Mallika Sarabhai’s play faces Censor heat

AHMEDABAD: Ever heard of cultural policing? That's what Gujarat subjects its cultural crowd to if they are not politically correct.

And the latest to come under the Gujarat Sanskrutik Pramanpatra Board's (Censor Board) hammer is Darpana Academy’s soon-to-be-staged play Unsuni: Unheard Voices, an adaptation of former IAS officer Harsh Mander’s novel Unheard Voices. The play, to be performed by Mallika Sarabhai's entourage, has been subjected to some “peculiar and unreasonable cuts”.

The play, a set of five monologues, depicts the apathy of the marginalised like the denotified tribes, the schedule castes and tribes and the manual scavengers in the country.

“The Board has demanded a cut in one of the scenes where a manual scavenger refuses to carry human excreta on her head. The cut demanded is unreasonable as it is nothing obscene or defaming about a particular community, but a fact. The government pays lakhs of women everyday for this job,” said an official at the Darpana Academy. “Objection has also been raised against a song titled ‘Sau sawaal karke’ (asking 100 questions),” he added.

The official said the play has already had 16 performances in Hindi and will be coming to Gujarat in January. “We will not be deleting the scenes and song from the play,” he said.

“The book deals with core problems faced by India. The censor board probably fears riots owing to the apathy shown in the play,” Harsh Mander told DNA expressing surprise at the Censor Board’s objections.

According to veteran theater personalities and litterateurs, Unsuni has been banned because Mallika and Harsh Mander are involved. Both had been verbal against Narendra Modi during the Godhra riots in 2002.  “The board is totally a political body, full of Modi's men. The play has been banned for no other reason but because it is Mallika’s. Anything she does is termed anti-Gujarat and anti-national. Gujarat is a joke on democracy; it is a state of complete dictatorship,” said a noted academician and theater personality on condition of anonymity. 

This is not an isolated case and the state's artistes have been protesting against the board since 1984.

“There was no logic behind banning a play on Maulana Abul Kalam Azad just because he was a noted leader from the minority community. Sometimes, plays were banned based on the person who is doing it and the scripts were not read even once,” said a former member of the board.

Recently, a play on rehabilitation issues was banned owing to the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project (SRDP) in state.

Hiren Gandhi, director of the play, said: “The play was banned purely due to political vendetta. We were helpless and the play was finally performed at an NGO's open-air theater.”

The board's panel, which is supposed to have learned academicians, litterateurs and eminent theater personalities, has no experts today. “Now, there's even a district-wise 'expert panel'. It's nothing but politics,” he said.