Have you read, “Mayhem of the Miserables!” available @ http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52075
PTI / The Hindu.
M.F. Husain in front of M.S. Subbulakshmi's portrait in Chennai. File Photo: V. Ganesan.
Friends and admirers of M.F. Husain were on Thursday at a loss of words at the demise of the painter famously dubbed ‘Piccaso of India’ and angry at the fact that he had to die in a foreign land.
From contemporaries Kishen Khanna and Anjolie Ela Menon to younger artists like Jitish Kallat a sense of shock, disbelief and grief prevailed among the art fraternity which mourned the death of the 95-year-old painter, a long time associate for many who said they found it difficult to visualise an art scene without the maverick.
“I knew he was in hospital for some time but am very sad to hear about his demise. Husain was a very, very close friend. I knew him long before his first exhibition in 1954,” Khanna, a close friend and fellow painter of the Progressive Art movement, told PTI.
My Take:
I am not an art-connoisseur but an objective observer, simple-minded analyst and strategist.
But, I know MFH as much as I know Salim Ali, SM for short, (Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali, the greatest of Indian ornithologist) - I never understood their life-time passions except that I know both have been Indians, born in Bombay, been Indians at heart throughout their lives. Both excelled in their chosen professions - Painting and systematic bird surveys & recording the same. Both were soft-spoken, jovial and conducted themselves with humility, despite their reaching heights of glory. While the latter has always been far away from any form of controversy, the former always courted them, willy, nilly.
As I watched the debates on MFH, since morning till an hour ago, channels, what I found out on our elite is that none them have ever understood the Society, whether that of Indian or foreign. The one common characteristic of all societies, from across the continents and throughout the history, is that they have never been homogeneous in their views, opinions, perspectives, beliefs and reactions.
At the age of 45 when he was a fully matured adult painter, he started painting those nude pictures of Hindu Goddesses, which attracted national wide outrage only among the miniscule percentage of prudes of the Indian Society comprising Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and all, just in 1996.
In 1998 Husain's house was attacked by Hindu groups like Bajrang Dal and art works were vandalised but this group again constituted far less than a very small fraction of percentage of the Hindu Community, which percentage is comparable with that of any other community in any part of this World But still there were voices, since this morning, insisting that the whole of Indian Hindu community has hounded him out of India. Of course, as can be expected, India being a Hindu majority state, its elite too is dominated by the Hindus, most of whom have been critical about the whole of India conspiring to make matters hot for MFH and forced him to self-exile since 2006, accepted the citizenship of Qatar and died this Morning in London.
Whatever, I see that he lived his full life, nearly 96 years and how many of us can expect to live that far? While in exile too he repeatedly expressed his nostalgia for India especially for Mumbai and even declared that he never relinquished his Indian citizenship and that he would return to his home, one Day, which never happened. True, as someone said no force on this Earth can take away India from his heart, nor any force can snatch away him from India, emotionally.
And almost all elite, uniformly, blamed Indian government (I do not hold any brief for this government on this or any other issue) for having failed to provide him assurance to protect his life, if he returns, though there was no such request from him or his family or his legal advisors, ever since he left India. I also do not remember any of these weeping elite has ever made any such request to the government. However, government representatives confirm that they would have given him 'Z' category, the highest level of security provided to anybody in India.
But as someone who still carries the graphic memories of late 90s attack on him, I am convinced that he would have been assassinated by the Hindu Radicals (whose brief, I do not hold, either) like those who were planning to bomb the offices of that Danish newspaper, which published obscene cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.
This would become all the more a reality due to the MFH propensity for his absolute personal freedom; he was not a person to allow the security to control on where to walk, to lunch or whatever. Like he stuck to his 'freedom-of-expression' he held equally dearly, his freedom-of-movement.
Having said that, I, now, reconfirm that MFH took an adult decision of staying out of India on his own volition, lived abroad at his free will and chose to die there. On his death, Today, we must accept that fact and respect his 'Freedom-of-Movement' if not his 'Freedom-of-Expression', on which everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.
Full Story at,
No comments:
Post a Comment