While the LDF government has formed what has been called a ‘cultural resistance’ committee to ensure that no work of art in future suffers the fate of ‘Empuraan’, the Sangh Parivar is silently, without much ado, spreading its ‘nationalist art’ propaganda in Kerala.

In the Sangh Parivar’s telling, the ‘voluntary’ cuts made by the makers of ‘Empuraan’ demonstrated their lack of conviction. “Because the writer and the filmmaker of ‘Empuraan’ were unsure about the story, it all degenerated into a situation where they made an apology just when they saw some scattered posts on social media,” said J Nandakumar, the national organising secretary of Prajna Pravah, the intellectual wing of the RSS.

“It can only be either of the two things. The makers did not believe what they said or they realised that they had made a mistake,” he said. Nandakumar was speaking to Sangh Parivar enthusiasts during a discussion on ‘freedom of expression’ organised by Vivekananda Cultural Institute at Vivekananda Hall, just beside the AKG Centre at Palayam in Thiruvananthapuram, on April 16.

In short, the ‘Empuraan self-punishment’ is being sold in ‘Sangh Parivar’- inclined circles as an example of the inherent fragility of anti-Hindu narrative in art. To understand conviction, Nandakumar took his audience back to 1922, when Kumaranasan wrote ‘Duravastha’ (Tragic Plight).

Kumaranasan’s heroics
The poem is against the Hindu caste system, but also paints a scary picture of Muslims. Asan calls Mohammedans “cruel”, “looters” and “arsonists”, describes them as “rogue elephants”, demeans them as “wild cats” that maul “sweet doves in a cage”.

Nadakumar said the Muslim community rose up in arms. “The threatening slogans that erupted in those protest meetings would make recent threats like ‘keep your kunthirikkam and karpooram ready’ sound like lullabies,” he said. This was a reference to hate slogans raised during a Popular Front of India rally in Alappuzha in 2022, apparently asking Hindus and Christians to keep their funeral items ready.

Nandakumar said Asan refused to change even a bit of a word in his poem. “He had an erect spine,” he said. This was not the case with writers Santhosh Echikkanam and NS Madhavan, Nandakumar said.

He said both had written stories with a Muslim as villain, faced the fury of “organised religion”, and quickly succumbed.

Biriyani maker’s woes
Echikkanam’s ‘Biriyani’ is about class divide. It is about a poor migrant worker Gopal Yadav who is contracted for ₹250 to dig a trench ‘one man high and one man wide’ to dump the excess Basmati-rice biriyani that was prepared in Kalanthan Haji’s house. This migrant worker, who is made to dig this huge pit to bury fresh biriyani that could not be consumed, had a reed-thin daughter named Basmati who had died of hunger.

“Our poor Echikkanam remembers only that the story was published. From the next day, he was busy attending press conferences to convince people of his secular identity,” Nandakumar said, and with extra emphasis and sarcasm, added: “He also openly said that he would never again write such a story. I don’t know whether he had performed ‘etham’ (a penance in which an individual does squats by holding ear lobes with crossed arms) at some literature gathering.”

Kalanthan Haji is religion-neutral
Echikkanam found Nandakumar’s remarks both amusing and dangerous. “I have never apologised, nor have I said that I will never write stories with Muslims as villains in future,” he told Onmanorama. “In fact, I received overwhelming support from educated Muslims,” he said.

Echikkanam said that he came before the media only when he was called an RSS guy. “It was an insult and I had to say I was not,” he said.

The writer said he was trying to define the growing distance between the haves and have-nots through food. “Extravagance is not religion-specific. This tendency to show off wealth is a rich man’s trait. If the story was in Thiruvalla, I would have featured a Christian house. It was Kalanthan Haji’s house because I had placed ‘Biriyani’ in Kasaragod. If it was in Thrissur, it would have been ‘sadya’ in the house of some Sekhar Menon,” Echikkanam said. “I think the Sangh Parivar is trying to create the impression that writers and artists are cowards,” he said.

Columbian tragedy
Mock worry prefaced Nandakumar’s reference to Madhavan and ‘Higuita’. “It is with sadness that I have to remind you of the trauma the great NS Madhavan had to go through after he created a villain named Jabbar,” Nandakumar said.

Shaken, Nandakumar said Madhavan had promised that he would henceforth call his characters A, B, and C. The head of the RSS's intellectual wing missed the fact that Madhavan was actually making fun of the criticism.

He even saw an apology in Madhavan’s ABC sneer. “Why did he apologise for a story that had originated as an organic spark in the corners of his imagination,” Nandakumar said.

Such rhetoric conceals the fact that there was no major opposition to ‘Higuita’. There was no burning of books or street protests, just an academic criticism by MT Ansari, a professor at the Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad. Ansari essentially argued that it was a Hindu writer’s prejudice that made the villain a Muslim.

Madhavan’s Higuita moment
The 1990 story was about Father Geevarghese who, roused by the rule-defying exploits of Columbian goalkeeper Higuita, abandons his goalie-like witness stance and surges forward Higuita-like to save a converted tribal girl, Lucy Marandi, from a Muslim pimp named Jabbar.

Forget apology, there is evidence to show that Madhavan had not taken Ansari seriously. In 2011 he said: "The villain Jabbar is a Muslim only for those who over-read. It is lack of self-respect that creates such evil thoughts. Ansari never said that the story had an anti-Muslim content. He was dealing with the issues of representation. But it implied that only such representations can be expected from Hindus, which was even more dangerous."

Still, Nandakumar insisted that Echikkanam and Madhavan were forced to apologise by the combined might of “an organised religion, the kind of people who issue fatwas”.

Prithvi taunts note ban, escapes
In contrast, he said 'Empuraan’s was self-censorship, not forced. “They keep calling Modi a fascist. But it was the censor board led by Modi that passed ‘Empuraan’ for screening. Artistic essence alone was looked into,” Nandakumar said.

He said the censor board surprisingly passed even ‘Jana Gana Mana’ (the 2022 Prithviraj-starrer by Dijo Jose Antony). He referred to a demonetisation jibe made by Prithviraj's character in the film: “Here notes will be banned, and if need be, votes too. No one will dare ask. Because this is India.” (This scene features only in the trailer of the film.)

The man who claimed that only artistic merit mattered for Modi, said with sharp disapproval: “I don’t know whether the film was passed without the censor board members reading the subtitle of this remark in English of Hindi. Censor Board is no vacation job. Those appointed should be given an orientation.”