Current Events

The Silence of The Brains:
Hindutva’s Onslaught on ’Nanak Shah Fakir’

MICHAEL SINGH

 

Sikhs are one of the most successful and patriotic minority groups in the United States. Yet Sikhs here have been known to be harassed, humiliated, abused, beaten up, and even fatally shot, because of mainstream ignorance of Sikhi.

And whose fault is it? According to a Stanford University study, 70% of Americans don’t know what a Sikh is. Surely this ignorance is not completely the American educational system’s fault. Do we blame the victims, the Sikhs themselves, for not spreading the word effectively about their incredible religion? Consider the current dust-up.

It seems that most of the Sikh world today, both in India and across the diaspora, find themselves tied up in knots over a film looking for an audience. One could say that, “At last, the vast majority of Sikhs are united in a common goal.”

What a rare thing!

But that goal, sadly, is to ban a film.

Not a film full of sex or blood and gore, but a loving film about the Founder of Sikhism. The ground-breaking, courageous, eye-opening, slow-moving, endlessly pious 140-minute 'Nanak Shah Fakir' about the life of Guru Nanak finds itself a target of wrath and more.

The Indian Government - itself certainly behind the machinations and the stupidity - has purportedly followed the demands of the calcified, corrupt and functionally illiterate members (who in turn somehow find themselves compromised and beholden to the Hindutva gang) of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandhak Committee (’SGPC‘), and has banned the showing of a re-tooled 2015 bio-pic on Guru Nanak.

This latest onslaught was on March 28, 2018.

A mere fifteen days earlier, on March 13, 2018, the same SGPC had endorsed and approved the film and given it their blessing. One of the SGPC’s more enlightened and literate members, Chief Secretary Roop Singh, emailed one of the film’s producers, Harinder Singh Sikka:

“... you are requested to inform all Schools and Colleges through a circular so that the film can be shown to largest number of students in order to make the younger generation well aware of the Sikh history.”

If Dr. Roop Singh’s logical thinking and his noble hopes to educate Sikh youth, had been honored and respected, there would be no controversy, and no edict to ban the film.

What changed?

Hindutva-driven politics stepped in.

What is this politics? Ask Prakash Singh Badal, ex-Chief Minister of the Punjab, and the de facto dictator of the SGPC. He has the answers because he is behind the well-orchestrated mischief. His minions and those who are easily influenced in a society of lemmings, willingly do his bidding.

Keep in mind, Badal pals around with politicians even more powerful than he: I.e., Hindu politicians in New Delhi who are part of the bigoted, xenophobic and hegemonic movement known as Hindutva. Falsifying history to erase hundreds of years of contributions of Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs and others, including making up lies out of whole cloth in children’s textbooks, Hindutva followers claim that India is a Hindu country - contrary to the very Constitution of the land. Nobody but a Hindu can be a true Indian, they say. No way of life is worth a paisa, other than the Hindu way, they preach.

While national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru who had preached secularism, now roll over on their eternal funeral pyres, extremist Hindus are dragging Christians out of churches and beating them up and even killing them. The fate of Muslims is just as tragic. Meanwhile, the Hindutva propaganda machine mischievously paints Sikhism as a sect of Hinduism, a claim that goes 180 degrees counter to the teachings of Sikhi.

Prime Minister Modi supports this violent Nazi-like suppression of all things and people who are not Hindu. A film like ‘Nanak Shah Fakir‘, if it became a hit - they worry - could seriously undercut the incessant propaganda of Hindutva. Badal knows this, and knows how to play footsie with the Hindu-supremacists in the Central Government. It would not be out of character for an ambitious man like him, though he be a Sikh, to support a ban on the film, to pre-empt any enthusiastic growth of pro-Sikh sentiments in the Punjab or around the world.

Whether Badal was involved or not in the reversal of Dr. Roop Singh’s approval of the film, it is the dark cloud of politics, plus death threats to owners of cinemas, predictions that the filmmakers will go to Hell, which have combined with the Government’s dictatorial powers, to effectively ignore Dr. Roop Singh, and block the film’s release for a second time.

The 2015 version avoided showing Guru Nanak’s face, but did employ an actor to depict his body. That was blasphemous, according to the thought police at the SGPC. So the filmmakers spent years and no small amount of funds, to use special effects to turn the body into basically a glow of light in every scene.

However, the SGPC once again banned the film.

What would Guru Nanak do? In protecting His image as too precious, too unknowable, and too holy to physically depict in a film, Hinduized mobs seem to be  deifying him - again, in direct contravention of Sikh teachings. They have turned him into God. Which he expressly forbade!

There’s not a word in the Guru Granth Sahib that could, by any stretch, agree with the protesters.

As a child, growing up in the Punjab in the 1960’s and 70’s, I saw some Sikhs, under the influence of the majority Hindus who surround them, bow to “portraits” of Guru Nanak that hung in every home. I saw Christians bow to a Cross and a crucified Christ, Muslims bow to Mecca. Hindus, of course, themselves bow to anything and everything under the sun, including the sun!

