Champa Bilwakesh

As famous as he is today, M.F. Husain rose to prominence in the Indian consciousness when some of his work, painted in 1970, were published in a Hindi magazine with an article headlined “M.F. Husain: A Painter or Butcher?” Criminal complaints against the artist were lodged for allegedly painting Hindu goddesses — Durga and Saraswati — in the nude and thereby hurting Hindu religious sentiments.

In 2006, he was again booked for hurting religious sentiments by depicting Bharatmata in the nude, and multiple cases were filed against him. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded his arrest. There is a contract out on his life put out by a Hindu group. Husain now lives outside India in virtual exile. He is 92 years old.

Thanks to the Peabody Essex Museum, I had the opportunity to see Husain’s paintings for the first time through “Epic India,” a collection of canvases from his project for the 11th Bienal de Sao Paulo in Brazil, 1971, depicting his vision of the Mahabharata and its human tragedy. Since then he has revisited the epic over a span of several years, producing additional works.

Apparently, the museum has received some protests and threats over the collection. Closely watched by a security guard in the exhibition room, which was unnerving and intrusive at first, I found the entire experience quite moving.

I started with the lithograph of Vyasa and Ganesha rendered in a split image, a technique Husain uses repeatedly. It immediately made me recall Rajaji’s retelling of the epic in Tamil, “Vyasar Virundhu,” which I devoured over one summer at my grandfather’s house: Ganapathi laying out the terms of engagement with Vyasa, and the sage’s rejoinder. And so here is Ganapthi with a quill as Vyasa unfolds the tragic tale of his family, the two images merge above the piling pages.

The women from the epic that Husain portrays fascinate me for several reasons. Satyavathi, found in a fish’s belly, smelling of fish, mothering Vyasa; the rivers, Ganga who bore Bhishma, and Jamuna mentioned in the epic; Draupadi and Gandhari. The first three are painted prone, their bodies flowing among the waters, a lotus blooming in Ganga, the dark waters of Jamuna rendered monochromatic, the fishes nestling within and around Satyavathi, forming part of her, becoming her.

Draupadi, the single menstrual garment she wore and in which she is dragged into the court in disarray, undone by the dice which piles down on her as she stumbles and falls, her mouth and eyes in a scream of outrage and horror. Gandhari, a blind-folded witness to the destruction her sons bring upon themselves. Wicked they may be, but nevertheless the products of her womb. All these female representations are rendered nude or semi-nude, aptly portraying the whole drama that was played upon their female bodies, as bearer of the players, vowing revenge for its humiliation, and finally witnessing the destruction of the entire clan.

The exhibition hall has a comfortable seating area with several books about Husain, his career, and illustrations of his works. The object of his sometimes obsessive attention range from the sublime, such as the present exhibit, to the mundane, such as his paintings of actress Madhuri Dixit. In between are the portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, Indira Gandhi, murals that decorate public places, drawings which were never meant for exhibition, such as the nude Saraswati that has brought down Hindu wrath upon him.

Husain and Salman Rushdie are comparable in what they do with their own mediums and the controversy their work elicits in certain quarters. Both their work show their deep engagement with India’s soil, her people, her ethos, her history, and the peculiarities of her culture, urbane and provincial at the same time, the plurality that is India. There is an exuberance in the way they express this in their art. Rushdie with his language, in the way he has “chutnified” English.

“Christians, Portugeses and Jews; Chinese tiles promoting godless views; pushy ladies, skirts-not-saris, Spanish shenanigans, Moorish crowns . . . can this really be India? Bharat-mata, Hindustan-hamara, is the place?”

(From “The Moor’s Last Sigh”)

In dazzling abstraction, Husain evokes in his colors and powerful lines an abundance of everything India. In his capture of the Mahabharata he has only followed the storytellers before him who have all delighted the retelling in verses and paintings, in plays and stories, from great poets to our own grandmothers.

I simply do not believe that in this creative flow there is a space in either of these artists’ consciousness to think, “OK, so how can I now offend the Hindus/Muslims?”

And yet sentiments are hurt, some people believe Husain is disrespectful to the deities that Hindus revere. They promise large sums of money to have him killed, his hands severed, his eyes gouged.

I leave the museum with some sadness for this man who has lived through the early days of India’s struggle for independence, and has devoted his life to creating work that has put him on the world map of modern art. He is now enduring criminal suits and death threats on account of his work. Or is it simply because he happens to be born a Muslim?

We now have the legacy of our colonial past, the Indian Penal Code, section 294, which time and again has been invoked for every small-minded political and sectarian agenda to squash freedom of expression.

Although Indians once enjoyed unprecedented freedom for intellectual inquiry, skepticism, dialog, a space for a variety of viewpoints and beliefs, perhaps total freedom of expression is really a myth in today’s world. All across the world it is curtailed in one way or another. But if we are not careful in our zeal, we may be blinding our own eyes, like Gandhari.

Champa Bilwakesh, a resident of Massachusetts, is a graduate of the Program for Writers from Warren Wilson College. Her short story was nominated for the Ploughshares Emerging Writers issue. She has recently completed a novel.