After the police refused to allow the screening of documentary, Muzaffarnagar Baaki Hai , which takes a critical look at the role of Hindu groups in the Muzaffarnagar riots, at Spaces in Besant Nagar, members of the civil society protested on Besant Nagar beach and raised slogans against the police and the State.
The event, which was promoted on Facebook, was organised by the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle at Panuval book store, as a part of concerted effort to screen the film at 60 different places in India on August 25. The screening was stopped in Madurai and Trichy as well. However, in Pondicherry the screening went on without any problems despite Amit Shah’s visit.
Documentary filmmaker RP Amudhan, one of the organisers, said that the police had been continuously in touch with them and tried to convince him to not screen the film. “Over the last couple of days, they said that they fear a law and order problem and told us we cannot screen it without the Commisioner of Police’s permission even if we wanted to screen it in a private space,” he said.
Even before people started trickling into Spaces at Besant Nagar for the screening scheduled at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the police had taken up positions outside the premises on Tuesday.
After at least 50 people had assembled at the venue, several members of the audience, including Professor A Marx, actor Rohini and Venkatesh Chakravarthy, director of L.V. Prasad Film and Television Academy, condemned the manner in which the police and the State Government is trying to scuttle free speech.
“Stopping the screening of the film based on a law written in 1957 is highly objectionable. We don’t know which party is in power in the State: BJP or AIADMK,” asked professor A Marx.
Venkatesh Chakravarthy urged those who came for the screening to lodge a strong protest to save the shrinking democratic spaces. “It is not enough to see these films inside class rooms. We must screen these films in public spaces. We have to lodge a strong protest,” he said. Those who came for the screening then collectively decided to protest in public.
With many volunteering to screen the film in their houses, the film was finally screened in Goethe Institut thanks to its director, Helmut Schippert.
