We, the undersigned members of the filmmaking community in India, and supporters, are shocked to hear that the inaugural film festival organised by Film Society Ravenshaw at Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, was stopped from screening Debalina Majumder's Gay India Matrimony and Shabnam Virmani' s Had-Anhad.
Gay India Matrimony is a 2019 documentary which takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the problems and prospects of same-sex marriage in India, featuring the director herself and two others. Gay India Matrimony has been criticised by the opposing outfit Hari Om as "an attempt to corrupt the minds of yore ruth to steer away from family see values and tradition". In Had-Anhad (2008), Virmani traces the 15th century mystic poet Kabir's attachment with Ram, across the Indo-Pak border. In this case, Had-Anhad is charged with "romanticising the Indo-Pak right relationship".
Both films are well-known and have already been in circulation in film festivals and campuses in India and abroad. At a time when free speech is threatened across the country, journalists and mediamakers attacked, the forcible stoppage of the screenings of these two films only adds fuel to the rising intolerance in the country.
What is particularly dismaying is how an institute of higher learning, a University, finds documentary films that have been widely screened and acclaimed in many public fora unsuitable for its own students.
We are also appalled to hear that the outfit, Hari Om, objected to the screening of Pather Panchali (1955) by Oscar awardee and Bharat Ratna Satayjit Ray as "romanticising poverty in India" and to his equally classic cinematic work Charulata (1964) as "borderline incest". Such policing of Indian cinema through intimidation and threats of violence further shrinks the culture of free thinking and creativity. Universities and film societies are integral parts of our public spaces, their right to screen and discuss cinema needs to be upheld at all costs.
We strongly condemn this illegal vigilante action by self-appointed "guardians" of "morality" and culture.
We stand in solidarity with the filmmakers and the organisers of the film festival, and extend our unflinching support to them.