A supper with bacchus in India
Updated On: 04 August, 2024 06:55 AM IST | Mumbai | Devdutt Pattanaik
The organisers had to apologise for hurting sentiments, without meaning to
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Illustration/Devdutt Pattanaik
At the Paris Olympics, a dance performance provoked outrage. Christians saw it as a parody of Last Supper as depicted by Leonardo da Vinci. The organisers insisted it was based on another painting depicting Bacchanalia, the wild party of the god of wine, Dionysus, which is part of Greek mythology, much like the Olympic games. But the damage was done. The organisers had to apologise for hurting sentiments, without meaning to.
The French are famous for introducing the world to rather disruptive post-modern philosophy in the 20th century that argues that meaning rests not just with the artist but also the audience. So, the French got a taste of their own medicine—how the message was seen differently by different people. Diversity is not about including drag queens alone; it is also about including the hijab wearing fundamentalists and the Born-Again Christian. No one wants to accommodate though. Such is the nature of Western argumentative ideologies.
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