When iconoclast Malayalam writer MT Vasudevan Nair passed away last December, many people wondered if films like the award-winning 1972 film Nirmalyam—his debut directorial—could be made in this day and age. Kamal Haasan had raised the same question back in 2018.
The climax scene of Nirmalyam has the temple oracle spitting blood on to the idol of the goddess—upon realisation that his wife slept with a money-lender to feed their famished children. In another sequence, the young priest makes love to his sweetheart within the temple precincts.
Those days the ‘hurt sentiments industry’ did not exist in Mollywood.
The brouhaha over L2: Empuraan makes the discourse over Nirmalyam relevant once again. Within three days of the film’s release, lead actor Mohanlal had to issue an apology as a response to the outrage—real or manufactured—along with confirmation that the makers would undertake ‘voluntary cuts’ to the film, which got past the censors without trouble.
In the context of the actions that followed, the term ‘voluntary cuts’ may remind one of a hilarious scene from Shaadi Se Pehle (2006)—an otherwise forgettable Bollywood film—where Suniel Shetty playing a gangster puts a gun to the head of Akshaye Khanna and asks, “Tu pressure mein to aake nahin maan rahe hai?” (Did you consent after coming under pressure?).
The simultaneous raids on producer Gokulam Gopalan, and the Income Tax notices served to director Prithviraj and co-producer (and Mohanlal’s Man Friday) Antony Perumbavoor within a week of the film’s release indicated that it wasn’t really as ‘voluntary’ as it was presented to be.
The vindictive action notwithstanding, the producers are laughing all the way to the bank as the controversies only ensured that the below-average film became a blockbuster at the box office.
Nevertheless, the backlash against the film warrants a closer look, especially since it caught a lot of people by surprise in Kerala.
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Muscle-flexing by Sangh Parivar
The attack on L2: Empuraan originated from the Hindutva ecosystem. It was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s journal Organiser and people associated with the Sangh Parivar that spearheaded the charge against the film in Kerala, even as the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was calibrating its response.
This would also qualify as the first instance of the Sangh Parivar flexing its muscles in Kerala’s socio-political landscape.
This is not to say there has been no trouble from Hindutva groups in Kerala. These groups targeted writer Hareesh after his debut novel Meesha (Moustache), which was serialised in the Mathrubhumi Literary Weekly. They even extended it to a campaign to boycott the publication in 2018. It was backed by the Nair Service Society (NSS), among others. Similarly, the Sangh affiliates including the BJP were lateral entrants to the Sabarimala agitation initiated by the NSS, even if they later managed to hijack it.
Regardless, the makers of L2: Empuraan could have gotten away without resorting to ‘voluntary cuts’—with the civil society, the Left and the Congress in Kerala expressing solidarity with the makers. But Mohanlal’s closeness to the Sangh Parivar meant that he was amenable to pressure tactics.
In fact, Kerala BJP vice president Major Ravi—a retired army officer-turned-director—even brought up the issue of the actor’s honorary Lieutenant Colonel rank following Empuraan’s release, while claiming to speak as a friend of Mohanlal.
Why Empuraan riled the Sangh
It is important to understand why Empuraan riled the Sangh Parivar ecosystem in Kerala. It has to do with the stinging portrayal of the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, something Kerala youth barely had any recollection of. That the Hindu Right in Kerala would get so defensive about the Gujarat riots itself was revelatory to the people of the state.
The standard argument of Hindutva spokespersons was that the burning of the Sabarmati Express coach, killing 59 Karsevaks, wasn’t depicted in equal measure in Empuraan. It only exposed the Sangh Parivar belief system that the riots were par for the course—that an attack on innocents and the whole community at large was a justified response to a crime perpetrated by certain individuals.
The antagonist Baba Bajrangi bearing similarity with Bajrang Dal’s Babu Bajrangi—who was sentenced to life for his role in the riots—or the portrayal of the rape of a pregnant Muslim woman (with shades of Bilkis Bano) seemingly hit them too hard, despite the standard disclaimer at the beginning of Empuraan that everything depicted in the film is fictional.
Lately, the Sangh Parivar has been trying to champion Hindu identity politics in Kerala, fashioning themselves as counterparts to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)—especially with the Congress devoid of Hindu faces such as K Karunakaran.
Some months ago, RSS Sampark Pramukh A Jayakumar told me how the organisation was non-political—that it was merely interested in the “upholding of Dharma”.
The same Jayakumar had no qualms being at the forefront of the ambush against Empuraan. RSS ideologue EN Nandakumar went one step further and made statements on Malayalam news channels that the raids against the makers of Empuraan were justified.
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Kerala BJP on the back-foot
While the controversy was raging in Kerala, the BJP found itself on the back-foot in the state. And it coincided with the elevation of Rajeev Chandrasekhar as president of the state unit. Ever since he took over, the BJP has been on a drive to improve its image in the state, drawing people with an independent standing closer to the party.
Even today, there is a certain stigma associated with being identified as a BJP fellow-traveler in Kerala. There is a reason why many Right-wingers, including rationalists and commentators in Kerala, choose to position themselves as independent of the organisation—lest they get branded as ‘Sanghi’.
The Empuraan row only set the BJP back in its mission to scale up to a mainstream political coalition, and become a viable alternative to the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala. At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself opened up on the Gujarat riots to podcaster Lex Fridman, the Kerala BJP would have preferred to not rake up a controversy over the film.
The uproar only served to provoke people to read up on the Gujarat riots. It also led to a clip of then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee publicly exhorting Modi to follow ‘Raj Dharma’ in Gujarat to go viral on social media.
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The Kerala consensus
One should bear in mind that Muraly Gopy, writer of Empuraan, has done films like Left Right Left (2013) in the past, which had a central character—Kaitheri Sahadevan, essayed by Hareesh Peradi—modelled on Pinarayi Vijayan. At that point, writers swearing allegiance to the Left wrote articles panning Muraly Gopy in the Mathrubhumi Literary Weekly and Samakalika Malayalam Weekly, that he was smuggling Sangh propaganda into his films.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist exerted pressure to not screen Left Right Left in Thalassery and ensured it was pulled out of theatres in Kannur (and many other parts of Malabar) within a week. However, the Left does it with much more finesse, without resorting to frontal attacks on people exercising their creative freedom—whether they be writers or filmmakers—unlike the Right-Wing.
Mollywood has always had its fair share of political films. In 1986, the Mohanlal-starrer Rajavinte Makan had Ratheesh portraying the antagonist, modelled on Congress home minister Vayalar Ravi, who resigned from the Karunakaran government just a couple of months before the film’s release. Sreenivasan’s satirical Sandesham (1991) was a searing critique of the Marxist party (as well as the Congress), while Lal Salaam (1990) was controversial at the time of the release.
However, nobody really went out of their way to launch an all-out attack in the past, as it happened in the case of Empuraan. That has always been the Kerala consensus. In fact, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan made a real political statement when he watched Empuraan with his family, despite the film taking potshots at the Left and Vijayan’s cult of personality.
Just as Empuraan portrayed the ‘Hindu nationalist’ party as foreign to the ethos of Kerala, the controversy may have shed light on the distance the BJP has to cover—before gaining acceptability in the state.
Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)