Three days after a court in India ordered the seizure of two paintings by late artist MF Husain over a complaint that they were “offensive,” the gallery displaying them strongly opposed the “unfounded allegations” in a case that sets artistic freedom in the country against personal religious values.
The Delhi High Court on 20 January permitted police to seize the paintings after a lawyer named Amita Sachdeva complained the artworks – featuring Hindu deities Ganesha and Hanuman alongside nude female figures – “hurt religious sentiments”.
In an X post on 13 December, Ms Sachdeva said she had taken photos of the “offensive paintings” at DAG, New Delhi (formerly Delhi Art Gallery) and filed a police complaint on 9 December after “researching past FIRs against MF Husain”.
Maqbool Fida Husain, dubbed the “Picasso of India”, was one of South Asia’s most renowned artists but no stranger to controversy, repeatedly accused of obscenity by Hindu groups for painting deities in the nude or with nude figures.
In 2006, Husain issued an apology for his painting of “Mother India”, depicting a nude woman in the shape of the country’s map. He felt compelled to leave India and lived in self-imposed exile in London until his death in 2011, aged 95.
The paintings ordered seized by the court were part of an exhibition titled Husain: The Timeless Modernist, featuring 100 “pivotal works that reflect his powerful interpretations of Indian life, culture, and modernity”. It ran from 26 October to 14 December.
The gallery told The Independent the exhibition saw around 5,000 visitors, “including scholars, academicians, collectors, students and art enthusiasts as well as journalists, garnering positive reviews in the press as well as from the public”. “It is noteworthy that no other person among about 5,000 visitors at the gallery raised any objection to any of the artworks displayed in this exhibition,” it said.
The paintings, the gallery said, “were acquired internationally at a Christie’s auction and brought into India following due customs clearance”.
In her post on X, Ms Sachdeva alleged that when she visited the gallery again with a police officer on 10 December, the paintings had been removed and the gallery “falsely claimed they were never displayed”.
“This statement of Ms Sachdeva is patently false and malicious,” a spokesperson for the gallery told The Independent. “When the investigating officer enquired about the artworks displayed during the exhibition, we provided the entire list of artworks along with their photographs, including those works which she claims to have photographed during her first visit to the gallery. It is evident she is deliberately creating a false narrative to garner attention because no one at DAG has ever offered any comment or explanation to her at any point of time.”
The paintings displayed during the exhibition were “routinely replaced with other works of the artist so that all his works get their deserved display time during the exhibition”, they added.
The Independent has reached out to Ms Sachdeva for comment.
According to media reports, Ms Sachdeva demanded the court analyse the gallery’s CCTV footage to find out when the paintings were moved and why.
“Given its implicit belief in artistic freedom, the DAG denies any wrongdoing as alleged by the complainant who has publicly claimed to be principally driven by a religious agenda,” the gallery said.
“In fact, the complainant has herself displayed and publicised the images of the drawings over social media and television news media deliberately intending them to be viewed by a larger audience, while contending that the same images hurt her personal religious sentiments.”
In its order on Monday, the court said police had seized the CCTV footage and filed a report, which stated the exhibition was held in a “private space” and was only intended to showcase the artist’s original work. It further said the paintings had been taken from the gallery and were now with police.
Ms Sachdeva’s counsel Makrand Adkar took objection to the police report calling the gallery a private space since it was open to the public or else “the complainant wouldn’t have visited” it, Hindustan Times reported.
“The most revered entities of Sanatan Dharm, Hanuman and Ganesh, were insulted in the paintings,” the lawyer claimed. “This is obscenity. It is a deliberate and malicious attempt to insult Hindu deities. Thousands saw our deities…they were made objects of ridicule.”
The Independent reached out to Ms Sachdeva for comment multiple times but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Ms Sachdeva had asked for a case to be registered against the gallery on charges of deliberately and maliciously outraging religious feelings. The court, however, dismissed the petition.
In a statement to The Independent, the gallery said it “strongly opposes the complainant’s unfounded allegations and shall call out her attempt to launch a malicious prosecution against the DAG, when called upon by the court to do so”.
The gallery also “intends to pursue its own legal remedies against the complainant for the false and mala fide accusations made by her”.
Indian courts have historically protected Husain’s right to artistic liberty. In 2008, the Delhi High Court dismissed obscenity charges against him while cautioning that “a new puritanism is being carried out in the name of cultural purity”.
“Ancient Indian art has been never devoid of eroticism where sex worship and graphical representation of the union between man and woman has been a recurring feature,” it said.
The Supreme Court in 2011 upheld the decision, declaring that Husain’s works were protected under the constitutional provision guaranteeing the freedom of speech and expression.
