Modesty,Nudity & Male Gaze: India’s Tallest Nude Woman Statue Outside A Temple

In a country obsessed with god and goddesses and one that more often than not forgets to view its women outside divinity unless, of course. to relegate them to the fringes of society for their impurity, stands a nude female statue of Yakshi, possibly the only one outside a temple. Translated in Malayalam, ‘Yakshi’ means demoness. With her curves in all glory, the 18 foot imposing figurine at Malampuzha garden at Palakkad, is the tallest woman nude sculpture in India. A wanton seductress of men and a blood-sucking demoness, according to the myth that has been subverted for the figurine, it begs the question: how did a statue like this find its place?

Living in a country that can’t seem to get over ideas of modesty but also is among the largest consumer of porn in the world, the female nude model can evoke multiple responses. While some associate the figure with shame and can’t look at it, many others come here to click selfies with it. Within this context, it becomes important to question what the intent behind the sculpture is, especially since it was created from a single rock 52 years ago by Kanayi Kunhiraman, a male artist. Is it them merely another figure catering to the male gaze with its perky and voluptuously carved breasts and the emphasis on its curves while it sits with its feet apart?

In an interview with the Times Of India, when asked if “he thinks the work plays to the male gaze?,” Kanayi said that his Yakshi was a “homage to the empowerment of women.” Admittedly her gigantic features were meant to provoke the viewer, but “nature is nude and there is no shame in it. It is men who introduced the concept of chastity to repress women.”

For art historians or even those familiar with sculptures of the past, nude figurines were not considered immodest and the human body was appreciated for the longest time. So, how did we, as a generation or those before us, start questioning nudity in public space? The answer can be found in India’s colonial history. According to historian William Dalrymple, who wrote for the BBC, “Westerners coming to India have always been baffled to encounter a very different set of attitudes to the sensuous and its relationship to the sacred. Here, it is considered completely appropriate to cover the exterior walls of a religious building with graphically copulating couples. Christianity, in contrast, has always seen the human body as essentially sinful, lustful and shameful, the tainted vehicle of the perishable soul, something which has to be tamed and disciplined – a fleshy obstacle to salvation.”

He further adds, “But to pre-colonial Indians, there was no association of women with sin, and in all the voluminous Indian scriptures, there is no Eve, taking the fall for the Fall. Women were associated not with temptation but instead with fertility, abundance, and prosperity, and there is an open embrace of sexuality as one route to the divine.”

Yakshi has now spent five decades in the company of those that move away their gaze, those that ogle, those that question and those that just don’t care. Staying true to her womanhood, the connection with nature and questioning our preconceived notions of modesty, femininity, and nudity.

The 84-year-old sculptor says that he just wants us to view womanhood outside of the patriarchal set up, “I have seen children gazing comfortably at the statue and playing around it but men with preconceived notions of sexuality feeling shy to even stand nearby and take a photograph. There is nothing obscene in her nudity and if people feel so, it is because they are conditioned to see women in that way.”

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