Category World News

The tragedy has rekindled some of the mistrust and divisions in Hong Kong that erupted as a result of the devastating housing estate fire that claimed the lives of at least 159 people.

On November 26, the city watched horrifiedly as the fire started at Wang Fuk Court and quickly spread to seven of the complex’s eight towers. According to official reports, many residents were trapped inside because the alarms were malfunctioning.

After burning for more than 40 hours, Wang Fuk Court is on track to be one of the worst fires ever to occur, with 176 people killed in the blaze that started in 1948. However, the casualties rate have kept rising since the fire was extinguished on November 28.

Many Hong Kongers have never considered the scale.

This is a downtown area, not a small village in the middle of nowhere. We wouldn’t have anticipated that this would have happened, Issie, an educator who works in Wang Fuk Court’s Tai Po district, told Al Jazeera.

“This is a completely unthinkable situation. We anticipated that the government would have “put out the fire.”

Hong Kongers quickly mobilized following the fire’s eruption, when they distributed food, water, and shelter to young protesters despite not always agreeing with them. This is unlike the protests of 2019, which have taken place since.

As other residents of the housing estate’s 4, 000-plus residents were quickly gathered online assistance databases, including clothing, food, and other supplies, in Tai Po.

A petition was then released calling for “four demands” of government accountability in response to the protest’s “five demands, not one less” slogan. More than 10,000 people signed the petition, according to local media, before it was eventually removed.

In a striking visual similarity to the 2019 protest artwork “Lennon Walls,” handwritten notes adorned the fire’s victims.

A Hong Kong professor with experience with the city’s governance structure told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity because of concerns for the impact on their careers, that “mobilization is in Hong Kong’s “DNA.”

Because it was meant to be a significant renovation project, “people couldn’t explain why that happened.” He claimed that the renovation project, which was carried out to make the building structure and the residents safer, ended in tragedy.

Athena Tong, a visiting research fellow from Hong Kong and a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo, shared the sentiment that the government was slow to act.

According to Tong, “the fact that society, the regular citizens, needed to mobilize at that scale to help with relief demonstrates that there is no trust in the government’s competence,”

Hong Kongers began to question the government’s prompt response online, including a suggestion from early experts and officials that Wang Fuk Court’s bamboo scaffolding, a custom in Hong Kong construction, should be replaced with metal.

Later, fire investigators determined that Styrofoam blocks and subpar mesh netting were the main culprits.

However, some of the discontent stems from the deep existential questions that the protests in 2019 raised about Hong Kong’s future, according to observers.

As a number of grievances began to surface, some of which date back to the city’s 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty, the protests erupted into a widespread antigovernment movement in 2019.

The issue ranged from whether Beijing was backing off with its commitments to the former British colony’s “high degree of autonomy” until 2047 under the “one country, two systems” agreement with China to how the local leader of Hong Kong would be chosen. Some people were concerned about the future of Hong Kong’s distinctive identity and culture.

By contrast, pro-government Hong Kongers and Chinese officials perceived the protests as a city ebbing into pieces, possibly with the support of the US government, who wanted to destabilize Hong Kong for their own reasons.

Hong Kong was temporarily at a standstill for months as a result of the protests, but as a result, COVID-19 containment laws started to become in effect in 2020. Beijing passed legislation that made it next to impossible for large-scale protests in the middle of 2020.

The government’s response in 2019 and 2025, according to Issie, the resident of Hong Kong.

These things wouldn’t have happened before, she said, “especially when it comes to people being critical of their policies, and even this time when people were trying to help.”

A Hong Kong government spokesman earlier this week claimed that “foreign forces, anti-China, and destabilizing forces” were using “seditious pamphlets” to “maliciously smear the rescue work, instigate social division and conflict to undermine the society’s unity” in a language that was strikingly reminiscent of its 2019 remarks.

According to China’s state-run Global Times newspaper, a “small number of external hostile forces” were attempting to “reverse the tragedy and “replica tactics from the anti-extradition bill unrest” in 2019 to obstruct rescue and recovery efforts.

