Sullying the spirit of Gandhi

I had a feeling of deja vu when I stood up to address a room full of journalists the other day at the Press Club in Mumbai. I was there to speak on behalf of film maker Vijay Ghatge regarding his film Shobha Yatra, which had run into some trouble with the censors in a rather interesting and roundabout way.

A little voice in my head whispered ?Old chap, haven?t you been here and done this before? You?re like that proverbial dog who goes round and round and can?t catch his tail.? When is this unceasing battle between the film industry and the Censor Board, which is supposedly revamped with every new government, going to end?

In an instant, I was back in the 1970s, struggling to get my first film, Manzilein Aur Bhi Hain, cleared by the ?fascist? government of Indira Gandhi. Those were terrible times as the dark cloud of the Emergency loomed over our heads, and people like LK Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee crusaded against the fact that freedom of expression was being stifled.

Fade out and fade in to the year 1998…And the crusaders of yesterday are now the oppressors of today. And I am still doing the same thing with this government, i.e., fighting the Censor Board headed by Ms Asha Parekh.

She is one of our own fraternity and appointed by the government to play gatekeeper to protect the interests of the fundamentalists. Her board is asking me to digitally correct the saffron bands that the goons in my film are wearing. And to colour them grey, as suggested by the big daddies of the home ministry headed by LK Advani, so that in times to come the colour saffron is not associated with evil as depicted in my film.

Cut to: the power-drunk crusaders-cum-rulers suffer a shocking defeat in the 2004 general elections and the NDA is replaced by the UPA.

Now is the time for the UPA to immediately swing into action and launch a ?detoxification process,? which means that Anupam Kher, who is the chairman of the Censor Board, handpicked by the NDA government, is unceremoniously ushered out.

In his place, a ?fairer-minded, more suitable? Sharmila Tagore is brought in. And what does she do? She does exactly what Asha Parekh did.

Asha Parekh protected the Hindu fundamentalists and Sharmilaji protects the interests of the major player of the UPA, the Congress.

She refuses to certify the trailer of Shobha Yatra, a film which has been cleared by the Censor Board, on the grounds that it shows ?irreverence? to icons of India like Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru.

Simply put, she is the new gatekeeper of public morality, who will look after the interests of the current party. But instead of saying that decorously, she will hide her designs by making it seem as if she is protecting the form of the Mahatma from being desecrated.

When I finally spoke to the gathering, I chose to bring out the essence of what the Mahatma really was, rather than indulge in the usual chest-beating about the raw deal that the film industry has been getting all along from the Censor Board.

And I began by reading out a letter written to the Mahatma by my friend/philosopher UG Krish-namurthy, on the occasion when a temple was built in the name of the Mahatma in the year 1946.

Excerpts from the letter: ?Dear Mahatmaji…I am not averse to idolatry. I believe that every citizen in the world must have freedom and the right to worship his or her ideas in any manner or form that appeal to that individual. But when an institution like a temple is created for a living person, to which an ordinary individual is drawn because of the sanctity attached to it by a large number of devotees, does it not stifle independent thought? And thus perpetuate blind adoration and attachment to form?… do you approve and encourage such endeavours on the part of admirers to perpetuate your form and ideals for which you stand, however admirable and attractive they may be??

On receiving UG?s letter, the Mahatma wrote an open reply in The Harijan, stating that he was much pained to know a temple had been erected where his image was being worshipped. He called it ?a gross form of idolatry? and an insult to him in the sense that the whole of his life had been caricatured in that temple.

?A man is worshipped,? he wrote, ?only to the extent that he is followed, not in his weakness, but in his strength. Hinduism is degraded when it is brought down to the level of worshipping a living being. No man can be said to be good before his death. After death too, he is good for the person who believes him to have possessed certain qualities attributed to him…As a matter of fact, God alone knows a man?s heart. And hence, the safest thing is not to worship any person, living or dead, but to worship perfection which resides in God, known as truth.?

The letter had a staggering impact on the gathering. We could all see the absurdity in the Censor Board, pretending to itself and to the world that it was showing reverence to the Mahatma. While, in fact, itself desecrating what the Mahatma actually stood for.

By deifying Gandhiji, you destroy him. The shopkeepers who use the form of Gandhi as a means of their livelihood have no idea of the ideals he really stood for and upheld. Because if they did, they wouldn?t stifle independent thought, for which Gandhi lived and died.