The Times of India
by Dileep Padgaonkar | Jun 13, 2011
To die in exile is to die twice over: the first time in the spirit, the second time in the flesh. The very inevitability of death in the flesh makes its aftermath predictable. Kith and kin and friends will mourn it in the sure knowledge that the pain of loss will subside in due course. Not so the death in the spirit. Exile stokes rage against those who hounded you from your homeland. The thought that you might never return to it, not even as a bird of passage, reduces you to such a state of helplessness that you begin to wallow in self-pity - the surest sign of terminal impotence.
It is to M F Husain's resounding credit that he was able to defy both deaths as long as he did. He lived until the age of 95 with all his faculties intact. Except for a few weeks in hospital before he passed away, he continued to crisscross continents, cherish the good life and, above all, draw and paint with unflagging zeal. Artists half his age suffer from a burnout. Not Husain. He sought solace in prayer and the purest joy in his art. To anyone who knew him even in passing, he resembled a lark in full flight: utterly free from the conceits and foibles of the world though, truth to tell, he did exploit his business acumen with a suave insouciance. Barefoot in a Ferrari!
Far more impressive, however, was Husain's refusal to make a to-do about his exile. Of course he missed India as anyone who ran into him in Qatar or Dubai, Paris, London or New York would testify. But he bore no ill will against those who vandalised his works, burnt his effigies, defaced his portraits, hurled the most vicious insults at him and hauled him in courts across the country. After all this, to argue, as many have done, that his exile was self-imposed is to give his tormentors the cachet of wayward ruffians.
If he did not utter a word of reproach against them, it was because he never wavered in his abiding faith in the people of India - in their steadfast adherence to a syncretic culture steeped in the most subtle and sophisticated artistic, spiritual and philosophical traditions. Throughout his life he drew inspiration from every creative endeavour that shed light on the bewildering paradoxes of Indian life: the sublime cheek-by-jowl with the crass and the ludicrous. He looked at the idiosyncrasies with an amused and benevolent twinkle in the eye.
But make no mistake about it: his tormentors had hit him where it hurts most. More than any artist of his time, this pious Muslim nursed nothing if not reverence and unbound affection for the divinities of the Hindu pantheon. Few know, or care to know, that among his finest paintings are the ones based on themes and characters of the two great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Nothing would have caused him more anguish than to be told that in some of his drawings he had with malicious and deliberate intent 'hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus'. He chose to be discreet about it.
But India must refuse such discretion. The most enduring tribute that one can pay to Husain's memory is to put an end once and for all to this bogey of 'hurt sentiments'. It has allowed goons of every stripe to take the law into their hands to harass and intimidate people, curtail the freedom of writers and artists and impose on the citizenry a shallow and monochromatic view of Indian culture.
This is of course easier said than done for even parties who swear by secularism and progressive ideas have failed again and again to bring the goons to book. The regressive phenomenon first reared its head when a secular government at the Centre banned Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. It has gathered momentum ever since. The goons have routinely vandalised theatre and cinema halls, assaulted writers, sculptors and painters, ransacked media houses and not spared even such venerable centres of learning and research as the Bhandarkar Institute in Pune. Governments of all shades who are supposed to uphold the law have failed to bring the casteist and communal elements to book.
Moral and cultural policing by bigoted caste and communal outfits is a grave danger for Indian democracy. The overt or covert support they receive from established political parties and certain 'cultural' outfits emboldens them. So does the lackadaisical attitude of avowedly secular parties. All this is done with an eye on vote banks. All parties engage in it despite growing evidence that India wants to put divisive, identity-based politics behind it.
Corruption in public life is now on the top of the agenda as it should be. But it tends to detract attention from other dangers: the growing chasm between the rich and the poor and the denial of basic democratic rights to large swathes of the population. Of equal significance is the need to acknowledge the depredations of the casteist and communal forces and the inaction of the secular parties.
Don't expect any positive response from Ramdev or his supporters. His yoga asanas might cure cancer and, God willing, even the 'disease' of homosexuality. But he proposes no asanas for the mind and the heart to arrest the growth of a malignant tumour called bigotry. For that you must turn not to Ramdev's carnival of cant and chicanery but to the uplifting art of M F Husain.
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