Gandhi today said the party and VHP activists have gone “too far” in their protests. She also opposed the arrest of two arts students of M S University in Vadodra in BJP-ruled Gujarat.
“VHP and BJP activists attacked and damaged their paintings. This is unacceptable behaviour and I am sure, as a reasonable and open-minded person, you will realise that we offend the entire cultural world and thinking when we do this,” she said in a letter to senior party leader L K Advani.


The Pilibhit MP, who praised Hussain for his charity, alleged that his paintings had been misread deliberately and suggested that they were worthy of being displayed in a museum.
“Even if they have been interpreted correctly, and objected to, that is the purpose of good art: to arouse debate, to create emotion and passion, to be a means of communicating the artist’s own thoughts. Otherwise, all art would be a mediocre representation of real world and would have no value except as a photograph imitative record of the world,” Gandhi wrote.
In an attack on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, she alleged that the state had the highest incidence of cow slaughter.
“I have pointed this out to CM and Home Minister many times. No attempt is being made to make sure that the police, who are hand in glove with cattle smugglers, stop this open killing of something that the BJP stands for,” she said.
BJP rejects Maneka’s plea for Hussain, says he hurts faith NEW DELHI: THE BJP today rejected its MP Maneka Gandhi’s plea in support of painter M F Hussain, describing as “unacceptable” his depiction of Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude.
“We do not subscribe to her views on Hussain. As far as the party is concerned, it believes nobody has any right to give a vulgar depiction of our deities. Such acts are unacceptable,” Vijay Kumar Malhotra, the BJP’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, said. Malhotra refused comment when asked whether the party would take action against its Pilibhit MP for her public defiance of the saffron line on Hussain.