According to local media reports, Hong Kong police have detained at least 15 people on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the fire, and have also detained at least three others on suspicion of sedition and “attempting to incite discord” in response to the arrests.

According to local media, Miles Kwan, a university student, and former district councillor Kenneth Cheung, who was detained for leafleting, are among them.

The local government’s Executive Council member Ronny Tong claimed that there isn’t much information available about the sedition-related arrests, and that more evidence than criticism of the government would have helped to support the national security charges brought against them.

The law is the law, in our opinion, with a capital W. The police might err on the side of caution if someone violates the law at a sensitive time. The courts will be there to protect them if they overreacted, Ronny Tong said.

He claimed for Al Jazeera that it made sense for the government to reroute volunteers’ efforts to streamlined their work. The government provided a 100, 000 Hong Kong dollar ($12, 847) subsidy over the course of the past week, promising Wang Fuk Court residents would receive free housing until their homes were rebuilt.

Although only a small number of details have been made public, Hong Kong leader John Lee has also demanded an independent committee to look into the fire and review the building-work system in Hong Kong.

No government official had resigned as of Friday due to the deadly fire.

A day after a wave of Israeli raids rocked the south of Lebanon, President Joseph Aoun reported to have met with a delegation from the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the rising tensions with Israel and efforts to disarm Hezbollah.

Aoun urged the UNSC team to press Israel to abide by a ceasefire that it had violated almost daily on November 2024 and to leave southern Lebanon.

In remarks made by the NNA, Aoun said, “We look forward to pressure from your side.”

Aoun previously stated that the UN delegation would travel to southern Lebanon to check “the situation on the ground,” which included meetings with prime minister Nawaf Salam and parliament speaker Nabih Berri. According to Aoun, the trip would allow the delegation to “see the real picture of what is happening there” as the army implements a plan to destroy Hezbollah’s weapons.

Hezbollah is angered by the UN’s visit, which comes amid flimsy indications of potential deeper ties between Lebanon and Israel.

Hezbollah’s chief Naim Qassem criticized the two states’ first direct discussions on Wednesday as a “free concession” to Israel, which Lebanon technically is still at war with.

Qassem claimed that the civilian-led discussions violate the Lebanese government’s policy, which should be ensuring state sovereignty, in comments made by the pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar newspaper.

Qassem called Israel an “expansionist” and claimed that it had carried out “constant” attacks and refused to abide by the ceasefire agreement signed last year with Hezbollah.

Qassem stated that the US has no business interfering with internal Lebanese issues, including the country’s defense strategy or Hezbollah’s efforts to disarm the country. “This aggression is not due to Hezbollah’s weapons, but rather aims to gradually occupy Lebanon and establish a “Great Israel” through Lebanon,” Qassem continued.

Salam, for his part, defended the “positive” discussions with Israel, which were held during a meeting of the military committee monitoring their ceasefire, saying they were only concerned with putting the 2024 truce into effect.

Negotiations are “under fire,” right?

Israel’s military continued the negotiations with additional attacks in southern Lebanon despite the apparent diplomatic opening. It launched its latest of hundreds of attacks on southern Lebanese villages on Thursday, breaking the 2024 truce and causing the deaths of dozens of civilians and destroying important infrastructure, all of which were attributed to Hezbollah.

Zeina Khodr, a correspondent for Al Jazeera in Beirut, claimed that the strikes “will continue until Hezbollah is completely disarmed.”

Hezbollah has publicly resisted disarming it, but the organization has continued to bombard and occupy Lebanon.

Qassem asserted in recent days that the armed group has the authority to respond to the country’s top military official’s assassination last month in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Hezbollah has “the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that,” according to Qassem, calling Haytham Ali Tabatabai’s killing “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime.”

The “language of negotiation”

The government’s negotiations with Israel, which are scheduled to resume on December 19, are seen by Aoun’s Information Minister Paul Morcos as the only way to progress, according to Morcos. There is negotiation as the only option. At a cabinet meeting, Aoun, a former commander of the Lebanese army, said, “This is the reality, and this is what history has taught us about wars,” Morcos claimed.

