Missing Whistling Woods

The letter written by filmmaker Shyam Benegal and industrialist Anand Mahindra to the prime minister, urging him to intervene and save Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods institute, is uncalled for. It has already been established that the institute was set up by bending the rules, if not breaking them.

Both the Bombay high court and the Supreme Court have ruled that former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh misused his discretionary powers to allot land for the institute at rock bottom rates and ordered that the land be returned to the state. Moreover, it is not as if Whistling Woods is a charitable organisation, curtailment of whose functioning would cause an irreparable loss.

As the two gentlemen have claimed, Whistling Woods may well be the best film institute in India today, but it is still a commercial venture that charges students a hefty amount to enter its portals. Surely the promoters can set it up afresh elsewhere after following all the rules?

No one would question the integrity of Benegal or Mahindra, but they must find other ways to express their commitment to the arts instead of rooting for an illegal structure that stands on land obtained by questionable means. Benegal is a member of the academic advisory board of Whistling Woods while Mahindra is on the institute’s governing council.

Perhaps they could use their positions to impress upon Ghai, prime mover of the institute, to look at more honourable options than pleading with the prime minister to use his executive powers to protect it against the courts’ fiat.