M F Husain: Nothing beyond ordinariness

The reams of news prints, news hours and web space dedicated to M F Husain post his death goes on to display that our media always glorify beyond a fair share. Husain in his life through his words and deeds never rose beyond ordinariness. While fame does tend to brush higher values, it failed to make any impact on Husain, who largely indulged in senility and their advantages.

Is Husain, painted as the Picasso of India & artist of highest order, the biggest painter from India? I am neither an art critic nor an art connoisseur, but can definitely see that those who are, never preferred his art over his contemporaries. Then there are patrons, who may or may not understand art, but do make knowledgable investments. Here again Husain falls far short of his contemporaries and even in his prime and aided by his brush with controversies just about managed to cling on to the class of S H Raza, F N Souza, Amrita Sher-Gil and Tyeb Mehta. Do we still see a Picasso in Husain, an artist of ordinary league? In his last pre-death sell one of his works was sold for Rs 27. 5 lakh, while at the same auction Tyeb Mehta’s appreciation broke new ground to fetch a world record Rs 14.58 crore for his art.

Is Husain a great human being with high sensitivities and true to his country’s culture? One who paints, even as he claims with greater sense of purity than a devout Hindu, Hindu Goddesses in nude in a country where millions of fellow beings who don’t understand his art are bound to get hurt is the height in insensitiveness and a vulgar display of arrogance and insult to the adulation he received over the years from across the country. Hindus place their Gods in the same pedestal as their parents, if not higher. Most of those who protested, some taking violent turn, against Husain may not understand Husain’s “sublimity”, and we know art is subjective. But when Husain can paint Hitler in nude to humiliate him and express his hatred, and used the same brush to paint Hindu deity in nude as “depiction of purity,” they are definitely relative.

Is he a true Muslim? Definitely his community will have a better answer and a befitting one too. But as a non-Muslim and by my understanding, Husain has no place in Islamic ideologies simply since he hurt the feelings of fellow beings. Knowingly or unknowingly, but instead of an apology, he justified his hurting every Hindu using the same relative term that we place our parents and God in the same pedestal and Husain has painted our parents naked. So did the Danish cartoonist and the newspaper do apologized! Did the Muslim world forgive them and the threat lifted. I would not go to the extent of doubting Husain’s secular credentials, but yes they can be questioned.

It is for argument sake we may use words like “vitality” to guard against his art lacking in commercial value. But we have to compare the same “vitality in art,” “novelty in thought,” for his contemporaries and still Husain don’t emerge as the lone ranger. He is neither a human being of highest order. The community belief emerges with community dealing and not at personal level understanding, so the “quotable quotes of elites” like Azmi, Akhtar and De doing the round are for the satisfaction of media reports. And he did more harm to Hindu-Muslim sentiments and less benefit to art. And finally he fled the country, charged with hurting religious sentiments. He is a failed Indian and rightly died off-shore as a Qatari citizen and cremated elsewhere. Being a person who took birth under British, witnessed independence being earned and the pangs of partition and the communal flare up, a more understanding role from Husain was expected. Yet he chose the comfort of the “liberal” Qatari environment.

I do offer my silent prayers like I do for every soul who leaves this soil, but I refuse to salute.