There would be no concession to Lebanon’s sovereignty, according to Morcos, and Aoun stressed the necessity for “the language of negotiation, not the language of war,” to prevail.

Lebanon was tasked with putting an end to armed groups’ hostilities in the wake of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in November 2024, with Lebanon tasked with putting an end to Israeli military action.

Despite the terms of the agreement, Israeli forces are still occupying at least five positions in Lebanese territory and have not withdrawn. More than 300 people have been killed in near-daily attacks across Lebanon, including at least 127 civilians, according to the UN.

The likelihood of a US attack on Venezuela seems to be getting more and more likely as the US naval deployments in the Caribbean get worse and rhetoric gets worse.

Since early September, the US has carried out military strikes on at least 21 Venezuelan boats it claims are trafficking drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 87 people. The Trump administration cites a threat to national security as justification for the attacks, according to the Trump administration. However, it has not provided any proof of drug trafficking, and experts claim that Venezuela is not the main hub for the flow of drugs, such as cocaine, into the US.

US President Donald Trump has given conflicting messages about whether he plans a ground operation inside Venezuela. He has denied that he was considering strikes inside the country while also denying that he has ruled and not yet. However, he has authorized CIA operations there.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claims Trump’s real objective is to force a regime change by removing him from power, and warned that the country would resist any such attempt.

What we know is as follows:

How was Venezuela susceptible to US attacks?

Analysts say the US has several military options for striking Venezuela, most of which employ air and maritime power rather than ground troops.

The US has recently deployed a sizable air and naval force to the Caribbean, including the USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the area close to Venezuela’s coast.

Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, stated to Al Jazeera that “the pieces are in place for an air and missile attack.”

“The first strike will likely be long-range missiles launched from air and sea because Venezuela has relatively strong air defences”, he said.

Analysts believe that targeting alleged cartel-linked infrastructure would be easier to justify internationally and to arrive at a conclusion quickly given the Trump administration’s rhetoric’s growing focus on the Maduro government, which it claims has links to drug gangs in Venezuela.

A ground invasion has been ruled out by almost all experts.

“I don’t really see that an attack is likely at all at this stage”, Elias Ferrer, founder of Orinoco Research and the lead editor of the Venezuelan media organisation Guacamaya, said.

Because the region’s ground forces are insufficiently strong for an invasion, Cancian said, “There will be no boots on the ground.”

Additionally, a large-scale land operation would likely face significant challenges domestically and be deeply unpopular.

“Any move toward overt ground operations would encounter significant legal barriers, congressional pushback, and the shadow of Iraq and Afghanistan – all of which make a full occupation extremely unlikely”, Salvador Santino Regilme, a political scientist who leads the international relations programme at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera.

Not a binary choice between “no attack” and an invasion a la the way of Iraq, he said, “an analysis should be made in terms of a spectrum of limited but potentially escalating uses of force.”

An “Iraq-style invasion” refers to a massive ground invasion that is followed by a US-led occupation, the dismantling of state institutions, and a never-ending nation-building effort. This type of intervention would require the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops, years of counterinsurgency operations, and significant political and financial investment.

What might Venezuela’s US attack entail?

Analysts warn that a military strike is far more likely to cause instability for the country than it does for policymakers in Washington.

Ferrer described the idea of an attack as opening a “Pandora’s box”.

Armed actors have the power to take control of some areas of the country, whether they’re politically motivated or just organized crime, because both the military and paramilitary actors have that power in a conflict. Not just the outcome, either. But you open up all of those possibilities”.

Ferrer warned that the political opposition would be one of the least likely to suffer in such a setting.

The Venezuelan opposition is one of the most likely losers from this scenario, he said, only because they don’t have strong ties to the armed and security forces or have strong ties to them.

Indeed, some analysts argue that even a limited US strike would likely strengthen the Maduro government in the short term.

