Departures From The Fountainhead:
Thoughts Around The Passing Of M F Husain
By Cynthia Stephen
11 June, 2011
Countercurrents.org
What is it about India that makes it difficult for most people to reach their full potential on its shores? These same people travel abroad and then come into their own.
Even game-changing philosophies have not survived here for long. For examples, Buddhism only flourished outside its borders, barely escaping being radically changed by enemies from within (brahminisers) even while Buddha was alive….even the memory of Ashoka could only be revived after British historians came in and excavated and studied epigraphic evidence….
In the modern era, even the Art movements in modern Indian art – after Ravi Varma adapted western idioms to convey Indian mythological themes and had a huge influence on popular religious iconography and design, the Bengal school came into being in early 20th C to “escape from the colonial aesthetic”. In the fifties came the Progressive Artists Group’ led by Raza and Souza, with M F Husain an important member too. While Raza migrated to Paris decades ago, Souza went to London and both became huge names in the international art circuit. Only Husain continued to remain rooted to India, but his personality and original brilliance ensured his worldwide re-known and built up a sizeable market for his works.
But even he lasted in India only till 2006, after which the rise of so-called cultural nationalism began to intrude into the art world. A time arrived when the lowest common denominator began to place limits on creativity and cultural expression . Our robustly plural civilisational consciousness was almost irreparably damaged by bigoted and small minds which controlled doubled fists, who took it on themselves to define the boundaries of artistic merit and intellectual freedom. Husain left Indian shores with dignity, his life and creative freedom under threat from small-minded goons who lack even a semblance of real culture or basic human values, driven by the same fascist ideology which impelled Nathuram Godse to shoot Gandhi in cold blood – and dance by his graveside decades later.
Needless to say, these forces were impelled by the same ideology which hounded Buddhism out of existence in the land of its birth a couple of millennia ago. Husain lived out his final years - at the peak of his creative and productive powers – in Qatar, having accepted Qatari citizenship and renouncing his Indian passport. He died in London, in June 2011, without his native land ever feeling the touch of his bare feet again.
India’s civilizational botnet – Brahminism - hampers anyone who tries to be original, and even tries to eliminate that person from the physical, social and mental space in the country. The large section of India’s population was Outcasted by them, but the outcastes’ biggest achievement is that they have survived with much of their cultural heritage – though not all of their history – intact. In the non-outcaste sections of India, presently comprised of what is known as the Other Backward Classes - what the braminisers permitted, bowdlerized or assimilated into their processes of “intellectual production” was allowed to thrive, but under their patronage. Still, Subaltern consciousness and cultural production survived, but without any support except for what was available within these economically and socially weakened communities.
The hugely economically productive working classes and the service-providing classes were demeaned into partial or full slavery and this has had the greatest depressing effect on human development in our country for this section, and for all women, for centuries. But the events of the so-called Freedom struggle which (allegedly) ended successfully with the handover of power to an Indian Prime minister on 15th August 1947 only handed the huge landmass (even after Partition), with political and financial recources and legal power to the Brahmins, and the brahminical upper-castes and classes.
The humongous task of lifting the teeming millions out of the economic, social and cultural morass into which they have been thrust has been placed on the shoulders of an Indian republic which is ill-equipped intellectually and ideologically to undertake it, even if its intentions were sincere. Against this deluge was one man – the redoubtable B R Ambedkar, the messiah of the underdogs, who with the sheer force of his erudition and passion was more than equal to the combined forces of the Brahminical and upper-class establishment. His unquestioned intellectual honesty and commitment to the interests of the masses made him the automatic choice for Chairman of the Drafting Committee for the Indian Constitution. His main contribution – the Preamble – is the yardstick which determines the parameters within which the rights of the citizen and the state are defined and put into practice. It is only after the Constitution was framed that the fundamental freedoms have become realizable for us as citizens. The resistance movement begun by Dr. Ambedkar has survived his untimely death in 1956, though in a weakened form, and his life and legacy continues to be a beacon for those who are still the colonized and the damned in Indian society.
Of course, the Indian state has fallen far short of its founding document, the Constitution. The masses of India have not yet fully woken up to the enormity of the fraud being perpetrated on them by the establishment day after day, for decades on end. The greed for power and pelf among the denizens of the system has become a raging monster, eating into its vitals. Half-hearted measures such as calls for stronger legislation such as the Lok Pal will only serve to drive the infection deeper underground. The perpetrators of high-end political and corporate crime will only raise the stakes higher. As has been found true so far, almost anyone of any stature in this country has his price – and someone willing to pay it.
But there are straws in the winds, presaging change. A young man on Bangalore’s streets, interviewed by a TV crew, says, “There is no use if you have power but cannot exercise it with justice and in favour of the people.” A young slum-dwelling woman continues fearlessly to challenge the workers of the municipality in Delhi – despite surviving two murderous attacks on her including one in which her throat was slit. Her life was saved and her resolve has hardened. She continues to use the Right to Information Act (RTI) to challenge inaction and corruption in the provision of civic amenities to her people. Several RTI activists have been done to death, but most still continue undeterred to challenge the corrupt establishment despite grave threats to the safety and security of themselves and their family. Many teachers, nurses, doctors, clerks, and other lower-level staff in governments and private institutions still work with commitment and excellence. A large number of individual government servants struggle alone but grimly against corruption and inaction in their departments, paying a huge price but refusing to compromise, even as corrupt colleagues and seniors heap harassment upon them for years. In fact, it is these people who keep our country moving – the very salt of the Indian earth.
Efforts by the Brahminical and saffron forces to hijack the weak anti-corruption surge in the cities, driven by the middle class and kept alive by a section of the media are bound to die a natural death, because the masses are not involved. The masses are mobilizing around their own issues of life and death – land, water, human rights violations, displacement, illegal mining, loss of livelihood commons, while the state employs its troops with brute power to restrain them, causing some of those caught in the middle to turn to extreme solutions for their situations. The poorer sections are affected adversely on both sides, while the political and bureaucratic establishment is too busy raking in its illegal millions and in finding creative and lucrative ways to hide them. Overall, the legal system, despite its black sheep, continues to be a source of some hope. The Election Commission of India has given us much reason for pride and hope as well, by conducting elections in an exemplary manner. But contradictions abound in our society, and the terminal decline in public morality needs to be urgently addressed. The yet-quiescent masses have to rise up and act – resisting corruption and exploitation and threats to cultural and intellectual freedoms both individually, and collectively through the ballot.
Cynthia Stephen is an Independent Researcher and writer Bangalore, India
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