DOORDARSHAN resembles nothing more than a big bully who submits finally to a bigger bully wielding a bigger stick. You thought, like any reasonable person with a healthy sense of self-respect, that Doordarshan would have learnt its lesson after its long legal tussle with Anand Patwardhan who relishes a fight against authority as much as he loves making documentaries on "controversial" subjects. But whoever said that Doordar-shan's faceless bureaucrats, who execute the written and unwritten commands of their political masters, had this virtue called self-respect? But you assumed that they at least had the survival instinct, without which no species can live and perpetuate itself. The Doordarshan bureaucrat must be a hybrid wonder, baffling all biologists.

So finally Anand Patwardhan triumphed, as he was surely expected to, after the courts commanded Doordarshan to telecast Ram Ke Naam. Patwardhan had after all the earlier experience of Bombay Our City which again needed judicial intervention before it got its rightful time on the national network by virtue of winning the highest national award given by the government. This bizarre Kafkaesque scenario, where one wing of the information and broadcasting ministry hands out prizes to a film and another wing tries it damndest best to block the telecast of the very same film, ought to inspire our filmmakers to make black comedies centring on inept, self-defeating censorship. Where are our political farceurs when we need them?! In all this highly publicized legal drama, who has benefited the most? Why, Anand Patwardhan, of course. Sorry for the cynicism — this in no way diminishes my admiration for Patwardhan's ability as a skilled and committed documentarist who can pick "the issue" which can needle the national conscience — but how many would even be aware of the telecast of Ram Ke Naam but for the long-drawn legal battle? These battles with authority have made Patwardhan's films a cause celebre geared to gain media sympathy. The next logical question which not many ask is: how many committed documentary filmmakers have the stamina, strength, resources and media savvy of this battle-scarred veteran?

Not many, I am afraid. In our country, it is only politically controversial films which manage to gain press sympathy and space. Will this judgment and Doordarshan's shame-faced compliance become a precedent so that all films which win the highest national awards will automatically be telecast within a reasonable time of their winning these prizes? Every information and broadcasting minister, whatever party and front he may belong to, has asserted from every possible podium that films which win top national and international prizes — like our very own biannual BIFF — will be aired on Doordarshan. Frailty of memory, thy name is an Indian information and broadcasting minister. We have seen these ministers come and go — a regular procession, and they are eagerly joined by state information and broadcasting ministers when such film festivals are held in state capitals — mouthing promises at presentation ceremonies and not one has bothered to remember what they said.

Like justice delayed being justice denied, the immediacy of a hot political subject thaws and then freezes into a forgotten past. If the baleful, inimical and calculated cynical exploitation of simple Hindu reverence for Ram was telecast soon after Ram Ke Naam won a Swam Kamal in the summer of '92, would it have alerted the nation to the dangers of the Hindu fundamentalist wagon fuelled by misguided Ram bhakti? Patwardhan believes that exposing the mass ignorance, blind prejudice, and frightening xenophobia of those who followed Advani's rath yatra would have perhaps roused the dormant secularism of the majority of the Hindus. Could it have averted that dastardly blot on our so-called tolerance when the Babri Masjid was razed by frenzied karsevaks? It is not easy to second-guess history, but many ordinary Indians who had nothing to do with the karsevaks or the rath yatra might have been spared the guilt and shame of 6 December '92.

Of course, there are those who argue that films never undid history or thwarted its process once atavistic forces had been unleashed. Leni Riefenstahl's stunning Triumph of Will did not wake the rest of the world to the dangers of Hilter's Nazi Germany. The documentary went on to win a number of prizes (outside, Germany) and is now condemned to the hell reserved for fallen angels who package evil with unsurpassed beauty. But we, at the fag end of this century, are expected to be more media-literate and see through the cynical games that politicians play. But given the self-preserving instincts of the political breed, you can be sure that Doordarshan at least will not keep its routinely reiterated promise of giving documentaries their allotted time. Yes, innocuous and touristy and propagandist films will be shown from time to time, but not incendiary stuff.

Why blame Doordarshan? It too has jumped into the no-holds-barred war for ad revenue against the satellite channels, conveniently forgetting that even the home of free enterprise, good old capitalist USA, has a channel called PBS. But for PBS, there wouldn't have oeen the brilliant Civil War series. Just as a free press and a free judiciary are necessary for democracy, so is the right to air dissent on national TV. But it is easier for Doordarshan and other channels to celebrate the Mera Bharat Mahan feel good fiesta of song, dance and sports heroes carrying' the national flag. The more a nation feels threatened about its identity and integrity, the more tempting are patriotic placebos.


Other attempts to stop Ram Ke Naam