A Petty Tyrant in the Garb of God’s Agent
This article was first published in the print edition of Manushi Journal. (Issue-26, Jan-Feb 1985)
This film is appropriately named. In one sense, it really is the voice of today, a voice duly censored by the government and revised in accordance with the censor board’s instructions. What better evidence can there be of its contemporary quality ? Today, every voice, however vulgar and distorted or beautiful and strong, has to acquire government approval in some form or other before it can reach a wider audience. Were Shri Krishna to descend on earth today, he too would have to submit his teachings and his love for sport to the scissors of the censor board before bringing them to the public eye or ear.
In Delhi cinema halls, this film had an appropriate prelude. It was preceded by a government documentary that had been made on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 115th birth anniversary. This documentary presented the entire legacy of the Mahatma as the inheritance of the Nehru family. So, dear friends, if Rajiv Gandhi can befool people in the name of Mahatma Gandhi, why cannot Raj Babbar be accepted as the modern incarnation of Shri Krishna ? One might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.