The Hindu, August 26, 2008
Editorial
The harassment of Husain
It is distressing that the intolerant should continue with their harassment of M.F. Husain and the state should be so ineffective in giving protection to the works of the nation’s most celebrated artist. The attack on the exhibition showcasing prints of his works in New Delhi is proof that the mindless and bigoted hate campaign against him continues unabated. Since the controversy over some paintings he did of Hindu goddesses erupted in the mid-1990s, Husain — who deserves to be treated as a national treasure — has been hounded and eventually forced to go into exile. His Mumbai residence was attacked by the Bajrang Dal; he has received numerous death threats; and his art works have been vandalised on a few occasions, one of them in London in 2006 when a major exhibition of his early masterpieces was forced to shut down after three men sprayed black paint on two of his paintings. Side by side, he has been a victim of legal harassment. The string of court cases slapped on him for ‘promoting enmity’ and ‘outraging religious feelings’ resulted in the issuing of non-bailable arrest warrants, the declaration that he is a proclaimed offender, and an order to attach one of his properties, thanks to the lower courts being extraordinarily accommodative of vexatious complaints.
The irony about the most recent act of vandalism in Delhi — carried out by a virtually unknown outfit that calls itself the Shri Ram Sena — relates to the circumstances in which the exhibition was held. Organised by SAHMAT, it was a parallel event to protest against the exclusion of the 92-year-old artist’s works in the first India Art Summit, which displayed 400 works of 200 artists and saw the participation of 34 galleries. Paintings of Husain were said to have been kept out for reasons of security, which raises the question — why couldn’t the country’s biggest art fair institute measures to exhibit the paintings safely? The question assumes an additional edge given that the Union Ministry of Culture was a sponsor of the summit. Rather than regret the absence of Husain’s works and say it was not consulted about which works were to be displayed, the Ministry — which recently invited Husain to be a member of its National Culture Fund Council — should have used its clout to see that the works of India’s greatest contemporary artist were on view, and with full security. In face of the continued onslaught against Husain, it was an opportunity for the Central government to show it was prepared to stand up for cultural freedom and liberal thought. Allowing the art summit to take place without his works is an indirect capitulation to rank communalism and moral vigilantism.
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