Husain’s many varnas

When it comes to ideals of beauty, artist emeritus Maqbool Fida Husain has always been triumphantly plural. Whether it was Indira Gandhi as goddess Durga or suvarna Bollywood heroines like Madhuri Dixit as a contemporary Gajagamini or the talented Tabu as the embodiment of secular India, Husain sahib’s tricolour is sketchily syncretic. No small wonder then that his latest muse is Mayawati whom he recently described as “a beautiful woman with an expressive face” whose portrait he would “love to make”.

Whatever Mayawati’s views may be on being co-opted by a member of the ‘sanskritised’ cultural elite, she has responded colourfully enough by promising that tea in the government offices of Lucknow will no longer be served in unaesthetic plastic cups but in designer earthen kullars. In fact the kullar crusade has long been a part of Samata Party leader Jaya Jaitly’s arsenal and there is perhaps no reason to resist the conclusion that given Husain sahib’s talent for spotting beautiful women in unlikely places, the Tehelka lady might just be next in the list of his artistic objet d’arts. From Hollywood heroines to Dalit heroines, from avenging prime ministers to national award winners, Husain’s fascination for the famous and the feminine is well known. And while his reactions to Mayawati may well be borne out of a purely creative urge to capture her charisma, there is an equally strong possibility that as far as the unique selling point is concerned, Husain sahib has always been artful about choosing the flavour of the moment.

Nonetheless bharatiya beauty has always been far too Aryan. While Halle Berry, Naomi Campbell, Salma Hayek and Bianca Jagger have succeeded in no small measure in reinventing international notions of beauty, in India unfortunately, there has been an undoubted dominance of the fair and lovely. Mayawati as a Husain model thus has interesting consequences for the dalitisation of the beauty myth as well as for adding new ‘varnas’ to the artistic palette. In so doing perhaps Husain may encourage Mayawati to provide support to some of the exquisite artistic legacies of Lucknow, rather than simply patronising the statuary of Ambedkar. Art after all should not be caste in stone.