According to Santino Regilme, “external aggression frequently results in a rally-around-the-flag effect and gives incumbents a potent pretext to criminalize dissent as treason.”

The opposition, which is already dispersed and socially uneven, would likely split more between those who support US pressure and those who fear being permanently discredited as foreign proxies, he added.

“Comparative experiences in Iraq, Libya, and other cases of externally driven regime change suggest that coercive intervention rarely produces stable democracy”, Santino Regilme explained.

Senior Venezuelan officials have taken a standoffish position in the face of mounting tensions. They publicly call for peace, but they also refer to any potential US action as a violation of international law.

“They]the US] think that with a bombing they’ll end everything. “Here, in this nation” On state television in early November, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello made fun of himself.

Maduro struck a similar tone earlier this month.

He declared, “We want peace, but peace with sovereignty, equality, and freedom.” We oppose peace in colonies and between slaves.

What is the US’s primary strategy?

The retired Marine Corps colonel from CSIS, Cancian, claimed that the US is working with the CIA to undermine Venezuela’s military’s loyalty to the Maduro government.

“The United States may tell these forces that they will be left alone if they remain in garrison during any fighting”, Cancian explained.

He claimed that during Desert Storm, the US carried out similar actions. A US-led coalition expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991.

In that conflict, US officials quietly signalled to certain Iraqi units that if they stayed in their barracks and did not resist, they would not be targeted – an approach that helped limit resistance during the ground offensive.

Cancian claims that the Venezuelan government has removed any military-related opposition.

There is therefore a high likelihood that the military and security forces will engage in combat, he added.

So how could Venezuela’s military respond to an attack?

Ferrer argued that everything depends on what the US sends them before an attack. What’s actually more intriguing is the kind of deal being tried by the US,” she said. How is it trying to involve or marginalise the armed forces and the security forces”?

Is it telling them, “Hey guys, you can stay in control of these businesses, these ministries – the generals can keep their posts,” he asked? Or will it engage in “de-Baathification” in Iraq, where all officers are fired and all soldiers are fired to purge the armed forces of pro-Maduro elements?

Marginalising the armed forces could trigger more, not less, violence, Ferrer warned.

You might have pockets of conflict that are occurring throughout the nation, not necessarily a coup or civil war that involve the entire nation. If the armed forces are marginalized, he continued, “that’s definitely a possibility.”

What might Venezuelans do as a general?

The picture is complicated, according to analysts. “Ordinary Venezuelans have already endured a prolonged socioeconomic collapse, hyperinflation, widespread shortages, international sanctions and one of the largest displacement crises in the world”, Santino Regilme said.

In 2025, a recent study found that about 28 to 30 percent of Venezuelans needed humanitarian aid.

A US attack, in contrast, “would likely be seen less as a moment of “liberation” and more as yet another layer of insecurity, one that threatens what is left of basic services like food and medicine.”

“Public opinion research shows deep distrust both toward the government and toward foreign military intervention, suggesting that popular reactions would be heterogeneous, ambivalent, and heavily shaped by class, geography, and political identity”, Santino Regilme added.

What would the international partners of Venezuela say?

Regional and international actors’ responses are likely to reflect their current strategic alliances with Caracas.

According to analysts, China, now one of Venezuela’s largest creditors and economic partners, is expected to maintain firm diplomatic support for Maduro, but its ability to shape events on the ground would be limited if open conflict erupted.

We are aware that China’s influence would be diminished in the event of an armed conflict between Venezuela and the US, according to Carlos Pina, a political analyst from Venezuela.

Russia, on the other hand, has a closer military stance toward Venezuela. Moscow has supplied advanced weapons systems, trained Venezuelan personnel, and maintained intelligence cooperation for years.

The use of military equipment that this Eurasian nation has sold to Caracas would be linked to Moscow’s [role],” said Pina.

In any case, both nations would continue to support Maduro politically. As the expert noted, “the diplomatic support of these countries for Nicolas Maduro would be undisputed”.

Could the US take aim at other nations?

Analysts warn that Venezuela’s US aggression might have regional effects.

