Husain Exiled: Fascist Threats, Freedom of Expression and Indian Democracy
“In India, a new Puritanism is being carried out in the name of cultural purity and a host of ignorant people are vandalizing art and pushing us towards a pre-renaissance era,” — Delhi High Court while quashing all charges against M.F. Husain in its 8th May 2008 judgment.
Maqbool Fida Husain is one of India’s most noted painters. But he is known today for all the wrong reasons. In 1996, at the age of 81, he became the centre of attacks by the Hindu fascist forces, who took issue with his portrayal of Hindu deities in the nude. Charged with ‘hurting Hindu sentiments’, Husain was confronted by death threats and endless harassment. At one point, there were 1,250 cases pending against him across the country. The fascist brigade stalled his exhibitions, often violently, whether in Boston, London, or New Delhi. On more than one occasion, they vandalized his property and damaged his work. In 2006, the ninety-one year old artist had to leave India, fearing for his life.
Eventually, the Indian Court quashed most of the cases against Husain. In his remarkable 74-page judgment, Justice Kaul termed the allegations against Husain “baseless.” The judgment ends evocatively, stating that: “A painter at 90 deserves to be sitting in his home and painting his canvas.”
Yet though the courts ruled in his favor, Husain continued to remain in exile in Qatar. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which spearheaded the attacks, repeatedly proclaimed that it would not allow him to return. Worse still, the Congress-led UPA government, for all its professed ‘secularism’ and commitment to freedom-of-expression has not even provided lip service towards defending Husain’s right to live in his own land. Now, the matter appears to have come to its sorry end with the news that Husain has accepted citizenship of Qatar, thus relinquishing his Indian citizenship.
The debates over freedom of expression that arise in the case of M.F. Husain are more than a turf war between different political forces. Rather, they are questions of vital import for the health and survival of our democracy. As Justice Kaul observed in his judgment of 8 May 2008:
“Our Greatest problem today is fundamentalism which is the triumph of the letter over the spirit. In a free democratic society tolerance is vital especially in large and complex societies comprising people with varied beliefs and interests. An intolerant society does not brook dissent. An authoritarian regime cannot tolerate expression of ideas which challenge doctrines and ideologies in the form of writings, plays, music or paintings. Intolerance is utterly incompatible with democratic values. This attitude is totally antithetical to our Indian Psyche and tradition. It must be realised that intolerance has a chilling, inhibiting effect on freedom of thought and discussion. The consequence is that dissent dries up. And when that happens democracy loses its essence.”
The main allegation against Husain is that his portrayal of Hindu female deities is ‘offensive to the sentiments of all Hindus’ in India and abroad. Rather, he should paint Muslim icons like Mohammed, Mariam, and Allah. The forces who advance these arguments have no knowledge of the different Indian art traditions that have existed in India. In both Indian folk traditions and Hindu classical tradition there is no concept of nudity. Husain’s crime is not that he lacks the understanding of ‘Indian Culture’ or is disrespectful to the Hindu sentiments. He uses subjects and styles that have been used to represent Hindu gods and goddesses since ancient times. His crime is that he is a Muslim artist with deep love and awareness of Hindu art traditions, at a time in Indian politics, when communal mobilization and vote bank politics to seize power has become a norm.
It is also interesting to note that the subjects of all three of Husain’s controversial paintings are female deities. For most self-appointed guardians of morality like the VHP, there could be no subject more ‘emotive’ than the body of a woman which comes to represent a community. The romanticization of woman as a mother, a daughter, a sister, or a whore and the inability of most to think outside these constructs has only helped such forces. Further, fundamentalist groups are always ready to join hands when it comes to safeguarding their terrain, especially when the issues involved concern the representation or agency of women: think of how fundamentalisms of all hues joined together, whether this be the campiagn against Taslima Nasreen or ‘Love Jihad’.
Today, Husain is (in)famous for many reasons. We know how much his paintings sell for, his obsession with Madhuri Dixit, and his extravagant new life in Dubai. Few know that he started his career as a young artist painting movie hoardings in Mumbai or that his work helped establish a progressive style which took its points of reference from Indian culture but used modern techniques. Fewer still know that he has spent his life understanding and depicting the totality of Indian tradition: he spent eights years painting the Ramayana with over 150 canvases dedicated to the epic, and as many years painting the Mahabharata. It is important to bring the figure of Husain out of the art-galleries and archives and to celebrate the tolerant, inclusive notion of Indian culture that he stands for, rather than afford the fascist brigade the opportunity and liberty to manipulate public debate and public opinion.
