Rajeev Kumar
Research Scholar,
Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, Turkey

In examining the interwoven trajectories of art, ethics, and politics in Muslim South Asia, the figure of Maqbool Fida Husain emerges as a poignant emblem of what Professor Bruce B. Lawrence conceptualizes as Muslim cosmopolitanism. Far beyond a biographical study or aesthetic appraisal, the analysis of Husain’s work becomes, in Lawrence’s framing, a meditation on barzakh—the Qur’anic notion of in-betweenness—and how it animates the ethical, political, and artistic dimensions of Muslim identity in a plural world.

M.F. Husain’s life and work offer an expansive canvas—both literally and figuratively—through which to interrogate the layered tensions between rootedness and migration, tradition and experimentation, belief and belonging. A prolific artist known for his fearless engagement with religious, mythological, and political themes, Husain’s journey took him across continents while remaining deeply tethered to the Indic landscape of his birth. His art, as Lawrence emphasizes, does not merely depict a Muslim identity—it embodies its cosmopolitan excesses and ethical contradictions.

Professor Lawrence’s exploration of Husain draws from his own personal interactions with the artist, as well as a larger civilizational inquiry into the aesthetics of Muslim South Asia. Central to this inquiry is the concept of Muslim cosmopolitanism, which Lawrence rethinks not as a fixed political category but as a barzakh—a dynamic and liminal site of navigation between worlds. For Husain, this meant not simply being a Muslim artist, but one who inhabited the borderlines between Islam and Hinduism, between India and the Arab world, and between political exile and creative freedom.

The ethical dimension of Husain’s work, as discussed by Lawrence, lies in its refusal to remain silent or apolitical. Whether through his depictions of religious figures, women, or national motifs, Husain consistently disturbed conventional categories and invited both admiration and controversy. His aesthetic courage became, in this light, a form of ethical dissent, a refusal to be reduced to singular affiliations.

In situating Husain within broader histories of civilizational encounters, Lawrence draws attention to the 11th and 12th centuries—a period of rich exchange between Hindustan and the Maghrib—as a precursor to modern cosmopolitan currents. He links these histories to the cultural traffic shaped by colonialism, empire, and globalization, showing how Husain’s own mobility across Europe and the Middle East resonated with a deeper historical memory of Islamic movement and hybridity.

Yet, for Lawrence, Muslim cosmopolitanism is less a historical fact than an aspirational condition. It remains, in many ways, an ideal—difficult to fully realize, yet vital to imagine and sustain. Husain’s life and oeuvre, marked by exile and provocation, reflect both the possibility and precarity of this condition. He represents the tensions of being in-between—between geographies, communities, and modes of meaning—while also refusing to resolve them into neat identities.

The significance of this intellectual framing extends beyond Husain himself. It invites a reconsideration of Muslim identities in contemporary South Asia—not as monolithic or reactionary, but as complex, creative, and situated within larger ethical and aesthetic worlds. The cosmopolitan Muslim, in this sense, is not a universal abstraction but a historically grounded figure negotiating difference through embodied practices and imaginative vision.

In conclusion, Professor Bruce B. Lawrence’s engagement with M.F. Husain offers more than an academic tribute. It proposes a new grammar for thinking about Muslim subjectivity in the twenty-first century—a grammar of in-betweenness, ethical engagement, and aesthetic insurgency. In Husain’s paintings, we do not just see colors and forms; we see the outlines of a cosmopolitan ethic that continues to provoke, inspire, and unsettle.