Ten Film Makers Return National Awards Over Growing Intolerance In The Country

By Countercurrents.org

28 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Filmmakers after announcing they were returning their National Awards. (ANI Photo)

Although the students of The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) have called off their strike and returned to their classes, the FTII row is not dying down. In a new form of protest ten film makers including Anand Patwardhan and Dibakar Banerjee returned their National Awards today. They said that they are returning their awards in protest of the governments unwillingness to resolve the FTII crisis amicably and also to protest the ‘growing intolerance’ in the country.

“We are disenchanted with what is happening in our country,” Patwardhan told a news conference. The artistes cited ‘threat to diversity and freedom of expression’ as the reason for giving up their awards.

“The government must reveal its commitment to protect freedom of expression,” one of the filmmakers present at the press conference said.

“Murders of rationalists are not random acts of violence. People are being murdered for their beliefs and opinions... If we don’t protest now, we’re in danger of being part of flattening diversity,” he added.

Other filmmakers who returned their National Awards included Lipika Singh, Nishtha Jain, Anand Patwardhan, Kirti Nakhwa, Harsh Kulkarni and Hari Nair.

Documentary filmmaker Patwardhan's noted films include Bombay: Our City (Hamara Shahar) in 1985, In Memory of Friends (1990), War and Peace in 2002 (adjudged the best non-fiction film, National Awards 2004) and Jai Bhim Comrade in 2011 (given the special jury prize in the National Film Awards, 2012).

Dibakar Banerjee has made films such as Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006) and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! Both the movies have won National Awards. His latest film Titli is scheduled to be released this Friday.

At least 35 writers have given up their awards since the brutal killing of Mohammad Ikhlaq in Uttar Pradesh over beef consumption rumours.
Noted author Nayantara Sahgal was among the first to return her award on concerns over a “dangerous distortion of Hinduism”. After her, a string of writers including Ashok Vajpeyi turned in their honours to express their anger over the Akademi’s silence on rising attacks on free speech in the country.

The FTII strike began with the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as Chairman of India’s premier film institute. He is best known as Yudhishthira in the popular Mahabharata TV series. Chauhan has appeared in television serials, generally of inferior quality, and several ‘B’ grade Bollywood films, some of them can be termed as semi-porns. He is an active member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He extensively campaigned for the BJP in Haryana during the Lok Sabha elections last year.

FTII panel also was reconstituted with four of the eight members aligned with the ruling party. Some call them propagandists of BJP and its parent organisation Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sang(RSS). These include Anagha Ghaisas, who has made several documentary films of Prime Minister Narendra Modi; Narendra Pathak, a former president of the Maharashtra ABVP; Pranjlal Saikia, an office bearer of an RSS-linked organisation; and Rahul Solapurkar, who is intimately associated with the BJP.