M.F. Husain and the Making of a Campaign

Abstract

Building upon the evidence examined in the previous chapters, Chapter 5 analyses the single most widespread and virulent campaign of violence against an artist—that targeting M.F. Husain, mapping precisely the transformation of disconnected, and varied attacks on artists into waging campaigns against them. True, the attacks on Husain since the mid-1990s, and responses in his name, enlarged the word-stock surrounding him, but buried within it the static and isolated view of violence hardly explains the logic and the process of Hindu nationalists’ sustained and obsessive, often even pointless, preoccupation with him. The progress and shifts in their campaigns underline varied and evolving attitudes towards his alleged offences, not always related to the images in question. Given Husain’s extraordinary stature within the art world, and within the world of violent offence-taking, an understanding of the build-up of the campaign waged in his name is essential for any analysis of the phenomenon of violence of offence-taking and its discipline-enforcing attitude towards artists.