A filmmaker, a stand-up comic and a historian walked into a panel. And they swapped stories about the number of people who were offended by the number of things they had done.
In a discussion titled “Republic of hurt sentiments” at The Huddle here on Saturday, Karan Johar, Tanmay Bhatt and Mukul Kesavan took the audience through the processes by which to insulate against hurt sentiments.
One of the first is a certain pre-censorship. Johar has been at the hurt end of several controversies involving outraged sections of society. The latest was on casting a Pakistani actor in his film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil . When the outrage reached unavoidable levels, Johar published a video apologising to people for casting decisions made months before cross-border tensions came to a boil.
“I was torn between ideology and circumstance. But I felt I had no choice but to publish that video. It made me very uncomfortable — having to do that. Many people called it a hostage video and it looked like I had an invisible gun to my head. I am not proud of the fact that I had to do it. It works against my own ethos as a human being,” he said.
Stand-up comic Tanmay Bhatt too faced the brunt of political parties who threatened to beat him up for making a comical video poking fun at Lata Mangeshkar. He too promptly apologised. “I am still in my 20s. I apologised because I would like to live for some more time,” he said. “After the AIB roast too, I remember there were people shouting slogans outside the office. The thing is they actually call you up and inform you that they are coming for a protest. It’s like they are setting an appointment for it. Outrage is now an industry. And we have no choice but to apologise and move on,” he said.
Social media impact
Indian films and Indian audiences were far more progressive in the 1940s and 1950s. Filmmakers have taken on the powerful even in recent history. It is in the past seven or eight years that the outrage industry has really broken into the big league. “One of the biggest factors is social media. Earlier, with newspapers, it took 24 hours for the story to come out. Now someone tweets it in 24 seconds and everyone just picks it up. There is a cascading effect of digital media. And things go out of control very quickly. The 24 seconds has destroyed the sensibility, ethos and fabric of our country,” Johar said.
“If Twitter shuts down, half our problems will be solved,” Bhatt said.
Pre-censorship
The result of this over-sensitivity that groups of Indian audiences display to all minor sleights — real or perceived — is that artists, writers and filmmakers are pre-censoring themselves. Kesavan recounted his account of writing his first book of fiction. It involved a scene in an akhara and he wrote, “He woke up and saw a hugely muscled ape on the opposite wall.” “I am writing a mid-list literary book, which if I am lucky 2,500 people will read. Yet, I thought, ‘What am I writing?’ Akharas usually have images of Hanuman in them. This could offend someone. So I changed it to ‘There was a hugely muscled primate’ hoping that people who’d be offended would probably not know what a primate meant.” Kesavan said.
At the AIB office, Bhatt said, the loudest laughs mean a joke that can never be performed.
Johar has an entire legal team that vets everything, including lyrics. “And they send me long e-mails with 20 points saying this word will offend this party, that line will offend that community, etc.” he says. Johar had also acquired the rights to make a movie based on the bestseller The Immortals of Meluha by Amish. “But no matter how close we stay to the book, we realised there would be someone powerful who wouldn’t like the depiction of something. So we have decided to shelve the project.”
