Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
The Madras High Court on May 29 has rejected a petition of a Vaisnav orgnisation styled as International Sri Vaishnava Dharma Samrakshanna Society (SVDSS) that sought for a direction to film certification authorities to change the title of the Kamal Hassan starrer ‘Dasavatharam’ and delete some scenes that depict the tussle between the followers of Vishnu and Shiva.
The High Court has dismissed the petition on the ground that the petitioner has not watched the film and hence the allegation was based on hearsay.
There is no doubt that it is a just and proper judgment. But I think it would have been better if the communalist attempt to strangle creativity could have been judicially trammeled.
History of India is history of conflicts amongst religious communities and also of how religious communities, as and when in power, have tampered with history. So history of India has a history of suppression of facts that the scholars describe as gaps. These gaps need removal by reconstruction of the concerned time, which is possible only through reinterpretation of events, episodes and characters the texts of history books depict.
The creative peoples are the ones who can do it. And, they ere the ones who have been trying to do it.
Communalists must not be allowed to obstruct them by any means under any guise.