‘If the government can have an ideology, so can citizens’

Last week, when filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri arrived at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University to screen his film Buddha in a Traffic Jam, it wasn’t the sort of welcome he had imagined. The director was greeted with sloganeering and posters that read, “ABVP go back,” “RSS go back,” “Down with Fascism,” and “Go Back Agnihotri”. Vivek later claimed that the students even attacked his car. He, however, seems unfazed by it all.

On his part, Vivek is holding the faculty responsible for the student’s behaviour. He says, “These students have been brainwashed by the faculty — the university is infested with Leftists. I am not shaken by the protests but these unemployed students raising anti-India slogans are worrying.”

His film hits the theatres today and it has already had an eventful run in its unofficial screenings in college campuses. In March when the makers were planning a screening at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, they did not have a favourable response initially. Nonetheless, Vivek went ahead with it and the response was not quite what he expected. They were expecting an audience of 200-300 students but the crowds ran into thousands, Vivek says. The Jadavpur University experience, however, remained entirely bitter for Vivek and his team.

But what do future filmmakers have to say about the furore Buddha In A Traffic Jam is yet to be screened at the Film and Television Institute of India, which has been yet another hotbed of controversies for a while now.

Abhijeet Khuman, a TV direction student believes that however “coloured” one’s view may be, a filmmaker is well within his rights to present his opinion, but then he must also include all sides of the story. He says, “I don’t think any filmmaker can ever be entirely objective about a topic, no matter how hard he tries. But as a filmmaker, Vivek has the responsibility to present both the sides to the story. I’ve heard from my friends who have watched the film that the movie is more about the Vivek’s views rather than the reality. If he hasn’t given a balanced perspective, the misrepresented section is going to have a problem.”

In Vivek’s words, the film is based on the nexus between professors and NGOs and Naxalites, and how students were used as “intellectual terrorists”. The director has also said that his central protagonist is modelled on a Kanhaiya Kumar-like persona. In the context of Kanhaiya Kumar being subjected to a media trial for his “anti-national” remarks, student of direction Anunay Barbhuiya maintains that a student’s ideology too needs to be taken seriously. “If the government has an ideology, so do the citizens. Students too are a part of a political system and need to be taken seriously. Every student has the right to express his views and it shouldn’t be quietened down.”

While on the topic, Abhijeet questions why a documentary like Battle for Benaras, which was based on the electoral battle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi during the 2014 election, was met with objection last year while this feature film has been passed without a single cut. “Why was there a no-release for the documentary and not a single cut for this feature film ” Abhijeet asks.

Gaurav Singh, who is currently studying TV and engineering, calls the film nothing less than an “agenda film” funded by the government. Gaurav, who recently watched the film at a screening at the Pune University, doubts Vivek’s claims about lack of government support for the film. He says, “The director kept rueing the lack of government support for the film, and his difficulty in finding a release date. If it is the case, why then is the film only being screened in government institutions Moreover, he has skimmed over important subjects like Naxalism and has only shown them in a negative light. I’m worried that people will be influenced by what the film says.”

Vivek has an answer to this. He says that screening the film across colleges was necessary since it is based on the nexus between professors and NGOs and Naxalites, “I don’t have a Shah Rukh Khan in my film to promote it in all the big shopping malls in the country. There is nothing wrong in wanting to promote the film. It is based on how college students are being brainwashed because of political agendas, and I am showing exactly that.”