Devdutt Pattanaik: Unravelling male nudes

A few decades ago the statue of Bahubali a sage from Jain lore was being installed right in front of Mumbai domestic airport Many protested arguing that the image of a nude man should not be the first thing people see when leaving the airport In response the middle portion of the image was covered with a panel Eventually the statue had to be removed The idea of seeing Bahubalirsquos image as that of a nude man disgusted the faithful for it transformed an asexual transcendental symbol into a sexualised biologyIllustrationDevdutt PattanaikHuman beings are meaningmaking animals We can bestow meaning to sound or to a stroke of a line and thus create words We can bestow meaning to images or to a gesture and thus create symbols We can create layers of meaning by which a tree is not just a tree and a cigar is not just a cigar So it is with nudity Depending on the gaze depending on the context it has a different meaning It can be asexual or sexual a celebration of the flesh or an indicator of something spiritual The difference is evident when we compare and contrast the 14feettall marble statue of David carved in 16th century Italy by Michelangelo with the 57feet image of Gomateshwara Bahubali carved in Shravanabelegola in Karnataka in the 10th centuryIn the Bible humans were naked in Eden when they were innocent but when they ate the Forbidden Fruit they became aware of their nakedness And so they covered themselves with leaves Any act of nudity after this Original Sin and the subsequent Fall from the grace of God is deemed vulgar even offensive In the Old Testament tale of King David dancing naked before the Ark of the Covenant evokes much outrage with many people arguing he should not have done so or would not do so as such dancing is disrespectful seen only amongst pagans Yet Michelangelo carves this very same David in his younger days when he defeated the giant Goliath in the nude in the style used by ancient Greeks to depict heroes such as Perseus The polytheistic lsquopaganrsquo Greeks celebrated the flesh and the human form In the age of the Renaissance when Greek thought was being rediscovered the male nude was no big deal as it would have been one in the previous Dark Ages In fact no one saw the nudity of the statue when it was unveiled The focus was on the statuersquos remarkable selfconfidence concentration beauty and graceCarved five centuries earlier the gigantic Bahubali embodies the struggle to break free from the material world He stands tall looking at the horizon vines wrapping around his calves and thighs indicating both the duration of his struggle as well as its earthly nature He is neither a Tirthankara like his father nor a Chakravarti like his brother He is between sage and king earning the empathy of lay followers of Jainismrsquos Digambara order Here the nudity embodies renunciation and has nothing to do with male beauty or powerHow we see the male nude ultimately is both a function of our own conditioning our own education and maturity as well as the culture we live in Neither of these images would be welcomed in most Middle Eastern countries notwithstanding their gender or their refined meaningsDevdutt Pattanaik writes and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times Reach him at devduttdevduttcom