Fire On The Water

Varanasi’s become a New Age hip town. But it’s also a conservative small town and a stronghold of the Sangh parivar. There’s ganja on the ghats. But also fierce pride in an ancient and holy city. So, when a team of urban slickers arrived here to shoot what Sangh members call an ‘English-speaking’ film, complete with trendily-shorn actresses and a director associated with cinematic controversies over lesbianism, it was simply too good an opportunity for the ‘sanskriti’ warriors to let go. Even after the Centre announced a solution, RSS and BJP leaders in Varanasi said they’d continue their protests.

Says Veera Pande, ex-BJP mlc and one of the leaders of the demonstrations against Water: "Mehta is a lalchi, using our city to get money and international awards. We will not let the shooting take place, whatever the Central government says. Mehta has simply exploited the compulsions of the government. Just changing a few words here and there doesn’t change the theme of the film. The people of Varanasi will take to the streets." RSS leaders in Delhi also said they were unhappy about the government’s decision. "How can you allow a film that shows a widow’s home as a brothel?" asks a senior BJP leader.

The Water controversy illustrates yet again the constant and widening schism in the parivar. Is the BJP a lawful party of governance or is it a perennially agitating law-breaking mob? The state administration was helpless when a lumpen crowd broke up the film sets on January 30. And there could not have been a greater contrast between the suit-clad conciliatory Arun Jaitley in Delhi and the almost 200-strong mashaal juloos led by the Kashi Sanskriti Raksha Sangharsh Samiti (KSRSS) through the alleyways of Varanasi on Tuesday, screaming, "Water film banane wali nari nahin, bimari hai."

The cadres are getting bored with Vajpayee. And chafing at the bit. ‘Mandir’ is buried, Murli Manohar Joshi no longer heads culture, textbooks in BJP states have already been rewritten, local NGOS are diverting attention to tedious things like poverty and literacy, leaving little space for the exciting war for culture. "The RSS and VHP cadres can’t survive without constant morale-boosting and stimulation," says Vikas Pathak, journalist with the local daily, Gandeev.

Local RSS leader and veteran BJP corporator, Narayan Mishra, spells it out. "Let the government say and do what it wants. We will never compromise. Koi samjhauta nahin hai. Kashi is India’s holy city. Here, you cannot make a film which calls itself Water and denigrates Mother Ganga. We understand what the people of Varanasi want. The central government doesn’t."

On January 2, even as Jaitley made soothing sounds in Shastri Bhavan to Mehta, okaying her script for a second time, VHP leader Ashok Singhal flew into the city to urge the agitators to press ahead. As Mehta and Jaitley chatted, the spokesman of the BJP youth wing, Prakash Tiwari, said they were planning their next move while RSS member Deepak Misra said they would never give up the battle for sanskriti.

Language feeds into politics. According to administrative procedures, an official from the local air studio was appointed observer during the shooting. "Sections of the script were provided only in English," complains Rajkumar Singh, journalist with the local Jan Varta, "why was it not provided in Hindi? You can’t be so arrogant. You can’t just come into the city and ride roughshod over everyone here." Singh says Bombay and Delhi journalists were given preference in Water press conferences, while the local press was treated with disdain. But Mehta says she’s been abused as a chandala. On the streets, a youth tells Outlook, "Deepa ka balaatkar karenge."

Journalists say there’s been a crucial public relations failure on the part of Mehta’s team. As soon as she had arrived, Mehta should have sought the blessings of the city patriarchs, offered prayers at a temple and perhaps employed locals as extras or allowed them to build the set. "If I had the opportunity," says Tiwari, "I could’ve built a set for even less money than they’ve spent." In fact members of the film crew say the January 30 incident was probably instigated by a UP government official who’d asked the government for distribution rights for Water but was refused. Police say the situation may have been defused had some local youth been given jobs.

Producer David Hamilton doesn’t see why everyone has to interrogate the film crew. "There’ll always be someone who doesn’t like the sandals or the hair or the clothes. We simply can’t satisfy everyone. Everyone can’t be a censor board." Hamilton says the agitation will have wider implications. "If another western filmmaker comes to me asking about making a film in India, I’ll just have to say, don’t trust government approvals, because even if they’re given the film may not work out." With no shooting on the film, Hamilton’s losing Rs 10 lakh every day.

In the lobby of the Clarks Tower Hotel, Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das looked depressed and disappointed as they sat clutching their scripts under the lugubrious gaze of a posse of policewomen. "I’ve just been on this crazy diet," complains Azmi. "I shaved my hair because I thought it was important to get rid of the vestiges of vanity and narcissism. I’ve been trying to read the script but can’t concentrate. I simply cannot understand how these people can defy their own government." For her, the film, far from being a denigration of women, actually shows how poverty forces women into survival strategies which later even liberate them. "But in order to show liberation, we have to show oppression." The brotherhood can’t be bothered with the language of liberation. "Unhone nagn pradarshan kiya," insists Tiwari. He says he saw Das and Azmi scantily clad in thin muslin take a dip in the holy Ganga and emerge drippingly nude. "It was obscene and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Women never do things like that here. They are dignified when they bathe." He says Mehta’s an agent of Christian missionaries who are trying to undermine the importance of Kashi.

Das says it would be a tragedy for the crew, the nation and cinema in general if anything went wrong with the film. "We have all deferred our salaries to remain here because we believe in the script." As do several citizens’ groups and women’s groups who’ve come forward with assurances of support and condemned the vandalism. The mahant of the Kashi Vishwanath temple, Dr Kulpati Tripathi, has written to Azmi giving her his blessings and encouraging the film to proceed. "These people take the name of Ram but act like Ravana," he says. Dr Aparna Chaturvedi, professor of sociology at the Benares Hindu University, asks why the cadres don’t agitate about electricity, drinking water and the condition of the roads.

"I’m not a politician," says Mehta, "I’m just a bright woman who makes films. Everyone has a right to protest, but not in this way," she asserts. Does the Sangh then not believe in democratic freedom? Shyam Deo Rai Chowdhury, mla and RSS member, says freedom of speech can’t become camouflage for an ‘Anything Goes’ culture. "Call us fundamentalist, bigots or RSS men, but you can’t keep denigrating our core beliefs and values just to win prizes in the West! Of course, society contains contradictions, but why exhibit them before a western audience just for personal glory?" Misra says violence is pardonable if it comes to protecting religious sentiments. "There was no other option but to break the sets. How else would they have listened?" He says if Mehta really wants to question orthodoxy, she should be brave enough to make such a film in Mecca or the Vatican.

Both parties insist the other is politically partisan. In India’s most politicised state, even God might brandish a manifesto. Away from the dialogue of the deaf, huddling in a filthy dank widow’s home that is the Shri Bhajanashram at Meer Ghat, Godawari from Madhubani who’s lived here for 20 years says widows are dirt poor and work as servants. The Bhajanashram is supposed to be a widows’ home but its owner, Chikoo, runs a ritzy hotel on the top floor and keeps the widows in an appalling basement.

Begging for food next to a sewer running with dog excreta, with pus in her eyes and feet swollen with sores, Sharoti, from East Pakistan, says sometimes widows were forced into prostitution by vicious temple pandas. Harimoti Biswas has been begging for 12 years after her relatives left her here after her husband died.

Mehta says her film will tell the stories of these women. The parivar says she’ll distort them for profit. More likely that amidst the cacophony of accusations these women will keep begging, scratching the phlegmy dirt of Varanasi for 20 paise coins.