His Master’s Voice

As Kamalahaasan walks down the steps of a temple, the idols momentarily look away. For the thespian raises his middle finger, to supplement a line of thought. The finger, he says, points at Hindu fascists in Chennai. Inside the shrine in Mumbai, Kamalahaasan explains why he is wearing a green shirt and trousers. "I hope the colour irritates all those who believe they are Hindu fanatics. I like wearing green these days." He has even intentionally grown his beard to sport the looks of a devout Muslim.

The reason why the celebrated actor wants to provoke the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has something to do with reactions back in Chennai when Hey Ram was being filmed. The sectarian noises have mostly died down now that the film is ready for release. But Kamalahaasan is an angry man. The responsibility of clearing a film on Gandhi has weighed heavily on the Censor Board. Though the cuts don’t affect the narration, Hey Ram has still been mauled for ridiculous reasons.

"The regional officer in the Chennai Censor Board was very scared. He wanted to tell his political bosses that he had cut everything that would create problems," says Kamalahaasan. A graphic narration in the film had a lotus somewhere in the frame. The Censor Board asked him to take it off. Another member said there was a crescent shown casually in a frame which was deemed an act of religious disrespect. Yet another member who was answerable to some Congressmen in Tamil Nadu said the charkha shown in a frame should be removed as adequate respect was not given to it.

"Who are these people? Why are they teaching me my culture," asks Kamalahaasan. "In Kamba-Ramayanam, poet Kamban describes how Surpanaka was so seduced by the very image of Lakshman that she collected the morning dews and rubbed them on her nipples. So, why is the Censor Board harassing people like me?" There is a scene where a character says he doesn’t drink milk. A woman asks him why. He replies that if god intended people should drink milk during their adult life, then he would have never let breasts go dry. To this the woman says: "Thank god, for otherwise men would tie women up in a shed for all their lives."

The scene was cut. "What the male character means in this particular scene is that milk was for infants. Only human beings drink the milk of other species, stealing the share of some calf in the process. That’s one reason why I don’t drink milk," the thespian explains.

The chairman of the revision committee whom the film was referred to said the scene gave her images of women being made to bend and milked. The actor looks helpless as he narrates all this: "I tell you the reason why they are so worried about anything to do with cows is that they are scared of the RSS. The Censor Board is full of people who are scared. The board is the biggest reason why so many bad films are made."

Also, there is a dance sequence that was chopped. In this scene, Kamalahaasan slithers over a woman. The board found it raunchy. "I know by experience that women like it when men slither on top of them but the board wants films to hide such things." He says the same board had passed a film which had three men resuscitating a drowned woman. The men lean close to her wet, half-naked body and keep pressing. "The three men say things like ‘press harder, let the water flow’. I was one of the three men. I’ve done roles like that. You let a juvenile masturbatory scene like that pass but you find my film offensive," he fumes.

One of the other scenes chopped by the board is where a man jocularly calls his friend ‘a bloody Sindhi’. "The board said Sindhis will be offended." There is yet another scene where the Tamilian husband tells his Bengali wife that she should speak slowly since it’s a difficult language to understand. "They cut it because Bengalis will be offended." There’s a scene where a man tells another, ‘Take off your trousers and I’ll know if you’re Hindu or Muslim’. This line was cleared in the Hindi version but not in the Tamil one. "So, according to the Censor Board, Tamilians are immature. They will be corrupted by the line while the northern belt will not be. All this is so stupid that..." he grows menacing... "you want to take a machine gun and step on the road."

Now, the final take on this. While the Censor Board took extreme care to protect Indian morality, "they didn’t mind Gandhi being shot in the film".