Nudity Is Beautiful

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Humans, infact all creatures come naked to this nude world. All mountains, trees, flowers, rivers and the whole creation is uncovered. Sun, moon and all luminosities in the sky are naked. Animals, birds, insects come coverless and go coverless under the sun. Only after the invention of language we have started using ‘green mantled earth’, ‘snow clad mountains’ and use other metaphors of civilization as poetic cover on the earth. Truth itself is naked but whoever speaks ’truth’ puts on it the garb of his own imagination. Civilization makes nature artificial. Shame enters society to isolate individuals from each other. But in the long and arduous history of man, the idea of covering the body must have come as a sort of protection from the seasonal vagaries of nature. And the cultures must have changed into demarcated territories of civilizations where protective gear must have changed into fashion wear. Nudity in the context of civilization has become a non-value or anti- value, particularly, in social life.

But the human body is beautiful. The female body is the most curvaceous and graceful. Woman is nature in her magnificent symmetry. Naturally she attracts, arouses the sexual instinct to possess and admire. Creative artists adore a naked form of a woman and often they deify her. There is divinity in nudity. The soft rise and swell of golden breasts, the valley, mountain, arbours and silken hair, soft-playing on the cheek and the nose of a woman in winnowing breeze make a woman nature-personified. Painters and sculptors use nude models to create masterpieces. Aphrodite, Madona or the dancers of the konark temple are tributes to the beauty of nudity by creative minds. The world loves them. People buy the paintings even imitations and copies spending fortunes to hang them in special rooms and show them off to visitors with pride. The art galleries attract great many visitors if there is a nude painting of Michael Angelo or Botticelli adorning the gallery. A male nude too is attractive for the male is the Active Principle motivating Prakruti to function creatively. 

But when civilizations are cluttered with different cultures past fixation problems arise, conflicts ensue and lead to bloody clashes.  ‘The Unity in Diversity’ slogan of modern civilization does not create a new culture or a new civilizational order. India is a case in point. A group of educated elite appreciate objectively all forms of nudity as they do not see things through the prism of religion. But the fringe revolts which often leads to vandalism. When M.F.Hussein painted Saraswati as an underwater nude he was hounded out of the country. Many muslim religious teachers disapprove of even fashionable women who flaunt their skin. Sania Mirza’s Badminton gear was criticised as if showing legs and arms is an exhibition of nudity. Such things happen in a culture which does not grow and never tries to enter the demarcated territory of civilization. Those who think nudity is evil or culturally unaesthetic they are hypocritical brutes. They think that the skin of a woman or the naked form of a woman is only sexiting, they have no eye for beauty, symmetry, balance and proportion. Prurience is in their minds and eyes which cannot register the beautiful balance of symmetry and attitude. And this disapproval of nudity enforced by religion leads to hate.

But nudity has also its place and time. Nudity should not be a cult. Nudism as an expression of freedom or as protest destroys the natural charm of the human figure. If the body is projected as a defiant energy to express disagreement with certain accepted values of civilization it becomes anti nature and ugly. Conversely if nudity is enforced on a helpless woman to celebrate ephemeral victory, it causes moral imbalance which decimates all values which civilization holds sacred. In the history of human civilization the attempt to denude Draupadi, in the mahabharat, after she was lost to Duryodhan in a dice game stands out as the worst illustration of depravity. Nudity is not a display item for public mockery. This episode in the mahabharat unhinges the civilization and all citadels fall like corpses in Krukshetra. Nudity of a woman is a stance of beauty, not for lewd ridicule or frenzied sex. Nudity makes man humble at the altar of divine elegance. It is artistic in its appeal and humbling in attitude. In Hermann Hessay’s Siddharth the hero bows down at the pure naked beauty of Kamala. A beautiful nude makes a sensitive soul sober to contemplate the mystery of creation. It symbolizes the harmony of colour, rhythm and proportion of the universe.

The beauty of a woman without the trappings of civilization is a marker of ecological health. It has no place for lasciviousness or libidinous levity. If the viewer, because of his own imbalance, is aroused sexually he puts into stress his psychic ecology and demeans the aesthetic energy of formal grace.