14 Nov 2011 | Asia and Pacific, China
The long arm of Chinese soft power has reached Bollywood.
Indian censors have ordered the makers of Rockstar to cut or blur scenes showing images of the Tibetan national flag, which features in one of the film’s song and dance numbers. The movie opened last Friday with the required cuts.
The controversial sequence was a crowd scene filmed at Mcleod Ganj, a hill station town in northern India and home of the Dalai Lama since he fled Lhasa in exile in 1959.
Tibetans in exile naturally are incensed and have been staging rallies. It is not clear why the flag has been banned from the romantic musical, but Indian media speculated that India is bowing to pressure from China.
Kunsang Kelden, New-York based Tibetan activist and former board member of Students for a Free Tibet, told us: “It is outrageous that a vibrant democracy such as India, with an equally vibrant film industry, should bow down to Chinese pressure, violate free speech and censor the Tibetan flag.”
Rockstar’s director Imtiaz Ali may have the last laugh though.
According to Indian media his next film will be about the Tibetan independence movement.
“Reliable sources say that the movie will have political turmoil as one of the aspects along with love brewing between a Tibetan and a multi-millionaire Indian boy,” reports The Times of India.
It will be interesting to see how the censors deal with that.
24 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
On August 19, two photojournalists, Narciso Contreras and Showkat Shafi, said they were beaten by police and detained for several hours while covering a protest in Srinagar, in Jammu and Kashmir. The protest, which was a demonstration against Indian rule, escalated into a violent clash between protesters and police forces. According to Shafi, officers continued to beat him, even after identifying himself as a journalist. Reports say both photojournalists were treated for multiple bruises in a local hospital.
18 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Shehla Masood, a freedom of information activist and blogger, was murdered yesterday in the city of Bhopal. The 39-year-old was shot in the neck as she got into a car in front of her home. Over the past two years, Masood had been publicly pushing for the enforcement of the Right to Information (RTI) Act in India. The 2005 RTI Act provides access to certain public documents but those seeking them — namely material involving sensitive local matters — are often targeted by officials, with a dozen people allegedly being killed last year for doing so.
15 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The release of Amitabh Bachchan’s controversial new film, Aarakshan, which focuses on students benefiting from India’s quota system for Dalits (untouchables), has been met with protests and criticism from groups representing low-caste Hindus. Lawmakers in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Andhra Pradesh made an initial decision to block the release of the film, following the public’s reaction. Officials in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh decided instead to release a censored version of the feature, removing any scenes that would illicit anger from citizens. In Uttar Pradesh, the ban is still in place.
