When time accelerates not only future
events hurtle towards us faster, even
the events of recent past disappear into
oblivion more rapidly. It was only on June
9 last year that Maqbool Fida Husain died
in a London hospital far away from India,
his motherland that had forced him into
exile, as also from Qatar, the country that
had graciously given him citizenship and
an opportunity to continue his creative
life even in exile. Already in a year his
memory has become faint in the public
consciousness. It is mostly his former
tormentors and current collectors that
remember him – the tormentors whenever
his works appear in a public place and
collectors when his works appear in public
auctions and go under the hammer.
The controversies that surrounded
Husain especially during the last decade
of his life, apart from personally hurting
Husain, have done another harm that is
still not adequately realised. These have
obstructed a serious evaluation of Husain’s
place in the cultural history of India both
as a public figure who personified multicultural
India, and as a major artist who
has left a decisive mark on the modern
Indian painting. Let me make a beginning
towards such an evaluation.
First his persona, its public perception
and its impact. Maqbool Fida Husain was
born to Zaineb and Fida Husain in 1917,
in the temple-town of Pandharpur in
Maharashtra. Pandharpur was then and
still is a major Hindu pilgrim centre. His
devout Sulemani Muslim grandfather had
a lamp-making shop in the street leading
to Vithobha Temple, the main shrine of
Pandharpur. The small Sulemani Muslim
community in Pandharpur was wellintegrated
with the local Marathi culture.
They spoke Marathi and their women,
including Maqbool’s mother wore the
traditional nine yard sari. Thus Maqbool
Fida Husain took his first steps in life in a