In a memorable sequence in T.V. Chandran’s 1995 film Ormakal Undayirikkanam , a young boy walks into a barber shop, where a murder has just happened, and rubs away a writing on the wall which warns customers against having political discussions. He leaves just the word “politics” untouched. It could very well be seen as the director himself making a statement about his cinema, which has worn its politics on its sleeve, at a time when mainstream Malayalam cinema was celebrating apolitical narratives.
That film, as well as the 1997 film Mankamma and his recent work Pengalila , was set against the background of the Vimochana Samaram (liberation struggle) of 1959, when the Congress and religious and caste organisations got together to launch a protest movement to bring down the first elected Communist government of Kerala for implementing educational and land reforms. Many have drawn parallels to that period with now as the Left government at present is facing a similar opposition from religious forces post-Sabarimala verdict. Yet, Chandran views it differently.
“The context is a little different. In the past five years, the Sangh Parivar has injected religion into everything and brought down the level of politics. It has become the norm now that even the other parties have been influenced by religion to some extent. You couldn’t imagine an AKG or EMS inside a temple, but now even some Left ministers can be seen in temples. Religion has taken over every aspect of life, and issues like Sabarimala have relegated every other important issue into the background,” he says.
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He has explored the politics of Sangh Parivar, with a trilogy of films related to the Gujarat riots –
“In Kathavasheshan , the woman who is searching for the cause of her fiance’s suicide, finds out in the end that he committed that act “for the shame of being alive as an Indian after the Gujarat riots”. These words were supposed to appear on screen. But the censors only allowed “for the shame of being alive”. Now, it actually fits as we don’t need to mention Gujarat specifically, for what began there has spread across the country,” he says.
Censorship is, in fact, one of his major concerns as a film-maker, ahead of the election, with him wishing for a regime free of all kinds of censoring of content.
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“Successive governments have misused the censors for their own means, but in the past five years, it has hung as a Damocles’ sword over us. It is not just the certification board, but one has to also satisfy all kinds of religious fringe elements. If this has to change, the reign of the Sangh has to end in India. If they continue, the situation will only worsen, with us being forced to either stop all cultural activity or change its character to the form of an underground resistance movement,” Chandran says.
From his early days, he has been part of such a resistance, most notably during the Emergency days when he acted as the protagonist in P.A. Backer’s Kabani Nadi Chuvannappol (1975). He feels that even if an Emergency were to be declared in the present days, there might not be strong protests as back then, as conformism rules the roost.
“Even much of our new generation cinema reflects this conformism, where life is all happy and beautiful. There is no critique of anything. The idea is to conform,” he says.
Yet, he pins his hope this election on the first-time voters, to see whether they will get caught and travel with this tide or whether they stand on their own. Would he make a film set in the past five years? “Like many others, I cannot announce in advance what my next film would be, as I don’t have much of a financial backing.”