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| Edited By: Yogesh Pawar |Source: DNA |Updated: Feb 04, 2018, 07:20 AM IST
At Rs150 crore and counting, Padmaavat is sure making box office history. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's opulent drama, which hit a mass low in cinematic content, has also given a new lease of life to the political fringe. After they hogged headlines for over a year (from slapping the filmmaker, destroying sets and equipment to forcing the film to undergo a name change and several cuts/modifications) opposing the film, many feel it is time India, as a polity, decides what it wants to do with the extra-constitutional, while this storm seems to have put its worst in the past.
"Our lawmakers, law enforcement agencies and even the thinking population, has allowed this Frankenstein to grow right from Independence, creating haloed holy cows. This has led to attacks on freedom of expression progressively getting more direct, brazen and in your face with no consideration even for the human cost," laments Dr Kesari Dave, an Ahmedabad-based political scientist. She cites the Karni Sena's ugly attack on a school bus with young children and women aboard (Gurgaon, January 25) which cruelly drove home how "lumpenism" is destroying the very idea of India. "For a country positioning itself as a superpower awaiting its rightful position at the international high table, such boorish Stone Age stances can only attract sniggers from the international community. Especially so, when otherwise loquacious powers give quiet acquiescence to such lawlessness. We'll have to decide whether we want to be known for the Mars mission, proudly displayed on our new Rs 2,000 note, or for torching of public property in a bid to milk the anarchy, polarise and win elections."
This academic's concerns find an echo over 500km away in India's financial capital of Mumbai. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, whose works have often zoomed in on the gritty, real world with iconic films like Dev D, Gangs of
Wasseypur and Raman Raghav 2.0, has said: "The way things are, it's pretty scary. Everyone gets offended so easily, it is becoming increasingly difficult to be an artiste."
But has it always been this bad? "Yes," avers Dave, "This nonsense began in 1947, when one of India's greatest poets Majrooh Sultanpuri was thrown into Arthur Road Jail by CM Morarji Desai of the then Bombay Presidency for penning: 'Commonwealth ka daas ye Nehru / Aur tabahi laane na paaye (Hope this stooge of the Commonwealth, Nehru/ Doesn't bring us more doom).' To do this soon after Independence when Nehru was likened to a demigod was unthinkable. Desai told Sultanpuri to recant and apologise but the poet did neither preferring to suffer a two-year prison term instead."
Poets aren't the only ones facing the brunt of political whims. Many writers too, have found their works banned (officially/unofficially) and themselves on the wrong side of the law. They have been threatened with dire consequences or left to the mercy of troll brigades. It began with a ban on The Ramayana (1954), a spoof by the Thiruvananthapuram-born Indo-Irish Aubrey Menen. Some of the sections had been found offensive.
Novelist, playwright and screenwriter Kiran Nagarkar should know what Menen must have felt. After all, his Bedtime Stories ran afoul of authorities a whole decade before Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses was banned. The play speaks of choosing between the Pandavas—subject to human weaknesses and the Kauravas—who are no better. "I couldn't get this play staged despite Dr Shreeram Lagoo himself taking the lead. The Maharashtra censor board wanted a whopping 78 cuts!" he laughs. Though theatre persons, critics and academics embarrassed the government into reconsidering, by then the Shiv Sena had sniffed a soft target and opportunity to unleash its signature disruption to scare away actors. This ensured Bedtime Stories faced an extra-constitutional ban for 17 long years!
Legendary playwright Vijay Tendulkar too faced the ire of such bans for both his acidic critique of marriage and caste in Sakharam Binder and the iconic Ghashiram Kotwal, an allegory of the Shiv Sena's tactics to get power.
Pradeep Dalvi's Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy also faced vicious attacks and had to knock on the courts' doors to overthrow a ban.
Whether Salman Rushdie's epic Satanic Verses (which India was the 2nd to ban after Singapore) or The Moor's Last Sigh (where a character, Raman Fielding, resembled Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. A dog in the book was also called, Jawaharlal, which then PM PV Narasimha Rao thought alluded to India's first PM. Though the government's subsequent unofficial ban was thrown out by the Supreme Court, booksellers refused to stock the book in Maharashtra, fearing Sena vandals.), both have suffered authoritarian overreach.
Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin (who lives in exile in Kolkata) has also found several of her works banned in West Bengal. Understanding Islam through Hadis by Ram Swarup was banned "for creating communal disharmony."
