The Denotified Tribes Welfare Association (DTWA) has demanded the removal of certain scenes and muting of few dialogues in Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru movie as it allegedly portrayed the communities that were included in the erstwhile Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) as criminals.
In a petition submitted to Madurai Collector here on Monday, the association also appealed to the Collector to stop the screening of the movie using his powers under The Cinematograph Act until the filmmakers made the specific cuts in the movie.
The filmmakers had claimed that the movie was loosely based on the true incident of a crackdown by Tamil Nadu Police on a series of theft and murder cases in the State in which a few members of Bawaria community, who were also included in the CTA, were involved.
Alleging that CTA was a draconian law brought by the British Raj through which all the members of nearly 200 communities were branded as criminals, K. Kasinathan, a coordinator of DTWA, said that it was unfair that a movie made now had used the same language to characterise the entire communities as criminals.
“Those classified as ‘Criminal Tribes’ were in fact communities that provided stiff resistance to the British rule and hence they were oppressed through CTA,” he claimed.
Pointing out that CTA was repealed after prolonged struggle by the communities and activists, he said that the first National Backward Class Commission headed by Kaka Kalelkar in 1955 even recommended avoiding the use of the word ‘Criminal Tribes.’
A. Gowthaman, a joint secretary with the legal wing of DWTA, said that the association was also planning to approach the court if the filmmakers were not willing to delete the particular scenes and dialogues from the movie which the association found as offensive and defamatory.
“We have pointed out five instances in particular. The word ‘criminal tribes’ in the first scene, the scene where the protagonist explain to Rajasthan police about ‘thugs’ of 1830s, a scene showing the hero reading a Tamil book titled ‘History of Criminal Tribes’, dialogues that have reference to various denotified and nomadic communities and the derogatory remarks against Vettaikaran community,” he said.
