New Delhi, Oct 23 Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday termed as “petty” the Bikaner House administration’s decision to remove certain photographs from Raihan Vadra’s exhibition before its opening, and said it “casts a shadow” on the country’s reputation as a land of democracy.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP also said this “censorship” has driven “one more nail into the coffin” of India’s global reputation as a freedom-loving democracy.
Tharoor made the remarks after he visited the photo exhibition of Raihan, son of Congress general Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and businessman Robert Vadra, at the Bikaner House here.
Speaking with PTI Videos, Tharoor weighed in on the picture exhibition row and said the move to remove photographs was very disappointing.
“The Bikaner House was supposed to be a place of art and culture, and to be very honest, people don’t come to look at photographs out of any sense of political agitation. This is not a place where anyone is going to start shouting slogans, they come to see an artist’s eye, something he has framed,” the Congress leader said.
Seeing all those blank empty walls was really sad, he said and lamented what “we have we reduced ourselves to”.
“There is one wall where he (Raihan) planned to have photographs of protests and beneath that was the Preamble of the Constitution, that they could not take down as it is painted on the wall. So, the Preamble is there but the photographs are gone,” the Lok Sabha MP said.
This is the kind of thing that makes one despair for the kind of mentality of those people who are afraid of the public seeing a number of photographs, he said.
“You don’t get political agitations here, people come in because they are interested in the works displayed, whether it is paintings or photographs or books… I don’t understand why people do these silly things,” he said.
Tharoor hailed Raihan’s talent as a photographer and said he has got a wonderful eye. His wildlife photographs are “absolutely special”, he said with Raihan by his side.
“Finally, I would say to those who took these absolutely petty decisions that they have actually done him a favour because now the entire country knows about this exhibition,” he said.
Referring to Raihan, Tharoor said people in his kind of situation have the misfortune of often being identified solely by the family to which they belong but now the people know his work, what he is interested in, and that he has an artistic sensibility.
“I feel very pleased for him as a young man finding his place in his career that this silly, unnecessary controversy has made him a very famous photographer and an art person in our country,” he said.
On Raihan’s specific objection to the removal of one of the two photographs with the tricolour in it, the Congress leader said such a decision was “utterly shocking”.
“Just as they can’t deface the Preamble of the Constitution, they have no right to deface the flag. I think there is a certain stupidity, I will use a strong word, not just pettiness, not just heavy handedness but stupidity behind a decision like that. It is totally unfortunate, there is nothing about the flag or the Constitution, any Indian would shirk from,” he said.
I think whoever did that wasn’t using whatever grey cells he has got in his head between his ears, he added.
“It was the kind of decision that casts a shadow on our reputation as a land of democracy, as a country that protects freedom of expression and that values creative expression. It is not a good example of what India ought to be showcasing to the world and to the people in the world who appreciate these things,” he said.
Earlier, Tharoor slammed the Bikaner House administration’s move of not allowing the display of certain pictures taken by Vadra as a “disgrace” on several levels.
The photographs depicted events that have already been etched in public memory, and many of them would have echoed similar images that people have already seen in the media and online, Tharoor said in a post on X.
“While Bikaner House is free to have a policy against political stands, photographs of a protest demonstration are a depiction of an event and not political in themselves; they would almost certainly have passed muster had the matter been brought to a court as an issue of freedom of expression,” he said.
“And worst of all, this censorship has driven one more nail into the coffin of India’s global reputation as a freedom-loving democracy,” Tharoor said.
The publicity this episode has received will have reached a far larger audience, in Delhi and worldwide, than the exhibition itself might have, had it been allowed to proceed undisturbed, he said.
“I thank heavy-handed officials for giving a well-deserved boost to the photographic talents and career of Raihan Vadra,” Tharoor added.
After Raihan said the Bikaner House administration pulled down many of his pictures of the recent Delhi protests ahead of a solo exhibition, the Bikaner House Society said it had sought the removal of certain photographs after finding them inconsistent with its policy.
In an apparent swipe at the Modi government, Priyanka Gandhi said on Thursday that when someone with power becomes afraid of the expression of another, he doesn’t know it, but he has already lost the very power he is trying to protect.
(PTI News)