A year after the Hindi translation was banned in 1990, the authorities banned the English original too. Not only was American scholar James Laine's 'Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India' banned in 2004 following protests, a ban lifted only in 2010 when the Supreme Court upheld the Bombay HC's lifting of the ban. Even as the case chugged along, Sambhaji Brigade activists attacked Pune's Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute protesting Laine's translation of the 300-year-old poem 'Sivabharata' (The Epic of Shivaji). This book was also banned in January 2006. Subsequent governments have not revoked the still-in-place ban. Australian journalist Hamish McDonald's unauthorised biography of Indian business tycoon and Reliance Industries founder Dhirubhai Ambani, 'The Polyester Prince: The Rise of Dhirubhai Ambani' was also stopped from being published with an injunction.
The way the internationally acclaimed 'Picasso of India', Maqbool Fida Husain was hounded out of India for his work, which some far-right groups took offence to, is too recent to be forgotten. Forced to accept a Qatari citizenship, one of India's greatest artistes died a broken-hearted man in London in 2011. Anjolie Ela Menon, one of India's most well known contemporary artistes, who had a long association with the painter, has lamented how Husain was treated. "His detractors didn't understand him or his art in the first place. Truly sad, that some wannabe failed artistes and writers joined hands with fringe groups to attack him repeatedly and forced him to leave the country."
Actress Shabana Azmi had told this writer soon after Husain passing away: "We as a nation failed to do enough to protect him from the fringe. All of us need to introspect whether a man who had such strong roots in India (his mother wore the traditional Maharashtrian nauvari sari) deserved to be treated like this."
Given the strong influence of films in India, no surprises that both feature films and documentaries have often faced bans. Gulzar's political drama Aandhi (1975) was banned by the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government, given the strong resonances of the late PM in the way the lead Suchitra Sen was styled. Aandhi only released in 1977, after Indira Gandhi lost the elections and the Janata Party came to power. A political satire on the Emergency, Kissa Kursi Ka (1977) also faced a similar fate by the same government. The Shah Commission, which looked into the excesses of Emergency, found Sanjay Gandhi and then I&B minister VC Shukla (who also banned Kishore Kumar songs from All India Radio after the singer refused to sing at an Indira Gandhi rally) guilty of destroying the film's prints.
After the Shiv Sena arm-twisted filmmaker Mani Ratnam into changing how Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray was portrayed in Bombay, (set against the 1992-93 riots) this became a norm. Whether Fanaa (banned in Gujarat after actor Aamir Khan's support for the Sardar Sarovar Dam), Wake Up Sid (Raj Thackeray objected to the city being called Bombay), My Name is Khan (Shah Rukh Khan's support for inclusion of Pakistani players in IPL saw the Shiv Sena target his film), Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (Raj Thackeray's MNS issued an ultimatum as the fillm starred Pakistani actor Fawad Khan), Mersal (The Tamil film raised hackles of the BJP which fumed over lead Vijay mocking the new tax regime and Digital India campaign) or Indu Sarkar (Congress disrupted the screening of this Madhur Bhandarkar film based on the excesses of the Emergency. The censor board only allowed its release after 12 cuts and two disclaimers), movies have become the easiest soft target for extra-legal bans. "If this is the reaction to feature films, can you imagine the struggle filmmakers like Anand Patwardhan (Bombay: Our City; Father, Son, and Holy War; War and Peace and Jai Bhim Comrade) or Sirdhar Rangayan (Gulabi Aaina) have had to put up with?" asks Dave.
Booker Prize awardee, essayist Arundhati Roy, who has in the past said she sees "no end to the conflicts in India that arise from the country's taboos and result in the lynching, shooting, burning and mass murder of fellow human beings", has lamented: "Entire sections of society are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the next assault will come. Censorship has been outsourced to the mob."
Sahitya Akademi awardee Nagarkar shakes his head in disgust with regard to the vile threats put out by the Karni Sena to cut Deepika Padukone's nose. "I'm not exactly crazy about Sanjay Leela Bhansali and can't stand his kind of cinema but that doesn't mean anyone should have the right to stop him from making the films he wants," the Sahitya Akademi awardee Nagarkar told this writer. "We mustn't forget this is the land of Mahatma Gandhi who stood up to the British empire."
Wonder if democracy will break into a ghoomar on that note...
"The Supreme Court has time and again said once a film is passed by censors, it is the duty of the state government to ensure law and order is maintained", says Senior advocate Mihir Desai, adding, "While violent protests and stone pelting are visible, one can't track instructions given by political outfits/mobs to not allow a certain film to screen." Desai admits there's little anyone can legally do in such situations. "Theatres are privately owned and it could be argued that they have the right to show/not show a film. It is very difficult to prove coercion out of fear that their theatres might be vandalised for non-compliance." Wondering why law enforcement agencies "mollycoddle" troublemakers, he says: "At a time when people get arrested for so much as a Facebook post, why can't these riotous mobs be arrested? Obviously, governments allow this to happen. Once in power, all parties behave the same."
