An exercise to put Husain’s works in proper perspective

Late MF Husain’s mythological paintings had been at the centre of a ceaseless controversy for several years. In 2006, he left India and moved to Qatar. He finally forfeited his Indian citizenship in 2010 in what sure must have been a painful decision. Forced into exile, the master died in London, aged 95, five years after he fled Mumbai - his home for almost 72 years.

“Husain was India's most iconic and prolific artist - and painted right up until two weeks before his death in London at the age of 95.” The BBC obituary revealed. “He was a protean maverick who embraced the free market, took to making cinema, angered Hindu radicals at home with his provocative work, gamely took leaving India in his stride, and accepted Qatari nationality.”

Against this backdrop, the book entitled ‘Barefoot Across The Nation - Maqbool Fida Husain & The Idea of India’ (edited by Sumathi Ramaswamy; Publishers: Routledge, New Delhi; Pages: 312 - Hardcover; Price: Rs 1950), considers how India as a nation has responded to Husain: with admiration, adulation and affection, on the one hand, whereas with rejection and hostility, on the other.

An introductory note rightly mentions the document is more relevant than ever before especially in backdrop of the debates that have arisen over his self-imposed exile following a spate of attacks on his exhibitions in India, and his subsequent decision to leave the country – never to return.

Derived from a conference at Duke University, the insightful chapters provide a multi-disciplinary perspective by distinguished anthropologists and art historians, artists and curators, critics, and scholars of post-colonial literature and culture, to not only locate and identify but also to traverse the controversy surrounding the late artist.

In her preface, Monica Juneja offers a fitting context, suggesting that even while genuflecting in the direction of art as sacred image (his rendition of the goddess Saraswati) the image is cast ‘in the modernist language of autonomy and irony’.