Maqbool Fida Husain is back in the
news. Last Friday, his paintings on display at the Delhi Art Gallery
were removed, before the India Art Summit opened to the public, but
were surprisingly put back on display the very next day. The
confusion was attributed to security threats.
Husain chose to remain an Indian for
95 years,. From painting cinema hoardings, he went on to become
one of India’s highest paid painters. He was nominated to the
Rajya Sabha, and was conferred the Padmasree, Padma Bhushan, and
Padma Vibhushan.
In his insatiable hunger for fame and
wealth, the painter turned to indecent portrayal of Hindu Gods,
hurting the sentiments of millions. Disregarding this, when the
Kerala government chose to honour him with the ‘Raja Ravi Varma’
award, a member of the erstwhile Royal family termed the decision as
tantamount to ‘promoting pornographic art’.
Having heinously trudged ‘barefoot’
the huge canvas of freedom, tolerance, and permissiveness, the
painter fled the country. He has now surrendered his Indian
passport, and has courted the citizenship of a conservative state in
the Arabian Gulf.
The obvious question anyone will ask
is, having merrily desecrated the hallowed precincts of artistic
creativity, social etiquette and common decency through perverted
portrayal of the deities of his country of birth, will he paint
anything that even remotely offends his religion of birth?
Certainly no! The painter is
well aware of the consequences of the dreaded fatwa, which novelist
Salman Rushdie, and more recently, Taslima Nasreen the Bangladeshi
writer faced.
Let us hope, he drops the palette and
the brush, and turns to the Almighty in penitence.
