Famous painter Mohammad Fida Husain has very cleverly tried to conceal his desertion and defection from a citizen of India by birth to a citizen of Qatar by coating his decision in a diplomatic language of Qatar having bestowed an honour on him by offering him its citizenship which he gladly accepted. This just amounts to his desertion of India, the country, to quote his own words, "he loved the most". Now, like modern day lovers who profess their supreme love one day and desert the person next day, he must be saying that Qatar is the country "he loves the most". He cannot afford not to say it under any circumstances.

Many people in the world have sacrificed their life for their love for their beloved, be it a man or woman or their country. But as a modern-day lover, Husain is projecting himself as a martyr who had to jilt his beloved, in this case his watan.

In a recent article the famous liberal Bangladeshi writer expressed a feeling of hurt and dishonoured when compared with persons like Husain. To her, he is a cheap person who won his laurels and fame by indulging in cheap tactics like painting Hindu goddesses in the nude. What kind of great painting is this? She even said that when it came to painting his mother and Muslim women, Husain showed the utmost respect and painted them fully veiled and covered, but for Hindu goddesses he exercised his great fancy and freedom of expression. What a hypocrisy!

What a comparison! Husain is great, liberal and secular because he exercises his right to freedom of expression guaranteed under the Constitution of India to paint Hindu deities -- and not his own -- in the nude. But Taslima is a persona non grata only because she had the guts to exercise her right to the same freedom of expression Husain did to write about Islam. What a great hypocrisy and double standards our intelligentsia, the so-called ‘liberal and secular" tribe of our media treat both the individuals.

Whatever the Bangladesh, the country of her birth may have done, still Taslima wishes not to desert the land of her birth. She continues to pride in the fact that she is the citizen of that country, even if the fundamentalists there are at her head. The next thing dear to her heart is India and here to, the state of West Bengal with which she feels more at ease linguistically, culturally and otherwise. But now we cannot say so about Husain.

reads in detail-http://voi.org/20100307378/07mar2010/editorial/editorial/editorial:...