Deepa Mehta has received flak for showing former prime minister Indira Gandhi in ‘poor light’ as well as for using the country’s map without Jammu and Kashmir in Midnight’s Children. But she assures that the movie has nothing ‘historically inaccurate’, and that she will make the necessary changes to the map.
The movie, based on controversial author Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning eponymous novel, recently premiered at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IIFK). After the screening, the state’s Cinema Minister KB Ganesh Kumar’s estranged father and former Kerala minister R Balakrishna Pillai had said the movie shouldn’t have been shown in a Congress-ruled state as it shows the former Prime Minister ‘in a poor light’.
But Mehta says there’s nothing controversial about it. “There is nothing in the film that is not historically accurate. Otherwise, believe me, the censor board would have not been so generous,” said the acclaimed filmmaker, whose movie has been passed with an A-certificate and without any cuts.
The movie revolves around the national emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi from June 1975 to March 1977. Mehta clarifies: “The film is not just about Mrs. Gandhi. That is just an aspect of what happened. The emergency is a reality, everyone knows about it. And I don’t think she has been portrayed in any other way than accurate.
K.B. Ganesh Kumar also stated that he ‘felt sad when at the end of the film the Indian map was shown’. “It was without Kashmir,’ he has said. But Mehta has assured immediate remedy. “The map of India is a miss.
I did not know that and I wish I had... that when you show a map of India, you have to show Jammu and Kashmir. I had absolutely no idea, so I am going to do that immediately and I have absolutely no pain at all that it has to be done. So it is hardly controversial,” she said. Midnight’s Children is slated for release in February 2013.