A few days ago, Tapan and I braved the notoriously heavy Mumbai rains to travel all the way from Borivli to Prabhadevi for the film ‘Jashn-e-azadi’, a film on Kashmir made by Sanjay Kak, and being screened by Vikalp. We reached to find policemen at the door of the building. Curious and suspicious, we made our way up to the second floor, to the venue. More policemen… and grave looking duo of Anand Patwardhan and Sunil Shanbag, deep in conversation with the men in khaki.
Apparently, the police had received an anonymous call complaining that the film contains material that is inflammatory, and its screening may lead to a law and order problem. And they were therefore there to stop the screening. The organizers were not convinced. They asked for a written order. The police didn’t have any. They asked for some time to procure one. The organizers agreed to wait till 7.30. The audience, comprised mostly of professionals, both film makers and film lovers from various walks of life, who rely on screenings such as this to keep in touch with documentary films as well as low budget and short films all of which are otherwise difficult to access, waited patiently while Sanjay and Anand held fort, trying to keep the audience both informed of the goings on with the police and entertained. There was on that occasion, a different and unusual group as well in the audience, a group of plainclothesmen, who were politely asked to leave by the host, the man incharge of the Bhupesh Gupta auditorium. It was strange, surreal almost to see several men get up from the last row and leave after it was established that they were not regular viewers and unknown to anyone in the crowd.
The police returned finally with a search and seize warrant. They didn’t have to search, Sanjay readily handed to them the only copy that he had of the film on a dvd, which they promptly seized and sealed. Their mission was accomplished, as was the anonymous caller’s. The screening was stopped, the audience had to go back disappointed and wondering how little it took to disrupt even a private event in this city. And how easy to denounce an independent voice that dares to impinge upon a subject that may only be spoken of by people ‘authorised’ to do so, such as the government and the media. It doesn’t matter of course, as Sanjay pointed out, that the media sends out its young 20 and 30 something beat journalists, who sometimes have all of a few hours, or more rarely, a few days to do all their research and a few minutes to communicate it in. That apparently is acceptable. But a well researched and thought out chronicle of the goings on in a region, shot and edited over several years, and presented in a film of over two hours, by a filmmaker of repute, is questionable and its screening to a set of professionals, a threat to law and order.
Such, unfortunately, is the freedom of expression in our country.
Apparently, the police had received an anonymous call complaining that the film contains material that is inflammatory, and its screening may lead to a law and order problem. And they were therefore there to stop the screening. The organizers were not convinced. They asked for a written order. The police didn’t have any. They asked for some time to procure one. The organizers agreed to wait till 7.30. The audience, comprised mostly of professionals, both film makers and film lovers from various walks of life, who rely on screenings such as this to keep in touch with documentary films as well as low budget and short films all of which are otherwise difficult to access, waited patiently while Sanjay and Anand held fort, trying to keep the audience both informed of the goings on with the police and entertained. There was on that occasion, a different and unusual group as well in the audience, a group of plainclothesmen, who were politely asked to leave by the host, the man incharge of the Bhupesh Gupta auditorium. It was strange, surreal almost to see several men get up from the last row and leave after it was established that they were not regular viewers and unknown to anyone in the crowd.
The police returned finally with a search and seize warrant. They didn’t have to search, Sanjay readily handed to them the only copy that he had of the film on a dvd, which they promptly seized and sealed. Their mission was accomplished, as was the anonymous caller’s. The screening was stopped, the audience had to go back disappointed and wondering how little it took to disrupt even a private event in this city. And how easy to denounce an independent voice that dares to impinge upon a subject that may only be spoken of by people ‘authorised’ to do so, such as the government and the media. It doesn’t matter of course, as Sanjay pointed out, that the media sends out its young 20 and 30 something beat journalists, who sometimes have all of a few hours, or more rarely, a few days to do all their research and a few minutes to communicate it in. That apparently is acceptable. But a well researched and thought out chronicle of the goings on in a region, shot and edited over several years, and presented in a film of over two hours, by a filmmaker of repute, is questionable and its screening to a set of professionals, a threat to law and order.
Such, unfortunately, is the freedom of expression in our country.
7 comments:
surprisingly though, freedom of expression does seem to work in our country .. atleast comparitively .. i've been following a lot of articles being published about the US political scenario and the "independent" media participation in the country on various aspects, political and non political .. somehow, reading those articles makes me feel glad we are not as capitalist/aggressive as some other countries are .. nor will our people bow so meekly/indifferently to the kind of political rape of democracy that seems to be going on in the US .. another article i vaguely remember, talked about how a democracy is converted to a dictatorship in a stepwise fashion by subverting differnt areas of the govt, executive, and judiciary .. like replacing judges, giving more power to police, and so on .. then he went on to show how bush is doing the same .. and further predicted what bush will do in the future (and its all happening as he had predicted) .. i can't imagine something like this happening in india .. does this mean that things like this happen in india, but we don't know about them due a lack of freedom of expression ? .. or does it mean that this doesn't happen in india because things are more transparent at levels where it matters, and freedom of expression is much more vocal in india in areas where it should be ? .. i mean, bade bade sheharon mein choti choti baatein toh hoti hee rehati hain .. : ) .. should we assume that this is a symptom of a much deeper disease ? .. maybe it actually is .. : ) .. your views ? ..
