When Censorship Bites You Back on the Bum

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On May 31, 2010

If you watch the trailer you will catch a quick glance of Rizvan (the Khan in the movie) praying with his wife in the background lighting a lamp at an altar. This is what gave me a clue as to why it wasn’t shown in many theatres.

By Marina Mahathir

Last February I happened to be in Mumbai when Shah Rukh Khan’s latest movie My Name is Khan opened. I’m never been a big Bollywood fan but since I was in Mumbai and kept hearing the Slumdog Millionaire theme song ‘Jai Ho’ in my head, I took note of this movie this time. Not that I could help it; it was on the news all over the place.

But MNIK was in the news not because of its subject matter but because there were demonstrations in front of the cinemas showing it by the right-wing nationalist group Shiv Sena ( their equivalent of Perkasa). The reason wasn’t so much the movie itself but because Shah Rukh Khan, who owns a cricket team in India, had said he didn’t see why Pakistani cricketeers couldn’t join the Indian league. The Shiv Sena considered this treason, hence the demos. But most Indians were not bothered and went to see MNIK in droves anyway.

Indian TV also covered the premier of MNIK in Abu Dhabi. And since then it has shown all over the world with great success.

Having watched all the news about MNIK I was determined to see it somehow. I scoured our papers to see which cinemas it was showing at and was very surprised to find that it was showing in very few theatres. I thought Shah Rukh Khan was a pretty big name, plus the movie has the gorgeous Kajol. So the lowkey distribution was puzzling.

So I started looking for the trailers. Here’s the official one:

{youtube}_uNDm6YfN2k{/youtube}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uNDm6YfN2k