[sacw] [ACT] INDIA: Speak up against fundamentalists disruption of filming of "Water"

[Harsh Kapoor]

Protest against disruption of filming of "Water"

7 February 2000
Dear Friends,
The Hindu right wing groups (associated with BJP currently leading the
governing coalition in power India) in India are stepping up their assaults
on artists & intellectuals and on freedom of expression as part of their
overall agenda. Latest in this series are attempts to disrupt and stop the
film 'Water' currently being made in India by Deepa Mehta an India Canadian
film maker. Her earlier film 'Fire' had been the focus of viscious attacks
in December 1998 by the Hindu fanatics. A large number of progressive and
liberal groups in India have expressed their outrage at move to pre-empt &
control creative expression.
Please write to the Indian government expressing your concern.
Posted below is a letter written by an Indian feminist group (based in
Delhi) to the Indian authorities. Signatures are still being collected by
some groups in India to support Jagori's letter. Jagori can be contacted at
jagori@d... You may use this letter as an example or a model
for your own letter(s). Also posted along are some news reports to provide
you background information and addresses of Indian government authorities.
You may contact and write to the nearest Indian Embassy abroad. You will
also find below the address particulars of Deepa Mehta films to which you
can write expressing your support and solidarity. Please forward this to
your friends and to other organisations.
best regards
Harsh Kapoor
(South Asia Citizens Web)
-----------------------------------------
#1. A letter written by an Indian Feminist Group to the Indian Prime Ministe=
r
#2. Posted below is some background material
#3. Addresses of Indian Government Authorities
#4. Address of Deepa Mehta Films
-----------------------------------------

#1. LETTER BY AN INDIAN FEMINIST GROUP TO THE INDIAN GOVT.

To,
The Prime Minister Mr. A.B. Vajpayee
The Union Home Minister [Mr. L K Advani]
The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting [Mr. Arun Jaitley]
The Chief Minister [UP- Ram Prakash Gupta]

Dear Sirs,
31.1.2000

We bring to your notice the following diary of events, which has
necessitated our letter of protest.
Occurrences
- Sunday Jan 30th- activists of Kashi Sanskriti Raksha Sangharsh
Samiti (KSRSS) raid shooting location and burn set material (violent)
- KSRSS includes members of BJP, VHP, Shiv Sena, and RSS
- BJP national secretary- Jyotsna Srivastava, treasurer of party's
state unit- Ashok Dhawan, a party legislator Shyam Dev Roy Choudhuri
amongst others led protest march and rally.
- KSRSS accuses Mehta of trying to defame Hindu culture
- Rally ended with Sanskar Bharati (cultural branch of Sangh Parivar)
organizing secretary, Jitendra vowing to thwart shooting of film in the
country and stating that it won't be cleared till passed by the Kashi
Vidwat Parishad.
- Lucknow, State Government will refer film back to I&B Ministry-
shooting will remain suspended till Union Ministry takes decision on the
issue.
- 31st- UP government ordered shooting be stopped- order issued by
district magistrate Alok Kumar saying producer and director need 'no
objection certificate' from state government.
- Protest posters say film seeks to show Kashi as a city where: child
widows are forced into prostitution, society is permissive, people are
corrupt and Ganga is polluted. Also that tradition and culture is being
slandered
- Script has been cleared by government of India and I&B minister
Arun Jaitley, with shooting allowed to commence under supervision of a
liaison officer (Krishna Murari) appointed by ministry- script cleared w/o
single cut.
- Mehta besieged by obscene calls and death threats

By disrupting the shooting of the film Water, yet another incident of
fundamentalist violence has come to the fore, threatening the already
disintegrating climate in which we have difficulty in expressing ourselves
freely. And those who do take this risk are silenced with mindless outrage
in the name of protecting our "moral and social" fabric.

This despite the script of the film being passed with permission to begin
shooting by the highest government authority, which was not taken as a
granted by the UP government, proving it's incompetence and inefficiency in
protecting individual's freedom of speech and expression.

It is shocking that the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh who being the
caretaker of law and order for the state has taken absolutely no measure in
stopping and condemning these undemocratic and unlawful acts. Every
individual has a right to protest but the current incident reflecting
goondaism, transgresses the basic norms of democracy. Such arbitrary acts
of violence and lawlessness pose a constant threat to people's right to
freedom of creative expression. They also endanger their life and property,
jeopardizing any future voices.

