Will the Shiv Sena succeed?
Feb 12, 2010 General
MUMBAI: A deserted ticket window at a cinema hall in Mumbai is an unusual sight. More so when it’s the day before the release of a Shah Rukh Khan-starrer. But that’s precisely the scene across the city. Posses of policemen have replaced the jostling queues of film-mad Mumbaiites and ticket scalpers.
Mumbai is holding its breath. Will My Name Is Khan release at all? Will cinema owners take the risk of screening it in defiance of the Shiv Sena, the parochial, right-wing party that is desperately looking for a way to stay relevant? Ask a theatre manager in Mahim, the heart of Shiv Sena country, and she says screening the film is a risk she’d rather not take. “We simply can’t afford the damage that Sena goons can cause,” she says.
It’s a sentiment echoed by large multiplex chains, which have put on hold bookings for the film, after Sena chief Bal Thackeray issued a diktat against it a few days ago. Thackeray claimed to be incensed at Khan’s support for Pakistani players in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and his assertion that the demand for preference in jobs for locals in Mumbai was absurd. “Mumbai belongs to all of India,” the superstar had asserted, also refusing to apologise for his stand that Pakistanis be allowed in the IPL, a cricket league owned by the powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India that is only two seasons old, but is already ranked among the top 10 global sporting properties.
The real reason for Thackeray’s theatrics, though, is apparent to all.
The aging satrap chose his son Uddhav, a political greenhorn, over his nephew Raj, a natural, to lead the Sena. Raj rebelled, forming a rival party – the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in 2006. Both parties are relevant only in the Indian province of Maharashtra and the competition for Marathi votes was well and truly on.
Raj captured the political advantage by carrying out violent agitations against ‘outsiders’ — migrant North Indians who escape the crushing poverty of their home provinces by coming to India’s financial capital to drive taxis and take up menial jobs. He claimed they were taking away jobs that should have gone to Marathi-speaking locals. While the claim is questionable – and the agitation against the spirit of the Indian Constitution that allows all Indians to settle anywhere in the country – it succeeded in capturing the imagination of a section of the local youth.
This manifested itself in last year’s provincial elections in Maharashtra. The MNS sucked away a huge chunk of the Sena’s traditional Maharashtrian vote bank, its candidates winning in even the staunchly Sena bastion of Dadar in Mumbai. It was a stunning political erosion of the Sena, its worst showing in provincial elections in 20 years. The party won only 44 seats against its 2004 tally of 62. Raj’s MNS walked away with 13.
The second body blow was delivered by Rahul, the son of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The Congress heads the coalition that is in power in India. Uddhav was left red-faced when Rahul, who had also said in North India that the country belonged to all its citizens, ignored threats from the Sena and discarded his helicopter and cavalcade to visit Dadar on a suburban train. It didn’t help that Khan is said to be close to Rahul.
Faced with political oblivion, the Sena had to do something drastic. And fast. In this context, Khan’s comments were a godsend for Uddhav. Raj had forced the director of My Name Is Khan, Karan Johar, to apologise for referring to the city as ‘Bombay’ in a previous production. Uddhav demanded that Khan do the same.
Khan refused and Uddhav launched a typical Sena agitation: a mix of violence and acidic comment pieces in the party mouthpiece, Saamna. At stake – apart from Mumbai’s reputation as a cosmopolitan, tolerant melting pot – is Rs 100 crore ($22 million) that is riding on My Name Is Khan. For the film to be a commercial success, it has to net at least Rs 60 crore ($13 million) in India, making up the rest in international sales. Mumbai and Maharashtra traditionally make up about 40 per cent of any Bollywood film’s taking in India; in this case, Rs 24 crore ($5 million).
Any dent in that chunk could mean massive losses for the producers, theatre owners and Fox Star Studios, which acquired the distribution rights for Rs 81 crore ($17 million). All the stakeholders will remember that the Sena has a history of terrorising Bollywood. In 1998, Sena activists attacked theatres screening Deepa Mehta’s Fire because it had lesbian overtones. Last year, the party tore down posters of Kurbaan (another Johar production) because they showed a bare-backed Kareena Kapoor embracing Saif Ali Khan. That apart, the Sena had also disrupted a performance of Pakistani ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali Khan at a city hotel in 1998.
Most of Mumbai is backing Khan and social networking sites, Twitter, and TV channels are buzzing with outrage at the Sena’s threats. However, at the time of writing, most of Mumbai’s leading cinema halls have declined to screen the film, the government’s assurances of providing adequate security notwithstanding.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, hoping to reassure Mumbai, said he would watch My Name Is Khan in a theatre. Which one, asks Mumbai, given that most of them have refused to show the film. The Sena’s last-gasp effort to grab the political limelight may just have succeeded.
Ashraf Engineer is Senior Associate Editor at Hindustan Times, Mumbai.
Tags: India, Shah Rukh Khan, Shiv Sena, SRK
Rare “Prehistoric” Shark Photographed Alive
Apr 17, 2009 General
Flaring the gills that give the species its name, a frilled shark swims at Japan’s Awashima Marine Park on Sunday, January 21, 2007. Sightings of living frilled sharks are rare, because the fish generally remain thousands of feet beneath the water’s surface.
This serpentine specimen may look like a large eel, but its six slitlike gills help mark it as a cousin of the great white, the hammerhead, and other sharks. But this isn’t your average fish.
With a mouthful of three-pointed teeth, the frilled shark may be a fearsome hunter, but it’s considered harmless to humans. Those needle-like choppers are better suited to fleshier forms found in the deep sea, such as squid and other sharks.
Right now it’s known as a “living fossil.” But the frilled shark may be on its way to joining its ancestors.
Indian’s hatred against Pakistan
Mar 6, 2009 General
Watch a little old but full of hatred against Pakistan
Tags: India, indian extremists
Thank You Change can happen
Jan 29, 2009 General, Technology
Big Change
Tags: Barack Obama, change can happen
8 Years Of Bush in 8 Minutes!
Jan 20, 2009 General, News & Events
Tags: Bush, bush policy, eight years, elections 08
Bush’s Shoe Attack Had Links with Pakistan!
Dec 23, 2008 General
The pair of shoes which was thrown at Mr.  Bush in Iraqhas links to Pakistan, said a statement from Pentagon. They have the  following proofs:
i)The journalist had visited  Pakistanearlier this year. There he was inspired by the shoe throwing at former  CM Arbab Ghulam Rahim and Sher Afghan Niazi.
ii)   He received his training of throwing shoes by a Pakistanbased Jihadi  organization.
iii) The DNA sample of leather has  revealed that the animal whose skin was used for manufacturing the shoe had  traces of grass which is grown in North of Pakistan and this skin was collected  by a Jihadi organization on Eid-ul-Adha this month.
Hearing this, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza  Gilani have decided to ban the Jihadi organization and launched a country wide  crackdown against all the cobblers in Pakistan.
Tags: Bush, shoe attack
