The Industry of Nuisance

On the nature of current court cases against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s new movie

The unending court cases against Sanjay Leela Bhansali because of Ram-Leela remind me of a very interesting character I met about half a decade ago for a column on do-gooders.

He was known to be a crusader against unauthorised buildings. When I met him, he told me how he had been just an ordinary middle-aged man until a builder started constructing an illegal building on a plot adjoining his home. He couldn’t sleep at night from the noise and when he complained, he got insulted by everyone from the builder’s men to the police.

One night, defeated and sleep-shorn, he turned over his troubles to God. The next morning he woke up with renewed vigour and went on the offensive. Many petitions, court appearances and a vicious assault on him later, the building was demolished.

He had found a vocation. Soon, he was a name taking on all sorts of unauthorised structures built by really powerful people, including a former mayor. It was a dangerous thing to do and I especially found his night of religious epiphany fascinating.

But strangely, when I spoke to the lawyer who first took on his case for free and the journalist who filed the first report on him, they would say things like ‘He was alright in the beginning’. At some point, I surmised, it was possible that the man had turned his knowledge of the system into a means of extorting money of those whom he targeted. I dropped the story.

Like him, there is an entire industry out there in this country trying to profit from the power of becoming a nuisance. They do this through knowledge of law, familiarity with court and police procedure, and gumption. Some do it for money, others for publicity. It is a tool for many aspiring politicians. Yellow journalism exists for this reason and Bhansali is a victim of this industry.

According to a DNA report, just this week a court declared that a case could be filed against Bhansali and the actors in his movie because the complainant said it ‘glorified violence and obscenity’.

Earlier, a slew of court cases had forced Bhansali to change the name of his movie from Ramleela to Ram-Leela to Goliyon Ki Raasleela: Ram-Leela. Another court case had forced him to change the names of the warring communities in the movie. All this was happening despite a High Court having imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on one such complainant for filing such a frivolous case. This deterrent had made no difference.

Bhansali’s movie became a target because the name ‘Ram’ is in the title and that makes it perfect material for creating a nuisance by using labels like ‘glorifica•tion of violence’, which mean nothing. The Ramayana itself culminates in a great war, and if that is not ‘glorification of violence’, what is?

The industry of nuisance is, however, not all bad. In the case of the possible-ex•tortionist that I cited above, you can still recognise that there is something courageous about robbing the corrupt. It is a form of justice when powerful people have completely compromised the system and an unexpected person comes along to play extortionist. It is not a noble act, but even in a den of criminals, there are degrees of evil.

If one can sympathise with such extortion, then the sort of nuisance Bhansali has faced seems not so much evil as insipid and irritating. If, like SEBI and TRAI, there were a regulator for the nuisance sector, then people blackmailing filmmakers would be on top of its agenda to weed out.

I had one final encounter with the possible-extortionist. In the last Assembly election, when I went to the polling booth, I saw his name on the ballot. He was representing an irrelevant party. I had already decided to waste my vote, and giving it to him seemed one way to make amends for taking his time and not writing about him. I pressed the button against his name.

court casesRam-LeelaSanjay Leela Bhansali