Maqbool Fida Hussain passed away this month at a ripe age of ninety five in London. However controversial and however debatable his worth as an artist may be, the fact remains that Hussain was inarguably one of the finest painters of his times and easily one of the best artists that India has ever produced. Having lost his mother at a very early age, his longing for his mother whom he never saw and his reverence for the saintly like Mother Teresa who filled that void in the lives of thousands like Hussain gave birth to Hussain’s faceless ‘ Mother’ on canvas. Hussain’s series of paintings on India’s most famous ‘ Elephant Headed God’ – ‘Ganesha’ that he painted in both oil and water colours not only reflected His omnipresence but also popularized the diety within India and abroad changing the popular perception from ‘Lord Ganesha’ to ‘My friend Ganesha’! If Hussains Ganesha reflected omnipresence, his ‘Durga’ reflected sheer ‘Power and strength’. And how can one forget his controversial depictions of ‘Goddesses Laxmi and Saraswati’ and that of ‘Sita’ and even ‘Bharat Mata’ which invited the ire of Hindu’s. But Hussain remained adamant and far from apologizing he chose to leave the country in 2006 never to return. This was partly due to the growing hostility towards his works and mostly to evade the legal cases pending against him for hurting the religious sentiments of people. The conference of Qatari citizenship in 2010 on India most celebrated painter shocked Hussain’s critics and supporter’s alike. One wondered whether Hussain who had issues over the state of creative liberties in India would have even a trifling of that liberty in the Islamic state of Qatar. Still others argued that Hussain took selective creative liberties as was evident from his withdrawal of his film ‘Meenaxi’ in the wake of opposition from Islamic fundamentalists. The assassination of Safdar Hashmi a playwright who was brutally killed in broad day light in New Delhi, while performing a street play, gave birth to one of the greatest masterpieces of Hussain ‘Freedom: A Tribute to Hashmi’ which was sold at Sotheby’s auction for a whooping ten lakh rupees in 1989 and was resold in 2008 for 4.4 crore rupees. Hussain and late Pt. Bhimsen Joshi two of the legends in their chosen fields were juxtaposed at a rare occasion where Hussain attempted to capture the divinity of Panditji’s music on canvas. It was a rare and memorable treat for art lovers. Hussain walked barefooted all throughout his life for which he was once refused entry at the Calcutta Club where he was a chief guest! But he never gave in till his very end! I can vividly recall a nostalgic article the celebrated painter wrote for a Sunday supplement of a leading daily wherein he recalled the days when he grew up from a boy to an adolescent in Madhya Pradesh. His first love and subsequent heart break all this set against backdrop of shady mango orchard complete with swings and murmuring of folk songs and lullaby’s that he so intricately captured in words and so vividly remembered even at such a ripe age! The legendry painter then turned to film making and made his first film ‘ Gaja Gamini’ which was his ode to womanhood. Bringing out the true essence of his then muse Madhuri Dixit in a nine yard green Irkali saree the film wasn’t easy to comprehend for an average movie audience but no one could deny the fact that it had some of the finest camera work besides having effective usage of colours. ‘ Meenaxi – A tale of three cities (Hyderabad, Prague and Jaisalmer)’ had some great musical score by A. R. Rahman but the same music which became the highlight of the film also became the reason for the films withdrawal. Usage of the word ‘Noor – Un- Allah’ (the light of the purest kind used to describe The Almighty) was used to depict a woman in one of the songs. This invited the ire of Islamic fundamentalists and Hussain had to withdraw the film.
But inspite of all the Hussain controversies I sincerely believe that Husain’s freedom or for that matter any artists freedom to write or paint anything he chooses even if it is a bit of shit should be safeguarded. We have a legal system to effectively deal with things that are derogatory or offensive and book the guilty. There is seldom any reason to break into an exhibition or burn down a book stall and get ourselves labeled rightists or fascists. Such acts are likely to do a greater harm to democracy than the works themselves would!
There is no need to promote a good work and there is no need to pull down a bad work – people do the honours either by celebrating or ignoring them sooner or later. Let’s leave things to people and let the offended seek legal assistance to book the guilty. As for Maqbool Fida Hussain, his greatness can be gauged by the obituary paid by one of the biggest hardliners of the rightist ideology – Raj Thackeray who remarked that people never really understood the worth of M. F. Hussain as a painter and always tried to guage his greatness from the costs that his paintings fetched! And let’s not forget that Raj Thackeray is an accomplished cartoonist and belongs to the same school of arts where Maqbool Fida Hussain honed his painting skills!!
-Bhushan Sarmalkar (JAI)
-Bhushan Sarmalkar (JAI)
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