Mersal or Padmavati

FILM producers in India often rue that it’s nearly impossible to make films on political subjects. Now, it seems political references too can invite trouble for them. Tamil superstar Vijay starrer Mersal which opened in theatres a day prior to Diwali is being lapped up by the audiences. Hailed as a rollicking potboiler, it has set the cash registers ringing. Yet, all that the state unit of the BJP in Tamil Nadu can hear are some dialogues not favourable to government policies such as the GST and demonetisation. Even if a couple of one-liners in the film are politically loaded, the BJP neither has the moral authority nor legal standing to demand cuts in a film duly certified by the CBFC. 

Not too long ago, the former CBFC chief, Pahlaj Nihalani, was breathing fire and axing anything and everything that didn’t meet his sanskari standards. With his replacement by a sensitive and sensible poet, Prasoon Joshi, filmmakers thought they could breathe easy. But creative freedom remains under siege from different quarters. Political parties are rattled each time they face an inconvenient truth on celluloid. Obscure outfits, such as the Karni Sena in Rajasthan, see red without provocation. After vandalising the sets of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati, it now threatens to block the film’s release in the state.  

Cinema’s detractors forget that it is often a commentary on society and history. Though Mersal is essentially an entertainer, every director reserves the right to make a political comment too. If politicians are every day taking potshots at one another, there is no credible reason to make unreasonable demands on the film fraternity. In a curious case of overreach, the BJP has proclaimed that a few scenes in Mersal are not just anti-Centre, but also against the country. Will it apply the same standards when a biopic on Dr Manmohan Singh is released? More pertinently, it must revisit its stand on Madhur Bhandarkar’s Indu Sarkar which ran into trouble for delving into the period of Emergency. By no stretch of imagination is cinema the mouthpiece of governmental authorities. That happens only in authoritarian regimes.