We are all complicit in the exile of MF Husain
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COMMENTS 
Our ‘patriots’ hounded MF Husain out of his country. Our ‘secularists’ didn’t have the guts to bring him home. All of us are guilty of giving in to intimidation in the name of pragmatic governance, says Dilip Simeon
Our secularists have always found it possible to keel over when it comes to confronting fascism. Sadly that's equally true of Very Revolutionary people. The fact remains that the Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal etc hounded MF Husain out of his country in his old age. And the government plus the judiciary, despite a Delhi High Court order three years ago (Justice S K Kaul) saying Husain deserved to be back and painting in his home, hadn't the noodle to dismiss all the trumped-up cases. Now everyone including the goondas are talking about 'the Indian Picasso'. We're a world-class power after all. We must never lose an opportunity to take credit for those of us who are globally known. Even if we hate their guts.
All of us are at fault for giving in to intimidation in the name of pragmatic governance. Husain's plight has re-opened old wounds: I was hounded out of my college in the mid-1990s by my own colleagues in the institution for which I had worked so hard. The ones who wanted me out are the same bunch of patriots.
But no one is guiltless in all this. Taslima Nasreen was forced out of Bangladesh, then forced out of Kolkata by Muslim fanatics given free rein by the Left Front. The heroes of police action in Nandigram didn't have the guts to take police action against fascists in their capital city. Some years ago a set of sex-obsessed goons began campaigning against Valentine’s Day and women’s lingerie. If Islam and Hinduism need their 'honour' defended by hooligans and via the burning of books and underwear, then the followers of these great traditions ought to hang their heads in shame. Why don't they speak up and tell the gangsters to go to hell? Why are we always differentiating between 'our scoundrels' and 'their scoundrels'? Why can't we stop being defensive and call a spade a spade? We are all complicit in permitting this state of affairs.
On the one hand the ultra-patriots complain that the minorities don't integrate, and when one of them appears so steeped in Hindu culture and tradition that it becomes his very muse, they vandalise his home and his art! Here's Pritish Nandy's article 'He was as Hindu as any one of us'. Indeed, he could have told his party boss Bal Thackeray that, who famously said "if Husain can enter Hinduism, why can't we enter his house?” (Nandy joined the Rajya Sabha as member for the Shiv Sena in 1998.)
Do they want all non-Hindus to get a certificate of patriotism? It's clear as daylight that the only 'objectionable' thing the fascists gleefully fastened on was the name 'Husain'. Had the same stuff been painted by a Dixit or a Joshi, they would have strutted about with pride. This is where we are today, at the mercy of outright lumpens, who enjoy the status of respectability.
If the Government of India offers Husain a Bharat Ratna posthumously, I would urge his family to decline it. Or, what amounts to the same thing, give it to Bal Thackeray and Togadia for so valiantly defending Hinduism, by forcing an old man -- India's Picasso, no less -- to die in exile. It is good that he is being buried in the UK. There's more peace, and maybe less chance of some NRI ultra-patriots vandalising his grave.
RIP Maqbool Fida. We didn't deserve you
(Dilip Simeon is a Delhi-based writer and academic)
Infochange News & Features, June 2011