What Bollywood can learn from director of S Durga about having a spine

The week began with a glittery, typically star-studded opening ceremony for the 48th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Panaji, Goa. Many of Bollywood’s biggest movie stars were in attendance, smiling for shutterbugs and posing for selfies.

Information and broadcasting minister, Smriti Irani, was photographed deep in conversation with Shah Rukh Khan, who kicked off proceedings with his trademark charm. She beamed as she took the stage to address the gathering, which included delegates of film industries from various parts of the country and the world, including acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi.

At the same time, on social media, on news channels, and the front pages of newspapers, there seemed to be only one thing a large number of people across the nation were discussing: the deferred release of Padmavati, which has stoked the ire of fundamentalist Rajput and Hindu groups. The historical epic - directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor - is said to be based on Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s epic poem, Padmavat, considered by historians to be a fictitious account of Allaudin Khilji’s lust for Rani Padmini, the queen of Chittor.

Fringe outfits such as the Rajput Karni Sena, who vandalised the sets of the film when it was being shot in Jaipur this January, have threatened to “chop off” Padukone’s nose (she plays rani Padmini) if the film were to reach theatres. Thakur Abhishek Som, the Meerut-based national president of another "fringe" outfit named, Akhil Bharatiya Kshatriya Yuva Mahasabha, went a step further by offering Rs 5 crore to anyone who would behead Padukone and Bhansali. Suraj Pal Amu, the ruling BJP’s chief media coordinator for Haryana, went yet another step further, offering to raise the bounty to Rs 10 crore.

Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar, usually vocal on a number of issues, called upon Bollywood celebrities to boycott IFFI, but clearly no one got that memo. They were all there: posing for pictures, smiling at each other, wearing designer clothes. Meanwhile, the protests and opposition against the film have only intensified, even though a) the film’s release has been pushed indefinitely; and b) none of the offended parties have actually watched it.

At the time of writing this piece, at least three chief ministers - Vasundhara Raje of Rajasthan, Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh and Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh - have placed either conditional or outright bans on the film.

Minor detail: all three happen to belong to the BJP - as do Amu and Irani - which at the time of writing this was yet to unanimously condemn or, I don’t know, expel Amu for essentially instigating murder against a public figure.

The Bollywood fraternity is notorious for largely playing safe in the face of controversy. Occasionally, they band together for the odd common cause, usually one that isn’t overtly affected by politics or religion, such as when Udta Punjab was initially banned by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) a year ago.

Top male stars like Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan spoke out against growing intolerance in late 2015, only to face backlashes and calls for boycott, and have since refrained from making political comments in the public domain.

Salman Khan’s friendliness with the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are well documented - he rarely takes anti-establishment stances. Ditto Amitabh Bachchan, who, when grilled by TV anchor Arnab Goswami in a 2015 interview, famously claimed that the film fraternity is “vulnerable” when it takes political stands; he also admitted that allegations levelled at him and his family for their purported involvement in the nearly three-decade-old Bofors scandal had hurt him deeply and strengthened a resolve to stay away from controversy.

Akshay Kumar usually keeps mum on most issues, but is openly pro-establishment and nationalistic, his politics now more and more visible in his on-screen roles (his last release, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, was a glorified paean to Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan).

You’d think a direct, open call to murder an A-list actor and director would encourage the industry to set aside their differences temporarily and come together in united condemnation, but you’d be mistaken. On the red carpet, according to tweets and social media updates from journalists at the venue, there was a palpable sense of fear.

HuffPost India Bollywood editor Ankur Pathak, live-tweeting from the venue, tried to speak to a number of notable Bollywood personalities on the issue, with mixed results. Filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj, he claims, very reluctantly said “I stand with Mr Bhansali”, after being reminded how he’d received support for his 2014 film Haider, which had faced the ire of nationalists for purportedly portraying the Army in poor light.

