Medium Term: We hounded our greatest painter out of this country

Now that we are so busy flogging ourselves over our failure to allow M.

F. Husain to return to India, this might be a good time to examine the issues that led to Husain’s exile from our shores. Otherwise, we will lose ourselves in

paying fulsome tributes without understanding why the artist was hounded out of India. And other artists will continue to suffer the same fate.

 

   As long as I can remember, Husain has used Hindu motifs and figures in his work. Though he was born a Muslim, he was not particularly religious and regarded himself as part of India’s secular tradition, drawing inspiration from all aspects of Indian tradition and life. For instance, his famous Mother Teresa series in which the Catholic missionary was portrayed as an angel of mercy would probably have scandalised the likes of Osama Bin Laden. But for Husain, religion and religious figures were merely an aspect of a nation’s cultural heritage and its everyday life.

 

   Husain’s penchant for using religious figures rarely became an issue – at least not in the Hindu-Muslim sense. In 1975, he portrayed the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, as Durga riding a tiger. Given that this painting was widely reproduced during the Emergency and given also that Mrs Gandhi had banned the RSS during this period, you might have expected Hindu zealots to protest about a Muslim painter’s use of Hindu religious imagery to glorify their enemy. But there were no religious protests at all. The only objections were secular: should Husain have been painting the praises of the woman who had suspended civil liberties?

 

   All this changed in the 1990s when the mood in India changed. As an aggressive, intolerant form of Hindutva swept the nation, Hindu zealots looked for reasons to be offended – especially where Muslims were concerned. In 1996, a Hindi magazine carried an article entitled, ‘Husain: Painter or Butcher?’. The title said it all. The magazine reproduced an old painting, done over 25 years ago, in which Saraswati was in the nude.

 

   Hindu zealots were outraged. Who was this irreverent and blasphemous Muslim painter to dare tarnish the image of a great Hindu goddess? Later, another painting in which Bharat Mata was also nude (though there is some dispute as to whether this was really meant to be Bharat Mata) caused a similar furore.

 

   At that stage, many things could have been said. And they were. Husain was not seeking to insult the Hindu religion. In any case, the painting had done no harm to Hinduism or offended very many Hindus in the quarter century since it had been painted. So why make such a fuss now?

 

   But nobody was listening. Within days, the Husain-is-an-enemy-of-Hinduism view had been seized on by political extremists. In Maharashtra, Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena targeted Husain and his work. In Gujarat, activists from the BJP (then in power in the state) vandalised Husain’s paintings and a gallery where they were being exhibited.

 

   Soon, the Sangh Parivar mainstream began to echo a milder version of this position. Of course, Husain is a great artist, said the so-called Sangh Parivar liberals, but should he not be more careful about offending Hindu sensibilities? There are many other things to paint. Why focus on Hindu goddesses? As far as I can recall, few Sangh Parivar figures of any consequence stood up and said: Look, this man is India’s greatest artist. He has no desire to harm Hindus. A nude figure is not necessarily obscene. Leave him alone.

 

   With nobody willing to rein in the extremists, it soon became open season on Husain. Hundreds of nuisance court cases accusing him of obscenity or of offending religious sentiments were filed all over the country. Every time a gallery tried to show Husain paintings, Hindu zealots would threaten violence and force the exhibition to close or, at the very least, to withdraw Husain’s works.

 

   You might have thought that all this would change once the NDA was defeated and the UPA took office. In fact, things got worse. The Congress did almost nothing to protect Husain. The Congress government in Maharashtra seemed strangely reluctant to withdraw the cases filed against him by the Shiv Sena-BJP government. The Centre dragged its feet on disposing of other cases. Galleries were not assured of protection in case they showed Husain’s works.

 

   If no Sangh Parivar figure of consequence had stood up for Husain, then what was worse was the behaviour of the Congress. You would have expected the party’s leaders to stand up and say: This man is India’s greatest artist. We will not allow you to persecute him. We will free him from harassment. We will ensure that his works can be exhibited all over India.

 

"Were Husain’s paintings obscene? That’s a non-starter. I don’t think anyone with any understanding of art regards them as vulgar or obscene."

   In fact, the government of Manmohan Singh did no such thing – no matter how many crocodile tears its leaders now shed over Husain’s demise.

 

   I did not necessarily agree with the decisions Husain took in recent years. I can understand his reluctance to return to India and face harassment. But I do not think he needed to renounce his Indian passport and to accept Qatari citizenship. You can’t stand up for freedom of speech and then become a citizen of a country that has no liberal democracy.

 

   But, there is no doubt that successive governments of India behaved disgracefully. And it is as clear that we hounded our greatest painter out of this country.

 

   Now, for the issues raised by this sorry saga.

 

   One: Were Husain’s paintings obscene? That’s a non-starter. I don’t think anyone with any understanding of art regards them as vulgar or obscene.

 

   Two: Was it his intention to demean Hindu deities, to insult the religion and to create religious divisions? Of course not. There is nothing in his history or record to suggest that he had any anti-Hindu agenda.

 

   Three: Were Hindus justified in being offended?

 

   According to me, this is the crux of the issue. How do you define ‘justified offence’? I know people who are offended by Hindi film songs. I know others who are offended by women in short skirts. I myself was offended by the sight of the government of India prostrating itself before Baba Ramdev (until it executed an about-turn a few days later).

 

   But here’s the thing. My sense of being offended is my own. I have no right to ask the law to curtail the freedom of others only because I am offended. I can’t ask women to wear longer skirts because I find short skirts offensive. I can’t ask the government to ban Hindi film songs only because I am offended.

 

   The basis of a liberal society is that we do not curtail anybody’s freedom unless we are convinced that an exercise of that freedom would hurt anyone. In truly liberal societies, the law does not accept that giving offence equates causing hurt. Just because I am offended, it does not follow that I have been hurt in a manner that justifies legal action to curtail other people’s freedom.

 

   One reason why India is not a truly liberal society is because we consider the causing of offence as sufficient reason to invoke the full majesty of the law. So, all kinds of people claim to be offended by all kinds of things. Regional pride is affected by a Hindi film. Professional pride is affected by a dialogue in a popular song. Religious sentiments are offended by an article. A community’s pride is hurt by an accurate rendition of its history. And so on.

 

   Even when the courts throw out these arguments and take the side of free speech, the people who claim to be offended resort to violence. A strong state would guarantee the safety of those targeted. In Britain, for example, the government of Margaret Thatcher went out of its way to protect Salman Rushdie after the issuance of a fatwa against him even though he was an outspoken critic of Mrs Thatcher.

 

   In India, however, we protect nobody. Political parties participate in the violence. It isn’t just the Sangh Parivar or fundamentalist Muslim organisations that use violence. The NCP led an attack on the Bhandarkar Institute in Poona and destroyed priceless historical manuscripts only because it was offended by some passages in a book about Shivaji.

 

   My worry is that once the mourning for Husain dies down, it will be back to business as usual. Free speech and freedom of expression will continue to be stifled on the grounds that people are offended. A few judges will stand up for liberal freedoms (as Justice Kaul of the Delhi High Court did in the Husain case) but this will not be enough. Our laws will provide cover to anyone who wants to trample on our freedoms and persecute our artists. The police will do nothing to protect those who are persecuted. Instead, they will join hands with the persecutors and narrowly interpret the laws.

 

   But worst of all, our politicians will join in and participate in the assault on our liberties and our freedoms. They will do this because they know there are votes to be won. And because, like this government, they are largely inept and incompetent even when it comes to implementing their stated agenda.