man u r such a ..........
for u MF Hussain is a living Picasso.......if he is a picasso, what will u say of the Danish Cartoonist who painted Muhammed....he is definately a michaelangelo........man u r myopic, u say u can't find even a single acclaimed indian painter, i'll help u out..herez the list...Amrita Shergill
Jamini Roy
Raja Ravi Varma
MF Hussain
Tyeb Mehta
Anjolie Ela Menon
Francis Newton Souza
Rameshwar Broota
SH Raza
u say MF hussain wasn't the first person to paint nude indian goddess...so what, should we spare that old pig becoz of that......if hez such a grt writer can't he find somone in his own fraternity to be depicted likewise.....If M F Hussain would have painted The Prophet in the same colour (shown generosity towards Prophet as he had shown by painting Bharat Mata and Goddess Saraswati in nude) , the Muslim Fundamentalists would have certainly not allowed him to fly but beheaded him.

Taslima's case is different from Hussein. Hussein may be a great painter but drew vulgar nude paintings of Hindu goddesses who are never painted like that, and rarely but ever are painted nude even. I ask Hussein if he has guts to draw a painting of Prophet Mohammed, need not be a nude one but fully clad? Your own muslims will tear him to shreds and feed him to dogs - You, I mean many of you, can be so intolerant and mad. Then why should he hurt the sentiments of other religionists, that too by drawing vulgarly nude paintings? He is a fan of Madhuri Dikshit. Can he draw a nude painting of hers? Let him draw and face the consequences, she will sue him for crores. Is it because Lakhmi, Saraswathi and Parvathi are so helpless and Hindus so powerless that he dares draw such vulgar paintings? Can he draw a nude or even semi nude painting of Fatima or Ayesha? Is he penitent at least now? I doubt very much. Nobody is stopping him from returning home. He can come back, go to jail for a few days, apply for bail and appeal. In this country and governments going all out to appease 'minorities' even when they are patently wrong and aggressive, certainly the government may also pardon and remit his sentence. Don't equate this delinquent with Bahadur Shah Jafar, who though pusillanimous, for a time stood in front of the rebels, was treated as a rebel and compelled to die in captivity in Burma.
Taslima is a brave lady but unnecessarily bowed down due to both left front and Congress governments cowardice and opportunism before Muslim communal forces. After all what is wrong with her lajja or other writings. May be she might have been stringent in criticism but in democracy that is not only permissible but desirable too. You say she criticized Mohammed. What if? We criticize our gods - Rama, Krishna, Vishnu, Siva - nobody is spared by our writers. There may be and are communal bigots in our religion too but by large people tolerate such criticisms. Hinduism allows atheism to coexist with it and I may say even encompasses it. So I can't understand what is wrong in a Muslim criticizing Mohammed? Nobody is taken as unchrisian for criticizing Jesus these days - except of course for the exception of bigots who are there in any religion. I think only when progressive Muslims rise to the level and courage of criticizing and disagreeing with the sayings of Mohammed even that Islam will have any real future as a liberal and progressive and humane religion. Otherwise not.

On the tower of Babel the debate goes on : My religion is greater or yours ? My God is bigger or yours ?
Are’nt religion and God divine and immortal ? Then how can a mere mortal malign them with his brush or her pen ??? It’s like objecting to someone throwing pebbles at the sky !!!

This article by Syed Ali Mujtaba is not more than another futile attempt to justify an unjust and fanatic move. Any country is governed by it law and constitution , not by any religious feelings. Fanatics of every religion should understand and imbibe this very clearly that our nation is not a property of their religion. It has it's own constitution which gives the freedom of expression. It's our constitution and law , that will decide what is proper and what is not! Not any Mulla , Pandit or Paadri.

Syed Ali Mujtaba is very concerned about poor Bangladesi people , who are coming illegaly just to 'feed their family'. It's ludicrous that Mr Mujtaba is not concerned about the Kashmiris, who are living a life of refugee in their own country!
Mr. Syed Ali Mujtaba , just by acting as a 'Self Appointed Intelluctual' and getting yourself published in a website , you can not rationalize your baseless and comunal thoughts.

Mr. Mujtaba , gone are the days when, people like you were taking advantage by feigning as 'minority' and pressurizing other Indians by crating 'hungama'. It's better that people like you accept Indian Constitution and start living like true Indian not as a flollower of your religion, else ready to face the consequences.

Even though Muslims live in Hindustan, they hate Hindus. Why? There are lots of Muslim nations on this planate where they should move. First they should check the welcome they will receive from their holy nation Saudi Arabia. They will treat worst than dogs.

Why not move to their cousin’s nation Pakistan or Bangladesh? Let us see how much welcome they receive their? Do they know how these nations treat Hindus?