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday this week, Trump warned that any country producing narcotics would be a potential target, and singled out Colombia for producing cocaine, which ends up in the US.

Therefore, according to experts, what is happening right now with Venezuela could serve as a general framework for defining regional domestic political crises as “narco-terrorist” threats, a term that could serve as a justification for military action under the auspices of counterterrorism or law enforcement.

According to Santino Regilme, “what is being tested around Venezuela is less a single country policy than a broader template, where complex domestic crises are reframed as “narco-terrorist” threats that justify extraterritorial use of force under the banners of law enforcement and counterterrorism.”

If applied to other countries in the region, he warned, this model could “further erode the already fragile constraints on the use of force in international law and weaken regional mechanisms that seek negotiated political settlements”.

A young Maqbool Fida Husain, who was barely in his 20s, made his way to Bombay, the Indian financial capital, in the 1930s, from Indore city, which was 600 kilometers (370 miles) away.

His dream was to make films. He started painting billboards for the burgeoning Bollywood film industry after finding it difficult to survive in the city.

A decade later, as newly independent India was finding its footing, Husain became a part of a group of artists who laid the foundations of modern art in the country. He later became one of the most well-known and renowned Indian modern artists of the 20th century, frequently referred to as “India’s Picasso.”

But despite the global renown and the numerous awards – internationally and at home in India – Husain found himself the target of a concerted hate campaign by a rising Hindu majoritarian movement starting in the 1990s, forcing him to flee.

Famous works by Husain have found permanent homes in Doha, Qatar’s capital, since the artist was granted citizenship in 2010, nearly 20 years after he fled into exile and 14 years after his death in London.

Lawh Wa Qalam: MF Husain Museum inaugurated

The board and the pen, or Lawh Wa Qalam, was inaugurated by Qatar last month, which honors Husain’s life and work that spanned more than six decades.

“Maqbool Fida Husain is a legendary artist – a true master whose artistic works transcend borders and connect cultures, histories, and identities”, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the chair of Qatar Foundation, said during the museum’s inauguration.

The celebrated artist’s final works, along with his other works, including photography, films, and poetry, are displayed in the new museum, which is located in Doha’s sprawling Education City.

At least 35 paintings, which were completed as part of his Arab Civilisation series before Husain died in 2011, are on display in the building.

Husain incorporated Arabic script and calligraphy into his bold modern style to illustrate the significance of the early Islamic military victory in The Battle of Badr. Arab Astronomy, another painting, honours scholars who mapped the heavens.

Seeroo fi al ardh (meaning “travel through the earth”, in Arabic), a multimedia art installation that opened in 2019, now forms part of the museum. Through the lens of the Arab region, the installation examines the evolution of human civilization.

“From the outset, one of the biggest questions for us was how to represent the range of Husain’s practice without reducing it to a simple linear story at Lawh Wa Qalam”, Noof Mohammed, museum curator, told Al Jazeera.

One of his most ambitious career stages was the one that we wanted to concentrate on presenting in Doha, which we wanted to do primarily. Projects like Seeroo fi al ardh and the Arab Civilisation series show him working on a scale and clarity that deserve to be seen together, and that shaped how we approached the narrative”.

The museum, which is spread over 290 square meters (3, 000 square feet), also houses his personal belongings, including Indian passport books, which he gave up in 2010.

“We were lucky that Husain made Qatar his home, where he was able to produce a lot of artwork that is part of the collection in the museum”, Kholoud Al-Ali, executive director of community engagement and programming at Qatar Foundation, said.

The Education City of the Qatar Foundation is home to some of the best educational institutions, including Georgetown University, Northwestern University, and Weill Cornell Medicine, as well as a hub for contemporary Arab art. The campus boasts more than 100 public art installations, including those by Damien Hirst and Faraj Daham.

Al-Ali told Al Jazeera, “This museum is going to be an addition to the Education City ecosystem, a place where students, researchers, and anyone interested in art can find essentially what they’re looking for.”

confined to his home

By the time Husain had moved to Doha, he had long secured his place as one of the world’s biggest figures – and as a lightning rod for criticism from the Hindu far-right in India.

