'Redemption is hard-won'

By MF hussain

I chose to leave and when a multitude of children throw stones to keep the perceived enemy out it is also a choice. They have been driven into that choice. I never meant to be political because I'm an artist who works and paints for himself. If you persist, the works you create gain a universal appeal and audience, and then you become answerable for all that.

Exile and expatriation is always exhausting. I came away myself because I am an old man and helpless against a physical assault. That brings in the point about fear which comes before freedom. As long as you live in fear you cannot be free.

That is perhaps what is happening in Kashmir today. Generations have lived in fear and so they have never had any taste of freedom. The children feel that it is their right to seek retribution. They have seen their parents and their brothers and children awash in blood and tears, and haunted by images of unspeakable, largely unspoken butchery. India as a culture has to show concern and compassion. Any redemption in this situation is going to be hard-won.



Still as they say Hindi hain hum watan hain, saara jahan hamara. We have to teach those kids the meaning of these words and that can begin only if we try to figure out why they failed to accept the meaning of these words in the first place. I have said this before and I say it again. War breaks out. 'Museums with walls' collapse. A battered tree itself becomes an object alive, a cracked asphalt road bears the inscription of art manifestos. I don't read them, I can't, but my fingers can travel along.

All over the world there is a dying of lamps; Ignite your heart, for the light fails.

(As told to Uma Nair and Manoj Nair; MF Hussain spoke to ET from London)