Can you not imagine something like that happening in India? If we continue to follow the essentially western models of development?
I'd love to know too why it is that we have survived so far. I have a feeling that it is also because things are a lot more complicated, and not just transparent. And maybe because essentially we are not a society driven by the twin goals of money and power. Because religion/ spirituality and family ties/ values still play a major role in shaping the course of our lives. But look around you, especially in the big cities, and what do you see? How long do you think we can last, and where do you think we are headed?
I don't know. And I am concerned.
it is an interesting thought .. for the moment, i'll leave your previous post aside by saying that political thought and freedom of expression does not have to mix with a country's social changes .. what i am writing below is a direct response to your comment .. i'll try to tie it back to the political aspect later (if i can) .. i guess the problem is that we are confusing social degradation with social advancement .. it is possible that both go hand in hand, but not necessarily .. for example, look at, say, the swedish society, and, say, the american society .. we could also add another interesting dimension by considering the japanese society .. i do not claim to be an expert on either .. infact, my knowledge is limited to the daily articles i read on these countries .. even so, it is interesting to see how each of these countries has evolved socially .. switzerland is a model of social advancement .. america is tending towards social degradation .. and japan has somehow managed to advance to a point that it has encompassed social degradation within its controlled environment .. wouldn't you say that the western model that you are talking about is specific to the americas ? .. and now coming back to social degradation vs. degradation of rights of freedom of thought and expression (which seems to be the american model) .. i doubt if india would ever support a dictatorship .. dictatorship doesn't seem to be in our psyche .. maybe because one doesn't need to be a dictator to get his way in india .. ppl are docile enough without someone resorting to dictatorship .. : ) .. i suppose a good rebuttal is the emergency imposed by IG during the 70s .. on the other hand, look at how she was imprisoned for the same .. i see the same thing happening today in case one tries to impose his will on the public, and this is regardless of how socially advanced/degraded we are .. can you think of any situation in the big cities where a dictatorial will has been imposed on a sustained basis and has not been opposed ? .. if a situation like that does exist, it might help me understand what you are saying better ......
Sanjay Kak and Half-truths can't be trusted. His is clearly a propoganda which has come out in open now. Why has he forgotten to mention about the few lakh Kashmiri Pandits who have lost everything and are now living a life of refugge's in their own country ? Does that not find any angle from his lens or were those Robin Hood's like Yasin Malik more important to Kak ? Its quite obvious that people in Kashmir overall take freedom from a different connotation all together; its not the freedom of what Yasin's, Geelani's talk about; its the freedom from gun culture and blood shed. They are tiered of seeing all this. They are tiered of the entire commonal problem. Sanjay's masala movie doesn't even leave the army and the Indian govt. making imaginary emotional stories against them.
Lastly just for the heck of it, why doesn't Kak apply for the censorship certificate; ofcourse he'll not a problem with it; he may have many terrorists, fundamentalists and pseudo's to support him.
The reality about KASHMIR can be read at http://www.kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com/
For Bobby:
a. I am surprised that you feel that ‘political thought and freedom of expression does not have to mix with a country's social changes’. What, in this day and age works in isolation, and can stay unaffected by the changes in other spheres?
b. Social degradation and social advancement are relative terms. And at any rate, it’s an argument that I can’t allow myself to be drawn into for sheer lack of knowledge. However, I will say this much, it appears to me that the models that we are following, particularly economic and developmental, are more and more of the Western (and yes, read American) variety, leading to far reaching social changes. Actually you probably know and understand this better than I do.
c. India may not overtly support dictatorship today, and probably never will. However the kind of conversion from democracy to possible dictatorship in the US that you spoke of in an earlier comment, is far from overt. It is that that we have to guard against.
d. I seem to have been misunderstood here. I did not make a case for the degradation of the freedom of expression, for I am not in a position to compare today’s scenario with earlier ones. I only stated the current state, which can do with improvement. But perhaps the coverage by the media of the incident and subsequent reactions by people, are representative precisely of a freedom of expression that we do still have, and should continue to demand and fight for in order to retain.
oops, that 'comment deleted' was my own, deleted for some typo errors. Next time I'll just be more careful, or live with the errors, than let people think that i wished for a comment to not appear...
ironic though, that it should happen in the middle of a discussion on freedom of expression :-)
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