Forced Womanhood Magazine

COMMENT: A monochromatic democracy —Rakesh Mani

COMMENT: A monochromatic democracy —Rakesh Mani

India does not easily tolerate bold creativity or those who are ahead of their time. The drastic extent to which expressions of individuality and creativity can be made to feel insecure speaks volumes about the future of imagination in this country

M F Husain’s passing in a London hospital marks the conclusion of one of the most pitiful chapters in independent India’s secular history. It is an indictment of India’s government and its poisoned politics that Husain, arguably India’s most celebrated and prolific artist, died in exile.

For all our pretensions to freedom and secularism, we failed to defend a frail, nonagenarian artist against a clutch of right-wing fanatics. The last few weeks have seen angry articles and emotional obituaries, but neither is this the first time this has happened nor is it the last. Husain joins a host of prominent writers, thinkers and artists — Salman Rushdie, Deepa Mehta and Taslima Nasreen, to name a few — who have waged protracted battles with Indian religious fundamentalists and succumbed.

As India becomes increasingly polarised along communal lines, it is important to tell and re-tell their stories, so we do not soon forget and allow ourselves to, once again, become mute spectators to orchestrated religious intolerance.

Husain’s story is the stuff of legends. He famously started out painting cinema hoardings in Bombay to support his young family. Working on large canvases with bold colours developed his characteristic style, and the city’s grimy backstreets inspired his personality. He came to prominence in the 1940s and joined the Progressive Artists’ Group, with avant-garde artists like F N Souza and S H Raza, who broke with tradition and experimented with content and technique.

Souza, the group’s founder, was the first to be hounded out. In 1950, he left India after his studio was raided in search of obscene paintings. Raza also left for Paris some years later. Husain stayed back and spent decades as a successful artist, exhibiting his works freely. By the 90s, with India on the fast-track to free-market reforms, he was an icon. India’s nouveau riche scrambled to acquire artwork and display them in drawing rooms and boardrooms. Investing in art became a marker of social and cultural mobility, and Husain capitalised fully.

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