The Husain question will linger

The passing of Maqbool Fida Husain on Thursday in a London hospital marks the end of an epoch in Indian art. Husain’s enormously vibrant palette — more devoted in recent times to the Arab civilisation than to subjects Indian, will be laid to rest. With it will also go silent the debates around the status of a minority artist’s engagement with Indian mythology, and the failure of the modern Indian state to protect him.