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Indian Court Orders Release of “Obscene” Artworks
By Annette Meier
Exterior view of the Bombay High Court in Mumbai, India. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
On November 1, the Bombay High Court in India ordered Mumbai’s customs department to release several artworks by two of the country’s most prominent artists, FN Souza and Akbar Padamsee, which were seized last year on grounds of “obscenity.”
The confiscated artworks belong to Indian businessman and art collector Mustafa Karachiwala, who had purchased them in 2022 from two London auction houses and shipped them to India last year. The shipment contained three works by Padamsee, a 1995 charcoal drawing and two black-and-white photographs (both 2005), each titled Nude and depicting a naked woman, as well as Souza’s Erotic Drawings series (1962–63), comprising three ink- and pen-on-paper drawings of a couple engaging in intercourse.
Indian customs officials impounded the shipment on April 20, 2023, citing a violation of obscenity laws, and Karachiwala was subsequently fined INR 50,000 (USD 594). Since then, the works have been held by Mumbai’s customs department.
According to a report by The Art Newspaper, a customs commissioner had sent Karachiwala an order on July 1 stating that the artworks were “offensive” and “disgusting by accepted standards of morality and decency,” and that they could not be imported into the country. As a legal dispute ensued, the customs department maintained its stance, even rejecting artwork certificates provided by two commercial galleries in London and Mumbai.
Karachiwala’s attorneys, Shreyas Shrivastava and Shraddha Swarup, argued that seizing the artworks on the basis of obscenity was illegal, arbitrary, and a breach of the constitutional rights that safeguard artistic expression. “[T]he customs officials have failed to understand the significance of art and failed to differentiate between art and obscenity,” they said, adding that the works hold national and cultural value. As such, they requested that the customs order be dropped and the artworks released.
After Karachiwala filed a petition under the name of his private company, B.K. Polimex India Pvt Ltd., challenging the July 2023 order, the Bombay High Court deemed the order “perverse” and therefore “unsustainable,” directing the customs department to drop its obscenity claim and to release all seven artworks immediately.
Annette Meier is an editorial assistant at ArtAsiaPacific.
