Opinion: Dealing with intolerance, artist style

By M H Ahssan

It was just a casual remark, almost tossed out as an aside, but it stopped me dead in my tracks. In the current issue of the once-iconoclastic American magazine Mother Jones, best-selling author Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns) talks to the interviewer about how an Afghan painter cleverly survived the reign of the Taliban.

This artist habitually paints in oil. But to outwit the Taliban he used watercolours to paint over the human faces on his canvases to make them "Shariah friendly". However, as soon as the Taliban left, the artist simply "washed the painting and the faces came back."

Taking a cue from this the author had the Taliban insist that flamingos wear pants in his second novel A Thousand Splendid Sunswhich exposes the absurdities of the moral police. Now, if only our very own and very dear MF Husain had used watercolours to paint saris or some kind of drapery over his nude deities or "Bharat Mata" in his oil canvases. And then waited for better, saner times when he could wash the paintings and make the clothing disappear and the nude bodies with their magnificent lines underneath surface.

Being surreptitious is a necessary evil for creative people in intolerant times and places. Think of all those unfortunate scientists and writers in times past who could have avoided being pilloried or burnt at the stake had they only used invisible ink to pen their discoveries.

Things haven't really changed that much with progress. Just this week the Chinese banned Twitter, having already muffled Google. Even the ether out there is obviously no longer free.

Intolerance is not the prerogative of the poor and developing nations. Nor, even of repressive regimes. It's a contagious disiease that infects fundamentalists of all religions and beliefs. Ironically, those very nations that pride themselves on their espousal of the freedom of expression and human rights while criticising others for not doing so often react in a similar manner when provoked. Just the other day a white American male fatally shot a middle-aged doctor who used to perform late abortions.

Some years ago Arnold Lehman, the Brooklyn Museum's director wore a bulletproof vest during the controversial "Sensation" exhibition at his institution. In the show, Chris Ofili used his trademark elephant dung in the painting, The Holy Virgin Mary, which almost got cancelled by the then mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani because of the outraged reaction of many American Christians.

Now coming closer to home, to Husain living in exile between Dubai, London and wherever his whims and circumstances take the fleet-footed painter: what should he and others like him do in our deceptively liberal times?

Allegory has been traditionally a way out for creative people. My favourite of Salman Rushdie's oeuvre is Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a phantasmagorical and allegorical story he wrote after he went into hiding after a fatwa on his head was issued by Ayatollah Khomeini.

The other way, and that's what Husain has chosen, is to move away and carry on painting and living life to the fullest, allowing his joi de vivre full reign -- defiant in the face of adversity. You only have to see a recent photograph of him in his red Ferrari. He wears the face of a child who has finally got the toy he's been longing for. Art and life carry on. The late philosopher Ramu Gandhi made a perceptive comment about Husain to art historian Geeta Kapur. The Mahatma's grandson could not understand why people were "attacking" Husain.

"... he is like a child! He, like our toy makers, plays with line and colour and form, and like those toy-makers he will sometimes magically make an icon!"

Here is an untutored artist from a humble background who could magically connect with millions. That wide Ferrari smile of his flies in the face of all those Big Brothers and Sisters. It's almost an emoticon.