HUSSAIN A RANK COMMUNALIST IN HIS PAINTINGS

AUM
HUSSAIN’S ART SMELLS OF RANK COMMUN
By Chitranjan Sawant

Meet the man who manoeuvres to remain in the news all the time for all the wrong reasons. He sports a white beard, white longish hair, wears a kurta-pyjama and walks around barefoot in all seasons. Many a club or a hotel slammed their doors on him because they found his appearance not presentable and obnoxious to hi-fi guests. He welcomed such episodes as these brought him into the limelight through the ever hungry media, both print and electronics.
His name is Maqbool Fida Hussain and he professes to be an artist. A brush and a canvass to be painted in oil or water colours are his tools with which he has pocketed millions of dollars from the rich but ignorant people who wish to keep up with the Joneses. His bizarre paintings fetch more money in outlandish exhibitions than at home. The Sheikhs of the Arabian countries loosen their purses to buy something that they do not understand but their foreign wives find fashionable.

COURTING CONTROVERSIES

MF Hussain thrives on controversies. The more, the merrier – that is his motto. The unsavoury controversies keep his name and mien in circulation and bring both notoriety and popularity; (it depends on which side of the fence you are). Such controversies indeed are money spinners. Our hero-cum-villain loves money. He worships Mammon, keeping Allah in the wraps for that period. This helps him wear his pseudo-secular credentials on the sleeves and enables him to keep the Islamist terrorism at bay ostensibly. He practises and promotes religious terror of sorts and is a past master of religious discrimination as we shall see for ourselves shortly.
Hussain was born in India and thus is a natural citizen of the great land called Bharat. But there is no love lost between the two. A billion strong citizens of India address their motherland as Bharat Mata – Mother India. However, Hussain’s head is where his heart should be. His head says “denigrate Bharat Mata, create a controversy, gain notoriety and earn more money.”His heart is in Dubai where he lives at present and has acquired its citizenship too. M.F.Hussain courted controversy by painting a portrait of Bharat Mata in the nude with an outline sketch of the country around. He and his mindless friends hailed the said obnoxious painting of Bharat Mata in the nude as an Expression of Artistic Freedom. What a shame! In the name of artistic freedom, the perverted mind of Hussain brought Mother India into international disrepute. He deserved to be exiled but survived with the support of pseudo-secularists and cumbersome legal system. The public pressure, however, forced him to flee India and take refuge in Dubai and show off his numerous cars like Rolls Royce, Bentley and what have you.
Here is a contrast that exposes Hussain’s rank communalism. He let his brush move up and down the canvas cautiously. He made a painting of his mother and also that of an unidentified Muslim lady. In reverence, both are fully clad and no part of the body is visible. Just short of a Burqa or a hijab, the ladies are fully clothed and have been given an aura of social respectability. Hussain’s biological mother is all dressed up but the Mother of a Billion Indians, Bharat Mata, is shown in the nude. Why? It is just not an expression of freedom of the artist’s brush but an exhibition of mental perversion and laying bare his hatred for all things that the Hindus worship. The worse follows.
It was indeed mean of Hussain to have painted the Hindu goddess Durga in the nude and showing sexual nuances with her mount, the lion. By any standard, it was an act of sacrilege and certainly not an exhibition of artist’s freedom of expression. My abhorrence of that man masquerading as an artist precludes from citing such examples where reverence is shown to Islamic women but nudity is thrust upon Hindu goddesses. Hussain had once painted Hitler headless and another person in the nude to announce from housetops how he hated them. I wonder if Hussain too subscribes to the Pakistani’s Hate Hindu campaign. The artistic evidence has put Hussain in the dock. Let him have a chance to defend himself under the magnanimity of the Hindu ethos.
One wonders why Hussain has been ignoring the Muslim women of prominence from joining the gallery of nude portraits. The most venerable young bride of Prophet Muhammad(PBUH), Sallallah Wasale Wasallum, was intelligent and advised administrators on matters of State. Ayesha was her name. Hussain should have tried a portrait of Ayesha like that of Bharat Mata. He did not do so for reasons known to him. Does it not amount to discrimination? Perhaps the Muslim element in him took control of the artist element and he painted the Hindu goddesses in the nude to denigrate a vast majority of his compatriots. Shame on Hussain and on those who espouse his cause under the mistaken belief that they thus promote a plural society. It is nothing but rabid communalism to appease the Muslim vote-bank.
I shall concede the point that poor Hussain could not have painted the Prophet and exhibited his artistic freedom as it is forbidden in Islam. It is one of the rare occasions when the Muslim in Hussain gains ascendancy and locks him out of the realm of Islam. I would, however, like to remind the artist , now a nonagenarian, that painting another great lady, Fatima, is not forbidden. As a beloved daughter of the Prophet, she should have been taken note of by our morbid Hussain. But he failed to do so and the gallery of paintings of the eminent ladies in the nude was deprived of a great possession. Artist Hussain has to answer for this gross dereliction of duty towards the Muse. Let us borrow the eternally famous words of Jesus Christ spoken when the life was ebbing out after crucifixion :
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Perhaps, Hussain the artist does not know what he has missed by being discriminatory in painting some and leaving out other eminent ladies in the nude. Let us wish him better luck next time when he feels inspired to paint women in the nude so that he spreads his net far and wide without any bias, fear or favour. Adieu our ex-compatriot! Now we sign off.

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