Water dispute

IT IS A familiar screenplay - the same type of villains, the same irrational passions, the same tired arguments. The ransacking of the sets in Varanasi of Ms. Deepa Mehta's Water bears a painful resemblance to the attacks on Mumbai and Delhi cinema halls that had screened her last film, Fire. The only material difference, perhaps, is that while the violence perpetrated a little over a year ago was directed at preventing the screening of a film, the present frenzy in Varanasi is aimed at thwarting the making of one. Like the heat over Fire, the flood of protest over Water - conducted by a clutch of organisations which owe allegiance to the sangh parivar - seeks to derive its dubious justification from a set of dreary and jaded catch-phrases. Among the things the film has been decried for is that it is ``vulgar'', ``against Hindu culture'' and ``opposed the traditions of this country'' - expressions that have been employed by the majoritarian right every time it wants to enforce its own shabby ways on the nation. Over the past few years, there have been worrying signals of the growing confidence of this fundamentalist fringe, which clearly regards itself as the final arbiter of what is vulgar and what is aesthetic, what is permitted and what is prohibited.

Set in Varanasi in 1930, Ms. Mehta's Water dwells on the plight of widows who are forced into prostitution to eke out a living - a bold, but hardly profane or blasphemous, theme. To suggest that such a film would hurt the sentiments people have for a holy city is not only to miss the point about the film but also to stoke a dispute along religious lines. Given that the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting found there was nothing amiss with the script, it is remarkable that a controversy of this dimension has been raked up about it. With the Uttar Pradesh Government stopping the shooting of Water, the organisations which launched the protests against it may have registered a cynical victory. But a couple of things need to be noted about the manner in which the protests took place. The fact that a few senior members of Mr. Ram Prakash Gupta's Ministry had openly identified themselves with the protestors, reflects very poorly on the Uttar Pradesh Government. The primary responsibility of the Government was to ensure that the shooting of Water took place peacefully and unhindered and not to give the impression that it was sympathetic to those who ultimately took the law into their own hands and ransacked the sets of Water. The quick imposition of the ban on further shooting also raises questions not only about the Government's resolve but its very intentions in this matter. Whether the Government buckled under pressure or folded only too willingly before it, the fact is that succumbing to such threats only serves to whet the fundamentalist appetite and not sate it.

Our recent experience of such controversies reveals that they are almost always politically motivated; the professed sentiments of hurt and the talk of injured feelings being merely cynical and manipulative devices for parties and politically affiliated organisations to extend their popularity or reach. So much so, this country has intermittently witnessed a number of noisy but essentially trivial and stage-managed disputes - for example, the `ban' slapped on Pakistani sportsmen, the protests against `bold' magazine covers or advertisements and the forcible extraction of an apology from artist M.F. Husain. Those who take the law into their own hands by whipping up such pseudo-controversies need to be dealt with by a firm hand. The Uttar Pradesh Government must ensure that the tide of protest over Water is stemmed and that the shooting is allowed to take place as quickly as possible.

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