His paintings, which were exhibited at international fairs like the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil alongside the renowned Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, broke auction records throughout the 20th century.

Husain was a versatile artist working across multiple mediums: Films, photography, tapestry and poetry.

In 1967, he directed the experimental film Through the Eyes of a Painter, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. He also directed Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities and Gaj Gamini, starring his muse, Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit.

Husain had a cult following and was adored by the press for decades. He developed a celebrity-like reputation by walking barefoot. The Calcutta Club, an elite British-era social club based in the Indian city of Kolkata, once came in for heavy criticism when it refused Husain entry for not wearing shoes.

Hindu right at attack

But by the mid-1990s, Husain’s portrayal of nude Hindu deities, some of them drawn in the 1970s, stirred controversy. He was accused of insulting Hindu sentiments and making up.

Multiple criminal police complaints were filed against the artist after a magazine, Vichar Mimansa, published his painting depicting Hindu deity Saraswati in the nude in 1996. A new wave of lawsuits resulted from a painting of Bharat Mata (Mother India) as a naked woman eight years later. He apologised, but that did not deter the torrent of hate and legal cases.

His Mumbai home was ransacked in 1998, and hundreds of police complaints were made all over the country. His exhibitions were vandalised in India and abroad, forcing Husain, in his 80s, to leave India in 2006 for safety.

The Supreme Court of India ruled that Husain’s Bharat Mata painting was a work of art in 2008, and the case was quashed. India has a tradition of graphic sexual iconography in temples, the top court reminded petitioners.

Husain felt uneasy about returning to India, where anti-Muslim rants were becoming more common. He died in 2011 in London at the age of 95.

Husain’s attacks weren’t isolated. The right to freedom of speech and expression in India has been declining since the rise of the Hindu right in the 1990s.

Numerous filmmakers, authors, and artists have been the target of increasing anti-Hindu nationalist attacks. Bollywood star Aamir Khan faced boycott calls from Hindu groups over his work and past media interviews, during which he expressed concerns about rising religious intolerance.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, came to power ten years ago, hundreds of Muslims have been lynched by Hindu vigilantes, hundreds of houses have been destroyed in violation of ‘bulldozer justice’ without the proper process, and a number of legal and institutional measures have been put in place, negatively affecting the minority community.

In January this year, a Delhi court ordered the seizure of “offensive” paintings by Husain. Hindu organizations threatened to obstruct the late painter’s Mumbai auction. The event eventually went ahead without incident under tight security.

His departure from India is tragic, and it is a sign of the kind of censorship and repression of speech and expression that has become much more prevalent, according to Sonal Khullar, an art historian from the University of Pennsylvania.

Khullar, who featured Husain in her 2015 book Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity and Modernism in India, 1930-1990, said the attack on Husain was due to both his Muslim heritage and the secular ethos that informed his work.

“I think it really came down to what this artist was able to represent in India, whether you understood him to represent Muslim peoples, societies, or whether you understood him to represent a secular ethos,” he said. And I think that’s what came under an attack”, she told Al Jazeera.

The architecture of the museum

The architecture of the museum was inspired by Husain’s sketch dubbed Lawh wa Qalam. The multiple influences that inspired Husain are reflected in the building design.

“For instance, the blue tile used in the building has its origins in Central Asia, and it has become an important part of the architectural language”, said Martand Khosla, the architect of the museum.

Given Husain’s impact on the Indian cultural landscape, Khosla claims the project was extremely personal.

“We grew up seeing his work … at airports, at convention centres and inside people’s homes”, he recalled. He continues to be significant. So in that sense, it was a real privilege to be able to come and build a museum for him”.

Husain’s work

Husain was one of the most well-known contemporary Indian artists, with between 30 000 and 40 000 pieces of art.

His paintings portrayed Indian icons such as Mahatma Gandhi, leader of India’s independence struggle, to mythologies such as the Mahabharata with motifs of rural and urban life.

