Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: barefoot across India: an artist and his country / Sumathi Ramaswamy -- Modernist myths and the exile of Maqbool Fida Husain / Geeta Kapur -- Art on trial: civilisation and religion in the persona and painting of M.F. Husain / David Gilmartin & Barbara D. Metcalf -- Mapping India after Husain / Sumathi Ramaswamy -- Secret histories of Indian modernism: M.F. Husain as Indian Muslim artist / Ananya Jahanara Kabir -- Of M.F. Husain and an impossible love / Veena Das -- "I am an Indian and a painter, that is all": intention and the secular subject in contemporary India / Karin Zitzewitz -- Defending Husain in the public sphere: the Sahmat experience / Ram Rahman -- Fault-lines in a national edifice: on the rights and offences of contemporary Indian art / Tapati Guha-Thakurta -- Taking and making offence: Husain and the politics of desecration / Kajri Jain -- The bliss of Madhuri: Husain and his muse / Patricia Uberoi -- Viewed from across the globe: the art of M.F. Husain / Susan S. Bean -- Barefoot across the nation -- A metaphysical secularist? decoding M.F. Husain as a Muslim painter in exile / Bruce B. Lawrence.