Relevance Of Husain

K.Bikram Singh

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 multi-cultural 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 well-integrated 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 composite cultural atmosphere in which religious acrimony was unknown.