Freedom of expression in the time of Hindu Rashtra

This has been an interesting week for cinema that causes "offence". If there was ever a moment to dispense with being apologetic when it comes to something as "vulgar" as box office collections, the time is now.

PK, despite the vociferous protests against its contents, is raking in at the box office — at last count it had crossed Rs 200 crore. The protesting groups that draw inspiration and endorse the idea of a Hindu Rashtra, do away with self-introspection when they don’t deliberate on the obvious — most people watching this film, by default, would in all likelihood be Hindus. So what’s amiss here, why are the protests not swelling? Why is it left to a bunch of scruffy necked hoodlums — with sticks in hands — to come to the defence of the faith?

Surely, more of us, who self-identify as Hindu, should be marching down to cinema halls and pulling down shutters and tearing up posters. This is where the extreme right-wingers go wrong — they just don’t get most of us Hindus. And that could be a problem, in fact it already is. It’s the reason why they remain the fringe. Even the century-old Hindu Mahasabha only manages to get airtime when it decides to go after “girls in half-jeans”.

Intolerance

We, the victims, the poor masses, seduced by Aamir Khan’s superstardom and Raju Hirani’s wizardry, battling with a holiday season that we nearly lost to "Good Governance Day", are desperately seeking senseless entertainment (read: propaganda) and find it in our films. Yogi Adityanath doesn’t watch movies but is nonetheless offended. Good Hindus purportedly shouldn’t. Oh wait, that sounds a lot like someone else... but let’s not go there — this isn’t the "Intolerance Wars". Sanctimonious murmurings of support are heard from "other" religious leaders — nothing makes them bond more than a thin skin and a shared intolerance of other people’s right to choose.

Besides tomorrow, Salman Rushdie might decide to visit again. Could PK be offensive to some? Yes. Should those people protest? Yes. Should they vandalise and resort to criminal intimidation? Well, the answer to the last question should be obvious to everyone, but it isn’t. You see, we, the Hindus, are the victims and the law doesn’t support our intolerance, and when it doesn’t, we have no option but to take it in our own hands. And our "representatives" with somber sounding double and triple barrelled names are fighting the good fight for us. Who knew we had so many of them? With every outrage we are introduced to a new group.

Now comes the Nathuram Godse film project, should it be banned before it’s even made? The answer again is an obvious one. But here comes the slippery slope — freedom of expression comes with caveats. Ah! Now I hear you — your caveats versus their caveats. All this "caveat" talk makes me think of a dentist — caveat-cavity word association, I’m drifting. But there’s someone who seems to be at the dentists’, numbed by Novocain, tongue thickened, words stuck although mouth pried open — yes, the government. Not a word, whilst hoodlums run the streets and terrorise theater owners and viewers. Selective outrage takes over the narrative — grammatically correct versus the grammatically challenged.

The courts are itching to get into this, especially I suspect the Supreme Court, that delights in government business — becoming the opposition in the absence or is it the presence of a comatose Congress? It must hold up our constitutional values. You know, the Constitution? The national book, I believe that’s settled now, but I may be wrong. Anyhow, the Constitution that let us in on inconvenient details like fundamental rights. But don’t count on publishers — they RSVPd earlier this year — not coming.

Freedom

Now film producers and studios, yes, they may fight the big fight for freedom of expression — after all they stood up to the underworld. Scratch that, actually one female actor did, but you get what I’m saying. Never mind that default film contracts often come with gag orders themselves, cloaked in clever legalese — do not talk politics, religion, etc, till after the release of your film. So are they going to take this up? Probably not. Did you see them on any TV debates? Always a good indicator.

Censorship

What’s going to happen is that the inexorable onus of self-censorship is going to fall on creative people. But who can blame the moneyman? Here’s the big non-secret — films are a business. Take Sony Pictures for example, already burnt because of the email hack in which a producer and director dissed a female superstar; it decided to not release The Interview in theaters. It took a public admonition from the most powerful man on earth — President Obama — to convince Sony to agree to a limited release of the film! Yup, you can’t make this stuff up. We will not be bullied by chubby, xenophobic, basketball loving, dynastic despots of reclusive countries was the underlying brave message.

So who is going to stand up for freedom of expression here? It has been sort of ongoing since 1951, when India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the author-politician, moved an amendment that was enacted. And don’t look at me! I just hit my word count and am due to sign a new film contract (which will presumably come with the gag order), so I think I’m going to have to outrage in private. No complaints though, it’s far less work than having to choose between staying loyal to an ideology versus an inconvenient principle like freedom of expression.