Kangana Ranaut: Beauty among the beasts

Kangana Runout is all over the news these days like a bad rash, there's just no getting away from her interviews, statements and tweets. I find her very refreshing in these morbid days of rapes, lynchings, bridge collapses, encounters, defections and states going bankrupt. What is enlivening in her utterings is the novel perspective she brings to bear on whichever subject she decides to take on.

Someone once said that we are all born ignorant, but we have to work hard to be stupid. And no one can accuse the Himachali belle of not working really hard at it. She is a bit like the IAS — an expert on any subject; she has spoken on the US election, history, Manipur, the farmers' protests, the Delhi riots, the 2002 Gujarat carnage, nepotism, Bollywood, sexual exploitation, the caste census, censorship, the freedom movement, among other weighty subjects. And, in keeping with the best practices in the IAS these days, she is also a lateral entry into Parliament!

She has even started dropping hints about her marriage, and our vacuous media, with no exit polls on the horizon, has started speculating about the wicket-keeper who might be responsible for the run-out. It's a bit late for me to throw my hat into the bull ring, having already chucked my towel into another one, but I do have a piece of advice for the gentleman — if you have the Encyclopedia Britannica, sell it to the kabariwala; you won't be needing it any longer, for your wife knows everything. Ditto for Google search.

Now, I'm no fan of Ms Ranaut's brand of politics, and I do wish that she would be less forthcoming with her muddled thoughts on everything under the sun and a little less toxic, but one can't but doff one's hat at her candidness, the courage to call a spade a shovel, and the audacity to call out the power brokers in the world of politics and film-making. Among the current crop of female "influencers", she perhaps is the only one of note to say 'F**K YOU!' in a man's world which is getting more parochial with every successive election. And sadly, she is paying the price.

The hounding of her film Emergency is a case in point, though the malaise it depicts is much larger, for the same is happening with the Netflix series IC814. Taking offence has become a full-time, and rewarding, profession in India. It's not something new either — remember Kissa Kursi Ka, Aandhi, Rushdie, A Suitable Boy, Sacred Games, Tandav and the enforced exile of M.F. Husain?

This "hurting of sentiments" is a very dangerous trend in a country with six major religions, 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes, 22 official languages, 121 other languages and 270 mother tongues, 2,000 registered political parties and hundreds of millions of morons. Any aspiring or misguided idiot can claim to be offended by anything in a film. In the case of Emergency it is allegedly the "unfavourable" depiction of Sikhs and in IC814 it is the Hindu names of terrorists and their "humanising", whatever that means.

Both films are loosely historical, and there are always different perspectives on history, which is the way it should be. In a liberal democracy, a writer or director should have the freedom to present his version of any historical event, without any jingoist, communal or political obstructions.

If the SGPC does not like the way Sikhs are shown by Ms Ranaut — fine, go and make your own version of it, God knows they have the money to do so. If the fake nationalists have the opposite grouse — whereas Sikhs are demonised in Emergency, terrorists are humanised in IC418 — don't watch the film, or ask Vivek Agnihotri to make another film called the 'Hijack Files'.

Lumpen elements one can understand — stupidity is part of our DNA. What one is most shocked at, however, is the way our governments and courts become part of this regressive process. The courts these days will do everything except their jobs, which is to dispense justice in a timely manner.

Why, one wonders again and again, do they even admit petitions for banning/ withholding the release of films on grounds of distortion, defamation or hurting of sentiments? Leave it to the censor board, and if this august body fails to do its job then haul it over the coals. But why become the court of first resort for any dissatisfied idiot?

I am constrained to observe, with great respect and regret, that neither the Bombay nor Madhya Pradesh High Courts have served the cause of free speech by failing to facilitate the scheduled release of Emergency.

The Central government, as is to be expected, has conducted itself with its usual duplicity. Though it found nothing wrong in the dubious representation of facts and tenor with its own propaganda films — Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story — in the case of Ms Ranaut's film, it has arm-twisted the censor board to delay certification because of the "sensitivity" of the subject — read: possible adverse impact on the BJP in the impending Haryana elections.

One would have expected the two high courts to have seen through this dumb charade, but possibly the blindfold over the eyes of the statue of justice is tighter than we would have imagined.

Coming on top of the ever-increasing restrictions on print and televised media, social media platforms and OTT channels, the legitimacy now accorded to communities, self-appointed 'nationalists' and religious groups to block any film, and the reluctance of the judiciary to stop them, is turning India's creative pastures into intellectual deserts. Soon, no one worth their salt will write books or make films except the propagandists of whichever party happens to be in power at the time.

There are two lessons in this for Kangana Ranaut. One, the wheel has come full circle for her, and she has become a victim of the same toxic and intolerant ideology that she supports. Two, she has been betrayed by her own party which has cast her aside for a few seats in Haryana. Her free-roaming and independent spirit does not correspond with the confining and suffocating ethos of the party she belongs to. Time for another battle for the Rani of Jhansi?

Views are personal

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and the author of Disappearing Democracy: Dismantling of a Nation and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com