The cat is out of the bag. The great painter - we can now no longer call him Indian - Mohammad Fida Hussain is out his bag of nationalism, secularism and liberalism. He has now shunned his citizenship of the Indian nation to move to the greener pastures of Qatar.

He had all along been alternating been claiming that he is not in exile but has been roaming one country or the other out of his own free will and in December 2009 saying that he had been forced into living away from his homeland. In one of his interviews to the BBC Hindi in 2009 explaining the fact of his being away from India, the country "he loves very much", he had said," "I have never been away from my watan (country); main to ghoomta-phirta rehta hoon" (I keep on moving here and there}.

Whatever he may say or claim, the fact remains that he opted to remain out of the country only after there was a display of great feeling of hurt and outrage over his painting in the nude the Hindu goddess and Bharatmata. He had wounded the sentiments of not only the Hindus but every Indian in general because Indian culture never allows anybody to hurt the sentiments of others. We may subscribe to any faith yet we do respect the women and mothers of every other religion. We Indians cannot think, even in a dream, of demeaning other's deities. But Hussain chose to turn his right to freedom of expression into a license to inflict venomous injury on the feelings of Hindus.

As I have written earlier also, he did not, surprisingly, avail himself of this very freedom of expression to paint in the nude his own mother or any other relation, or a person belonging to his own religion. If ever he has painted any Muslim woman, he has been as decent and civilized as he has been indecent and uncivilized and uncultured with Hindu goddesses. A person who doesn't paint his own mother in the nude cannot claim the right and have the moral authority to do the same with others.

In spite of religiously claiming this right, Hussain has never had the morality to declare that if any painter great like him painted his mother or any member of his family in the nude, he would similarly appreciate and respect that painter's right to freedom of expression, as he wishes for himself.

read in detail: http://voi.org/07mar2010/ambacharanvashishtha/column-ambacharanvash...