Producer Boney Kapoor delivered an even more clipped response: “Padmavati is, well, not my film.” Oscar-winning composer AR Rahman refused to speak at all, reportedly walking away with a “Sorry… I will speak to you later”. Padmavati star Kapoor, who incidentally went on to give a speech at the inauguration that spoke of how cinema is meant to do more than entertain, even provoke, produced a diplomatic statement: “I am very optimistic about the release of Padmavati. There are people who are being angsty and losing their cool. I don’t want to be one of them. I will be disappointed if the film doesn’t get a release at all. Having said that, right now I don’t have a clue when the film will come out. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Don’t get me wrong - not everyone associated with Bollywood has reacted this toothlessly. Directors such as Hansal Mehta, Anurag Kashyap, Anurag Basu, and even Madhur Bhandarkar (who is generally pro-government and once famously participated in a march led by Anupam Kher to declare that concerns of growing intolerance were unfounded at best and malicious at worst) have condemned the threats of violence, which have been made without even seeing the film, on social media.

Padukone herself has reacted defiantly - and bravely - to threats directed as her, commenting that we have “regressed” as a nation. Many of Bollywood’s newer stars, such as Varun Dhawan, Arjun Kapoor and Siddharth Malhotra have also put out cursory statements on Twitter.

Bhansali, whose 2015 epic Bajirao Mastani faced similar protests and censure for taking several liberties, has stayed silent and, as of Friday afternoon, is yet to make a statement.

Last reported, on Tuesday evening, a complaint by one Pawan Kumar, a resident of Haryana’s Chakkarpur village, against Amu for criminal intimidation remained the only real legal response made by anyone to counter his heinous provocation. Clearly, this isn’t enough.

Concurrently, another controversy has been playing out at IFFI this year. Malayalam filmmaker Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s film S Durga, which had been selected for screening under the Indian Panorama section of IFFI, was one of two films unceremoniously dropped by the I&B ministry days before the festival began, overriding the decision of the jury appointed by them. The other was Ravi Jadhav’s Marathi film, Nude.

No official reasons were given for this decision. With Nude, it has been surmised that its title and content - it’s the story of a woman who works as a nude model at an art college - may have been the problem, although films screened at IFFI haven’t traditionally been subjected to the same censorship that theatrical releases face.

With S Durga, the issue has been a little more complex. With its original title, Sexy Durga, the film has won accolades at film festivals around the world. However, for the better part of this year, Sasidharan has received threats and abuse online from people claiming to be aggrieved Hindus objecting to the title on grounds of "hurt religious sentiments". Because, as we all know, "sexy" is an objectionable word in India.

In early October, following many months of vociferous online trolling by aggrieved Hindus and a typically perplexing directive by the CBFC, the title had to be changed so that it could play at the 18th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival and subsequent film festivals within India.

Sasidharan made the change, reducing the title to S Durga, with the poster now edited to read Sxxx Durga. Cheekily, he added a tagline: "You can’t censor imaginations!"

Farcically, this title change is only for the benefit of Indian audiences. The international title remains the same. The Facebook page for the film is still "Sexy Durga".

Sasidharan has minced no words when it comes to expressing his feelings about the matter. In several interviews, he has denounced the I&B ministry’s interventions as "fascist" and expressed grave concern for the future of freedom of expression in this country - an ongoing national conversation in this country that has undoubtedly intensified in the past three years, ever since the nationalist, right-leaning BJP assumed power at the Centre.

Lending support, three members of the IFFI jury - including jury head and filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh, writer-editor Apurva Asrani and filmmaker Gyan Correa - resigned from their positions mere days before the festival began while six members wrote a formal letter of protest to Irani.

On Facebook, he has been posting regular updates on the goings-on at IFFI as well as his films, in English and Malayalam, with one update from last week concluding with: “We are living in a society, where people shamelessly compromise to get the benefit of governments. These compromises make things smooth for dictators.”

He has also followed his words with action. A week ago, he filed a writ petition against the I&B ministry and senior IFFI officials, for “illegal, aribitrary, and unjust exclusion” of his film, adding that they hadn’t “understood the context and setting” of his film. Perhaps it helped that the two-time Kerala State Film Award winner used to be a lawyer and is familiar with judicial process.

