Of film screenings and political muscle-flexing
BJP leaders must distance themselves from the elements who disrupted film screenings in Pune and Hyderabad
and their violent and illegal actions, says GEETA SESHU
Are the recent attacks on film screenings in Pune and Hyderabad by students and youth owing allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) some indication of the shape of things to come in a pre-election year?
On August 21, 2013, activists of the BJP’s student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) attacked students of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and members of the Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) who had gathered for a screening of Anand Patwardhan’s film ‘Jai Bhim Comrade’. The ABVP activists reportedly asked the KKM member to raise a ‘Jai Narendra Modi’ slogan and to clarify his links with naxalite groups.
On September 7, 2013, activists of the BJP’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), disrupted the screening of a film festival on Kashmir in Hyderabad, vandalizing equipment and even stole the personal computer of film-maker Ajay Raina. The attackers, led by a Kashmiri pandit and software engineer Rahul Razdan, were objecting to the film festival ‘Kashmir: Before our eyes’, for being anti-national and against the Indian army.
Kashmir has always been a red-rag for the right-wing in India and there are quite a few instances of disruptions, attacks and the vandalizing of venues where any discussion, art show or film screening is held on Kashmir. In February last year, the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena decided to disrupt the screening of a documentary on Kashmir ‘Jashn-e-Azaadi’ , purportedly because the film portrayed the Indian army in a poor light.
The running thread in all the protests on Kashmir is, of course, nationalism. But so are the protests against what Manmohan Singh terms the greatest threat to national security – Maoism. Blogs, comments on news-sites and social media networks run by Hindutva supporters are replete with justifications of these acts of vandalism in the name of preserving and protecting Indian nationalism.
If these are merely students or youth who have a different point of view, there could have been room for a dialogue. While some may feel the space for a dialogue, small though it is, may be long past. Dialogues take many forms and are powerful, even if they are unequal, like the contentious government-supported Zubin Mehta concert in Kashmir last week and the effort of civil society organisations to host their own programme ‘Haqeekat-e-Kashmir’, focusing on both the music of the valley as well as the political turmoil in the area.
Perhaps these violent objectors are fringe elements in the BJP’s student and youth wings? Unlikely, but even so, it is incumbent on the BJP leaders to come out and say so and definitely do more to distance themselves from these elements and their disruptive, violent and illegal actions.
Caught on the back foot with charges of the involvement of BJP leaders in fomenting trouble in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar riots last week, it is unlikely that the BJP leadership will speak out on these incidents. But with rising electoral temperatures, its silence will only add to the chilling effect of these reprehensible acts.
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