Maqbool Fida Husain was India’s preeminent painter who internationalised Indian painting. His works celebrate the multicultural and multi-religious life of India. But Husain’s fortune took a downward turn since 1996 with the resurgence of Hindutva forces. The right wing fanatics took upon themselves the role of self-styled moral police when the Bajrang Dal and VHP activists vandalised his art and rampaged through his house.
No wonder, with a heavy heart, Husain was forced to live in exile in foreign lands until he received Qatari citizenship last year as if to end his agonising feeling of rootlessness. His dream of returning to his motherland remained unfulfilled as he breathed his last on a distant shore. The eloquent paean of the government in memory of the departed soul rings hollow and ironic in the backdrop of its earlier step-motherly attitude towards its great son.
Mostafa Murshid Pasa
Rajnagar, Murshidabad, W.B.