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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: Sep 22, 2018, 07:00 AM IST
In this age of “competitive intolerance”, taking offence has become a birthright. Be it a book, a film, a play, or a song, any creative endeavour that doesn’t conform to a community’s so-called standards of decency runs the risk of incurring the wrath of moral guardians. Worse still, the offence industry is flourishing and makes its presence felt every now and then with some muscle-flexing and high-octane drama.
Actor-producer Salman Khan’s film Loveratri, now changed to Loveyatri, has fallen foul of a fringe Hindutva group, Hindu Hi Aage (HHA), which has announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh for thrashing Salman Khan in public. In a lighter vein, anyone willing to take up the challenge might end up breaking his own limb because the superstar is surrounded by a posse of beefy bodyguards.
However, HHA’s indignation borders on the ridiculous. The Hindi film industry, especially those churning out potboilers, play it safe because they want handsome box-office returns. The idea is to entertain and rake in the moolah. Loveyatri, like any Salman Khan film, falls in that category. To take the title of such a film seriously and then spin a narrative of insult to Hinduism by relating it with the holy month of Navratri is an exercise in sublime ridiculousness.
Ideally, groups like HHA should be ignored, but sections of the media looking to sensationalise such threats add fuel to the fire by giving them their 15 minutes of fame. Not so long ago, the period film Padmavati, name changed to Padmaavat, and the fierce protests it sparked, had kept the nation on tenterhooks.
The Rashtriya Rajput Karni Sena (RRKS), a Rajasthan-based organisation, was catapulted into the limelight for its nuisance value. RRKS lived up to its reputation by vandalising theatres, agitating on the streets, and threatening to chop off actor Deepika Padukone’s nose if the film was released. After much ado, Padmaavat did see the light of day when the film certification board allowed its release without any cuts but with five modifications. By conservative estimates, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s magnun opus collected more than Rs 500 crore worldwide.
The controversy had ensured that people saw the film if only to figure out whether the fuss was worth it. Who knows if the HHA will end up actually giving undue publicity to the film? At a deeper level, we need to introspect about a society’s low threshold of tolerance and the normalisation of violence as a means of dissent.
Concurrently, we should also acknowledge the fact that by giving in to the demands of fringe groups, state governments have virtually given a carte blanche to the lumpens. Let’s face it: Politics in India mostly focuses on identity, religion and ethnicity. From Salman Rushdie to Tamil writer Perumal Murugan, writers, artistes and artists have become easy prey for different kinds of groups, which have enforced a culture of ban in the country.
For all its worth, the trailer of Loveyatri like countless other sneak-peeks of that genre, can be called anything but vulgar. But then, who will bell the “offended” cat?