Let us look the crime rate in India. Pick any news paper and majority of criminals will be Muslims. They should leave their backward thinking and accept the majority treatment gracefully and thank Hindus for giving better treatments.

let me first thank you for reading me and then caring to write me, i very well understand your feelings but let us agree to disagree with other as i try to lay out my position before you. i m not a defender of m.f hussian and trying to justify what he has done. my submission that he is haunted out of the country by certain sectation of people. i have resistance against such people. i dont believe those who vandalised on the kolkatta street were any different. if they are hurt they have the right to protest but they can not cross the line which they did and i have no sympathy for them. In the same context i want to make another point, in the indian tradition there has been any number of stance where hindu god and godesss are being depicted what we call nude vulgar etc. my the jhtka tales, are full of pronographic contents. even today in rural india, in some quaters there are some youths who play on the music and sing n and dance uttering very vulgar words abouts the hindu god and godesss. i have been perview to such meetings in a tribal village of Jharkhand and so there is certain degree of credibility to this facr. there is huge difference between the urban india and rural india, there is whole set of oral tradtions and local custom that do not follow the city paradigm. my idea is to say that hindusm can be judged from the glasses of Abramic faith and vice a versa. as far m.f hussain is concerned, such people do not belong to any faith, they are above faith, we should not get trapped in their names which their parnents have given and they can not change it. i met a person recently, his name is rahman ram, he is also a painter and an indian, he lives in NY. he was arrested in US during 9/11 episiode because he was having a muslim sounding first name. he acctually was born to a hindu parents and he wanted to be different. to me m f hussain has not done a right a thing but my only submission iif he had a hindu name, the sangh privar would not have forced him to go to exle. its not because he wanted to avoid the courts, its more because of threat to his life an liberity that he has left the courty. if the bjp or sangh privar is so much secular let them call husseain. i dont know how much conincing i m but thats what i wantd to to say.

regarding the economic migrant from bangladesh, you are basically caught up in th nepolonic era of jingoistic nationalism, history has travelled much more from there. i am peace activist who is propagating the idea of south asian federation. the answer to the economic migrant issue does not lies in pushing them back to the country which would be too inhuman and the best to handel it is to issue them ID cards and such kind of things. why i have raised that issue and mixed it with taslima is while in this case there is warm welcome and general enthusiam and in case of economic migrant its sheer hate mongring. this really pricked me and i have tried to put this across.

lastly, i have written early that taslima nasreen should be labeled as anti- islam writer and not a feminist muslim reformer. one should not again get trapped in her name. having said that i repeat what i said that lords world is big enough to accomodate those who follow islamic faith and as well those who like to denegrate it. i believe that india should shelter taslima nasreen and she should live peacefully. but the big uestion is will she do that, i have my doubts, as a journlist i find not even two months passes, she is back in the news. i can on but i stop. thanks again for your comments, let close this up here. SAM

If Taslima has hurt the feelings of Muslims, so has Hussain hurt the feelings of Hindus. Anyone who says that Hussain is right and Taslima is wrong is either a hypocrat or a dishonest. If Hussain has a right to freedom of speech, so has Taslima. CPIM has been the greatest defender of Hussain's freedom of speech, but their abject surrender to a handful of Islamic extremist in Taslima's case exposed them fully. The CPIM have done great disservice to real secularism in India. If the BJP is guilty of pandering to Hindu communalism so is CPIM pandering to Muslim communalists.

Let's also not forget that Taslima controversy was intentionally planned and provoked to divert attention from the murder of Muslims by the CPIM mobs in Nandigram. The whole story has been completely blacked out by the media as CPIM activists blocked the whole area. The story of Muslim deaths in Nandigram is yet to be told to nation.

I'm sorry to say that your argument has no validity. Firstly, you advocate illegal immigration. I wonder who taught you that this was a legitimate demand. So, do you advocate that the US must open its borders just because poor people from other countries can fill their stomach? Utter nonsense.

Secondly, there is a difference between M.F.Hussain and Taslima. Taslima wrote about religious persecution of minorities in Bangladesh. She wrote about the evils in Islam (like sati or the caste system in Hinduism) - it was more like starting a dialogue. She did not insult the religion (and in any case, she has clearly denied having made any statements that she supposedly said). Mr.M.F.Hussain would have been praised if he chose to paint the sufferings of people in Hindu society due to the prevelant evil practices. Instead, he chose to paint Hindu Godesses in the nude. Had he had the courage to paint the Prophet Mohammed or Jesus Christ in the same way, we could appreciate his sense of art. But by delibarately showing only Hindu Godesses in the nude, it smells of ulterior motives. (For example, why draw a nude Hindu along with a fully dressed Muslim with a dagger? - Yes, check his paintings). So, there is a huge difference. Do not compare Taslima's case with M.F.Hussain's.

You either do not know the issue about both these people or you pretend not to know. If it is the former, I hope I've helped you differentiate. If it is the latter, you can go ahead with your meaningless rhetoric as it is impossible to wake up a person who pretends to be sleeping.

Artists like him must be appreciated for they have done in their field, art, in his cae.
MF Hussain is above all average human concerns of what subject is acceptable for painting. As long as the Goddess was painted with respect, how does it matter who paints it?
Moreover at his age, his social and artistic perspectives are way above his or someone else's religion. He should be honored in India, simply as an Indian Citizen.
Thank you for your article. Very much needed.