New Delhi: The ninth Udaipur Film Festival, a three-day event from November 15 to 17 at the Rabindranath Tagore (R.N.T.) Medical College was disrupted by members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Saturday, November 16.
The festival, jointly organised by Cinema of Resistance and Udaipur Film Society, was dedicated to rights activist G.N. Saibaba and Palestinian children killed in the ongoing conflict with Israel, which drew objections from the RSS.
Speaking to The Wire, Sanjay Joshi, the national convener of Cinema of Resistance, said that the festival organisers had submitted the required application and fees and obtained permission from the college administration. However, around 2:30-3:00 pm during the post-lunch session, RSS members disrupted the event, prompting the college principal to summon the organisers and the RSS members for a meeting.
The principal questioned the Udaipur Film Festival convenor Rinku Parihar about the intention of the festival. The Wire tried to reach out to the principal of R.N.T. college but he was unavailable for comment.
Joshi said that the festival featured banners and posters paying tribute to Saibaba and Palestinian children, to which the RSS objected. The RSS members also branded Saibaba as a “terrorist,” Joshi added.
“The RSS members questioned me, ‘what about people dying elsewhere?’. We offered to extend the tribute to victims of all genocides but refused to apologise as demanded by the RSS members,” said Joshi. The organisers were forced to proclaim that they were against “naxals and maoists”.
“The representatives of the Udaipur Film Society said that they consider every single act of genocide a human tragedy and are ready to give homage to all the victims of such acts however they refused to agree to the conditions presented by RSS volunteers that the society must apologise for dedicating the festival to Palestinian children,” Parihar said.
Initially, about five RSS members entered the venue but their numbers soon doubled. The group misbehaved and pressured the organisers to stop the event, upon which the college administration forcibly shut down the festival.
Parihar also released a statement, saying “on the second day of 9th Udaipur Film Festival, due to pressure and terrorising of RSS activists, the RNT medical college administration forcefully stopped the film screenings.”
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Joshi also reported that Facebook blocked advertisements related to the festival. Despite the presence of the outpost in-charge at the venue, no action was taken against the RSS members.
The organisers were advised to escalate the matter to Udaipur district magistrate and district collector Arvind Poswal. When they tried to contact him initially, he was unavailable. Later, around 7:45 pm, they met Poswal, who questioned the organisers instead of addressing the disruption and expressed his inability to take action. He asked the organisers to file an FIR. The Wire tried to reach out to Poswal but did not receive any response.
“Udaipur Film Society’s representatives also met the district collector Arvind Poswal however he expressed his utter helplessness in the face of social miscreants. The irony was the ball passing game between the district collector and the college administration both of them asking the permission from each other. It is to note that when the festival was illegally and forcefully stopped the local police’s representative CI himself was present there,” Parihar stated.
Despite the disruptions, the organisers managed to conduct the festival against all odds. They arranged a new venue near Sandeshwar Mahadev temple to continue the event. “There were national-award-winning filmmakers among us, who stood in solidarity throughout,” Joshi said.
The new makeshift venue. Photo: Sanjay Joshi
Parihar exclaimed, “It is tragic that when the festival venue was barged by these miscreants, Shabnam Virman’s film Had Anhad was being screened that has become an anthem for communal harmony in documentary in cinema carrying message of poet Kabir.”
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The Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation (CPIML) also condemned the hooliganism by the RSS. “The CPIML unequivocally condemns the cowardly disruption by RSS goons of the screening of Had Anhad at the Udaipur Film Festival. This brazen attack on democratic spaces and progressive art reflects the growing attack on freedom of speech under the fascist regime, which seeks to stifle any voices critical of exploitation and injustic,” the party announced in a statement.
“The CPIML stands in firm solidarity with the Udaipur Film Society in its brave stand against fascist intimidation. The refusal of the organisers to remove their dedication to Palestinian children and professor Saibaba is a courageous assertion of democratic rights,” the statement mentioned.
This is not the first time such an incident has occurred, says Joshi. In a previous edition of the festival in 2016, the organisers faced a similar disruption when activists belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, objected to tributes for Rohith Vemula and Delta Meghwal. Joshi condemned the incident in the strongest terms and said that neither cinema nor any form of art can be stopped by such elements.
