When I'm 64
Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty four...
When the Beatles sang this song in 1967 being sixty four seemed very far away. Paul McCartney is supposed to have written it when he was just 16. What does this have to do with Aarakshan? Plenty.Today when India celebrates 64 years of freedom, let us ask ourselves, how tolerant are we as a nation. What makes a democracy work is strength of the opposition in the Parliament.Art, literature, movies, advertisements etc all serve to shape the society in a subtle but definitive way. Today that freedom is threatened. The extra constitutional authority of some sections is showing up all too often. The Censor Board clears a film to be screened. That does not mean anything. Pressure groups will use brute force to determine what you can and cannot see. Prakash Jha's fate is a staunch reminder of how widespread this issue is:
The UP government has banned the release of Aarakshan; the Punjab government has followed suit till such time the state’s Screening Committee – whatever that is – previews the movie and submits its report. And Maharashtra wants specific scenes to be cut before the movie is allowed to be screened there.
We have seen pressure groups succeeding in getting the lyrics of a song to be changed because it refers to a community. Remember howlyrics of the song Dhan Te Nan from Kaminey were changed? The film Singh is King has to make a dozen changes that The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee asks for. Lov Aaj Kal sees Saif Ali being chastised for portraying the community in a manner that was unacceptable to some. Jodhaa Akbar did not show Rajputs in a "positive light" - hence parts of Rajasthan did not allow it to be screened.Even an actor's offscreen views are not free. Aamir Khan's support of the Narmada Bachao agitation was reason to stop screening of Fanaa. After having put crores making a film, the directors and actors are easy prey to this arm twisting. So they are keen to strike a deal - any deal, just so that they can screen their film. The directors have no choice - they have to give up their creative freedom to be able to get return on their money invested. Giving up your lunch money to the school bully to buy peace sounds eerily familiar.Authors face similar pressures. From Salman Rushdie to many more since, authors have had their books burnt because someone found something objectionable. Earlier this year, a book about Mahatma Gandhi, was banned in Gujarat. You can see a long list of books that are banned in India here. Biographies of Nehru, Subhash Bose, Tagore have been shunned because they portray them with their failings. Husain survived the ban on his paintings by going to Qatar on a self imposed exile. Anything that describes a national leader in less than glowing terms is banned by his or her supporters. We of course cannot make fun of religion or religious leaders or godmen.They say that it is only the self confident who can laugh at themselves. Poverty is no laughing matter we used to say earlier. "They" make fun of us because we are poor, is an often heard line in Bollywood movies of the '70s and '80s. "Kyunki main gareeb hoon na ..." was the reason given to anyone who was taking a dig at the hero.Today do we still have something to prove to the rest of the world? Artistic freedom if given up will make us look suspiciously close to a muzzled dictatorial regime. We have got political freedom, even if we haven't got economic independence for the majority. Can we make sure we do not give up what the Indian Constitution guarantees to all its citizens - the freedom of thought expression and belief. We must have matured as a nation enough to be able to give people the freedom to share their point of view even if we do not agree. For God's sake we are 64 today!! Happy Independence Day.