On Tuesday, as Bollywood continued to dither around with their reaction to Padmavati, Sasidharan had a huge victory: the Kerala HC directed the I&B ministry to reverse its decision and add S Durga back into the line-up. In an ecstatic Facebook post, he said: “I usually don't celebrate victories. But this I cant (sic) stay away. This is the victory of cinema. This is the victory of our democracy. This is the victory of those people from jury who sacrificed. Cheers India!"

This celebration may have been premature. As of Friday, the fourth day of the festival, the order was yet to be implemented. No screening for S Durga - a censored version, with the changed title and 21 audio mutes - was added to the schedule. On Facebook, an unrelenting Sasidharan declared: “What is going on in our country! I am moving for a contempt of court case tomorrow.”

As anti-climactic as this may sound, there are a few lessons to be learnt here.

With all this talk of bounties and beheading, aired by news channels that invite these perpetrators into their studios for "debates", it is perhaps easy to forget that India is a democracy.

In the current political climate, intolerance is seen as the new normal. Talking about religion and history is dicey, discussing or depicting sexuality is taboo, and the mix of the two is a Molotov cocktail. Often, the underlying emotion behind objections to films like Sexy Durga or Padmavati, which some fear may challenge established worldviews and long-held beliefs is along the lines of "What is the need to do this?".

Ideally, in a democracy, this is not a question that should hold much value. Ideally speaking, the filmmaker, writer, poet, and artist should have the right to create anything - as much as any other citizen should have the right to deride it, criticise it, disagree with it, and boycott it.

In India, freedom of speech is a shaky concept, at the mercy of the vagaries of subjective interpretation. But laws against violence or threats of violence are unambiguous. Why didn't we see a counter-offensive in the form of what Sasidharan did from the likes of Padukone, Bhansali, or Viacom 18 right away?

We could all come up with any number of hypothetical answers to this question. They’ve always been spineless, says one opinion. There are too many vested interests, says another. No one will go against this government, says a third. Mukesh Ambani owns Viacom 18, the producer of Padmavati, says a fourth, in a manner that supposedly explains everything.

You may argue that this has always been the case in India. You may argue that the current political climate is so dangerous that dissent could lead to one being murdered. After all, if fringe outfits can openly threaten a top Bollywood star, what can an ordinary citizen do?

Sasidharan is one of those ordinary citizens who chose not to revel in this defeatist view of India’s democracy. Perhaps he hasn’t received open, nationally broadcast death threats like Padukone, but has received threats from right-wing outfits all the same. This is an unfortunate comparison to have to make, but hypothetically, if the people making threats were to follow them up with violent action against him or his film, he - a relatively unknown independent filmmaker from Kerala - would perhaps be a much easier target than Padukone, a revered star with millions of fans across the globe (and the ability to afford top-notch security, which has now already been provided to her by the Karnataka government).

We tend to get so swept up in the grim narrative peddled by social and traditional media that it’s easy to forget that, despite all the problems, much of the law is actually on our side. When we use these tools at our disposal, as Sasidharan did and Bollywood ought to have done, it helps renew faith in our democracy.

Even if the perpetrators - in Sasidharan’s case, it’s the state itself - ignore these directives, the filmmaker’s insistence to continue pressing on reminds us that values such as fairness and justice are worth fighting for, and prevent us from slipping into a state of perpetual cynicism.

Bollywood stars are idolised by millions. When they choose to stay mum, it distorts our ideas of what is permissible and what isn’t. They would’ve been right to boycott IFFI and thereby send a strong message. They would’ve been right to file criminal complaints against the likes of Amu, as an ordinary resident of Chakkarpur, Haryana, did for them. But at the time of writing this, the industry as a whole has shown nothing that resembles a strong stance.

One may argue that standing up for principles is a matter of personal choice. This is true, but what is also true that when public figures react in such fear, it sends out a dangerous message: arbitrary offense can be taken by anyone on the basis of no evidence whatsoever and it will still be taken seriously.

Also read: Body found hanging at Nahargarh Fort: Is it a threat to those protesting Padmavati?