At the onset of this week, The Habitat — a studio for performing artistes like comedians, poets, and musicians in Mumbai’s Khar — put out a statement saying it will be temporarily shutting its premises. Recently, The Habitat (and the building that it is housed in, Hotel Unicontinental) was allegedly ransacked by workers of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, who had taken offence to the lyrics of a parody song by stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra. What followed was a political slugfest. At least 12 workers of the Shinde-led Shiv Sena were arrested, subsequently granted bail, a first information report was filed against Kamra, and the latter was granted interim bail by the Madras High Court too.
But this is not the first time that The Habitat has landed up in trouble, or even the first time that a venue was vandalised because someone took offence to an artist’s work. Barely weeks ago, when podcaster Ranveer Allahabadia (known as Beer Biceps) and comedian Samay Raina landed up in a controversy about “obscene content”, the Mumbai Police had reportedly reached The Habitat to inquire about the case, since the video for Raina’s online show ‘India’s Got Latent’ was shot there.
Even back in July 2020, while the country was under a lockdown, supporters of Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena allegedly vandalised the studio as a reaction to a video by stand-up comedian Agrima Joshua, which they said was reportedly “insulting to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.” It was only after Joshua wrote a public apology and posted it on the internet did the vandals leave the venue.
In 1996, activists of right-wing outfit Bajrang Dal had reportedly ransacked 23 tapestries and 28 paintings of renowned painter MF Husain in Ahmedabad’s Herwitz Gallery as a retaliation to his work. In 1998, they vandalised his house in Mumbai, which later forced Husain into exile. But even after he left the country, the attacks continued, when in 2008, his works displayed at the Constitution Club in Delhi were destroyed by an angry mob. Maharashtra has been witness to plenty of such incidents.
In 2015, columnist Sudheendra Kulkarni’s face was blackened allegedly by workers of the Shiv Sena (then an undivided party), for participating in a book launch with a former minister of Pakistan. At the time, Kulkarni had told the media, “A group of 10 or 15 Shiv Sainiks mobbed me, they stopped my car, asked me to come out, they caught me, started abusing me, they said we had ordered you to stop the launch this evening, you didn’t listen to us, this is what we’ll do with you.”
To prevent any sort of engagement with Pakistan, the Shiv Sena had also in 1991 and 1999 dug up the pitches at Wankhede stadium and Feroze Shah Kotla stadium, respectively, before international cricket matches with the neighbour. While the purported attack against The Habitat unfolded this week, acclaimed filmmaker Hansal Mehta also reflected on his own run-in with the Shiv Sena, dating back to 2000. In a note on Instagram, the director shared, “They vandalised it, physically assaulted me, blackened my face, and forced me to apologise publicly — by falling at the feet of an elderly woman — for a single line of dialogue in my film. The line was harmless, almost trivial. The film had already been cleared by the Censor Board with 27 other cuts. But that didn’t matter.”
While such incidents have happened since time immemorial, Mehta talked about the effect they leave behind, and the trauma. He wrote, “That incident didn’t just bruise my body. It bruised my spirit. It blunted my filmmaking, muted my courage, and silenced parts of me that took years to reclaim.”
