Memory loss down memory lane!

The debates on TV these days revolving around M.F Husain's citizenship issue, has made me cringe with embarrassment over the manner of insensitivity with which anchors like Arnab Goswami have attempted to make a complex issues black and white. The desire to paint (excuse the pun), Mr. Husain into a scheming money-hungry old man, grabbing at the opportunity to ride a red Ferrari and pad his mattress with the mega bucks, is truly revolting.

I think that the history of this story is either conveniently being overlooked by many (whose intelligence I would like to believe could figure out the larger agendas at play); or people in the news media are in fact the ones to blame for "wanting a story at any cost with a different angle": mad angled bingo chips may soon do too, at this rate! This new analysis that is being floated, that those of us who are Husain supporters (outraged at the apathy of successive Indian governments who have dragged their feet over tackling the anti social tirades of communal forces, and their violent disruptions to Husain's art and art practice), are in fact attempting to communalise the situation, is proof enough that the ability to perceive and read the accurate political factors within this targeted harassment, is completely absent.

As an artist, I have been observing the slow and steady eroding of liberal thinking and the goonda brigade vigilantism of culture, that is orchestrated by political agencies which has impacted the art world, by infringing upon it's freedom to express. I am also hugely tired of these assumptions that artists who are liberal are prostituting ancient Indian cultural norms and desecrating the purity of Indian civilization. These are windbag stories, and I am bored to death by the likes of Mr. Chandra Mitha, (pompous men) who talk the rhetoric of the saffron brigade and airs their bigoted views on this subject. It is time for TV channels to find more articulate new speakers who are informed, and whose views are substantiated by opinions (even if differing to what I may hope to hear), that are not rubbish hate speeches.

As for Mr. Arnab Goswami. A lesson in manners, the decorum of refinement and research in Indian contemporary art history is the homework I assign you, young man.