For some time now, minorities across the country have been at risk. Young women are denied education on flimsy grounds, dietary rituals of minorities are attacked, meat shops are forcibly shut, crude shelters and workplaces of poor Indians are bulldozed and Muslims are relentlessly bullied by mobs b
Poster of Kissa Kursi Ka In a longish feature for Film Comment (May-June 1980), American journalist Elliott Stein wrote about the forays made by Indian film personalities into politics. “In no country are cinema and politics more closely intertwined,” he noted. Some of the events, he noted while covering Filmotsav ’80, a film festival held in Bangalore (now Bengaluru), were M.G.R becoming the chief minister of Tamil Nadu in 1977, Dilip Kumar being appointed the sheriff of Bombay (now Mumbai), and the successful launch and quick folding up of a new National Party by Dev Anand. “One case of Indian politics-cum-film received world attention because it involved Sanjay Gandhi,” wrote Stein. “In 1977, Amrit Nahata, the producer of Kissa Kursi Ka brought a suit against Mrs Gandhi’s son, claiming that he had stolen and destroyed all of the prints of the film, which caricatured his mother’s regime.”