It is the responsibility of the government to demonstrate to the citizens
of this country that their fundamental rights cannot be trampled upon by
criminal acts of violence. Immediate punitive action must be taken against
all perpetrators. The film should be allowed to resume shooting in the most
peaceful circumstances possible.

As concerned citizens we demand that immediate and appropriate action be tak=
en.

In solidarity,
Jagori group

No Organizations: Individuals
1. Kali for women Anjali Monteiro
2. Vimala Ramchandran

------------------------
#2. NEWS AND BACKGROUND MATERIAL

Hindustan Times
7 February 2000
=46ront Page=20
=20
SUICIDE BID HALTS SHOOTING OF WATER
Varanasi, February 6 (Anirban Bhaumik)

Demonstrators protest against Deepa Mehta's film Water and the Madhya
Pradesh Government's decision to ban the Bajrang Dal national convention
in the state, at Red Fort in the Capital on Sunday. Photo: Manish Swarup
SHIV SENA activist Arun Pathak gave a fillip to the saffron brigade's
anti-Water offensive this evening by immersing himself in the river
Ganga near the Assi Ghat.

He was rescued from the river and was rushed to the hospital in a
critical condition.

=46ollowing his suicide attempt, the district administration stopped the
shooting of the film as an irate mob turned violent and resorted to
pelting stones.

Though the shooting of the controversial film had started amid tight
security and low-key protest demonstrations by the saffron brigade, the
scene became tense in the afternoon as Arun, tying a heavy stone to his
legs, boarded a boat.

Sailing on the river, he threatened to immerse himself in the Ganga if
the district administration did not stop the shooting of the film by 5
p.m. Though the police and the district administration officials tried
their best to pacify him, he refused to be dissuaded and immersed
himself into the river at 5.05 p.m. after apparently consuming
something.

Arun was rescued immediately by the boatmen whom the district
administration's officials had deployed around his boat and was sent to
the hospital in a critical condition.

The incident triggered off resentment among the saffron activists who
had been waiting in the nearby Assi crossing. They proceeded towards the
shooting locations raising aggressive slogans. The security personnel
applied force to stop the irate mob which retaliated by pelting stones -
causing injuries to a number of cops and damage to two buses.

Meanwhile, SP (City) A.M. Jain, who was on the spot overseeing the
security arrangements, rushed to Ms Deepa Mehta and told her that the
situation might worsen and that she should leave the location
immediately with her cast and crew.

A six-car-convoy, with the escorting vehicles of security personnel,
took the director herself, crew and cast, including Ms. Shabana Azmi and
Ms. Nandita Das, to the hotel in the Cantonment area where the unit has
been staying over the last few days.

SHOOTING TO GO ON: Actor-parliamentarian Shabana Azmi, who plays the
lead role in the film today asserted that the shooting of the movie
would continue till the state government gave a written order directing
the filmmaker to stop it.

"The film unit is determined to carry on and try to shoot the film till
such time as the state government gives us in writing that the Central
Government's writ is not binding on the state and that it is a law unto
itself and that the ministry of information and broadcasting clearance,
given not once but twice, is useless and that is why it has been
cancelled by state government" , she told newspersons here.

The actress said law and order did not pose a threat to the shooting
because when they were on their way to the locale there was not even a
single protestor on the street and "we saw smiles on the faces of the
people" .

She described the suicide bid by a Shiv Sainik as "extremely
unfortunate" and said the police did not take action despite knowing
about it in advance.
_______

Hindustan Times
1 Feb 2000
Opinion

A PROTEST THAT HOLDS NO WATER
by Poonam Saxena

Controversy seems to pursue filmmaker Deepa Mehta like a particularly
persistent ghost. The protests in Varanasi against her new film, Water,
turned violent on Sunday when BJP, VHP, Shiv Sena and RSS activists,
under the banner of the newly-formed Kashi Sanskriti Raksha Sangharsh
Samiti, attacked the shooting locations and ransacked the sets erected
at Tulsighat.

In view of the disturbed law and order situation, the state government
decided to stall the shooting of the film and refer it back to the
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Ironical indeed, because Mehta
had already obtained a clearance from that very ministry before
embarking on the shooting.

