Page 292 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

tional Award for the ¤lm best promoting national integration, tax exempt status
(which makes the tickets much cheaper), and is regularly screened on Doordar-
shan (Indian state television) on Independence Day. This happened under the
Congress (non-Hindutva) government.
Mani Ratnam’s second ¤lm in this trilogy, Bombay (1995), has a central nar-
rative of an intercommunal marriage between a south Indian Hindu male and
a Muslim girl, both hoping to escape communal tensions in Bombay. However,
this is 1992 and, following the mobilization of support for Hindutva via Rath
Yatras around India, which demanded the building of a temple at Rama’s birth-
place in Ayodhya, on a site then occupied by a mosque, the mosque was demol-
ished and there were subsequent riots in Bombay in December 1992 and Janu-
ary 1993, which left many dead, mostly Muslims. A ¤lm about such recent
events, which seemed to threaten the future of India, was a bold move and one
unlikely to pass the censors, who made many cuts, including references to the
high numbers of Muslim deaths and images of the police shooting Muslims as
well as actual footage of the mosque being demolished (Vasudevan 2000a, 195–
196). The censors may have thought Bombay would not in®ame communal sen-
timents as it shows that Hindus and Muslims were equally culpable (whereas
the violence was disproportionately against Muslims) and the violence directed
more at property than at people (Vasudevan 2000a). Mani Ratnam met the head
of the Shiv Sena, Bal Thackeray, who acted as unof¤cial censor, authorizing
screening in Bombay without protest. However, the ¤lm was the object of Mus-
lim protests, and Mani Ratnam’s home in Madras was attacked by a gunman.
Muslims and secular objectors to the ¤lm argued that Bombay shows the secular
male as the modern citizen, while his wife is a religious, domestic ¤gure. The
¤lm enforces many stereotypical images of the Muslim, as aggressor (the girl’s
father) contrasted with the educated, peaceful Hindu (the boy’s father), or im-
ages from the Muslim social (Vasudevan 2000a, 200). Again, while many objec-
tions to the ¤lm may be upheld, apart from the seal of approval from the Shiv
Sena, which Mani Ratnam was obliged to obtain, there is no convincing argu-
ment that Bombay espoused Hindutva. In fact, in the ¤lm’s ¤nal scenes, when
the mob threatens to burn the hero alive, he claims he is an “Indian,” not a
Hindu.

A Hindutva Film?
Hey! Ram (Kamalahasan, 1999), again from the south although made in
simultaneous Tamil and Hindi versions, undeniably ®irts with Hindutva in a
more dangerous manner. This ¤lm is nationalistic and historical, a ®awed epic.
While ultimately carrying a Gandhian message and showing scenes of Hindu
barbarity, albeit often retaliatory, the ¤lm emphasizes graphically violent scenes
depicting Muslim atrocities, inspired directly by Jinnah, while sympathetically
portraying the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; a leading Hindutva organi-
zation). The conversion at the end feels like an afterthought, added after a very
serious and deep fascination with forms of fascism. Some of the ¤lm’s images

The Saffron Screen? 281