Sikhs are not permitted to worship Guru Nanak. Only to revere him. But to my young eyes, all the bowing looked the same. So when I learned later on in life that Sikh tradition did not allow for Guru Nanak’s likeness to be shown, I became confused.

Didn’t every Sikh home hang such a likeness, often with garlands, in a prominent place?

I’m not alone in my confusion. Sikh scriptures do not contain a single admonition against showing Nanak’s likeness. They only forbid idolatry. So what is an artist to do?

In the 17th century, while there was living memory of the Gurus and long before Thomas Edison invented the motion picture camera, artists in Punjab and across the subcontinent were paintings of all the Sikh Gurus, and those frescos survive to this day. So what is the problem?

Today if you walk into the holiest of Sikh shrines - Darbar Sahib, popularly known as “The Golden Temple” -- you will see an image of Guru Nanak embossed directly into the gold.

The argument being bandied about by ignorant mobs today is that showing Guru Nanak’s face in film is a violation of “the fundamental beliefs of Sikhism,” yet nobody can point to a scriptural edict forbidding such an image. As with the Muslim ban on showing Mohammed -- a ban which does not exist in the Koran --the ‘Sikh’ ban seems to have garnered support amongst the lemmings.

The ban raises a few questions: is India not a democracy? Is a free press not a fundamental and integral pillar of democracy? Where are the outcries and indignant editorials from the educated ones or the Sikh intelligentia publicly condemning the ban? Where are the Sikh comics ridiculing this ridiculous ban?

A deafening silence has fallen across the world of Sikhism, succumbing to the terror being doled out freely in India by Hindutva.

Of course, the bigoted and xenophobic leader of India, Narendra Modi, will always stand behind any movement or cause that suppresses all religions other than Hinduism. So in this instance, the supression of India’s freedom of the press, falls smack into the centre of his party’s and RSS’ agenda.

So consider the fate of ‘Nanak Shah Fakir‘. Three years ago, when the film appeared briefly before first being banned, I saw it. My Hindi is not very good, and the English subtitles were not very legible. So, I was bored to tears for 140 minutes.

My Sikh friends who understood the dialogue perfectly, however, were transported into a spiritual state. They loved the film and became emotional afterwards talking about it.

Therefore, if this film isn’t a fabulous vehicle to spread Sikhi to a new generation, and to the mainstream audiences, what is? When will the community enter the  21st century? The so-called leaders -- the SGPC, for example -- are not going to lead the way. They are a mega-powerful clan of faux-spiritual connivers who control vast sums of money without divulging how much comes in, and whom it goes out to, and why. They have no interest in changing their status quo.

Change can only come from the panth. And perhaps the least intimidated segment of the panth, free from coercion and influence from Hindutva, is the one in the diaspora. It will come in small steps, with articles, books, plays, and yes, films.

If anyone out there is brave enough to make a 3-minute film about Nanak, and show the actor’s face, I hope he will be faithful to the truth: Guru Nanak was not a slow-moving precious glowing force of nature, lifting his hand to bless everyone, and speaking in weird poetic couplets.

No. Instead, he was a rabble-rousing trouble-maker who created a revolution by rejecting the status quo of Hinduism’s inhumane caste system, its partriarchal structure, and its denigration of women and the poor. His mission included very earthly goals: justice, peace, and equality of all men. And women.

Now, THAT would be a film worth watching. Till then, the sluggish, respectful and sentimental ‘Nanak Shah Fakir‘, with its ultra-pious depiction of Guru Sahib and his stories, will have to suffice in its noble role of educating young Sikhs and
mainstream non-Sikhs, about the wonders of Sikhism.

If indeed an outcry from the Sikh intelligentsia persuades the SGPC to lift the ban.

Remember … who owns Sikhi anyway? Under whose authority does the SGPC issue edicts? Guru Nanak himself would surely be against the SGPC; one of his messages was that no religion ought to put priests between a devotee and Waheguru, the Lord of all creation.

And God knows that the SGPC today is nothing if not a band of mahants and pandits, bishops, cardinals and a pope. If ‘Nanak Shah Fakir’ remains banned, the ignorami amongst us will continue to win the battle of what is allowed and what is forbidden. And continue to reject efforts to bring the genuinely inspiring and amazingly relevant tenets of Sikhi to the mainstream. And continue to push the Sikhs down a slide towards Brahminism, a curse which the Gurus fought against so vehemently.

So, speak out, intelligentsia! Speak out, young Sikhs. Demand that the suppressors in the Indian Government and the SGPC lift the ban. Confront Badal!

Failing that activism, perhaps somebody can pirate the film and set it loose on the internet … and nevertheless make it a success!

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The author is an LA-based documentary filmmaker. His latest film, "Valentino’s Ghost: Why We Hate Arabs and Muslims,” has played in over 100 countries, although not in the United States, where it is considered too politically ontroversial. It made its world premiere at La Biennale (The Venice Film Festival), where it received a standing ovation. It is designated a New York Times CRITICS’ PICK. Michael is currently raising funds to complete “Riding the Tiger,” his personal eye-witness account of the massacre of Sikhs in New Delhi in1984. He can be reached at turbancowboy@gmail.com.

Vaisakhi Day, April 14, 2018
 

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