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Muslim Party Calls to Boycott TV Network for Indian Film
BOMBAY, June 27 (News Agencies) - A prominent Indian Muslim political party called Wednesday for a boycott of a cable television network that produced a Hindi film on the bloody events surrounding the partition of the subcontinent.
"We are issuing a call today to all Muslims to boycott Zee Network's cable television channels," Mohammad Farooque Azam, President of the Bombay chapter of the Indian Union Muslim League, told the French news wire AFP.
Azam's anger was directed against Zee Network's mega budget movie "Gadar" (Anarchy), whose screening led to violent protests by some Muslim groups who say it denigrates Islam.
Azam, who has seen "Gadar," said the movie depicts Muslims as rapists, terrorists and unworthy of trust.
"We are holding a public protest meeting on Friday in Bombay. We want the issue to be resolved peacefully with the deletion of the objectionable shots. Otherwise we will be out on the streets."
According to other leaders of the Muslim community, the film has many objectionable scenes including one in which the heroine, a Muslim girl, offers prayers while wearing a bindi -- a Hindu religious mark -- on her forehead.
"A Muslim woman never wears a bindi on her forehead," said Syed Shahabuddin, a prominent Muslim politician.
"I am against the wrong depiction of Islamic culture in films. The scene is an example of wrong depiction of a Muslim woman," he added.
Azam echoed the views expressed by a prominent Indian Sikh leader, Rachchpal Singh, that the film was part of a conspiracy to create enmity between the Muslim and Sikh communities.
Gadar, a love saga set in 1947, depicts a Sikh truck driver falling in love and eventually marrying a beautiful Muslim girl, against the backdrop of the partition of the subcontinent into Hindu majority India and Muslim majority Pakistan.
The partition sparked off an orgy of sectarian fighting between the two communities, which left an estimated one million people dead.
The film is Zee Network's first mega-budget feature film production.
Well-known Indian film actress, Shabana Azmi, described Gadar as a "provocative" film, but defended its screening.
"Gadar positions the Muslims as the 'other'... The film is designed to be a provocative one. The father of the girl ... subliminally reinforces the canard that any Muslim is automatically a Pakistani," Azmi said.
"I defend the right of Gadar to be screened. No call for a ban on the film should be acceded to. Our constitution upholds freedom of expression."
There are around 140 million Muslims in India, the second largest grouping in the world after Indonesia.
Widespread Hindu-Muslim violence erupted after Hindu extremists demolished the Babri mosque at Ayodhya in 1992. Hindu-Muslim relations remain tense over a number of issues including Indian-Pakistani dispute over India's heavy-handed treatment of Muslims in the state of Kashmir.
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