When Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food, a Tamil film by debutant Nilesh Krishnaa and starring Nayanthara, released in December, there was very little buzz around it. It received mixed reviews (a polite way to say it sucked), had a limited theatrical run, and went quite unnoticed.

But we can’t afford not to notice it anymore.

Soon after Annapoorani released on Netflix on December 29, it ran into controversy. Activists from the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Hindu IT Cell filed two separate police complaints against Netflix, the filmmakers and others for promoting “love jihad”, that good old conspiracy theory, and hurting the feelings of the Brahmin community. The Thane police swiftly registered an FIR.

Zee Studios, one of the film’s producers, promptly apologised and directed Netflix to remove the film. Their response suggested Annapoorani might be restored after editing out parts that are supposedly offensive.

The forcible removal of the film, which was already passed by the Central Board of Film Certification, led to outrage on social media. While the majority of the Tamil film industry chose not to react, filmmakers Vetrimaaran and Pa Ranjith condemned the censoring of cinema through “external pressure”.

Meanwhile, the controversy piqued the curiosity of not only the Tamil public but movie-watchers across the country. They may not have paid attention to the film before but now, they badly wanted to know why it’s so controversial. Since Annapoorani is no longer on OTT platforms, it’s now being actively shared through torrents, Telegram and other illegal means.

Small censorship, big publicity

But the events surrounding Annapoorani aren’t new. Such censorship and outrage have happened time and again. And these objections haven’t been raised only by Hindutva outfits, but by other religious, political and caste power centres as well. 

Popular Tamil writer Perumal Murugan came under attack in 2014 for the contents of his book Mathorubhagan, or One Part Woman in English. It supposedly offended the sensibilities of caste-based and religious Hindu groups in the western Kongu belt of Tamil Nadu. The police brokered a “peace talk” between the writer and the protesting groups and forced him to unconditionally apologise and withdraw all copies of the book. The turn of events eventually pushed the writer to give up his craft and declare “Perumal Murugan, the writer, is dead”.

However, responding to a series of litigations and suits, the Madras High Court ruled in favour of Perumal Murugan, who returned to writing in 2016. While he was already popular in Tamil reading circles, the controversy brought him nation-wide attention. His work was translated into English and sales spiked.

Also in 2013, Kamal Hassan was gearing up to release Vishwaroopam when it ran into trouble with the AIADMK government led by J Jayalalithaa. A group of Muslim civic groups requested the chief minister to intervene and edit portions of the film that portrayed Tamil Muslim characters as terrorists.

As Kamal, the film’s actor, co-writer, co-producer and director, attempted to dodge pressure to edit the film, the high court stayed his film’s release. A dejected Kamal addressed the press saying the film’s non-release might eat up all his savings and that he wanted to “leave the country”.

This resulted in huge outrage, both online and offline. Angered fans and non-fans extended their solidarity to Kamal and vowed to ensure Vishwaroopam’s release and success. Some even sent Kamal their savings and requested him to continue making films in India.

Kamal finally agreed to requested changes, Vishwaroopam released, and it was a huge commercial success.

Then there was Vijay’s Mersal in 2017, considered a typical entertainer. But both the BJP and AIADMK governments objected to dialogues that criticised GST. The BJP also demanded that comments on Digital India be removed from the film.

Mersal, until then, was a formulaic revenge drama that was in no way centred around GST or Digital India. But it quickly became the Tamil public’s assertion against the centre’s policies. Had both the governments ignored the film, the audience might have easily forgotten its comments. But the objections and calls for censorship converted an average entertainer into a political statement. It triggered public curiosity and made it an even bigger success.

These stories tell us that external pressure – whether it’s Hindutva outfits or Muslim groups or governments – often muzzles an artist’s freedom to express themselves. But at the same time, their actions bring extraordinary attention to the artistic works in question, making them popular and commercially successful.

Kamal knows this well. In 2018, he released a sequel titled Vishwaroopam 2. Neither Muslim groups nor the Tamil Nadu government expressed any issue, or interest, in it. Unlike its predecessor, it garnered little support from the public. In the absence of any demand to censor it, Vishwaroopam 2 is now just another inconsequential film in Kamal’s career.

Overnight liberal icons

When established artists are censored, or threatened with censorship, they get publicity they couldn’t have managed on their own. We witnessed similar events happening around the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat (2018). 

The film was a simplistic, Amar Chitra Katha-esque take on the life of Mewar queen Padmavati. It suffered from anti-Muslim tones, the problematic representation of Alauddin Khilji, and the caricatured portrayal of the queer character Malik Kafur. To make things worse, the film’s climax almost romanticised the abolished practice of sati.

Despite these glaring problems, it became a liberal and progressive choice to support Padmaavat, because several Rajput caste groups, including the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, protested against the film and vandalised its production sets. In the process, these groups converted the act of watching a film steeped in regressive Hindu patriarchal mores into a radical act – bringing the film stupendous attention and commercial success.

