His early association with the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group used modern technique, and was inspired by the "new" India after the partition of 1947.

His themes—sometimes treated in series—included topics as diverse as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the British Raj, and motifs of Indian urban and rural life.

[5] Maqbool Fida Husain[6] was born on 17 September 1915 in Pandharpur, Bombay Province (present-day Maharashtra)[7][8] in a Suleymani Bohra family.

[12] This was a clique of young artists who wished to break with the nationalist traditions established by the Bengal school of art and to encourage an Indian avant-garde, engaged at an international level.

[19] Although he was raised in a Muslim household, Husain sought freedom to capture the essence of beauty in other religious cultures, for which he received a backlash.

[21] The paintings in question were created in 1970, but did not become an issue until 1996, when they were printed in Vichar Mimansa, a Hindi monthly magazine, which published them in an article headlined "M.F.

"[22] In 1998 Husain's house was attacked by Hindu fundamentalist groups like Bajrang Dal and art works were vandalised.

He has also produced and directed several films, including Gaja Gamini (2000) (with his muse Madhuri Dixit who was the subject of a series of his paintings which he signed Fida).

[24] In this film she can be seen portraying various forms and manifestations of womanhood including the muse of Kalidasa, the Mona Lisa, a rebel, and musical euphoria.

Husain's son stated that the words were a phrase referring to divine beauty that were being sung by the central character played by Tabu.

In February 2006, Husain was charged with "hurting sentiments of people" because of his nude portraits of Hindu gods and goddesses.

[27] In addition, on 6 February 2006 issue, India Today, a national English weekly published an advertisement titled "Art For Mission Kashmir".

Organisations like VHP protested persistently against Husain displaying the painting on the websites and even in exhibitions in north Europe.

Husain claims that the loss of his mother at the age of a year and a half is a possible reason for his pattern of paintings depicting a maternal Indian figure.

[1] For the last years of his life Husain lived in Doha and London, staying away from India, but expressing a strong desire to return,[35] despite fears of being prosecuted.

[46] And Harsh Goenka, a Mumbai-based industrialist, claims that forcing Husain into exile "is, in a way, showing the weakness of the system, that we cannot protect the rights of the citizen".

According to Shashi Tharoor, who supported the petition, it praised Husain because his "life and work are beginning to serve as an allegory for the changing modalities of the secular in modern India – and the challenges that the narrative of the nation holds for many of us.

"[49] Husain had such a vast amount of work that spanned over 10 decades producing roughly 40,000 paintings by the end of his lifetime.

[20] On his part Husain stated that leading Hindu leaders have not spoken a word against his paintings, and they should have been the first ones to have raised their voice and only people with political intentions created controversy.

[9] After Husain's death, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray said, "He only slipped up on the depiction of Hindu gods and goddesses.