Serve Us Right

Editorial:
The wall to wall coverage and extensive paeans being offered to him [on his death], will have us believe that MF Husain was an Indian citizen. Fact is that India refused to allow him his artistic expression and sent him into exile with its disregard. Our collective failure in even tolerating, leave alone celebrate, the art of MF Husain, an artist celebrated as the ‘Indian Picasso’, is another embarrassment we collectively shoulder as a people. He died in London, an Indian-origin citizen of Qatar who could not be guaranteed safety by the country which is trying hard to claim him in his death. We do not deserve to claim that his death is a ‘great loss to India art’; Indian art lost him the year 2006, when MF, unable to find a studio in India to exhibit his work or security for himself, went into a self-imposed exile. One should bear in mind that he was targeted for a full decade before he gave up on us.
The extreme right wing had put the crosshairs on him ever since they started consolidating a vote-bank in 1996 [when a Hindi magazine printed his painting of Saraswati, made in the 1970’s, with a headline obviously aimed to instigate, “M.F. Husain: A Painter or Butcher”]. Ten years later, he left dejected; disappointed not by the rabid campaign of harassment and intimidation directed at him by Hindutva groups, but by the State’s refusal to stand up for him, even if not in support for his expressions, then at least his security. He was hounded by court cases, and when, in true artistic defiance, when he refused to respond to the summons, a court in Haridwar issued an arrest warrant and attached his immovable properties. The race to comment and condole his passing away by the establishment would have one believe that MF was truly a national heritage, if that was the case, then shouldn’t his cases have been handled by the State or the civil society? And yet no one stepped up for him, except for issuing the perfunctory statements. It was clear that even as right wing groups wanted to ‘get him’ to score some points with their vicious constituency, the worst offenders were the State and the Civil Society who did not ensure that he was allowed a safe space.
When the embarrassment of MF taking Qatari citizenship hit the fan, there was some routine fawning by the Centre, to which MF said: “India is my motherland. I can’t hate my motherland. But India rejected me. Then, why should I stay in India? When Sangh Parivar outfits targeted me, everyone kept silent. No one, including political leadership, artists or intellectuals came forward to speak for me. How can I trust a political leadership that refused to protect me? Is there any surety that I would be given protection in India?”
MF was an artist, obviously then, also a dreamer, and it should get every Indian thinking when even a whimsical painter cannot be paint over the nightmare that our country can become. The world’s largest democracy cannot mourn even mourn him anymore as one of its own citizens. Serves us right.