Amid row, ‘Kaali’ director says feeling unsafe

Amid the raging row over a controversial poster of Leena Manimekalai’s documentary ‘Kaali’, the filmmaker on Thursday said she doesn’t feel safe “anywhere at this moment”, as more cases continued to be registered against her and Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra for her remarks on goddess Kali.

The Toronto-based director is facing five FIRs in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh over the poster of her documentary film ‘Kaali’ depicting a woman dressed as a goddess smoking a cigarette. Twitter has pulled down the poster that she shared last week.

“It feels like the whole nation – that has now deteriorated from the largest democracy to the largest hate machine – wants to censor me. I do not feel safe anywhere at this moment,” Manimekalai tweeted as she shared an interview she did with The Guardian.

Also read: How Leena Manimekalai defends her Kaali poster

Ever since the poster was released and the controversy erupted last week, Manimekalai and her family have received over 200,000 threats online, she alleged in her interview to the British newspaper, while describing the online vitriol as “grand-scale mass lynching” by rightwing Hindu groups.

The filmmaker dismissed claims that her documentary is disrespectful to the goddess or to Hinduism. She said she had been raised as a Hindu in Tamil Nadu but is now an atheist.

“In Tamil Nadu, the state I come from, Kaali is believed to be a pagan goddess. She eats meat cooked in goat’s blood, drinks arrack, smokes beedi (cigarettes) and dances wild… that is the Kaali I had embodied for the film,” she said.

The filmmaker also shared on Twitter a photograph of two actors smoking while dressed as Lord Shiva and another goddess. The trolls targeting her did not know how folk theatre artists relaxed after their performances, she said.

While one FIR against Manimekalai has been registered each in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, three have been registered in Bhopal, Ratlam and Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh.

The latest one, in Jabalpur, was filed on Thursday on the basis of a complaint by BJP MLA Sushil Tiwari’s son Harish Tiwari for allegedly hurting religious sentiments.

Moitra stoked controversy earlier this week after she said that for her, Kali is a “meat-eating, alcohol accepting goddess” and that every person has the right to worship gods and goddesses in their own way.

Also read: Offerings to Kaali vary from place to place, say priests after Moitra’s remarks

FIRs have been registered against the TMC leader in Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal for allegedly hurting religious sentiments of the Hindu community. BJP leaders in West Bengal have lodged over a dozen complaints since Wednesday and have sought her arrest.

Leader of Opposition in the Bengal assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, reiterated that he will move the Calcutta high court if Moitra was not arrested. Tanuja Chakraborty, president of the West Bengal BJP Mahila Morcha (women’s front), led an agitation in Kolkata for the second consecutive day.

The lawmaker from West Bengal’s Krishnanagar, however, challenged the BJP to “bring it on” and asserted that she was not afraid of its “goons”, even as her own party condemned the remarks and said it was made “in her personal capacity”. Moitra has now stopped following the TMC’s official Twitter handle.

Also read: Furore over ‘Kaali’ smoking in film poster, plaint against director Leena Manimekalai

In a tweet late on Wednesday, Moitra said: “I do not want to live in an India where BJP’s monolithic patriarchal brahminical view of Hinduism will prevail and rest of us will tiptoe around religion. I will defend this till I die. File your FIRs - will see you in every court in the land.”

On Thursday, she shared a poem from an anonymous citizen who appealed to people to speak up in her support.

Meanwhile, in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore, police arrested a woman belonging to a right wing outfit for hurling abuses at Manimekalai and threatening her with dire consequences.