[The play encountered its first hint of trouble in January, when the Ranga Shankara Theater in Bangalore staged the play, but only with police protection. Then in February, the popular Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai canceled “Ali J” because festival organizers could not get extra security. On March 9, shows in Chennai, India, were canceled after the police commissioner there issued a letter to Evam, the Chennai theater group behind the play, advising it to desist from showing the play to “maintain law and order.”]
By Kavitha Rao
 |
Evam
Karthik Kumar, actor and director of the play “Ali J,” said
he would upload the play to
the Internet.
|
BANGALORE, India — An Indian play on the Muslim identity, “Ali J,” had a strong start last year,
premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in August to good reviews during
its 25-day run and then making its first domestic appearance in October at the
National Center for the Performing Arts in Mumbai.
But
since then, “Ali J” has caught the attention of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti,
whose stated mission is to establish a Hindu nation. It has argued that the
play would “hurt the
feelings of Indians” and could lead to religious violence. And now,
the play’s producers say that with election season in full swing, it has become
impossible for anyone to attend an “Ali J” performance in India.
“Ironically,
I have offers from a Pakistani theater group to show it in Karachi, and another
U.K.-based group too,” said Karthik Kumar, who directed the play and has the
title role.
“Ali J” is a one-hour monologue by Ali, a Muslim everyman on
death row for a crime he is accused of committing during the Gujarat religious
riots in 2002. In the play, Ali recalls the major events in his life, exploring
what it means to be a Muslim in today’s India and his identity outside India.
The
play encountered its first hint of trouble in January, when the Ranga Shankara
Theater in Bangalore staged the play, but only with police protection. Then in
February, the popular Kala Ghoda festival in Mumbai canceled “Ali J” because
festival organizers could not get extra security. On March 9, shows in Chennai,
India, were canceled after the police commissioner there issued a letter to
Evam, the Chennai theater group behind the play, advising it to desist from
showing the play to “maintain law and order.”
Knowing
the risks, Arundhati Raja, the director of the 200-seat Jagriti Theater in
Bangalore, decided to put on “Ali J” anyway, arranging for police protection
for the shows that had been scheduled for last week. The police had agreed
there was nothing objectionable in the play, Ms. Raja said, but they changed
their minds at the last minute.
“An
hour before the first show on Wednesday, policemen came into the theater and
told us to stop the play and leave the premises,” she said.
Ms.
Raja said one of her friends with connections to the Home Ministry of Karnataka
State talked to people in the ministry, who said the play could not be staged
before the national elections this spring because it might cause religious
violence.
“We
are being forced to kowtow to fundamentalists,” Ms. Raja said. “We want to
stand up for the arts, but we have no support from police or the spineless
government.”
However,
the Karnataka home minister, K.J. George, denied any knowledge of the incident
and said he had not issued any instructions to cancel the play. Kamal Pant, the
additional commissioner in the law and order division for Bangalore, also
denied that the police had stopped the performance.
On
its website, Hindu Janajagruti Samiti noted the most recent cancellation
of “Ali J,” saying, “Hindus should offer gratitude at feet of God for this
success.”
Mr.
Kumar said he had given up on staging a live performance in India and would
instead put “Ali J” online through Vimeo on a pay-per-view basis, in an attempt
to recover the approximately $10,000 he has invested in the play.
“I’d
be happy to do the play without protection,” he said. “But I can’t act if the
police actually stop us in the middle.”
Shekinah
Jacob, who wrote the play, denied that her work was unpatriotic but also argued
that this was immaterial. “Even if it contains passages criticizing the
government, I have the right to say what I want,” she said. “Apparently it’s
fine if we make art with songs, dances and running around trees, but the minute
we say something important, there are protests.”
Ms.
Jacob has won a Charles Wallace Trust scholarship to study in Britain and hopes
to discuss the play further there.
“At
Edinburgh, we had people crying, laughing, Indians and non-Indians. It will be
interesting to see where ‘Ali J’ goes from here. It could go anywhere,” she
said, just not in India.
Kavitha
Rao is a freelance journalist based in Bangalore. Follow her on Twitter @kavitharao.
@ The New York Times
[Campaigning nationally, Mr Modi
has assiduously avoided any conciliatory outreach, or inflammatory rhetoric,
towards the Muslim community, keeping his focus firmly on economic development.
A rare public comment on the 2002 bloodletting – in an interview with Reuters
last July – deeply offended many, reopening old wounds.]
By Amy Kazmin in
Bhopal, India
In Bhopal’s Darul Uloom – or House of Knowledge – madrassa, a
school offering secular and religious education in an elegant, 127-year-old
mosque, the teachers are increasingly apprehensive about the outcome of India’s
forthcoming parliamentary election.
