Canvas of Controversy
A Hindu group in London had complained that the show was being put up—they were offended, presumably, by the images of nude Hindu deities Husain had painted, among many other things
Remembrances | Salil Tripathi
He should have died peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones, in the city he loved, Mumbai, at his apartment in Cuffe Parade, where the air carries the scent of the sea, the monsoon breeze reminding him that it was time to get the umbrella out.
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It did rain lightly last night in London when I was at Asia House, listening to Amitav Ghosh speaking eloquently about the Indian complicity in the Opium War, and the Chinese grace in not bringing it up, as he launched his new novel, River of Smoke. Whenever I go to Asia House I can’t help thinking of Husain, because five years earlier, as Asia House was about to open an exhibition celebrating his work, unknown assailants managed to damage some of Husain’s paintings, and the show had to be cancelled. A Hindu group in London had complained that the show was being put up—they were offended, presumably, by the images of nude Hindu deities Husain had painted, among many other things. (They hadn’t protested when the Royal Academy had put on a magnificent show of Chola bronzes, including many nude Hindu deities, at that time, but then consistency is hardly the virtue of fundamentalists.) The Indian high commissioner at the time, Kamalesh Sharma, had called Husain “India’s greatest modern artist”, adding that his career and success mirrored closely “the meteoric rise of contemporary Indian art on the international stage”, even though police officers in India were preparing arrest warrants for Husain, should he return to India.
And so he left India. We didn’t know Husain was in London, and in the twilight hours of his life, but later that night, as Ghosh and I had dinner at a Turkish restaurant on Marylebone High Street, we talked about the exceptional rise of intolerance in India. He finds the narrowing discourse dangerous; I agreed, and said it infantilised India. We thought many of the attacks were outrageous, the complaints frivolous, and recalled how Husain was driven into exile.
Indeed, vigilantes have been acting with impunity and they don’t let writers write, painters paint, thinkers publish, and film-makers show their films. They force people to write less, differently, or not at all. Or, express and suffer consequences. Those consequences are not only abuse by trolls on the Internet or peaceful demonstrations, both of which have a place in a free society, but worse has happened.
Take Husain’s case—the ransacking of an art gallery, the attack on a television studio, which asked its viewers to vote on whether Husain deserved the Bharat Ratna, the verbal threats of violence should he return to Mumbai, the acquiescent police willing to prepare an arrest warrant and pursue spurious cases against him, and the unthinking judges admitting writ petitions by people who hadn’t seen his art at close quarters, but used Victorian-era laws to curb free expression on the grounds that the art offended their sensibilities. True, the courts finally ruled in Husain’s favour, but by then Husain had grown tired; he wanted to paint in peace.
The emphasis on a few paintings—such as the nude Saraswati and Bharatmata— introduced alien concepts such as blasphemy to Hinduism or Indian thought, and disregarded his vast body of other work: those galloping horses, the lament over the Andhra cyclone, the series on singers and artists, the celebration of that syncretic identity, Indian-ness. Garish, loud, huge, noisy: his canvas mirrored India.
Husain’s attackers stayed fossilised in the mind-set of Victorian Britain, considering sex to be shameful, where pomp and circumstance could not be ridiculed and you couldn’t say that the emperor had no clothes, and where laws were passed, after the 1857 War of Independence, to keep emotions of volatile elements of communities calm. It was an India where the deities were presumably so vulnerable that faithful vigilantes had to protect them.
Husain, on the other hand, was reminding India of its liberal, freer, ancient traditions, where you could laugh, sing, dance, joke, worship, or lament the rich life around you, in your own way, in your own rhythm, in your own colours—there was no one unitary view of “India”, but collectively, when you put together the mosaic, the fine image of India emerged.
Fundamentalists hated that pluralism. They wanted Husain to be more sensitive, less offensive to them, equally offensive to other faiths, and atone for his art. Instead, he left India, because it was no longer the India he knew.
Now he is gone. But we have his art.
Salil Tripathi, who writes the fortnightly column Here, There, Everywhere, is the author of Offence: The Hindu Case (Seagull 2009), which deals with Hindu nationalist attacks on writers, historians and artists, including Husain.
Your comments are welcome at salil@livemint.com
Salil,
perhaps you were aware also of the Muslim fundamentalists who complained about a song from Hussain’s Meenaxi considering it blasphemous. The song was banned to appease to them.