Despite taking this effort to safeguard her project, the Canada-based
film-maker should perhaps have anticipated the protests. After all, both
her previous films, Fire and Earth, ran into trouble in the
subcontinent. Fire, about a lesbian relationship between two unloved
Lajpat Nagar housewives, was attacked by Shiv Sena activists in Delhi
and Mumbai for showing a 'perverted' view of Indian women, and the film
was taken off the cinema halls where it was playing. Earth escaped
relatively unscathed, but Mehta did not get permission to shoot it in
Lahore where it was set. She had to recreate the city in Old Delhi.

Regardless of the artistic merit of both the films, the point made by
Mehta and her supporters then, which is valid even today, was quite
simply: Everyone has a right to protest, but there are legitimate ways
of doing this. No one has any business to protest violently, damage
property or threaten the safety of the people in question.

With Water, the third in her trilogy of the elements, the trouble has
started even before the shooting could commence in right earnest. The
subject of the film? Varanasi widows in the 1930s - is apparently
incendiary enough to send the self-proclaimed custodians of Indian
culture, tradition and morality into paroxysms of self-righteous rage.
In Water, Mehta is being accused of projecting Kashi in a negative
light, and depicting it as a centre for "prostitution among child
widows." None of the protestors have actually seen the script, but
rumours are flying thick and fast. In earlier interviews, Mehta had
hinted at the theme, and the script certainly does explore the angle of
a Hindu widow of that period being forced to repress her sexuality. This
is not a terribly new or outrageous idea - it is a reality of our
culture and has been written about by journalists, historians,
sociologists and writers ad nauseum. Hindi movies too have tackled the
theme in their own way over the years.

Then why this uproar? One of the reasons is that Mehta is regarded as an
'outsider' who lives abroad and, to quote Shyamdeo Roychowdhary, local
BJP MLA, who is in the forefront of the anti-Mehta protests, "She enjoys
portraying anti-Indian culture themes to get awards." This is a charge
often levelled against Mehta in a veiled, more sophisticated manner by
people in the film industry as well. And frankly, anyone is free to
think so, but that still doesn't excuse the protests, particularly the
manner in which they were carried out.

Incidentally, this is not the first time that a film has been shot in
Varanasi - there was H.S. Rawail's Dilip Kumar-starrer Sangharsh, Raj
Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili, Vijay Singh's Jaya Ganga. (And at the
moment too, the shooting for Goldie Bahl's Abhishek Bachchan-starrer Bas
Itna Sa Khwab Hai is progressing smoothly in Varanasi). Mehta has been
quoted in the newspapers as wondering why these films were allowed to be
shot in Varanasi without controversy. The answer lies once again in the
popular perception of Mehta as making films for a Western audience,
which should, by inference, not be allowed to see "Indian culture" in a
poor light (read the 'exploitation' of widows by Hindu society).

This is no argument. It is a bit like shooting the messenger who brings
the bad news. No one in their right mind could possibly justify the role
Hindu society allocated to its widows for decades. Trying to brush these
issues under the carpet or pretend they never existed, is to do an
injustice to the very society to which these upholders of Indian culture
belong. The great social reformers of the 19th century battled against
these very social ills. It is true that these are sensitive issues which
go to the heart of any community, but to give Mehta due credit, she did
get her script cleared by the government before starting her film. What
more is any filmmaker supposed to do? Have the entire film doctored by a
collection of conservative individuals owing allegiance to a particular
ideology? Sorry, that's not possible.

------------------------

#3. ADDRESSES:

A.B. Vajpayee
The Prime Minister of India
South Block New Delhi, 110-004, India
=46ax 91-11-301-6857, 91-11-301-9545

The Union Home Minister [Mr. L K Advani]
Cyclone 1/5 Pandara Park
NEW DELHI 110 003.
[Office Fax: 3015750, 3017763]

The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting [Mr. Arun Jaitley]
A 44, Kailash Colony
NEW DELHI 110 048

Mr N Dayal
High Commissioner for India
India House
London WC2B 4NA, U.K.
=46ax: 020 7836-4331

-------------------
#4.

DEEPA MEHTA FILMS

dmfilms@i...
http://www.earthmovie.com
http://www.directorsnet.com/mehta
316 Robert Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 2K8, Canada
Tel: 416-944-0851 Fax: 416-944-8910