A directory of what to watch, read

Ironically, the very act of censorship nudges people to pay attention to the proscribed work.

August 05, 2016 01:07 am | Updated 01:28 am IST

Banned: “‘Ka Bodyscapes’ is an important movie that depicts the consequences of Hindu fundamentalism.” A still from the film. Photo: Special Arrangement

Banned: “‘Ka Bodyscapes’ is an important movie that depicts the consequences of Hindu fundamentalism.” A still from the film. Photo: Special Arrangement

I was amused when I read that the >Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has refused to certify New York-based Indian poet Jayan Cherian’s film Ka Bodyscapes for its “vulgar and offensive scenes” and for “ridiculing, insulting and humiliating Hindu religion, in particular portraying Hindu Gods in a poor light.” I had anticipated such a response after watching the movie at a special screening organised in Delhi a few months ago. If it was cleared for public screening, I would have thought: was the movie so badly made that it didn’t have the power to offend — after all, it was a critique of right-wing fundamentalism.

No surprise News reports about the film say it is the story of a gay couple Vishnu and Haris and their friend Sia. But the movie is a lot more than the love story and provocative criticism of growing intolerance. The new religious police in India thrive by restricting bodies and their desires. The film, by celebrating bodily functions and desires, invites us to look critically at such policing. Haris, the painter who is working towards an exhibition, celebrates the male body by depicting it in various stages of pleasure and action in his painting series called ‘Ka Bodyscapes’. His friend Vishnu moves in with him and serves as the model for most of these paintings. They are close, attached and attracted to each other, and there is a strong sexual energy in their physical intimacy. The movie spends a lot of time pausing over parts of Vishnu’s well-built body, celebrating its beauty. Vishnu’s body, dark and hairy, is not manscaped and fair like actors and models we see in popular culture and is celebrated throughout the movie.

Sia, their friend, has a different battle which also emerges from associating shame with bodily functions. At her workplace, there is a major row after used sanitary pads are found in the toilet and the women are humiliated by the male employer. Hurt, Sia protests by filing a police complaint and also uploading a picture of her used pad as her Facebook profile photo and joins a protest march organised by a women’s right group. At the end of the movie, Sia and Haris’ lives converge and they pay a huge price for looking at the world through a liberal and progressive lens. The movie is not interested in the inner lives of these characters, but in the consequences of their intellectual and personal choices — and for that, I found the movie void of an emotional core that good stories should have.

But Ka Bodyscapes is an important movie that depicts the consequences of Hindu fundamentalism. At a time when sane people are bewildered witnessing the quick erosion of human rights in India, we need narratives that enable us to make sense of this chaos. We need stories that stitch together the beauty of the diverse resistance movements towards increasing right-wing fundamentalism. This movie, by telling a story that brings into ambit the diverse themes of religious fundamentalism, women’s movements, homophobia and eroding freedom of expression, is an ode to the terrible beauty of these tragic times.

The Nadine Gordimer test The Censor Board’s decision to block access to an important movie on contemporary issues about India once again points towards its complicity with the Indian nanny state that tells us what to eat, what to see, what to wear, who to love, when to marry, who not to marry. Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist, said in response to a question about her books being repeatedly banned by the apartheid regime: “It would have been an insult if they hadn’t been banned. This was an honour.” For writers and artists in India, every ban, every act of censorship should now be accepted as an honour. If our work does not get censored, it probably means that it is missing the note somewhere.

In Eugène Ionesco’s absurd drama Rhinoceros — a strong indictment of fascism — people turn into rhinoceros in hilarious ways over three acts, a metaphor for the quick spread of an incomprehensible and unsuitable ideology based on regressive ideas and hatred for minorities. The only person who doesn’t transform (or conform) is a character called Berenger who is criticised for his drinking and untidy lifestyle in the play. After 2014, most of us had started to feel that way: that people around us are turning into one-horned rhinos, that we are incarcerated in the middle of an absurd drama that performs chaos and confusion, to point towards the inability to express the chaotic and confusing nature of fundamentalism. But it didn’t stop there.

Once the Theatre of the Absurd was over, we watched in horror the Theatre of Cruelty: Dalit bodies murdered by institutions (Rohith Vemula) that stirred protests across the country, the militarisation of universities among which the JNU row was most widely covered, imprisoning students for their “seditious” and “anti-national” views, people lynched for supposedly eating beef in a village close to Delhi — a trend, that has now been admired and enthusiastically emulated in many other parts of the country — and, of course, the murder of writers that is still a work in progress: M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare.

What will emerge after Theatre of the Absurd and Theatre of Cruelty? Only time will tell. But I want to look at what’s beautiful in the middle of this: state institutions by repeatedly censoring art, silencing storytellers, persecuting critics by branding them anti-nationals, are actually telling us where to pay attention, where a new world is taking wobbly footsteps. They are telling us what to read, what to watch, who to marry, what to eat, what to die for, and, of course, who to fall in love with. The beauty of the pond and the biodiversity under it is no more visible. It is covered by an overgrowth, but from these plants, the beautiful water hyacinths will bloom. Blue and light purple in colour, they will sparkle in the sun, spreading their petals in fresh wind.

Aruni Kashyap, author of The House with a Thousand Stories, teaches at Ashoka University. The views expressed are personal.

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