In the subcontinent, the politics of censorship and prohibition is nothing new. From Koestler’s “The Lotus and the Robot” to Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus: An Alternative History”, trampling and mangling the idea of free expression is somewhat the part of our history and ancestry. In the past as well as in the future, people had and will again rise up against texts and volumes which they not only have not read, but cannot read. The claim of ‘hurt of religious feelings’ is as old the twenties when the author of the book called ‘Rangila Rasul’ was assassinated, allegedly for hurting the religious sentiment by drawing a lurid picture of their beloved prophet. The nation, so to speak, was fomenting with this great tradition of intolerance, from its very formative days.

So what is so special about PK? Does its stature as a big budget Bollywood film was supposed to garner more reverence than a book by Doniger or Nasrin? Was its virtue of being mainstream was supposed to provide it with some additional immunity (which it might have happened) in terms of scare statics invoked by the mainstream political parties? And who knows what would anger and what would be embraced by these parties anyway! Kamal Hassan’s ‘Hey Ram’ ended up being at the receiving end of overzealous congress workers who torn apart posters of the film and assaulted the movie theatres as the film, allegedly, painted Gandhi in an unfavourable way. True, a ‘Hey Ram’ hardly depicted anything that goes against the official doctrine about Gandhi that is held and perpetrated by the state machinery, true the film that ended up being adored by Congress and its organ – “Gandhi, my father” was more critical of Gandhi, pointing especially as his failure to be the loving father in his own personal realm while he keep projecting the same image to the nation. But yet, who can judge the temper of the political over-class! Their caprices are as unpredictable as the weather of middle march, uncertain of the next moment itself.

What PK showed is nothing too subversive or radical. Like many of its predecessor, it portrayed on silver screen, the futility of organised religion and preached, to an extent, for an amorphous “humanist religion”. This done-to-death topic was presented with humour, with enough glamour and star power that would be more impactful than an art-house production, laden with incendiary and blasphemous speeches. It probes the question of the existence of God, settles for a middle-ground by simply decrying the idea of personal God and deals with people’s faith with enough delicacy. What is, then, all the hue and cry about?

“If I were asked to define the Hindu creed”, wrote Gandhi, “I should simply say: search after Truth through non-violent means. A man may not believe even in God and still he may call himself a Hindu.” Interestingly enough, even though PK did not venture into a rabid atheistic position in its premise, its portrayal of some Hindu Babas made a strong case for ban, not because the film is depicting something novel, but because it has been released in a time when the country is going through a rather unprecedented period. And somehow PK has put its finger to that. Unlike the charlatans of other films like Ray’s ‘Kapurush, mahapurush’, PK’s antagonist is raging, combative, prepares his own self and makes the case for his own identity by preaching against the ‘other’: the religion of minority. The explicit mention by Hindu baba’s character (played by Saurabh Shukla) of the antagonistic relation between Hinduism and Islam is something, truly, unprecedented. It touched the chord through its verity, since today’s emerging Hindu nationality, like any political right-wing movement, rests more on the definition of Islam’s otherness than its own intrinsic value. PK, perhaps unknowingly or perhaps through the courage of a nameless script-writer, exposed that acerbic truth. (IPA Service)