INDIA –
Film Fascism
16’55’’
April 1999
Reporter – Eleanor Hall
Montage of cinema goersHall: In a country where going to the movies is a national obsession, a country which churns out more celluloid fantasy than anywhere in the world, one film is sparking an extraordinary reaction.
Starts:01:00:00:00
00:11People smash cinemaFX: Smashing glass/shouting
00:22DeepaDeepa: Nothing had prepared me for the way the Shiv Senics attacked Fire. I mean nothing.
00:32FX: Smashing glass/shouting
00:38Suda Churi:Suda Churi: This is the only way to pressurise, you know – the majority doesn’t like it.
00:43FX: Smashing glass/shouting
00:49DeepaDeepa: I think what I remember was the viciousness in the expression of the women who were tearing up the posters. And it felt like such a desecration.
00:56Deepa with guardHall: internationally acclaimed director Deepa Mehta is stunned by the reaction to her film and by the changes she fears are taking hold in her country. Now when she travels in India, she’s forced to take along an armed guard.
Deepa: Because it’s not that tangible its more scary for me personally.01:13
01:33View from carWe are being told all the time what we can do, what we can’t, what we can see, what we can’t. And that to me is sort of like the beginnings of fascism.
01:38Map India/rallyDrum music
01:50Hall: The world’s largest democracy is today honouring its national hero - Mahatma Gandhi. But these people are marching not to celebrate Gandhi’s birth but to warn that his message of non-violence and tolerance is being trampled.
01:55WomanWoman: The law connives and is involved. Look at this gentleman here listening to me, now there is a policeman listening to me. This is a so called free state.
[crying] Film this man who’s watching everything. Film him.
02:11RallyHall: Among those who fear the country of Gandhi has lost its way, is the Mahatma’s great grandson.
02:33Ghandi
Super:
TUSHAR GANDHI
Great Grandson, Mahatma GandhiGandhi: But the fear psychosis amongst the creative people on whom the attacks have been the most virulent, is because of the sheer strength of louts that these people have. The storm troopers that they have to whom nothing is sacrosanct.
02:41RallyHall: The fear on the streets here is generated by this man.
03:04Thackery speaking at rally
Thackery: We should completely crush the opposition. We don’t want them at all. 03:08Hall: Once known for the tolerance of its Hindu majority, India is now experiencing the march of religious extremism.
03:17Hall: Bal Thackery runs the Hindu fundamentalist party in the state of Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena has held power here for 5 years with a combination of anti-Muslim propaganda and brute force.
03:27Deepa on streetNow Deepa Mehta is in the firing line. Though she knows it’s the stronghold of the Shiv Sena party, Deepa Mehta has come with her daughter to what is also India’s culture and film city, Bombay, now known by its traditional name, Mumbai.
03:44Excerpt from FireShe’s fighting to get her film, fire back in the cinemas.
04:03Actress: I’m treated like a household pet when I take it. That’s what hurts.
04:10Deepa
Super:
DEEPA MEHTA
Writer/Director “Fire”
Deepa: It’s a film that talks to a large degree about the importance of choices.
04:16Excerpt from FireActress: This isn’t familiar to me this, this awareness, of needs, of desires.
04:23Hall: It’s a gentle film to western eyes, a subtle Indian Thelma & Louise, without the guns or even much nudity. But lesbianism was always going to be provocative here.
04:38Nandita
Super:
NANDITA DAS
ActressNandita: We have really never dealt with the subject of homosexuality. I mean very subtly maybe you see little shades and not mentioned and you know just camouflaged in a lot of other things but never sort of head on.”
04:54Shabana
Super:
SHABANA AZMI
ActressShabana: What the women doing basically is negotiating more space for themselves. What they are doing is trying to break out of a tradition that places them only as wife and mother, you know, as the bearer of male children, 05:07Excerpt from Fireand the fact they are moving out of that and also claiming desire, my god if women start claiming desire can you imagine how dreadful it would be for our culture.
Man: Raga!
Actress: Just ignore him.
Man: Raga!
Actress: Please don’t go.
05:29
05:32
05:34
05:56
Man: Where were you?
