It is possible to connect two seemingly unconnected incidents, and then two seemingly unconnected movies, with respect to something that has become common in today's India. Our country is said to be a pluralist democracy that honours freedom of expression and religion, but in practice does not seem to be so.
In Karnataka's Haveri, a bunch of hooligans barged into a hotel room where an inter-faith couple was present and forcibly shot them on video and manhandled them, with the woman eventually even alleging gangrape.
And in Tamil Nadu, a furore has broken out after a police case was registered against Nayanthara for her movie Annapoorani, which was released in December 2023, about a conservative Brahmin girl aspiring to be a master chef who takes up eating and cooking meat, aided by a male Muslim friend.
The OTT platform Netflix has taken the movie off its list in response to right-wing threats. Apparently, they did not like such a portrayal of Hindu-Muslim friendship between genders, which also included a dialogue referring to Lord Rama (who is this month's dominant political theme in India) as having eaten meat.
Who Defines the Rules? And How?
What links Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and the current national mood is an undeniable theme: moral policing and cultural intimidation that go both against the ethos of the country and the Constitution of India that is Bharat. Remember, this is also the land of the Kamasutra, which discussed sexual positions and all sorts of affairs that were not exactly sanskaari long before India officially became a liberal democracy.
In the broader context of what is happening in India, I see, both the movie's plot and the wimpish capitulation by Netflix against what is essentially an act of artistic freedom, as representative of illegal cultural intimidation. We need to ask why this is happening. Is this because those in power are seen to be representing a morality that defies individual choices to a point where vigilantes and sundry activists can intimidate anyone defying what is defined by a few powerful people to be 'culture'?
On a deeper look, however, it seems like Tamil Nadu is having some subtle culture policing of its own under the Dravida movement's political logic. It is equally evident that this is part of a global cultural framework in which you are happening if you do certain things and not 'with it' if you don't.
Last year, Aruna Vijay, a northern-origin Jain woman raised in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore, became a successful Masterchef India finalist (though not the winner), even though she insisted she won't cook eggs and other items considered non-vegetarian. She now has a cult following, but the current social climate requires somebody like her, such as the fictional Annapoorani, to go that extra mile to 'belong' in the league of ultra-successful people.
You can call this cultural Macaulayism after the British colonial master who made English India's administrative language and a passport to global success. If you don't master English, there is only so much you can do. That would be like a Tamilian from Madurai who is unlikely to make it big on Wall Street despite his investment banking skills, if he does not sport a jacket and a tie.
In 2019, celebrated Tamil director Atlee, who is now a Shah Rukh Khan colleague after the superhit multilingual Jawan, made Bigil, in which the protagonist, a football coach, brings back into the game a character called Gayathri, a Brahmin girl who quits playing football after she is married to a conservative family. Brahmin-fixing seems to be a fashion in Tamil Nadu, just like the 'Love Jihad' activism up north.
Now imagine Tamil Nadu, where Chief Minister M K Stalin is leading a campaign to allow Dalits to be temple priests to end caste barriers. His idea sounds good, but what if Dalits are required to be austere vegetarians for at least one generation to be allowed into temple kitchens in line with the Shastras? Who defines the rules? And how?
What is at Stake is the Right to Be or Say What You Want
What really matters in a modern democracy is the right to choose, and that includes the right to lay down rules, be it Masterchef or temple priesthood. The right to choose also includes the right to tell stories mixing imagination with everyday reality.
The Annapoorani controversy also involves the issue of Ramayana and whether indeed Lord Rama ate meat. We don't quite know but we have a right to ask if we have the right to choose between Ramayanas. Does it matter if the Tamil Ramayana by Kambar did have the Lord eating meat in addition to being a hunter-archer?
By caste/community, Rama was a Kshatriya warrior and by tradition and observation, the princely warriors were not professed vegetarians. Even if that logic was questioned, why should Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana be necessarily seen as the prime authentic document regarding that history?
Long before Annapoorani, there was a controversy in 2011 when the academic council of the University of Delhi removed from its BA curriculum poet-writer A K Ramanujan's 1987 essay, Three Hundred Rāmāyaṇas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation. This was seen as an act of censorship. The scholarly essay summarises the history of the Ramayaṇa and its spread across India and Asia over 2,500 years and underlines its variations.
Annapoorani, a box-office failure directed by debutant director Nilesh Krishnaa, only kindles thoughts and debates on the Ramayana and what it means for India and its sub-cultures. What is at stake after the Annapoorani controversy is the right to be or say what you want to, even if it is legally allowed because mob behaviour and social intimidation can cause utter distress to filmmakers, artists, and businesses funding their ventures.
Filmmaker Hansal Mehta made an acclaimed movie in 2015, Aligarh, based on the true story of Professor Ramchandra Siras, who was sacked for gay behaviour after a moral police intrusion into his home. He died in 2010 after a court case that he won after a painful struggle.
Be it cultural freedom or sexual orientation, it seems we are living in a totalitarian society of various hues that defy constitutional values. It is for the younger generation to see the inner imperatives so that the activism that upholds pluralism and constitutional freedoms defies the other that seems to have taken the law into its own hands.
(The writer is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He can be reached on Twitter @madversity. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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