The Art Newspaper

M.F. Husain cleared

By The Art Newspaper. News, Issue 192, June 2008
Published online: 01 June 2008

M.F. Husain cleared

London. An Indian high court has dismissed three legal proceedings against artist Maqbool Fida Husain. The 92-year old had been accused of offending religious sentiments and obscenity, a criminal offence in India, for his depiction of several Hindu goddesses naked. Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul called the allegations “baseless” and spoke out against “India’s new Puritanism…which is threatening to throw the nation back into the pre-Renaissance era.” Husain, a Muslim, has been living in self-imposed exile in Dubai after receiving numerous death threats for using Hindu imagery in his work. In 2006 an exhibition of his work in London was forced to close after a group of men defaced two paintings with black spray paint. E.S.