Actress: With Sita.
Man: You didn’t hear me calling?
Actress: Yes, I did.
05:42
05:44
05:46
05:48Man: Why didn’t you come?
Actress: Sita says the concept of duty is overrated. 05:50
05:54Hall: Such rebellion against male authority is also provocative in a culture where the majority of women are subservient to men.
05:58Nandita: When women come to see this film they are not really seeing it as a lesbian film. They are probably 06:08Nanditarelating to the loneliness that the women go through or the way arranged marriages you know -- I mean that little scene where the guy I marry, when he just makes love on the first night. I won’t even call it that -- has sex on the first night -- and turns and sleeps off you know and it think that’s the loneliness that people really associate with.
Hall: But Fire is nothing like the majority of films produced here.
06:32Bollywood setMusic
Hall: In the Hollywood of the east -- Bollywood -- its Hindi films like this that are blockbuster material, serving up their own peculiar version of visual popcorn and vacuous portrayal of women.
06:36
06:44Bollywood setNow Bollywood is not only the country’s entertainment factory but the keeper of Hindu culture, and lesbianism is not just seen as an import from the west but an affront to the Hindu ideal.
07:14Hall with cinema ownerHall: So your worst fears were that this area could actually have been damaged.
07:33Modi: Yes. This could have been damaged very badly.
07:37Hall: Roosi Modi, whose family has run this art deco cinema in Bombay since the 1930s, felt the force of the Shiv Sena opposition when he began screening Fire.
07:40Modi: This is where all the action took place, and this is where the crowd gathered, and here are the windows that they broke. This window and the other two where the crowd is, that side.
07:50Hall: How did they break them? What did they smash them with?
08:01Modi: Well, sticks, stones, smashed them with their fists, whatever. There must have been about 200, 300 people.
08:03
Super:
ROOSI MODI
New Empire Cinema, MumbaiHall: So how shocking was it for you?
Modi: Very shocking. I mean I would never have expected something like this to ever happen in my city of Bombay. Never.
08:09
08:11
08:18Music
Suda ChuriHall: This is the face behind the violence. A devout Hindu and a lawyer, Suda Churi appears frail. But as head of the women’s wing of the Shiv Sena, she’s a powerful political force.
08:27ChuriChuri: See in the film “Fire”, what was show – it is against our culture. It’s unnatural things which our religion… our custom… will never permit – and that’s why we’re against it.
08:42Women arrive for meetingHall: Suda Churi sees herself and her band of fellow Shiv Senics as the voice of the silent Hindu majority, a majority which she says in the past has docilely accepted outside influences and not stood up properly to defend its culture.
09:03Woman: We have to protest against this. It disturbs the social fabric.
09:20ChuriChuri: I believe in law no doubt – that is true. But some there are doing their duty.
09:24Hall: You say you have a right to agitate, but the people who want to see the film…
09:32Churi: They want to see, and they should not see. Why do they want to see that?
09:36Excerpt from “Fire”Hall: But when it came to censoring Fire, this guardian of Indian culture, with its rigorous rules governing the portrayal of women, violence, sex and animals, took the side of the filmmakers.
10:23NadeemNadeem: The essential point here is that the movie fit our guidelines and that’s why it was cleared by the censor board.
10:36NanditaNandita: All of us actually thought that probably the censors would cut something out of it and the fact they didn’t was, wow, I mean maybe people are getting more mature.
10:42Rioting in cinemaHall: No such maturity was shown by the Shiv Sena. Its reaction was not only to forcibly remove the film from the screens but to send Fire back to the censor board.
10:55NadeemHall: Once the censor’s made a decision on a film, how rare would it be for a film to be sent back by a particular state government.
11:11Nadeem: What happened recently in case of ‘Fire’ was, is in recent memory the only film I have come across.
11:17Hall and ChuriHall: And Suda Churi warns the Censor Board it had better not pass the film this time.
11:28ChuriChuri: If they do that, then we’ll start again agitations. We’ll stop pictures.
11:34
Hall: So if they do pass it again, there’ll be more violence.
11:39Churi: We just send back, you know.
