So Deepa Mehta’s “Water” had an opening at the Toronto Film festival. Kudos to Deepa, who completed the Trilogy, Fire, Earth and Water.

The film about Hindu widows was to be shot in Varanasi, India – the land of unadulterated Hinduism, the Hindutva kind was stalled. Deepa, was harassed by Shiv Sena activists, to shoot it despite all Government clearances for shooting it.

The archaic rule of getting the script approved by I&B ministry for a foreign film and having a government official at the shooting to see whether the script is followed was also taken care of, even after this permission the Indian State could not provide her security from a bunch of lumpens.

So when India is engaging with its diaspora trying to woo them to invest in the film industry, why did it not give Deepa, and Indo-Canadian Director, the security she needed? Indian censorship is a funny ballgame; they give you the freedom, but will not safeguard it.

Once again Hindu nationalism stopped a movie from being made in India. Maybe it would hurt Hindu sensibilities. On a certain level the film would make India seem like a retrograde society and reinforce the stereotype of a society cruel to its women, but the government should have known better. If there was a movie on “Witchcraft” in early Puritan America, would we have Christian fundamentalists protesting against the movie in America?

We are a nation that makes a thousand Bollywood movies a year, we need to allow foreign scripts on India to be made as well, especially foreign scripts by NRI Directors. This will increase our nation’s acumen and taste for a broad cinema spectrum. Deepa Mehta is India’s cultural insider, we need to understand that – And if anything, Water is seems more of a historical/cultural film than a Hindu film. And what the heck if it is not shot in Varanasi, India – the film has been made

You can’t keep a fiery film Director down for seven long years! Not when she has Lisa Ray and John Abraham as lead actors.


Apparently Deepa's daughter has written a Water memoir



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