Kaali controversy!
Leena Manimekalai, a Tamil documentary moviemaker, has stirred the hornets’ nest. In her movie Kaali, the poster of the much revered Hindu goddess Kali is shown smoking a cigarette with an LGBTQ community’s pride flag. The movie was screened in Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, as a part of ‘Rhythms of Canada’ and is yet to be shown in India.
The blasphemous Kali poster comes close to Nupur Sharma’s supposed derogatory reference to the Holy Prophet, resulting in nationwide arsons and a few reprisal killings.
Despite nationwide outrage, the filmmaker, Manimekalai, seems unfazed and unapologetic and confuses the issue as an overreach by Hindus and an attack on her freedom of expression. She’s urging the protesters to see her film, which promotes love, as per her claim.
I do not know the quality of her creativity, but many like her try to catapult their career and fame by deriding Hinduism, our Gods, faith and practices. Not to be left out, a few politicians have joined the bandwagon, many criticising the filmmaker and a few taking her side. One lawmaker from Bengal explains that ‘her’ Kali is meat-eating and alcohol-consuming, and she finds nothing wrong with it.
Kali is a manifestation of the Trinity Goddess Parvati from the Hindu pantheon. Parvati is widely worshipped from coast to coast in many forms and styles. Sadly, we have witnessed Kali, Shiva and Ganesha featuring in slippers, toilet seat covers and underwear in global e-retailers. Tolerance, Hinduism’s foundation, is increasingly put to the test by such provocations of Manimekalai and her likes.
A grim scenario of quoting religious scriptures in India could land one in hot waters. While the highest court interprets freedom of speech and expression differently and discretionally, the same yardstick is not applied to acts vilifying Hindu Gods. The nationwide furore against the film poster is the result of the harassment meted out to the lady, a BJP spokesperson, who could be spending the next days in police custody of various states and appearing in several courts for the same offence. Sadly, a similar scenario might await the movie maker as well.
Filing many First Information Reports (FIRs) all over India for a single and same offence is harassment and must end. As a matter of automatic procedure, the second and all subsequent FIRs must be deemed infructuous or clubbed together.
Back to Manimekalai, she has refused to apologise and has dared not to until she lives, whereas Nupur Sharma had apologised. The difference is that one is a Hindu Goddess.
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
In Pic: My Kali from Kalighat!