According to Khullar, the art historian, “Many of his early paintings seemed to make references to both wall paintings from the country of India, the ones you would find in the caves of Ajanta and those you would see in village homes.”

Painter Akhilesh Singh, who wrote Husain’s biography, Maqbool, said the turning point of his career was Between the Spider and the Lamp, which portrays five women figures standing with a lamp and a spider coming down from the roof.

It is considered to be the most significant piece of contemporary Indian art, according to Singh. It was modernist yet rooted in the folk tradition of India, he told Al Jazeera, adding that it defined Husain’s style.

Husain’s artwork was a break from the revivalist nationalism of the past that had triggered the creation of Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

Secular ethos was the language of his writing, which incorporated elements of Western modernism with elements of Indian culture, history, and folk traditions.

His first solo art exhibition was held in Zurich five years after India’s independence. His work was showcased across Western cities over the following decades, earning him acclaim worldwide.

Singh, the biographer, said Husain’s peers moved abroad, but he stayed in India.

Singh told Al Jazeera, “He helped to establish the entire contemporary art scene of the nation,” adding that he occasionally donated his own paintings to start galleries.

His contribution to Indian art was recognised by the government. In 1991, he was honored with the second-highest civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan, among other things. He was also nominated to the upper house of parliament in 1986.

Early life and the future

In the state of Maharashtra in western India, Husain was born into a Sulaymani Bohra Muslim family in 1915. But early in his life, he was drawn towards art while studying calligraphy at a madrasa in Vadodara, located in present-day Gujarat state.

He relocated to Indore, in central India, where his father worked in a textile mill after his mother passed away.

In Indore, he was introduced to the images of Hindu deities and other figures from Indian mythology by an art teacher at the Indore School of Art, which he attended, said Singh, his biographer.

Husain departed Indore for Mumbai in 1933, according to Singh, while India was still under British colonial rule.

“He went to Bombay to pursue filmmaking. He believed that film offered more opportunities for expression. But he couldn’t find any entry. He then began to paint movie banners, according to Singh, an internationally renowned painter who resides in Bhopal, India.

Husain had to juggle jobs, also working in a toy factory, to earn additional income before he got a start in the art world. His first painting was sold for 10 rupees in 1934, which is still only 11 cents, according to the current exchange rates.

By the late 1940s, he had established himself as an avant garde artist known for his bold and bright colour on canvas. In 1947, Husain and Francis Newton Souza and Sayed Haider Raza co-founded the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group.

In addition to his provocative art with erotic and unconventional themes, Souza, who later worked in New York and London, was well-known.

But to those who knew him well, Husain was more than just an artist. The legendary artist and Singh’s father were close friends. “He treated me like his son”, Singh told Al Jazeera. Early in the morning, he brought a Jalebi (Indian sweet) to our Indore home, according to him.

Singh recalled how, in the early 2000s, Husain once invited him to London. Husain drove Singh around London in his Rolls-Royce while making breakfast there. “He enjoyed every moment of his life”, Singh said of Husain.

Husain continued to love his motherland despite giving up his Indian passport. “This is just a piece of paper. He said after giving his Indian passport in 2010, “India is my motherland, and I simply cannot leave that country.”

Singh said that while in exile, Husain wanted to visit three Indian cities – Varanasi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. “‘ He told me from exile, “I will come any time,” Singh said. “But he died before he could undertake his journey back to his homeland”.

That Husain was forced to spend his final years in exile remains a blot on India, said Khullar, the art scholar.

One could say that for a certain segment of society, in general, for India itself, is a loss due to a figure like Husain, who was a figure of the Indian art world, which he founded in 1947.

“It’s a dark time, and people are afraid”, she said.

Husain himself, however, never let the attacks deter him from pursuing his art. He spent time in exile working on art projects in Dubai and Qatar.

“He laughed off the controversies. He never touched on the past. He was a man of the future and always looked forward”, Singh said.

The museum serves as a tribute to the board and the pen, an outlet for current and upcoming generations to admire Husain’s wizardry, and a place for that ethos as well.