Comment

Aamir Khan’s new film Fanaa will not be released in Gujarat. Simultaneously, a retrospective of MF Husain’s paintings organised by Asia House in London, has been wound up after two of the paintings were vandalised. The organisation protesting against Husain is called Hindu Human Rights. The protests were about two paintings called Durga and Draupadi. The objections were to the depiction of the goddesses in the ‘nude’.

The protest against Aamir Khan concerns his stand on the Narmada Dam. Now, Fanaa will not be screened anywhere in the state. Not just that, the people of Gujarat will boycott all the actor’s films. The boycott even takes on strange Gandhian overtones; everything to do with Aamir Khan will be banned, especially the products he endorses like Coca Cola and Titan watches.

You see the action-reaction, pulls and pressures of democracy at work here, where if someone has the right to a point of view, someone else has a right to oppose it. So if Husain has a right to paint as he wishes, others have a right to express their dislike of the results. And if Aamir Khan supports the rights of Narmada oustees, others have the right to say that they will neither see his films nor drink his drink, nor tell the time with his watches.

It doesn’t, of course, stay there. The Hindu Human Rights people may have organised the protest outside the London gallery, which is legitimate, but then someone destroyed two paintings, which is not. With Aamir Khan too, the people of Gujarat have a right to be upset because the Narmada Dam has become a highly charged issue. If they decided to ostracise him, you would consider that legitimate too. But who has heard the voice of Gujarat? What we hear, decibel upon increasing decibel, is the voice of a certain group called Yuva Morcha, which is one of the youth wings of the BJP and a certain individual called Amit Thakkar, whose record includes a physical assault on Medha Patkar.

Now the Yuva Morcha in no way represents the people of Gujarat; why, it doesn’t even represent the yuva of that state. It’s a political organisation which represents at best, the views of its members. In fact, I’m quite certain, it does not represent the views of the distributors or exhibitors of films in Gujarat, both of whom stand to lose a lot of money with Fanaa’s ban. They do not, I am equally sure, represent the views of Coke and Titan retailers who will also be financially hit. Finally, did the Yuva Morcha take the referendum of the cinema going public to get their views? Anyway you look at it, the Yuva Morcha’s stand is undemocratic and not much different from the vandalism that took place at Husain’s exhibition.

But this isn’t all. Take the two together and things begin to add up. Bring in other, seemingly unconnected happenings elsewhere in the country, and you will see a pattern emerging. One is the election in Rae Bareilly which Sonia Gandhi won by a record margin. One of her opponents who lost their deposits was the BJP’s Vinay Katiar, one of Hindutva’s vociferous flag-bearers. Elsewhere, LK Advani’s Rath Yatra has proven to be an abject failure. And the recent by-elections haven’t brought any cheer to the BJP either.

So what does the party do? It begins the process by which the electorate gets communally divided. It begins to light little fires everywhere so that communal passions are once again aroused and the resulting polarisation of the electorate helps them win again in next year’s assembly elections in Gujarat and strengthens the party in other parts of the country.

Seen in that perspective, the recent riots in Vadodara too fall in this pre-meditated pattern: the demolition of a 300-year-old dargah was clearly intended to
provoke riots, which the police predictably failed to control. Incidentally, is it also mere coincidence that even now, passions are being whipped up in Karnataka over the shrine of the Sufi Baba Budangiri?

The problem with MF Husain and Aamir Khan is not what they have done, but the fact that they are Muslims. Hindu artists have painted unclothed goddesses without any problem (in any case, Husain’s paintings are over 20 years old). Arundhati Roy’s stand on Narmada has been even stronger than Aamir Khan’s but it has not brought about any call for boycotting her book.

Husain and Aamir are only tools in a larger design. As is Fanaa, which to add a little twist to the story, is about a Hindu-Muslim love affair.