11:42ShabanaShabana: It’s completely unacceptable to say that they speak in the name of Indian culture, because Indian culture is a very tolerant one. This kind of intolerance that the Shiv Sena has shown is unacceptable.
11:44Guys on truckHall: But then tolerance has never been the hallmark of this party. It’s marshaled support over the years with an appeal to raw emotion – the emotion of religious fundamentalism.
12:02Drums/rally
12:13Shiv Sena RallyHall: Here on the outskirts of Bombay, tens of thousands of Shiv Sena supporters -- proudly displaying their party’s colours -- have been bused in to celebrate the Hindu festival of Malangrad.
But for all the enthusiasm the event seems to generate, this is not a Hindu pilgrimage that is familiar to recent generations. It’s a piece of their culture Shiv Senics say they are reclaiming after it was stolen by Muslims.
12:21
12:37ShabanaShabana: It’s about politics, its not about religion. It’s about using grievances in the past, real or imaginary, that need redress in the present times to get back your honour so to speak, and by doing that becoming a way of mobilising votes.
12:53Women at meeting with Suda ChuriHall: Suda Churi and her women’s wing are right behind their party’s leaders when it comes to defending their culture against the Muslim minority.
And it’s now that Suda Churi lets on what really bothers her about Deepa Mehta’s film. It’s not lesbianism being shown to Indian audiences, but lesbianism between Hindu women.
13:22
13:32ChuriChuri: The two ladies… they are Indians that are shown. In that lesbianism is everywhere, you have to show… why not show women from other countries – like Christians, or like Muslims?
13:44ShabanaShabana: That to my mind is the most dangerous and insidious thing that happened in this whole situation. The attempt to try and make it into a Hindu-Muslim thing when that wasn’t the case at all.
13:56Excerpt from “Fire”Actress: We’re leaving right now. Listen Raga, I’m glad he found us.
Hall: It was certainly provocative for Deepa Mehta to have called her two lead characters after the two most revered goddesses in Hindu mythology, but she says the trial by fire of the goddess Sita sets up the key theme of the movie.
14:08
14:15Man: What do you mean, no? It’s your duty.
14:29Deepa
Super:
DEEPA MEHTA
Writer/Director “Fire”Deepa: The point is to make somebody go through continuous -- women especially-- continuous trials to prove their purity seems to be part of our ethos, and that’s why I called her Sita.
14:33Hall: Do you think that if you had been a Muslim director, you would have been more at risk? People would have reacted even more violently towards you and your family?
14:56Deepa: Oh absolutely. In this climate right now, it would have been disastrous. If I was a Muslim, I would have been lynched by now and the film would have been, you know, just put in cans and dug up in some cave or the other.
15:04Hall: Are you serious?
15:27Deepa: Oh absolutely. There’s no question about it.
15:29People gathered outside cinema/ticket boxTraffic
15:31Hall: In one surprising quarter, though, they’re refusing to be intimidated. Despite the clear signals from the Shiv Sena that it wanted the film banned, the censor passed Fire a second time.
For Deepa Mehta it’s a moral victory but she’s resigned to the reality that it won’t be enough to win against the will of Shiv Sena godfather figure Bal Thackery.
15:38
15:53DeepaDeepa: People are petrified of Mr. Thackery. The reason the film, I think, will never be played in Maharashtra – and I’m positive of that – is because Mr. Bal Thackery has said that this film will not play in Maharashtra.
16:02RallyHall: In this city which has always been at the centre of India’s culture, fear is now setting the artistic agenda.
16:23Ghandi
Super:
TUSHAR GANDHI
Great Grandson, Mahatma GandhiGandhi: This is the same thought process that murdered the Mahatma 51 years ago. This is the same kind of propagation of lies and falsehoods that heralds the coming of fascism.
ENDS:01:17:00:0016:32
Reporter ELEANOR HALL
Camera GEOFF CLEGG
Sound GEP BARTLETT
Editor GARTH THOMAS
Producer IAN ALTSCHWAGER
Produced by ABC Australia c.1999
Distributed by Journeyman Pictures Ltd.