[This is Essay #3 in "The Spotlight Series". Click here for archives.]

Vikalp: Then and Now

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It has been four years since The Campaign Against Censorship was begun to protest the censoring of short films entered for the Mumbai International Film Festival – a festival of short films that is held every other year, and which is a government sponsored film festival. In August 2003, Indian filmmakers were told that their films - and only their films - would require a censor certificate to be eligible for the festival. This was unprecedented and patently unfair: no filmmaker from any other country was being asked for a censor certificate from their countries’ censor boards. Filmmakers from India and elsewhere protested. The government backtracked but instituted a partisan selection committee that acted as an unofficial censor. When it became clear that some films – the politically charged ones that were sharply critical of the NDA government – were not going to make it to the festival one way or the other, filmmakers began to withdraw their films from the festival. In the space of a couple of weeks in early 2004, an alternate festival on the fringes of the first was mooted and Vikalp: Films For Freedom was born. An account of the happenings of those early days can be found here.

Between MIFF 2004 and MIFF 2006, Vikalp became not just a festival that was an alternative to the main one, but an informal but democratic space in which to discuss larger issues of censorship and freedom of speech, negotiate contracts and find alternate methods of screening documentaries. Vikalp became, among other things, Travelling Vikalp and took each one of the original 58 films and many others in the following years, to cities all over India and abroad. These films are now archived with each of the Vikalp chapters in several cities.

As with any popular movement that brings like-minded people together, the early days of Vikalp were heady and full of hope. We believed that with so many people coming together, it was only a matter of time before change not only was possible but was inevitable. We imagined that with our numbers, we were in a position to negotiate with the government: we wanted changes in the outdated and ridiculous Indian Cinematograph Act 1952, that took no notice of either video, or cable TV or the proliferation of news channels and ‘citizen journalism’; we argued that festivals were not ‘public’ spaces and so should need no censor certificates; we insisted that even troublesome films ought to be shown because people could make up their own minds and needed no one else to tell them what was good for them.

In view of the events of the last couple of years does that sound incredibly naïve? With the banning of films as different from each other as Parzania and Aaja Naachle, the disruption of screenings of Sanjay Kak’s Jashn-e-Azadi, the vandalism at MSU Baroda, the attacks on Taslima Nasreen, did Vikalp ever have the backing of anybody else apart from a small number of filmmakers who wanted their films screened? In other words, has Vikalp failed?

Answers are never as easy as the questions that demand a response, and like everything else, the answer to this one is very, very complex. On the one hand, the movement to campaign against censorship suffers from some natural after-effects: the dissipation of initial energy and enthusiasm; the sheer numbers of people talking to each other leading to either cacophony or irreconcilable differences; alternately, a few people claiming the space for their own with the rest as silent spectators. In this also, as in other things, Vikalp is strictly democratic. We do not have elected representatives. We do not have office bearers. We cannot say with any degree of conviction that the buck stops here: with this person or that entity. Vikalp, having consciously decided to share responsibility with no hierarchies, suffers from all the disadvantages that such openness brings. Our strengths are our weaknesses.

On the other hand, we have become aware of several things on the outside of this movement that have grave implications not only for us as filmmakers, but for society as a whole. We realise that a change of government has not made any difference to policies; that the UPA is as interested in killing dissent and having a quiescent media as the NDA government. That people themselves are less tolerant of opposing viewpoints than they used to be, perhaps because they are being led into those paths by fringe political outfits, or because the disruptions in society are making people more conservative, less outspoken and ready to curb their speech in the ‘interests of the nation’, whatever that means.

This is not to say that four years on, we have cause to despair. If there is one thing Vikalp has done, it has given filmmakers a common platform on which to share their work and help each other out. Because of Vikalp, anybody making an independent film today in India can be assured of a community they can turn to for support. Vikalp has arranged screenings for nearly every independent film produced in the last four years, and now archives every one of them.

The value of such an archive cannot be underestimated. Indeed, if Vikalp had done nothing else, this much would be ample. In a country whose film archives are destroyed in careless fires, whose mainstream is overwhelmingly vocal, such a record of alternate voices and narratives from the peripheries is invaluable. It will remind us, in the years to come, that if the mainstream flows strongly, it is because it is fed by such clear and brave streams that form the independent film movement in India.

Much has been done, but as with everything else, much remains to be done. Vikalp has to find a way to overcome the inevitable inertia that comes when there is no longer a crisis to battle. It also has to find a way to not merely react to events after the fact – by sending letters of protest whenever something occurs to curb freedom of speech – but also to make that right inalienable and sacrosanct. How it will do that remains to be seen.

Related posts on my blog: ‘Not silence but more speech’, Beginning with the protest and ending with the loo, beyond absurd but who’s laughing?