Art community rallies round MF Husain

The art community is outraged by the turn of events in artist MF Husain’s case. Last week, the Union home ministry asked the police in Mumbai and Delhi to take “appropriate action” against the artist for his “objectionable paintings of nude Hindu deities”.

Mumbai police commissioner AN Roy said that his department had already registered a case against Husain and the crime branch was investigating it. Several complaints have been filed by a slew of Hindu bodies against Husain on grounds of obscenity and hurting religious sentiment. These include the paintings Saraswati and Bharatmata. The former was made in the 70’s.

“I am very upset,” says Geetha Mehra, who heads Sakshi Art Gallery. “The government has given MF Husain the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan, and gifts his paintings to dignitaries. If he is harassed like this, he and other artists may give up their Indian citizenship. But Husain feels the strong pull of his watan.” “He is only being harassed because he is a Muslim,” she continues.

“There’s enormous resentment from petty people because his paintings earns so much. They are like Don Quixote, with nothing to fight. It is a pity artists don’t have a union, since the Lalit Kala Akademi is doing nothing in these matters.”

Dadiba Pundole of Pundole Art Gallery, concurs: “It is very irresponsible of the government. Husain has already apologized if he has hurt anyone’s sentiments.”

Artist Nalini Malani adds, “Does this mean we have to do away with Khajuraho and Elephanta? The Indian notion of purusha-prakriti, and overlapping ideas of divine and erotic love, are basic to Hinduism.”

Artists held a protest in support of Husain at the Jehangir Art Gallery some years ago. When the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, dropped Surendran Nair’s painting “An actor rehearsing the interior monologue of Icarus” in 2000, all the other 25 artists withdrew their works and the show was cancelled.

Pundole does not believe that the government’s move likely to affect Husain’s prices or induce off-loading. “But I have heard educated collectors, who have Husain’s works, agree that he has offended Hindus. Why did they buy them then?” he asks.

When former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani cut off funding to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for its Sensation exhibition in 1999, with Chris Ofili’s ‘The Holy Virgin Mary’ with elephant dung on it, the museum’s director won a court order restraining the mayor’s actions.