"India's most famous artist has apologized for representing the country as a nude goddess in a painting. Maqbool Fida Hussain, India's best known contemporary artist, promised to withdraw his painting portraying a nude "Mother India" from a charity auction to be held later Wednesday in New Delhi, Press Trust of India news agency said Wednesday. Hussain's apology follows protests by several Hindu groups objecting to the painting and to earlier works by the artist portraying naked Hindu goddesses. Spurning his apology, dozens of Hindu hard-liners on Wednesday burned a paper effigy of Hussain after marching through the streets of Kanpur, an industrial town nearly 30 miles southwest of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, Press Trust reported."