The Bangladesh government has lodged an official protest with the Government of India, asking why the Central Board of Film Certification cleared the film Gunday, which hurts their nation's sentiments. The Sri Lankan government, on the other hand, must be sending chocolates to Indian diplomats, thanking them for preventing any hurt sentiments in Colombo. After all, the same Central Board for Film Certification has refused to give a screening certificate to No Fire Zone, a documentary about the final days of the 2009 war between Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
It is not enough that any random man – and man more often than woman – stands up in this country and imposes censorship by claiming hurt sentiments. In this great democratic country, we extend the privilege of hurt sentiments to foreign countries as well. Such great freedom do the people of Indian enjoy that not only are they restricted from saying anything about any religion that isn't authorised by that religion's fundamentalists, they can't even offend other nations. This is inscribed in the allegedly "reasonable" restrictions to free speech by what was ironically the first amendment to the Indian Constitution.
Callum Macrae, the director of No Fire Zone, has even been denied visa to come to India to screen the film in film festivals here. He's made the film available online for free in countries where it is banned – India, Nepal, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. If you go to http://nofirezone.org/watch and watch it, it will leave you disturbed, to say the least.
Yash Raj Films' Gunday is about two boys who arrive in India as refugees of the Bangladesh War and become gun runners and coal bandits. Bangladeshis across the world have been angry about the film for many reasons, mainly because it describes 1971 as an India-Pakistan War rather than the Bangladesh Liberation War. It is a fact that we in India know it as an India-Pakistan War but we live in a global world today where nationalist narratives will collide with each other at the speed of Twitter.
The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper, noted, "The film also apparently indicates that Bangladeshis were involved in various crimes like arms smuggling, and two young boys from these lands escaped and became vicious criminals. There's also insinuation that Bangladeshis prefer identifying themselves as Indians."
The Twitter hashtag #GundayHumiliatedHistoryOfBangladesh will give you a sense of the nationalist hurt. "Such a shame on Yash Raj banners. I am speechless & furious! Ignorance or Arrogance?" Tweeted Nowrose Ittela. The social media campaign has included bombarding YRF's social media accounts and email addresses with Bangaldeshi protests and mass rating of Gunday on IMDB as the "no 1 of the all time bottom 100".
YRF was forced to issue a conditional apology, which went on to explain that the film was not about Bangladesh but just about two refugees. The reason why a film like Gunday does not have to worry about India's relations with a foreign country is not just that it is a big banner Bollywood film. It's also that it does not destabilise our own nationalist narratives in any way. No Fire Zone, on the other hand, is documentary proof of genocidal violence that India would rather ignore. Some "genocides" are more equal than others – the Indian response to Bangladesh wasn't seen in Sri Lanka. Evidently, some foreign countries are worth offending in film and others are not.