Saffron Bollywood bikini causes colourful political row

A saffron-coloured bikini worn in a Bollywood film due for release next month has triggered outrage among Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party legislators, who claim it offends Hindu religious sentiment.

Saffron, signifying purity, is Hinduism’s most sacred colour. It also happens to be the colour of the BJP’s political logo, which features a saffron-hued lotus flower.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders from central India’s Madhya Pradesh state have said that not only was the saffron bikini “objectionable” in the action film Pathan, but the song actor Deepika Padukone sings while wearing it, as pictured in its trailer, displays a “dirty mindset”.

State home minister Narottam Mishra said the song entitled Besharam Rang or Shameless Colour portrays a “contaminated mentality”, which was also insulting to the tenets of Hinduism. He said many scenes, costumes and songs in Pathan needed “correcting”, failing which its release in cinemas across Madhya Pradesh would be “duly considered”.

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Censor board

Several complaints, reportedly by BJP supporters, have been filed against Pathan with the federal broadcasting ministry which oversees domestic and foreign film releases in India.

Calls on social media platforms to ban the film have multiplied, despite the information ministry’s censor board having earlier cleared the film for nationwide cinema screening.

Misra also personalised his attack on Padukone, saying she was a supporter of the “tukde-tukde” cabal that wants to break India up with anti-BJP conspiracies. News commentators said this stems from Padukone having backed students and teachers from the liberal Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in January 2020, after they were brutally attacked by the BJP’s youth wing armed with iron rods and acid bulbs for protesting an arbitrary fee hike. Some 40 students were severely injured.

Last week, Shah Rukh Khan, who plays the lead role in Pathan, said social media posts on the film were driven by “narrowness of views” which were “divisive and destructive”.

This, however, is not the first instance of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh overreacting to perceived slights to Hinduism.

Bastion of liberalism

On New Year’s Day in 2020, police in Indore, 190km south of the state capital Bhopal, arrested Munawar Iqbal Faruqui, a 29-year-old stand-up comic for a joke he was planning to tell at a public function. Police claimed the joke would have offended Hindu sentiments had it been told.

The comedian’s arrest had followed a complaint filed by the son of the BJP’s city mayor. Faruqui, a Muslim, spent more than five weeks in jail. His bail application was rejected by the state high court before he was freed by the supreme court in Delhi.

Faruqui’s subsequent performances in BJP-ruled states have been summarily terminated by authorities.

Meanwhile, a cross-section of media analysts maintain that the BJP was attempting to restrict the creative freedom of Bollywood, widely perceived as a bastion of liberalism and secularity, and especially the impact of Muslims like Khan, who make up a large percentage of India’s prolific film industry.

Khan’s son was arrested last year on charges of drug possession, but it later transpired he was wrongly jailed and purposely targeted.

“Indiscriminate tax inquiries and unfounded allegations against actors and directors are becoming commonplace” says Business Standard writer Sabyasachi Karmaker. The BJP has successfully created an atmosphere of intimidation and harassment to silence the film industry, he said.