Furore over fire
India B. Skanthakumar
On December 2nd 1998 two screening the Indian film Fire were attacked by the women's wing of the Hindu communalist Shiv Sena (Army of God). The following day a cinema in Delhi received similar treatment. Cinemas around the country got the message and pulled the film off their screens.
Deepa Mehta's film which has received fourteen international awards had been barraged by verbal assaults for several months before the physical attacks began.
Its central characters are two sister-in-laws living in a Hindu joint family in Delhi in unhappy and loveless marriages, who first through loneliness and then through desire are attracted to each other. The film doesn't only hint at this awakening of female sexuality but eroticises it through kissing, foreplay and intercourse.
This is perhaps the weakest aspect of the film. Had they been happily married or their husbands not been as unfeeling, could they not have fallen in love?
The Shiv Sena women's wing organised a petition, complaining that "if women's physical needs get fulfilled through lesbian acts, the institution of marriage collapse... reproduction of human beings will stop."
Instead of condemning this wanton violence and bigotry Maharashtra Manohar Joshi, who leads a Shiv Sena-BJP coalition government, congratulated protesters
"whatever is depicted in the film is against our culture." The Censor Board had promised second review of the film, with the aim of banning it.
When veteran cinema actor Dilip Kumar and other cultural figures sought the intervention of the Supreme Court to protect screenings of the film, male supporters of Shiv blockaded demonstrating in their underwear in protest at female 'nudity' in Fire!
Yet as bold and refreshing as Mehta has been in her treatment of same sex sexuality, lesbianism as such is a minor theme as compared to her exploration of desire and its assumes several manifestations in this story-all of which are conflicted with duty-and it is in the confrontation between the two that some found to be more tolerable to society than others.
The elder brother-in-law spurns sexual union with his wife 'Radha' (played by Shabana Azmi) for spiritual union with his swami; his younger brother desires only his Chinese girlfriend and resents his wife 'Sita' (played by Nandita Das); and the male servant desires 'Radha' but has to satiate himself by masturbating to porn videos. Yet it is the desire between the sister-in-laws that is so offensive to the other characters in the film and the The power of desire
Where society elevates duty above desire, stigmatises sex outside marriage and enforces compulsory heterosexuality, in Fire these conventions are subverted. "Without desire I was dead", 'Radha' explains to her enraged husband, desire there is no point in living And you know what else? I desire to live. I desire Sita. I desire her warmth, her compassion and her body. I desire to live again."
According to he film's protagonist Shabana Azmi, acclaimed actress, social activist and Rajya Sabha (Upper House) Member, "Fire is a film that disturbs. Fire is a film that starts a process of questioning." Women as symbol
The Hindu upper caste woman is a symbol par excellence of communalist ideology, which identifies the nation in the woman and the woman in the nation; which ascribes 'feminine', maternal and procreative functions to women and which removes agency in sexual and reproductive rights from women. Women can also be bearers of communalist ideology as illustrated by the leading role of the Shiv Sena Mahila Aghadi (women's wing) in the protests against this film.
The two Hindu women depicted in the film look, dress, behave and live as millions of others do in India. They work for the family business preparing sweets and drinks, cook and serve their husbands, care for the aged grandmother and so on. They are the antithesis of the deviant or outsider in the communalist imagination.
Yet within the private sphere to which they are consigned, they can and do find happiness, and with each other. It is this which is so unthinkable to the film's opponents and which shocks them so.
When discovered in bed together the women are compelled to leave their husbands and marital home. In a neat reference to the epic story Ramayana which is a favourite of the Hindutva ideologists, the director makes 'Radha's' sari accidentally catch fire. The audience watch helplessly as she is consumed by flames. Her husband turns away, leaving her to die.
However she survives her trial by fire, and is reunited with her lover at the Hazrat Nizamuddin shrine. Which leaves us with the symbolism of two Hindus finding solace in a Muslim religious space-steeped in Sufi syncretism and the tale of
Nizamuddin's homoerotic friendship with the poet Amir Khusro
Fire disturbs and destabilises
Hindutva cultural constructions with their essentialisms, homogenising processes and rendering of religious and sexual minorities as the demonic 'other'. Hence the venom has been unleashed against the film, its director and cast, and the places which dare to screen it. *
* I am greatly indebted to Shohini Ghosh's "From the frying pan to the Fire Communalism Combat,
(Mumbai), Vol. 6, No. 50, January 1999
<sabrang@bom2.vsnl.net.in> Arif Azad and Jean Dupont commented on an earlier draft of this article.
International Viewpoint #310 April 1999 21