Why water down our fame?

Sir, - The shooting of Ms. Deepa Mehta's ``Water'' at Varanasi was disturbed when there was a noisy protest against the theme of the film on January 30. Some sets and equipment were also destroyed. One wishes that the protest had been peaceful.

However, Ms. Deepa Mehta and her friends need to understand why the people protested. Her earlier film ``Fire'' showed two lesbians, bearing the names of Radha and Sita, to the horror of many people. And ``Water'' is said to be a film about widows at Varanasi turning prostitutes. If, as she claims, the script is good and clean, why does she hesitate to make a few copies available to the press so that the people can judge?

Would the tribe of Deepas dare do a film on the prostitutes in the holy cities of Islam or Christianity? As Swami Vivekananda noted a hundred years ago, Christian missionaries also reviled Hinduism with impunity but they did not dare criticise Islam because, in that case, ``the swords would be out''.

Secondly, aren't films like ``Water'' being produced to defame India, and win plaudits and millions abroad? Don't their producers fall in the category of Catherine Mayo, author of the notorious ``Mother India'' of the Twenties, whom Gandhiji aptly described as an ``inspectress of gutters''?

I hope Ms. Deepa Mehta knows what Ghalib said about Kashi. In his Persian ode to Kashi, he writes that the world has not gone to pieces only because Kashi Vishwanath is still there on the face of the earth. And these people want to show Kashi in a bad light!

Some of these people are so enamoured of the West that they want to globalise us in a hurry. Let them hear what Picasso, 20th century's greatest artist, has to say about the position of women in the West: ``In the West a young woman is a fairy; an old woman is a doormat.''

Nobody can hurt the feelings of millions in the much-misused name of ``freedom of expression''.

K. R. Malkani,

New Delhi

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