“What’s your name?”
“Kashif,” I replied.
“What?”
Before I could repeat my name, his friend intervened.
“Makbool Fida Hussain,” he said, emphasizing each of the three words of the famous painter, as he turned towards his friends, laughing.
[Lucknow University, 1993]
May be he was trying to tell his friend that this guy’s name is as foreign as MF Hussain. What difference it makes whether he is named Kashif or Maqbool Fida Hussain, at the end of the day both are foreign names. You don’t need to waste your time trying to understand and properly pronounce these names. No matter how much they claim to be Indian they will remain foreigner to us. So a famous painter or this stranger in front of us can be lumped together and understood just on the basis of their name.
Much water has flown in river Gomti since then but situation is not much different. MF Hussain, born in British India but couldn’t die in Independent India. Just like Bahadur Shah Zafar, he was denied death and burial in country of his birth and inspiration.
First time I saw his painting was in Jamshedpur. It was late 1980s, Tata Steel has commissioned Hussain to paint for their annual calendar. It was my first exposure to modern art and I was impressed by those simple lines and colors and how they were spread out to depict figures and ideas. It was uniquely modern and Indian.
Hussain is rightly described as super star of Indian art scene. His fame gave exposure to Indian modern art and artist. He was son of the soil that India should be rightly proud of.
MF Hussain thought himself as an Indian and painted figures from Hindu mythology that being an Indian, he correctly identified as his heritage too. But in the end Hindu fanatics prevailed and made it clear that MF Hussain is just Maqbool Fida Hussain, a painter with a foreign name, a Muslim.
Kashif, your hurt is as good as mine in the sense that MF Husain wrote his name Maqbool Fida Husain and not Makbool Fida Hussain. I cant understand what so called liberated liberals get by anglicising any Indian name. To those who felt Kashif and MF Husain is foreign, it has more to do with your cowardice and their psycology. None in Indian and in the zeal to prove being Indian, all and sundry ways are used. To many at IM, even praying at graves is part of Islam. When it comes to defend root of Islam, all get cold feet.
Mr. Naqqad i am dyslexic and had to check three times whteher it was i or a whether it was one Q or two .I am sorry if you get upset by spelling mistake of proper noun which is some time at the whims of the person .Just b/c my welwisher miss pelt my name i would refuse his friendship s . On the contrary you see glorious spelling grammatically superb sentences with lucid composed weaving of words by disinterested associate of yours .
By name M.F.Hussain was a Muslim, we have to wait until Qiyamah to find out whether he was living as a good and practising Muslim. He had been a great painter is entirely a different story altogether. Whatever he did or did not paint, in my humble opinion, he should not have painted the naked paintings of Hindu deities and also the naked paintings of models and cinema stars-this is nothing but soft-pornography—according to me.
Hindus have done it in their temples and books. They can do it religiously, but a Muslim doing it, I consider that M.F.Hussain trespassed into third party land rather ruldely.
“MF Hussain, born in British India but couldn’t die in Independent India.”
Well said Kashif!
It cannot be more obscenely obvious that a ‘liberal’ who paints nude Hindu deities is respected on a Muslim forum, yet the same forum criticized another ‘liberal’ Taslima. Sad. Infuriating. You would do well to test the depths of fanaticism in your own community as well.
MF Hussain was and continues to be one of the finest painters India has ever produced. If he wanted to live outside India, then it was his wish. I’m sure he could not have chosen the time and place of his death. That does not take away from the fact that he was an Indian by birth, in spirit and in his work and needless to mention – one of the finest of the good in us.
Legally there was no case against him and people who protested against him had no understanding of Art and in any case were not defending Hindu religion. A bunch of ruffians taking an excuse to break property, molest women (when they protect modesty) and oppose freedom of speech are just a bunch of hoodlums who have to be disciplined. Hussain understood India better than most of these so called protectors and continued a glorious tradition of art that is uniquely Indian in ethos and sensibility. In Art – portraying nude is a sense of purity and beauty – be it Greek Sculpture, Gandhara School of Art or the Khajuraho. By attacking Hussain, the miscreants confirmed that they are closer to the murderous Taliban in taste, sensibility and sense of reason than to anything Indian. Hussain will be remembered forever and these idiots will be recognized as pests.