Reel trouble

A FIRM JUDICIAL directive appears to have extinguished the threat to conduct an illegitimate, coercive and menacing protest. The Bajrang Dal, which had expressed its intention to disrupt the screening of the Hindi film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, has been forced to back down by the Delhi High Court. The Court's directive that adequate security be provided to the Capital's cinema halls screening the film has prompted the Bajrang Dal to formally ``withdraw'' its decision and ``allow'' the screening of the film. That a judicial body has prevented a nakedly fundamentalist grouping from conducting an incendiary and misguided campaign is worthy of welcome and a matter of great relief. But the Bajrang Dal's capitulation before the law does not, to underline the obvious, imply its respect for the law. If anything, the bigots who people this organisation have made a distressing habit of taking the law into their own hands and committing intermittent acts of violence and brutality.

Over the last few years, cinema appears to have become a repeated target for the Bajrang Dal and other like-minded organisations. The Dal was involved in the violent campaign against the film Fire. It also played a role in forcing the film's director, Ms. Deepa Mehta, into abandoning her next project, which was titled Water and was to be shot in Varanasi. A few months ago, Bajrang Dal hooligans ransacked cinema halls screening Mr. M. F. Husain's Gajagamini, ostensibly an act of retribution against the well- known painter for the manner in which he depicted the Goddess Saraswati on canvas many years earlier. The Dal's objection against Chori Chori Chupke Chupke does not stem principally from its content (as it did in both Fire and Water) or because of some imagined slight against Hinduism committed by its Director (as was the case with Gajagamini). Rather, it revolves around questions over the possible links that the film's producer and financier - Bharat Shah and Nazim Rizvi, both of who have been arrested - have with the underworld, principally Chota Shakeel and Dawood Ibrahim. The Dal has used this to try and lend a grandiose moral or ideological gloss to its campaign against Chori Chori Chupke Chupke which it has strived to defend on the ground that no film with links to the ``underworld mafia or Pakistani agents'' should be screened.

But the point surely is that it is not up to the Bajrang Dal to determine how Chori Chori Chupke Chupke was financed or how deeply the mafiosi were involved in backing it. Moreover, when a Mumbai special court has specifically permitted the film to be released and distributed, what right does the Bajrang Dal - or any other organisation for that matter - have to try and forcibly prevent its screening? Mr. Surendra Jain claims that his organisation has always respected the Judiciary but all the evidence points to the contrary. His own statement withdrawing the protest against Chori Chori Chupke Chupke repeats the threat that the Bajrang Dal will not permit films with ``underworld'' links to be screened in the future. The statement also contains the warning that the Judiciary cannot come to the rescue of people with such links every time. The statement reveals that while the Bajrang Dal may have been humbled by the Delhi High Court order, it is far from chastened. The Delhi police must take every step possible to ensure that film lovers are able to watch the film safely and without fear. With the Bajrang Dal's record of duplicity and double-speak, a mere statement withdrawing the protest is insufficient cause for letting down one's guard. It is imperative that all the necessary protective steps are taken by the administration to see that the screening is smooth and trouble free.

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