Hussain was smart enough to know the group wouldnt entertain nude portraits of the prophet (PBUH) and never indulged in his fantasies.
The govt did offer him Z level security on par or better than offered to a lesser obscure undeserving artist like Taslima Nasreen. But Hussain personally chose to be in self exile and one of his famous quotes was about a world without boundaries and fittingly the global citizen died in London and was buried there – again out of personal choice, not for any lack of support from the Indian Govt to allow him a burial in India.
I too find the Hindu fringe’s outrage ridiculous. But I get offended when the perspective is limited and one-sided and we equate this zeal with a far more rabid and dangerous phenomenon. Can we have a balanced perspective please?
Thanks for writing, Steve.
It was upto Husain to decide which battles to pick, and which not to, and make his assumptions based on the outward reputation of the people opposing him. He may have rightly concluded that Muslims would react harshly to his works; he wrongly assumed Hindus would be tolerant.
He lived by his choices – when to leave India, where to be buried. I can’t speculate his motives, and should not speculate his motives, but why should he want burial in India, after the way the Indian State failed to protect him and his art?
I’m glad we agree on the Hindu fringe’s outrage. If I haven’t written about rabidity from others, it is because the rabidity of one does not justify rabidity of the other. The attitude of Hindus should be judged on their own terms.
Thanks again.
The problem in MF Hussain’s case was not with ‘nudity’, because Indians are comfortable with it. The problem was the way the nudity was presented. His paintings were not only presenting nude pictures of Hindu deities, but also were ‘suggestive’ in nature (Sita sitting near Hanuman, and some others). He was a pervert by all definitions. And his art only represented it.
I think a few persons like MF Hussain attained to do what so many Muslim invaders couldn’t do – to provoke Hindus to the extent of comfortably labelling them as ‘intolerant’. Hindus and Indians are tolerant by nature. But everything has a limit. Hussain discovered it a hard way.
I find no words to praise the ‘mahatma’ MF Hussain. I call him mahatma – because columnists and so called intellectuals are bound to make him appear him like having a ‘halo’ around him. He painted for money that he earned in abundance. He gained popularity by painting on controversial subjects. He was not a law abiding citizen – he ran out when served with a non-bailable warrant. I don’t want to touch his personal life and infatuations. At an age where he should be graceful to inspire the youth, this pervert was running behind Madhuris and Meenakshis. Hardly a figure to inspire any respect.
I support freedom of art and literature, but what if one runs to provoke and paint honourable figures one after the other, from a selected target? Show me where Hussain has painted some Islamic or Christian figures, in nude, and in suggestive gestures? Why only Hinduism? This point alone makes him unprotectable.
We shall remember Hussain as a painter who earned fame but lost respect, in his life. Hardly an inspiring life.
Thanks for writing, Rahul.
There are several fundamental points on which I firmly disagree with your thoughts, and I suppose we won’t have an agreement. But for what it is worth:
* You’ve said Husain was “a pervert”. Perversity, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Most people can see a Playboy centrefold and probably conclude that the image is meant to titillate. Only a few would reach such a conclusion after seeing Husain’s drawings – where, sometimes, given their cubism-derived elements, it is hard to tell where the human form begins.
* I disagree that tolerance has limits. You are tolerant, or you aren’t. And there are many millions of Hindus who had either no view on Husain’s art, didn’t care, liked it, or championed it. By definition, then, the Hindus who objected to his art, were a minority. And if so, they cannot, and should not, get away with imposing their will on the majority, including non-Hindus.
* Nobody calls Husain a Mahatma. Not me; nor any art critic or writer. Nobody deserves a halo, while people do place halos around all sorts of people. Some have even placed a halo around Ramdev. Others place it around Sachin Tendulkar.
* You may find his relationship with Madhuri Dixit or Meenakshi or Tabu distasteful; the women concerned didn’t. And in a relationship between adults, so long as whatever happens takes place with consent, others have no business to interfere.
* Freedom of art or literature – if it doesn’t provoke, it is dull as dishwater.
* There is no reason why Husain should paint any other deity, from any faith, in the nude, in order to paint Hindu deities in the nude. A cricketer doesn’t have to score goals in hockey to be able to play cricket. So “this point alone” as you say, makes him unprotectable, is fundamentally flawed. He deserves protection precisely because he wants to express – no ifs, no buts, no caveats.
Thanks for writing.