The ten-day impasse over the ban of actor-director Kamal Haasan’s film “Vishwaroopam” in Tamil Nadu ended on Saturday night after representatives of the over 20 Muslim groups and the actor’s Raj Kamal Films which produced the movie, reached an accord, paving the way for the release of the movie in the state.
The actor agreed to delete seven scenes described by the Muslim outfits as highly offending Islamic sensibilities.
He also agreed to insert a disclaimer at the beginning of the film. In return, the Muslim groups decided to drop their protest. The agreement was hammered out after nearly six hours of talks at the Secretariat in the presence of Home Secretary R Rajagopal.
At the end, a tired but relieved Kamal announced that “I have agreed to delete some sequences only”, termed highly objectionable by the Federation of Tamil Nadu Muslim
Political and Social Organisations.
Declining to give details, Kamal (it is not yet clear whether they will be only audio sequences or both audio and visual) told reporters that he would furnish those scenes to the Central Board of Film Certification, get their nod for the deletion and then take steps to release the movie.
Thanking the state government which facilitated this process, Kamal said he has agreed to “withdraw the writ petition in the Madras High Court” against the ban order. “We hope they (Government) will withdraw the ban orders (under Section 144 of CrPC) in return,” the actor said. “To my fans, I wish to assure that the date of the movie release (Tamil version) will be announced soon after resolving some technical and legal issues,” he said.
Referring to the talks with his “Muslim brothers”, Kamal said there was a frank exchange of what both sides could do to help resolve the impasse. “I explained to them some of the technical problems involved (in deletion in a digital medium),” after which the accord was reached, he added.
Representatives of the Muslim groups including Rahamatullah, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Tauheet Jamat, said Chief Minister J Jayalalitha’s statement facilitated the tripartite talks during which “we went over the objectionable scenes” in detail. There were some 15 scenes, which highly “offended” Islamic sensibilities, but in the end Kamal has agreed to delete “seven scenes”.
A proposal for inserting a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie, that it neither purports to hurt anybody’s religious sentiments, nor portraying all Muslims as terrorists and that characters are not real, was also accepted by the actor, Rahamatullah claimed, adding, the Muslim groups will withdraw all types of agitations that they had planned against the movie.