Opinion The cinema of ‘bad light’

Being seen as the villain is less painful,politically,than being a hero to supporters of identity politics. In India,it’s always been a struggle to make films with a political content. It is not just chief ministers or party leadership,but usually the lumpen elements,often right-wing extremists,who continue to operate under the illusion that they are the guardians of Indian culture. Their politics is not just targeted at cinema with a progressive political context,but at any form of artistic expression. The late lamented Maqbool Fida Husain was its most prominent victim,as was,of course,Salman Rushdie.

Indeed,if illusion is cinema’s greatest weapon,it is also the reason why politicians see artistic expression as a soft target,the illusion of power. India has an unenviable history in banning art with political content. Back in 1988,Rajiv Gandhi,hailed as a progressive,modern-minded leader,was roundly criticised for his ban on Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. The prime minister was in a similar situation that the three chief ministers are in now — national elections were less than a year away and his political advisers spooked him into believing that the Congress party was in danger of losing its Muslim vote-bank. He later admitted that he had not read the book and had no intention of doing so. So is the case with Jha’s effort. The film released on Friday,but the protests had begun well before,with political groups claiming that it was biased against Dalits. None of them had seen the film but that didn’t deter them.

Back in 1970,the then-Congress government led by Indira Gandhi objected to Amrit Nahata’s film Kissa Kursi Ka. Nahata was no established film-maker like Prakash Jha,but his film was a scathing satire on Sanjay Gandhi’s rise to power. The Shabana Azmi starrer was India’s first political spoof and its title would become part of Indian political lexicon. Indira Gandhi’s errant son was clearly not amused. The film’s negative and the master-print were forcibly removed from the offices of the Censor Board and burned. The irony was that it would provide a powerful handle to the opposition,which defeated the Congress in the 1977 Lok Sabha polls. Sanjay and his partner in crime,the then-information and broadcasting minister,V.C. Shukla,were sentenced and sent to jail. The greater irony was that no one actually got to see the film. However,despite the deneouement,it set the stage for an all too familiar script.

In 1971 in Sikkim,a documentary made by the internationally celebrated Satyajit Ray was banned for showing Sikkim as a sovereign state. Shortly after,the remote,Chogyal-led state merged with India. The ban was only lifted last year. Even a dyed-in-the-wool liberal like Jawaharlal Nehru was not above playing politics with political films. The very first Indian movie to be banned was Neel Akasher Neechey,a film by another world-famous director steeped in cinema verite,Mrinal Sen. It was a film with overt political overtones and the central character was a Chinese labourer. His government also banned the classic 1962 film Nine Hours to Rama,based on a critically acclaimed book by historian Stanley Wolpert,who also wrote a definitive biography of Nehru. The movie was on the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi but the government’s objection was to the depiction of Nathuram Godse’s political and psychological motivation for the act.

Indeed,Indian sensibilities tend to get overly prickly about portrayals of the country or its people by a foreigner,as was the case with the Hollywood blockbuster film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was condemned for its “racist portrayal of Indians” and banned. Similarly,City of Joy,based on the book by Dominique Lapierre,was banned by the West Bengal state government “for showing the city in a bad light.”

Freedom of expression in the Indian Constitution,comes with certain restrictions on content,mainly to do with national security and maintaining communal and religious harmony. It was on that basis that the 2004 documentary Final Solution,on the Gujarat riots,was banned. Some states with a Christian population have even imposed a ban on The Da Vinci Code.

The current controversy over Aakarshan opens another can of artistic worms. Jha’s previous film Raajneeti was an equally gritty expose of politics,including caste issues,in the Hindi heartland. The difference was,there were no state elections on the horizon. The objections to Raajneeti came from the Congress party which accused the filmmaker of basing Katrina Kaif’s character on Sonia Gandhi.

Here’s the takeaway from Jha’s dilemma. In India,art should not imitate life,especially when elections are around the corner.

dilip.bobb@expressindia.com