I am not necessarily a fan of Prakash Jha, and I do not write this to argue a case for him, though I find his brand of cinema compelling, realistic, and a reflection of what goes on around us, with
Gangaajal being a personal favourite.
I write this since I am bewildered at the manner in which the Indian State has joined the league of pressure groups in this country which operate on muscle power to tell us what we can or cannot see. The UP government has banned the release of
Aarakshan; the Punjab government has followed suit till such time the state’s Screening Committee – whatever that is – previews the movie and submits its report. And Maharashtra wants specific scenes to be cut before the movie is allowed to be screened there. What model is this? Will releasing a movie after Censor clearance require it to be screened before 30 state government committees? A Bharat Darshan for the filmmaker?
I thought of writing what came to my mind when the UP government first disallowed the
Aarakshan team to even step into Lucknow for a routine promotional trip, but then desisted, since it is very easy for views on such issues to be misinterpreted as prejudices emerging from one’s surname, and which side of the reservation debate one is therefore presumed to stand on.
But right now, I think I’ll risk that. Because what we are seeing right now, with the Maya regime leading the way, is the setting of a precedence that must be fought, must be checked.
For the past few years, the trend of bodies and individuals demanding to see movies before they are released has been an increasing one, and because ten people throwing stones at a movie hall is good enough reason for screenings to be shut, most producers agree to this completely illegal and unjustifiable demand. If at all we need certification about whether a movie is fit to be screened or not, that job is the Censor Board’s. But if a Balasaheb has a problem with a movie, the movie may not release, or, at the very least, he will have to be shown
Sarkar at a private screening to ensure Sainiks don’t smash theatres. The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee ostensibly asked for twelve changes in
Singh is Kinng, post which it gave a ‘clean chit’ for it to be released. A
Jodhaa Akbar faces protests and subsequent ban if it cannot placate Rajput leaders. As to
Aarakshan, even as I write this, a news report has come in that says that Jha has agreed to cuts “suggested” and has “reached a settlement with the RPI” which is “now supporting the movie”. So, the Republican Party of India, whose activists stoned Jha’s home and office recently, has become a body whose support has to be earned by ‘reaching a settlement’. What is this, political negotiation or dons enforcing compliance?
The self-appointed leaders of various sections apart, politicians and governments step in to complete the job. They have more power to twist a filmmaker’s arm, almost always on the ground that some section in that state will be ‘upset’. UP has been fairly active; an innocuous film like
Welcome To Sajjanpur was banned in UP because it could supposedly ‘incite communal passions’, and could only be released with cuts that kept the government happy. The Madhuri Dixit starrer
Aaja Nachle was also banned in UP on the ground that it humiliated dalits as the lyrics of a song had references to the mochi community. Gujarat has also been proactive in displaying the state’s power: while
Fanaa faced trouble after Aamir made unfriendly remarks on the Narmada dam, the state predictably refused to allow the screening of
Parzania as the movie was based on the 2002 riots and could ‘lead to communal disharmony’. As if the Gujarat riots were triggered by filmmakers! Rajasthan came down on
Jodhaa Akbar since some Rajputs were upset, Himachal stopped
Traffic Signal since the use of the word ‘kinnar’ was deemed offensive to people of Kinnaur district. Bihar banned
Black Friday. A film you may not have heard of –
Tango Charlie, an Ajay Devgn starrer released in 2005 – was banned in Assam since it supposedly insulted the Bodo community. The Centre steps in sometimes too; if you remember, the Defence Ministry wanted to see
Rang De Basanti before it was released to ensure that MiGs weren’t trashed.
One could dig out more instances of pressure groups, community ‘leaders’, outright bullies and politicians temporarily in power deciding what we can, or cannot see. But the point is not a compilation. The point is that we are going on a reverse track – instead of a more open and accommodating society, we are quietly legitimizing this nonsense of vetting by anyone who has a fragile ego. Today, anything you write, anything you make, can hurt SOMEONE’s ego or sentiments. And that someone has to be mollified. Or else..!
Jha made an interesting point in the course of a conversation a couple of days back. “What you see is a movie” he said, “but for me, it’s a book. From
Daamul in 1985, to
Gangaajal,
Mrityudand, and now
Aarakshan, all I am doing is observing social change, writing it, and then putting that on celluloid. I am a chronicler of history in my own small way”. The problem is that our leaders – the elected, the unelected, or to quote Mr Manish Tewary, the unelectable – want us to consume our current history the way
they want to. Divergence is repeatedly and conveniently attacked on the grounds of ‘hurting sentiments’.
