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Culture of intolerance

If we are too easily offended as a people, then we capitulate even more easily to those who take offence. The suspension of the screening of Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar in Madhya Pradesh and two Haryana districts expresses the distressing tendency of governments and local administrations to appease the intolerant by banning films or books. The Hindi film — an extravaganza in which a marriage of political convenience between the great Mu ghal emperor Akbar (Hrithik Roshan) and a proud Rajput princess, ‘Jodhaa Bai’ (Aishwarya Rai), develops, through many a fiery trial, into true love — has evoked nasty protests in some States. Cinema halls in Rajasthan were coerced into not screening the film following threats of violence; a low intensity bomb went off at a hall screening the film in Maharashtra; and there has been some trouble in other States such as Gujarat, Bihar, and Delhi.

The trouble over Jodhaa Akbar ostensibly stems from ‘hurt sentiments’ the film’s ahistoricity caused among some groups claiming to speak for the Rajput community. There certainly “wasn’t any historical character called Jodhaa Bai,” as Irfan Habib, the eminent historian of Mughal India, points out; he clarifies that while it is true that Akbar married the Amber ruler Raja Bharmal’s eldest daughter, “her name isn’t mentioned anywhere … and she was certainly not Jahangir’s mother.” (Some historians believe ‘Jodhaa Bai’ was emperor Jahangir’s wife.) But then Jodhaa Akbar doesn’t claim to be history and indeed its director has described it as “70 per cent fiction.” It is significant that there was no protest when K. Asif’s 1960 classic, Mughal-E-Azam, drawing on folklore and claiming no historicity, featured ‘Jodha Bai’ (Durga Khote) as the Rajput wife of Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor). The involvement of politicians, cutting across party lines, in the current campaign of protest and intimidation suggests, in addition to political opportunism, a worsened attitude to freedom of expression. There is absolutely no warrant for banning films on account of a perceived or real threat of violence and thus flouting Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, which safeguards the fundamental right of freedom of expression. The principle that “freedom of expression protects not merely ideas that are accepted but those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population”; that law and order problems are no justification for suppressing freedom of expression; and that succumbing to threats of violence is “tantamount to negation of the rule of law” was firmly laid down by the Supreme Court in its landmark Ore Oru Gramathile judgment (1989). To suspend the screening of Jodhaa Akbar or turn a blind eye as bigots coerce cinema halls into pulling out the film is to surrender to the culture of intolerance and dishonour the Constitution.

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