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Some time in the 1980s, artist MF Husain held an unusual exhibition at the Jehangir Art gallery. Both the wings of the gallery were strewn with newspapers and bedsheets, all with white paint over them. Visitors were encouraged to walk around and see the show called ‘Shwetambari’; many did, more out of curiosity than anything else. Most walked out bemused.

The art community, which was much smaller those days, was also a little taken aback. What was the artist up to? Was this a Dadaist statement, a la Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, asked the high-minded? It was another of Husain’s publicity stunts, suggested many; that was the time when he had started to participate in public performances, once painting with Bhimsen Joshi, another time creating six works of Hindu goddesses only to cover them with white paint. The unspoken feeling was heard loud and clear — the old man had finally lost it. It was one thing to walk around without any shoes on, quite another to hold a phony exhibition.

Typically, the man himself did not say a word. He moved on and far beyond, continuing to create new work, some brilliant, some not. There was his obsession with middle-India’s heroine Madhuri Dixit (more prescient than people gave him credit for), a film or two and the 100 works for Rs100 crore, which could be seen as a money-grabbing exercise or a sharp comment on the state of art today. Whatever his motivations, he remained in the news.

For the past couple of years, however, he has been in the news for an entirely different set of reasons. A bunch of philistines, posing in the garb of upholders of Indian (or Hindu) culture have made sure that he remains out of the country. By filing a series of completely egregious cases against him and going on the rampage every time his paintings are on display, they have pushed him to the wall, leaving him no choice but to remove himself from the scene. Getting embroiled in court cases is a burden most times; for a 93 year old it can be torturous. Who would want to be rushing about appearing in court all the time and answering frivolous charges that are impossible to prove or disprove? So we have the sorry spectacle of a Shining India wherein the one man who has brought us glory all over the world is an exile. It should shame the government of India and it should shame all of us.

What really must hurt him is the attitude shown by all his so-called friends and the battalion of ‘art lovers’ who wooed him desperately when he was here and have maintained a loud silence on his predicament. Many a gallery has promptly taken off his paintings from the walls at the merest hint of a threat by some obscure Hindutva body, while the brave souls and celebrities who never cease railing against the government for one cause or the other have chosen to remain discreetly quiet. Why needlessly provoke the beast, is the general feeling.

Even this attitude is somewhat understandable; self-preservation is not a crime. The more tendentious view held by even some of those who claim to belong to the intelligentsia is that perhaps the ones enraged by his work may have a point. The argument goes this way: in these incendiary and sensitive times one must not hurt any community’s feelings. But this is gratuitous in the extreme; for one thing, none of the so-called Hindu organisations have the mandate to represent the ‘community’ at large; secondly, even if there was a genuine objection, vandalising his gallery or his exhibition is no way to go about it.

For the record, Husain — whose love for and knowledge of Hinduism far exceeds that of any of these self-appointed community representatives — is also reviled by fundamentalist Islamic groups, one of which objected to a song in his film Meenaxi on the grounds that the words were taken from the Koran.

Many years on, when we look back, many of Husain’s actions will start making sense just like today, Duchamp’s urinal is seen as an original art statement, a radical departure from the stuffy art movements of his time. Future historians will analyse Husain’s white exhibition and see all kinds of hidden meanings in it. But today while we have a genius in our midst, we threaten and banish him. That is truly a tragedy of our times.

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net