The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday night banned the screening of Kamal Hassan’s “Vishwaroopam” following strong protests from various Muslim organisations over alleged depiction of their community in a negative light.
Official sources said the state government has asked the respective district collectors to invoke necessary legal provisions to maintain law and order.
The ban came hours after the Muslim groups petitioned the government, seeking a ban.
A group of 20-odd organisations under a common banner submitted a memorandum to Home Secretary R Rajagopal to press for their demand, a day after taking up the matter with city police.
M H Jawahirullah, MLA and president of Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, told reporters that the movie “targets Muslims and their beliefs“.
Mohammed Haneefa, coordinator of Federation of Islamic Movements and Political Parties, said the community would not accept such portrayal even if certain scenes are deleted.
“We intend to register our apprehensions that release of the film with (even) deleted scenes or changes will affect the social harmony and all-round peace in the state,” he said.
The move comes days after Haasan, who directs and stars in the movie, held a special show for them.
The big budget movie has been made in Tamil, Hindi and Telegu.
Haasan has already clarified that Muslims are not shown in a objectionable manner in the film but that has failed to soothe frayed tempers of the community, which blames him of having a history of doing so in earlier films like “Hey Ram” and “Unnai Pol Oruvan”, the latter a remake of Hindi hit “A Wednesday”. Hassan had played the role of Naseruddin Shah in the original.
Hasan has been facing lot of hurdles with his latest movie, which has been made on a huge budget. His decision to show it on a DTH platform ahead of its theatrical release was faced with strong protests by screen-owners recently.
He was forced to drop his plans to have a DTH premiere first after the protests but moved the Competition Commission of India against Tamil Nadu theatre owners for allegedly restricting the release.
Keywords: Muslim organisations, Vishwaroopam, TN Government, Ban, Kamal Hassan, Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, protest
Comments:
Kamal should portray only what happens in real life. There is no point
in adding masala to it. As long as it reflects whats happening in the
current world, no body should have a objection.
Always terrorizing and vandalizing other people and their religions and
still always playing the 'innocent-victim' card.
The banning of Vishawaroopam is the beginning of the end of Kamal Hassan's career as a film star since he must have invested several crores as have the producers. The story director must have had more consultations over the movie's take on other religions. Since no govt wants any disturbance for any reason, TN has now banned the same. Why couldn't Kamal Hassan have shown this to media first to take its opinion. A film should be unbiased towards any community/religion.
Harsh lesson for this pervert. Most of his films have always been
'secular'. Now, that means he has always derided Brahmins, Hindus, Hindu
practices. This communist, anti-Brahmin, anti-Hindu actor has finally
been betrayed by his own 'friends' from the 'peace'ful religion. He
deserves it thoroughly...
Kamal is real artist to the core. He should not have followed this route to gain popularity. It
has become fancy to ridicule Muslims , drag into controversies, insult In media, depict them
as they want. In the first phase of organised blaming by the religious fanatics, the label
"TERRORISM" was forcefully thrusted on them. Now in the the second phase,the same thing
in a soft manner. As long as this attitude is present among the media and the so called
artists, real peace in the country is a distant dream
Then how to name Al-Qaeda terrorists? Shall we give them names like
Krishnamurthy, Subramanian, Ramakrishnan? Will that satisfy the innocent
followers of the peaceful religion? Of course, impotent Hindus in this
country will never react nor go on a rampage like ppl. from the peaceful
religion do. Real peace in this country was lost at least 1000 years
back.
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