It appears Jo Bole So Nihal may have been the target of a bomb attack. And Urmila Matondkar can’t have an eye operation in a film. In an industry obsessed with heroes, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose can’t be a forgotten one.If the sudden spurt in Public Interest Litigations against films is anything to go by, someone somewhere is taking Hindi films too seriously.‘‘Even if you send a postcard to the Supreme Court, it’s as good as filing a PIL,’’ comments Diwaker Agarwal, from DSK Legal, who represented Shyam Benegal’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero.A day before the release of Matondkar’s latest spook fest Naina, Mumbai retina specialist Dr S Natarajan, did just that.‘‘I saw the film on Friday night and I can firmly say it gives a wrong impression about eye donation,’’ says Natarajan, who runs eye hospital Aditya Jyoti.‘‘We wanted the film-makers to show a slide at the beginning or at the end of the movie stating that donating ones eyes is a good practice. We have now suggested that eye donation forms be distributed at all theatres screening Naina,’’ he adds.Incidentally, the makers of the film have started advertising the importance of eye donation in their publicity material. While this might be a reasonable request, others can be quite baffling. Benegal recounts how a group of six researchers from the Mukherjee Commission, probing the mystery surrounding Netaji’s whereabouts after the 1945 aircrash in Japan, objected to the depiction of Bose as the husband of Emily Schenkl, and also to calling him a forgotten hero.‘‘They sent me a legal notice when I was shooting the film. I replied and thought it was over. But just before the release, they filed a PIL,’’ he says. Eventually, the Calcutta High Court rejected the PIL.Agarwal’s take? ‘‘History always has many points of view. You can’t please everybody.’’Rahul Rawail, director of Jo Bole So Nihal says even after repeated advertisements in newspapers stating that the Deol starrer is not a religious film, it was embroiled in a spat.‘‘The film was cleared by the Censor Board as well as the Akal Takhth, which is the supreme body for Sikhs. Still the Shiromani Gurudwara Parbhandak Committee and certain people had a problem,’’ adds Rawail. The film was withdrawn in Punjab and Haryana.Religious issues have always raised hackles. Recently, Christian groups were up in arms against Vinod Pande’s Sins which depicted a priest having an affair with a young girl.In another case, People in Defence of Animals is in the process of filing a petition to prevent the release of Shah Rukh Khan’s home production Paheli.The animal rights group claim the film-makers had allegedly beaten the camels for a race sequence.‘‘PILs are just an easy source of publicity,’’ says Bollywood tracker Rauf Ahmed. Film-maker Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday, whose release was stayed by the Bombay High Court until the judgement in the 1993 blasts case was delivered, says cinema has become ‘‘an easy platform for people and politicians to get heard’’.The next Supreme Court hearing on Black Friday is on July 25. But Kashyap informs that the pirated copies of the film can be found everywhere.
