The worst crime of Maqbool Fida Hussain has remained largely unnoticed. The focus in the media has always been on his having painted Saraswati and Bharat Mata in the nude. Most other objectionable paintings of his would have remained in the background and would have been so forever had not Mr Russi Mody, the iron and steel prince of yesteryears, sponsored a volume of pictures selected by the painter. In the absence of the book, what he has painted and to whom the paintings have been sold would have been known only to Mr Hussain.
The real objections to what India’s most well known painter has done are clouded. Mr Hussain’s defenders keep repeating the right of an artist to have the freedom of expression. If this liberty is curtailed, creative art cannot flourish, they claim. His secular supporters, who are mostly Hindus, do not tarry a moment to stand and reflect whether the practice of such freedom should be restricted to the extent of not offending the sentiments of any group of people.
Incidentally, Mr Hussain has few Muslim advocates since Islam disallows the painting or sculpture of human or animal figures. Calligraphy and geometrical designs remain the horizons of a momin or a faithful Muslim. Moreover, Muslims would not wish to be trapped in a dilemma that while Lord Krishna can be painted in the nude, as done by Mr Hussain, the portrait of Prophet Mohammed even in full dress cannot be reproduced.
Aniconism or the absence of figures is a cornerstone of Islamic theology as referred to by the Oxford Dictionary of Islam, edited by John L Esposito, Oxford University Press, New York, 1999. The foundation is the Quran, which has explicitly forbidden idolatry and divination. There is no place for depicting people because Muslims believe that Allah is unique, without associate and he cannot be represented except by the words of the Quran. Soon after his triumphant entry into Mecca from Medina, the prophet had all the idols that lay in the Qaaba destroyed.
Will Durant, in his volume IV of the book entitled The Age of Faith has quoted A Guillaume, the author of The Traditions of Islam, OUP London, 1924, as saying that the Quran had forbidden sculpture vide Sura v, Ayat 92. His wife Aisha is reported to have said that prophet also condemned pictures. A fundamental contrariety in the secular argument is that Mr Hussain can paint a Hindu deity but no one can produce a picture of the Islamic prophet.
These advocates of Mr Hussain are therefore mostly Hindus who try to get away by arguing that the tradition of sculpting or painting figures in the nude is as old as Hindu art. They cite the nude carvings of Khajuraho and Konark but they do not tell their listeners that there is a difference between a human figure and what a devotee considers to be a deity or a divine entity.
The relationships between man and man and man and God are surely different. Similarly, the relationship between two intimate humans is different from that between two ordinary acquaintances. What goes well in a husband wife, for example, relationship cannot be extended to any and every other person. Nevertheless, Mr Hussain’s biggest crime is much worse. He has outraged the dignity of womanhood across religions, across societies and across countries. This he has done by painting an elephant copulating with a woman, another woman with a horse; a deity in sexual union with a bull, Durga in sexual intercourse with her lion.
The outrage is further proved by the fact that we are not able to find a single work of this artist depicting a man copulating with an animal. He has targeted only women. Mr Hussain’s second great crime is the result of his perversity. Even if the thought of copulating with an animal crosses the mind of some human being, it would only be an aberration. The function of an artist is to portray not aberrations but normal life. A great artist would portray life perennial as indeed did William Shakespeare or Remembrandt, Van Gogh and before them Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
Instead, our Bharat Ratna aspirant shows a Sita sitting on the thighs of a Ravana, a Hanuman howling at him, all in the nude. He then goes on to another picture showing Sita in a sexual act on the tail of a naked Hanuman. On a Shivratri night, Lord Shankar watching while his wife, Parvati, copulates with a bull! So what is the pleasure, however perverse, of showing a naked Krishna with his hands and feet cut off sitting on a cow and trying to play the flute?
How on earth do these things help to portray life perennial and make Mr Hussain, an artist distinguished enough, to deserve the country’s highest recognition? The artist’s sympathisers may have their own viewpoint but Mr Hussain must consider himself to be guilty or else why should he not come to court, face the cases and then travel abroad as he may wish. The way he has left the country and not returned for months on end definitely indicates that he is afraid of getting trapped into jail. He is reported to have travelled all the way from Australia to England; India is very much on the way but yet he did not take a stop over at his home. Is he therefore, not an absconder?
Coming back to sex and nudity, we accept that there should be no shame attached to them as indeed demonstrated at Khajuraho and Konark. That is the Hindu view. But MF Hussain has painted only those he has contempt for in the nude. Others he likes or respects he has kept fully dressed. This trait of Mr Hussain is evident in his painting of a panel of four dignitaries, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler.
Obviously, the most disliked person amongst these four is Hitler; and he has been painted naked. The other three leaders are properly dressed. If this panel painting is anything to go by, anyone Mr Hussain has painted in the nude is an object of his contempt.
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