Country has become more intolerant -- Merchant

Country has become more intolerant -- Merchant
KAVEREE BAMZAI

NEW DELHI, MARCH 1: ``The script was vetted by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry as well as the Government of Kerala. What else do they want?'' asks an irate Ismail Merchant. He's protesting against the Anglo-Indian reaction to his film Cotton Mary.

``We never wanted to portray Anglo-Indians in a bad light,'' adds the market-savvy half of the Merchant-Ivory partnership. ``It talks about the Anglo-Indian community at a specific point in history -- 1954 -- and how they had been brainwashed into believing, like many other Indians, that British is best. There's no attempt to denigrate them.''

Merchant is especially upset that the protests are happening in Kochi, where he says the government was extremely cooperative while the film was being shot last year. ``I think the country has become more intolerant now. And the problem is there's no strong Central government. Its existence is dictated to by governments in the states.''

He says when he was shooting for Jim Ivory's The Deceivers in Rajasthan in 1987, he was faced with similar problems, with rumours afloat about a woman being burnt alive. ``But I must say that then the administration and the Information and broadcasting Ministry were so firm. There was no question of our work being held to ransom.''

Merchant, whose somewhat iffy Cotton Mary was released in Delhi on Friday, believes that the truth has to come out in history. When they made Jefferson in Paris, he says, the Americans were up in arms at the suggestion of a relationship between the slave woman Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson. ``And now when the DNA tests have proved it, there are editorials saying Merchant-Ivory was ahead of their times.'' In any case, he points out, no one threw stones and tried to stop the film from being screened in the US.