The moral police have rediscovered their target of choice: the film poster. Gross challenges are being perceived to the world as they want it to be, and screenings of a new Hindi film, Girlfriend, are being disrupted across north India. Hoardings are being torn down, and its scenes depicting homosexuality shudderingly denounced. In Varanasi and Bhopal, in Bhubaneswar and Ludhiana, a violent campaign is being spearheaded by Shiv Sainiks and kindred souls to have the film banned. It could be said that this was only to be expected. After all, a few years ago, they rampaged at theatres showing Fire, which also dealt with lesbianism. Yet, in assembling once again at screenings, they remind us of how divisively the chips are stacked in India’s attempts at modernisation and social transformation.The issue here is not specifically homosexuality. There have been equally vehement protests against plans to film a story touching, among other things, the pitiful condition in which widows live in Varanasi (Water). Portrayals of inter-religious romances have elicited equally ill-tempered picketing (Ghadar). Anything that prevents life from being seen as one long sindhoor serial, it would appear, must be resisted. Anything that could inspire viewers to seek liberation from socially imposed compartmentalisation, it is evident, must be stifled.It is no surprise that the forces of orthodoxy are so focussed on the moving image. Cinema is for millions of Indians a prime source of entertainment and escape. Yet it can also be so subtly subversive. In Hindi cinema the equilibrium between conformity and rebellion is forever shifting. In the ’50s it combined celebrations of a newly independent India with stirring critiquesof the exploitative, hypocritical social system we inherited (for instance, Pyasa, Naya Daur). In the ’70s, it mixed some rather cliched domestic drama with angry rebuffs to a powerful elite that had monopolised decision-making and resources (Zanjeer, Deewar). Now it is pushing the envelope as far as notions of identity are concerned, whether they be sexual (Girlfriend) or religious (Bombay). No wonder propagators of self-seeking identity politics are so incensed.
