Ban gets brutal : The Tribune India

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Ban gets brutal

There is a grotesque campaign underway, factually wrong as it is always when it comes to Hindutva luminaries and trolls, naming Muslim boys in what is a deadly and diabolical communal twist.

Ban gets brutal

in the name of honour: Ever since Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavati went to floors, Karni Sena activists have been demonstrating against it. The film finally released as Padmaavat last week photos: agencies



Amit Sengupta

There is a grotesque campaign underway, factually wrong as it is always when it comes to Hindutva luminaries and trolls, naming Muslim boys in what is a deadly and diabolical communal twist. That is, these boys actually stoned the GD Goenka School bus at Gurugram, instead of the goons of the Karni Sena, who had earlier torched a bus near the same site with the alleged ‘intent’ of burning the 30 passengers inside, as the bus driver later said.

In a tale of two grotesque public spectacles, a Modi-bhakt and ex-feminist, and a hardline ex-journo fanatic, are in the midst of some vicious controversy; she, first, celebrating the fictitious piece of organised rumour, and, he, correcting her, and, then, she, accepting her mistake in a tweet, hiding a Freudian, slippery disappointment, which is as transparent as her initial celebratory glee.

In this grotesque scenario, they seem to have totally forgotten to see the 13-second video shot inside the bus. The video recounts the horror story of teachers and children, who were finally lucky to escape. It shows that anything disastrous could have happened to them, the teachers asking the kids to duck and lie down, a little child clutching onto her female teacher in desperation, another crying loudly in fear, others screaming as the nightmare continues with stones being hurled in a volley, and iron rods breaking the glass windows under whom the teachers and students were crouching.

The grim picture

Indeed, the tragedy is that events around the metropolis and its satellites still make news, while the margins are ‘fillers or capsules’ in the inside pages. Hence, the nation does not seem to want to know that children of a school called St. Paul’s Convent at Jaura in Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh had just about recently gone through a similar ordeal. Terrorised, the parents did not even dare to file a police complaint. And what was the crime of the school kids? They were dancing in the school function on a song ‘Ghoomar’ from the film Padmaavat.

So, is this for the first time that violence has happened on the sets, while shooting, or before the screening of films in India? No. However, it is as clear as the beginning and end of a fairy tale that this is no fairy tale. The Frankenstein monsters operating like Neo-Nazis unleashed by the mainstream and fringe in power, where they two operate as if in a jarring orchestra, has now moved from bylanes into the heart of darkness, whereby the State apparatus itself becomes a catalyst and predator in its bid to polarise society, violating all democratic institutions, notably, the Censor Board and the Supreme Court. And, indeed, without even watching the film, or, accepting the fact that it is a 16th century magic-realism fantasy, not based on historical facts — even while glorifying Sati — threatening that Rajput women yet will commit mass suicide if the film is released.

In this history of infamy, Deepa Mehta’s Water and Fire were brutally attacked; their sets damaged, they physically threatened, thereby postponing the release for months. Parzania — based on a true story of the Gulbarg Society massacre in Ahmedabad, Gujarat 2002, whereby a Parsi couple lost their little son after an organised mob-attack burnt and hacked 69 residents of the society, including a former MP and scholar Ehsan Jaffrey — was not allowed screening in Gujarat. I saw the premier of the film with a handful of people at a Delhi auditorium, along with director Rahul Dholakia and actress Sarika. The film had shaken the audience with its poignant depiction of the tragedy.

Can eliminating the film eliminate the truth of that massacre? Can banning individuals and their creative work — also eliminate scripts, ideas, images, sounds, text, music, theatre, memories, archives?

 As for Padmaavat, according to reports, the  CBFC’s Examining Committee asked the film’s producers — the director was not present during the censor screening — to  remove the shots where the stomach of the lead actress was visible. However, this kind of editing or photo-shopped images would have damaged the choreography of the dance chorus (Ghoomar). Absurdly, the director, apparently, preferred to conceal Deepika Padukone’s body using computer graphics.

Then, it was better

Indeed, earlier, the routine cabaret in Bombay movies was enacted by a ‘side-actress’, often a vamp, who had to finally die an unnatural death protecting the hero or some sundry good man from a blood-thirsty villain. It was Helen, a magical dancer, who lifted the original item song to scintillating heights without subverting basic moral or family values, never pushing titillation to the limits of vulgarity. In contemporary Bollywood, let us not even dare to rewind the raunchy item songs made (in)famous by top actresses, who have hitherto taken over from the ‘side-actresses’, in full public spectacles of skin and flesh, with lyrics loaded with obscene innuendo to match the rising adrenaline of sex-starved male audiences in India. ‘Fevicol’ or ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ would give a raunchy run for its money to item songs like ‘Rambha ho’ or Padma Khanna’s famous striptease in Jewel Thief — Husn ke Saat Rang.

Playing with scissors

Earlier, it was Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalani who put a spanner in the wheels of mainstream films. Nihalani himself has made raunchy films with dance sequences, which would make even the most lecherous go pink. However, once he took the high pulpit, he became the god of morality.

To name a few, Udta Punjab by Anurag Kashyap, on the drug problem in Punjab, was literally canned. It got its life after a protracted campaign by the director, his colleagues in the industry, and civil society. Lipstick Under My Burkha by Alankrita Shrivastava, was hounded by Nihalini’s Censor Board. She was humiliated. Finally, after its release, the audience discovered, how great this movie was, and how it opened up questions which Indian society was refusing to address.

Similarly, S Durga, (earlier, Sexy Durga), in Malayalam, by avant garde filmmaker Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, despite being widely acclaimed by critics in Kerala and international film festivals, was hounded. This, despite the Kerala High Court okaying it. It was not screened at the Goa International Film Festival hosted by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

The film depicts the nocturnal underbelly of a predatory, brutish and macho society. A stranded couple on the streets, suddenly discovers, that the whole world has turned an enemy, and the young woman ‘Durga’, otherwise named after a goddess, who is worshipped in temples and homes, is suddenly turned into an object of lust and violence. It narrates the dark underbelly of the night streets of our urban spaces, where women, even with a companion, can’t venture out by design or by mistake. She is at once dubbed as an object who should be brutalised.

Darker overtones

The dark irony is that the big guns in the Mumbai film industry have chosen to duck the controversy. Not one of them have stood up for Bhansali’s freedom of expression, the murderous threats against Deepika Padukone, and the violence unleashed on cinema theatres and streets. A fairy tale or a grotesque story?

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