We have received a letter from Ranjit Hoskote, Secretary-Treasurer, Drishti Media, Arts & Human Rights, Ahmedabad, on the Mumbai police stopping a screening of Sanjay Kak's documentary.
We write to bring to your notice yet another violation of the freedom of expression in India. On Friday, 27 July 2007, a posse of policemen attached to the Dadar police station in Bombay broke into a private screening of Sanjay Kak's documentary, Jashn-e-Azaadi, and confiscated the DVD.
The screening, which was hosted by the Vikalp group of independent filmmakers, was intended to bring to a Bombay audience an eloquent cinematic argument for dialogue beyond anguish and antagonism; for an understanding of the 'Kashmir issue' in human and cultural terms.
Kak's Jashn-e-Azaadi dwells on the experience of the Kashmiri people during the protracted period of strife they have suffered -- with equal elements of militancy, State repression, criminal violence, and a struggle for self-articulation. According to the Bombay police, it contains "scenes of a provocative nature". To disrupt the screening of such a documentary is only to re-enact the brutality that has become the tragic norm in the Valley.
We strongly deplore this violation of the right of Indian citizens to examine, express and discuss questions of great public importance, without falling in line with the official view on these questions. Such high-handedness cuts at the very root of democracy.