Interestingly, these events aren’t restricted to only established and popular artists. In 2012, when cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, who was until then an unknown figure, was arrested for cartoons that allegedly insulted national symbols, he became a youth icon overnight. 

Trivedi’s works were deliberately provocative and crude, but his arrest and the banning of his website Cartoons Against Corruption made him a symbol of artistic freedom and expression. His cartoons became some of the most forwarded content online in the weeks that followed. 

In the case of Annapoorani, had right-wing outfits chosen to ignore it, the film would probably have been buried in the archives of Netflix. 

Annapoorani is about a Brahmin woman who dreams to become a chef, a job that involves cooking and tasting meat. But if you think about it, there really aren’t any societal hurdles that prevent a Brahmin woman from cooking meat. It’s only self-imposed norms within a community and, if anything, only immediate family members would care enough to oppose her.

This is in direct contrast to Dalit women who are employed as midday meal cooks and are boycotted regularly by students themselves. So, it’s understandable that the film failed to strike a chord with the audience.

But by attempting to censor it, Annapoorani now has lifelong relevance. 

A different kind of censorship 

There’s no denying that a free and progressive society should have no place for these unconstitutional bodies exercising their control. But we’re forced to negotiate with the fact that they have, unfortunately, become part of our society. 

As we can see in the above cases, censorship by external forces happens at the very end of an artistic work’s production cycle, during the process of distribution to the end consumer. At such a late stage, the best these outfits can achieve are minor edits and changes. But what they’re more successful at is flexing their power and spreading fear. In exchange for the nuisance they cause, they offer exceptional publicity to the artist and their work.

But there’s a far more dangerous form of censorship at work in the dark silence of societal and state structures.

When Pa Ranjith made his first film Attakathi in 2012, a slice-of-life story on Dalits in suburban Chennai, the producer repeatedly told him not to focus on images of Dr Ambedkar. While it was considered acceptable to use Dr Ambedkar’s images in courtrooms and government office scenes, it seemed too radical and risky to show his statues and photos in homes and streets. 

Why? Because it might signify that the protagonist and other characters are Dalit and thereby antagonise the “common audience” – a euphemism for upper caste viewers.

It’s amusing that the very presence of Dalit characters or Dr Ambedkar’s images on screen offends the sensibilities of the average public. How sensitive can an audience be if they’re bothered by images of India’s first law and justice minister, the man who drafted the constitution?

But we can’t just blame this particular producer for his response. If anything, he accurately gauged society’s mindset and communicated it frankly to his director. It’s another story that Pa Ranjith still managed to insert images of Dr Ambedkar into scenes where the camera pans across homes and streets. But it was only after Ranjith himself became a star that he could openly show imagery of Dr Ambedkar and Lord Buddha in his films.

Similarly, filmmaker Vetrimaaran has often talked about his eagerness to make a film on the difficulties faced by Tamils towards the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. But he’s also diplomatically indicated the challenges in making such a film. Any film that speaks from the Eelam Tamil perspective would naturally incriminate the state of Sri Lanka, its armed forces, and its war crimes. And because Sri Lanka is considered a friendly neighbour to India, it’s almost impossible to make such a film and get it cleared by the censor board.

On the other hand, films like Kannathil Muthamittal (2002), Madras Café (2013) and season two of the web series Family Man (2019) are released without any issue at all. These are productions that either caricature the armed struggle of the Eelam Tamils or remain silent on the excesses of the Sri Lankan army. After their release, all three were sharply critiqued for their problematic political positions.

Societal censorship 

In the cases of Pa Ranjith and Vetrimaaran, there aren’t fringe groups censoring them or their work. But it’s the overpowering presence of the caste society or the state that prevents them from freely expressing themselves. 

If anything, this is a far more serious and dangerous problem that any liberal society should worry about. These cases don’t draw extraordinary publicity. Instead, their artistic work isn’t able to exist in the first place, because society and the state are far more powerful and overreaching than extremist outfits.

It’s these unwritten books and unmade films, that could alter the status quo of society, that need our attention, understanding and solidarity.

Let me end by drawing the reader’s attention to an incident from my own life.

Long ago, when I made the Inedible India comics, I once received a copy of an FIR that stated I had insulted Hindu gods by making political comics using their images. My comics used figures from Ravi Varma and Kalighat paintings – which often had Hindu mythological figures – to talk about contemporary social issues.

So it was understandable that someone had been offended.

While I was partly worried about the arrest, I also realised such an arrest could make me a national figure overnight, pushing my paltry 50,000 followers to five lakh – or more! I was both scared and thrilled and contacted lawyer friends just in case something untoward happened.

But thanks to my bad luck, the FIR I was sent turned out to be fake. There was no arrest. I was mostly relieved but I also sadly concluded I’d never hit that five lakh count.

Perhaps next time.