This whole point about our otherwise callous, brutal and indifferent governments being so touchy about law and order and people’s sentiments is a little far out. Case in point is UP. The fiery leader rose to power with walls plastered with the BSP’s original election slogan
, ‘Tilak, Tarazu aur Talwar, Inko Maaro Joote Chaar’. For her to today take the moral high ground that dialogues in a movie will ‘incite violence and disharmony’, is far more
filmy than any of Jha’s films have ever been.
UP’s Entertainment Tax Commissioner told our Lucknow reporter, “After viewing the film, we have enough reasons to believe that it could incite public sentiment, and therefore the department has taken the decision to suspend its release. Besides the objectionable dialogues, we felt that the film is raking up the debate over reservation, which, frankly, has been dead for a few years.”
Since
when did ‘raking up a social debate which has been dead’ become a legal offence? It’s a good thing the gentlemen adjudicating this were not there when Attenborough’s
Gandhi released, else they would probably have taken affront to the film raking up the debate over Chauri Chaura, non-violence, and India’s partition.
Saravanan Meenatchi 03/29/12
What happens if you embark on a suicidal rotation policy? Well, you end up
running in circles and, at the end of it all, you might only feel giddy and fail
to stay in control. 
To lose a plot, one has to have a plan in the first place. The Indian team's performance in Australia resembled a do-it-yourself-kit which the players had to assemble in the field on match day. The strategy, or lack thereof, was bound to flounder, and it did.
The steering wheel of our cabinet, which appears to have unmatched wheels (some with flat spots too), decided a few days ago that tougher penalties would be imposed on people who misused the roads by doing stuff behind the throttle and brake that they otherwise would not do even in the privacy of their sound-proof de-bugged offices of public good - they committed traffic offences! Most of these penalties would be by way of monetary fines on, who else, the urban middle class.
March 2 - Politics is a strict no-no for actor Shekhar Suman, who is coming back on the small screen with the new season of his popular satirical show "Movers and Shakers". However, his first guest on the inaugural episode of March 12 would be Anna Hazare.
The other day i met someone who told me that he'd had to postpone his daughter's wedding. Janampatris didn't match? i asked. Like India and Pakistan, janampatris have a way of not matching, not even cricket matching, which at least India and Pakistan do. The janampatris are fine; it's the damn price that's the problem, was the reply. I saw his point. The price of food being what it is, feeding a hungry baraat is no joke, not even a sick one. Veggie prices are very high, never mind those of chicken and meat, i agreed. Chicken-shicken, i'm talking about the price of gold, said the guy. Who can afford to buy the bloody thing now? And what sort of shaadi can you have without gold for the stree-dhan, the bridal sho-sha? 
Samsung is a company with a penchant for sequels, and just a few months after releasing Exhibit A, here comes Exhibit B: the Samsung Exhibit II 4G.
At least 25 passengers, including five women, were killed and more than 30
people injured when an overloaded Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) bus
rolled down a gorge near here on Monday evening. 
Have you come across someone who has twitched his eyebrows at the sight of Anna Hazare's visuals, as if to suggest he has had enough of the man and his movement? You should have. Have you heard professional marketers of cynicism insist that the Gandhian activist is 'blessed' by a foreign hand? If you watch the television, you surely have. Have you spoken to someone who believes, or pretends to believe, that the movement is theatrical, perhaps farcical? Absurd expenditure of words being a passion with so many professional critics, you possibly have.
Every subject has its own requirement of money. A budget doesn't decide the fate of a film at the Box office. Exaggerated budgets don't guarantee success. I know these days there is a trend to say -`This is a 100 cr budget film.' and so on. People try to make the budget seem like a virtue. It isn't. For a film to succeed you have to a strong story at the core. Everything else is secondary. 
Of late there has been a lot of talk of 'governance deficit'. Translated into plain language that means that the people who are meant to run the public affairs of this country - the politicians and the bureaucrats - don't know how to do their jobs. The bureaucrats - who in order to become bureaucrats generally would have had to pass often extremely competitive exams - might say that they know exactly what their job is, and how to do it. However, they are often prevented from doing so because of political interference. Maybe that's just buck-passing on the part of babudom, for there are many who believe that the ills of misgovernance that routinely plague the country are caused more by a generally inefficient, corrupt and unaccountable bureaucracy than by politicians. According to this argument, while politicians have to at least pretend to perform before the electorate or risk being voted out of office when their tenure is over, babus are secure in their jobs for the full length of their careers, and are under no compulsion to do their jobs or even to pretend to do so. 
She lost her mother at the age of four. She lost her son when he was four months old. She lost her husband two years after she lost her son. She lost her kingdom soon after. Eventually, the nascent, birthing nation whose very entity she ignited - lost her.