Indian voters are widely expected
to catapult Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial hopeful of the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, to power in polls that start in April and
end in mid-May . But among India’s Muslim minority, Gujurat’s chief minister is
indelibly tainted by the 2002 Gujarat riots in which some 1,000 people, mostly
Muslims, were killed and tens of thousands more driven from their homes.
Although Mr Modi was not charged
with any criminal wrongdoing over the massacre that occurred on his watch, most
Muslims – and some secular or liberal Hindus – believe he allowed, or even
covertly supported, the carnage.
Muslims are fretting about what
Mr Modi’s ascent to the country’s top political job could mean.
“Modi’s image among Muslims is of
a ruler who, when riots took place, discriminated against the Muslim
community,” says Sharafat Ali Nadvi, the madrassa’s headteacher. “But it’s not
as if the Muslim community hates Modi or holds a grudge. If he is ready to
apologise for his mistake, many sins are forgiven.
“If he pledges that as prime
minister he will not discriminate against Muslims, and abides by the
constitution, then Muslims will have no problem.”
Campaigning nationally, Mr Modi
has assiduously avoided any conciliatory outreach, or inflammatory rhetoric,
towards the Muslim community, keeping his focus firmly on economic development.
A rare public comment on the 2002 bloodletting – in an interview with Reuters
last July – deeply offended many, reopening old wounds.
“[If] someone else is driving a
car and we're sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will
it be painful or not?” Mr Modi said when asked if he regretted the violence.
“If I’m a chief minister or not, I’m a human being.”
Hilal Ahmed, a researcher at New
Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, believes Mr Modi and the
BJP are remaining intentionally ambiguous on attitudes and policies towards
Muslims to avoid either alienating the party’s hardline Hindu base or
mobilising Muslim voters.
More video
“They are not interested in
getting Muslim votes but they would like to neutralise Muslim votes,” Mr Ahmed
said of the BJP campaign.
In reality, Muslims can do little
to stop Mr Modi’s ascent. They made up just 13 per cent of India’s 1.2bn people
as of 2001 – the most recent year for which official data are publicly
available. The percentage is thought to be about 18 per cent now, although
authorities have yet to release the religious breakdown of the 2011 census in
the face of deep sensitivities: powerful rightwing Hindu groups have accused
Muslims of having too many children and threatening to overwhelm India’s Hindu
majority.
Muslims make up more than 30 per
cent of voters in just 46 of India’s of 545 parliamentary constituencies,
although the minority group can potentially influence the outcome in about 110
seats. The Muslim vote is also highly fragmented, with support coalescing
around different parties and leaders in different states.
Indian Muslims have not had their
own dedicated political party since the colonial-era struggle for independence,
when the Muslim League successfully promoted partition and the creation of
Pakistan, a trauma that still haunts Muslims who opted to remain in India.
Even among Muslims, there is
little unanimity about what a Modi premiership would mean.
Syed Amir Anwar, a young
chemistry graduate who teaches English at the madrassa, fears Mr Modi will give
greater influence in the bureaucracy and judiciary to rightwing Hindu groups
that see Muslims as a threat and want to promote a more explicitly Hindu
society.
However, Umar Farooq, another
English teacher, believes Muslims will be safer with Mr Modi as prime minister,
as he will want to demonstrate his administrative prowess. “Riots and
atrocities will be reduced because he will want to show a sober and polite
picture to the world,” he says.
Syed Javed Ali, a 38-year-old
Bhopal taxi driver with two young children, says he plans to vote for Mr Modi
after observing the BJP’s strong performance in Madhya Pradesh, where power and
roads improved dramatically, after the previously ruling Congress was ousted,
and replaced by an administration led by the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chauhan.
“Modi is a knowledgeable and
intelligent man – his speeches are very true,” the taxi driver said.
The world’s largest democracy,
with nearly 800m eligible voters, is heading for one of its most uncertain
national polls in decades
Across town, at the Muslim
Education and Career Promotion Society, which promotes academic excellence among
Muslim students, Sagheer Baidar, one of the founders, makes little secret of
his visceral dislike for Gujarat’s chief minister.
Yet like many Muslims in Bhopal,
Mr Baidar is also eager to dispel the impression of being cowed by the
likelihood of Mr Modi running the national government. “We are not frightened
of the prospect of Modi coming to power,” he said. “He will keep the Muslims
terrorised to retaliate for past history. But we are confident that the Indian
constitution gives us sufficient powers to fight what Modi represents.”
