Artists seek Bharat Ratna for Hussain

117 artists urge the President to bring the painter at par with them, by giving top honour, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 6, 2006, 22:19:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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What is common between Satyajit Ray, MS Subbalakshmi, Ravi Shankar, Bismillah Khan and Lata Mangeshkar? All of them are top of the league artistes in their respective fields and recipients of country's biggest civil honour Bharat Ratna Award.

Now, 117 artists cutting across different hues have asked President APJ Abdul Kalam to bring painter Maqbool Fida Hussain at par with them, by conferring Bharat Ratna award. The list includes Shashi Tharoor, Shyman Benegal, Irfan Habib, Saeed Mirza, Jayati Ghosh, Akbar Padamsee, Muzaffar Ali, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Kundan Shah, Raj Babbar, Subha Mudgal, Teesta Setalvad and Mira Nair.

Hussain is living in a self-imposed exile in England from earlier this year after numbers of cases were registered against him for allegedly depicting Hindu Gods and Goddesses in a bad light. The right-wing organisations including RSS have been demanding legal action against Hussain for the paintings and had even staged protests in various parts of the country.

In a letter to President last month, the artists, however, urged that Hussain has achieved 'reworking aesthetic traditions of India including especially the tradition of iconographic innovation'. "He is among those few modern artists who have focused on mythological and epic narratives, and, for over half a century, he has painted themes from the epics in literally thousands of paintings and drawings," the letter said.

They also said that Hussain has been steadfast in maintaining a most affirmative relationship with the Indian peoples' consciousness of their national identity. "Though him", the letter said, "we have learned to address a whole gamut of issues pertaining to the interactive dynamic of modernity with the country's many layered art and culture.

Terming his as certainly one of the most prominent post-Independence artists to shape and understand the contemporary art, the letter said, "this is an opportune and crucial time to honour him for his dedication and courage to cultural renaissance of his beloved country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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