Hounding out Husain

With reports suggesting that M F Husain has accepted the offer of honorary citizenship from Qatar and, given India’s rules on not allowing dual citizenship, we will have to face the patently absurd and shameful predicament of arguably our most celebrated artist literally being forced to renounce Indian citizenship. The way to make the best of a bad situation, if the government genuinely feels as embarrassed as vast sections of civil society, would be to persuade the 95-year-old artist to return home with adequate security, or even use this instance to re-examine the grounds for disallowing dual citizenship. But then, it’s our very polity that’s the root of the problem. Given that communal identity management is part and parcel of politics, the state has consistently prevaricated on obscurantist individuals and groups abrogating the right to be offended on sundry issues, whether Husain’s art or Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Allowing or sustaining such forms of communalism while claiming, or aspiring to, high democratic ideals is sheer hypocrisy. Thus, the absurdity of a situation where a Taslima Nasreen, fleeing from persecution in her own country, is allowed a form of refuge in India, while MF Husain is hounded out.

The Congress-led government can hardly express regret with a straight face. There is an abysmal record of failing to provide security to artists like Husain, with, say, even a handful of hooligans being allowed to threaten or attack art exhibitions. Or willy-nilly contributing to a scenario where the supposedly leading light of Indian art is even elided out of exhibitions. This, even as the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court in 2008 quashed some of the obscenity cases filed against Husain. The point isn’t even that, given the rich history of sensuality within Indian art and iconography, Husain has clearly been unfairly targeted. The politics of targeting the minorities perverts democracy itself. As does week-kneed surrender before the forces of coercion and exclusion. Rule of law, culture and artistic freedom too turn casualties.