He may have been India's most celebrated filmmaker, but the government had banned a documentary film that Satyajit Ray made on Sikkim in 1971. Now, the film, Ray's second documentary after he made one on Rabindranath Tagore, will finally be allowed for public screening, since the external affairs ministry has decided to lift the ban 40 years after it was made.
The film had been commissioned by the last Chogyal ( king) of Sikkim, Palden Thondup Namgyal, and his American-born queen Hope Cooke. "It was actually the Chogyal's American wife who was keen that Ray make a documentary on Sikkim," said Ray's Sandip, also a filmmaker.
However, when the film was completed after "having been shot in three different seasons", the Chogyal was upset about some of the candid reality portrayed in it. It included the Sikkim's poor alongside the grandeur of the royalty. In one of his shots, for instance, Ray showed the poor scrambling for leftover food dumped behind the palace after a grand royal dinner.
When the royal couple viewed the film in Kolkata for the first time, they were unhappy about some such shots and ordered cuts, narrates Sandip. Ray was "unhappy with the final cut", said Sandip. That was the only screening in India so far.
After Sikkim was merged with India in 1975, it was still considered a sensitive region and the Centre decided to ban the film that was commissioned by the monarchy with there being no screening of the film in India.
Excited that people here will finally get to see the film that was essentially made to promote the state as a tourist destination, Sandip told TOI, "Ray was reluctant in the beginning and told Cooke that he does not make documantaries and has only made one on Tagore, but Cooke insisted that she had seen the film on Tagore and hence wanted him to make one on Sikkim." As a young school boy, Sandip remembers going for the shooting that took place during his vacations.
Sandip says the film, shot in colour, has been screened at a few international venues, but more importantly it is an "unknown Ray", as not many people know that Ray had made a film on Sikkim.
"About two years ago, I saw it in France, as part of a retrospective of Ray's complete works," he says. The original negative must be America, Sandip says, as it was with the Chogyal when he left after Sikkim became part of India. But two prints of the documentary are in the US and the British Film Institute. At the request of the British Film Institute, Joseph Lindwall, renowned film preserver, and the Academy of Motion Pictures have restored the documentary.
There had been requests from the international film community and from Indians across the world for lifting the ban. The government has now decided to respond and the film will be screened across the country on Ray's 90th birth anniversary on May 2, 2011.