In this throwback interview Kamal Hassan spoke to Subhash K Jha about his brilliant film Hey Ram, which is hitting 25 years since it released in theatres.
When Hey Ram was released, you were accused of being both anti and pro-Muslim?
That really hurt. I was very angry. But anger sometimes heightens creative powers. Hey Ram failed for unknown reasons. I didn’t have paddings in Hey Ram. I had a free fall. They were saying to arrest Kamal Haasan under the National Security Act (laughs). I was supposed to be talking against Mahatma Gandhi in my film. They began reading anti-Gandhian signals even before the film reached the Censor Board. It was all very silly. The censors in Chennai objected to certain lines and scenes in Hey Ram. The line spoken by Gandhiji in my film goes like this, “I don’t drink any dairy products. If God wanted man to drink milk all life long, mothers would have been lactating incessantly?”
You fought the cuts?
I wanted to fight the cut because Hey Ram isn’t the last film I was making. I wanted to make a point about artistic freedom so that I could breathe easy while making my next film. That’s how I’ve been constantly evolving with each of my films. I was not fighting for the cut; I’m fighting against the attitude that this cut represents. I feel it’s wrong to let them get away with the cut. Why do you give me a Moghul Purdah?
What do you mean by this Mogul Pardah ?
You see, Hindu ideologies represented by Konark or Meera-like Bhajans in Tamil were all created by Hindus. Their ideology pertaining to sex, love, and life seems to be at odds with what came to India after the advent of the Moguls and Christians. Today, they ostensibly fight over the Hindu ideology. But when it comes to my film –and I’m not even addressing myself as a Hindu but as an Indian who would like to compete with the rest of the world intellectually–no one seems bothered! I was not being allowed to have my say whereas in Deepa Mehta’s 1947, a scene of a Muslim character’s pyjama being removed was allowed. Deepa Mehta went to the Tribunal to get her film cleared.
What is your point?
What I want to know is, why do we filmmakers have to wage the same battle against censorship over and over again? I do feel that all of us filmmakers become upset when our works are affected during censoring. Then we give a series of angry interviews. Then, it all dies down, and the war is over. That’s not the way to fight the problem. I feel the Censors have no right to sit in judgement on someone like Govind Nihalani. They act as though they are responsible for the morals of the whole society. It’s so frustrating when they point out what’s supposedly wrong in my film. People all over are ravaging the country from various areas. Here I am, making a valid point. And I’m not allowed to do it! I don’t agree with your argument that there are other wrongdoers among filmmakers for whom we have the censors. In art, you can’t have policing. But filmmakers resort to all sorts of funny tricks to get sleaze and violence past the checkpost. I’m aware of that. But why does the average citizen not carry a blue film in his hand or view it openly? Is it only because they fear the law? Indians have an inbuilt censor. I trust them on that. Abolish censorship, and for one year, the sleaze makers may go berserk. But after that, they’ll settle down. Why do you think boys behave themselves in a co-educational school? They feel a civic responsibility toward keeping the classroom organized.
Weirdly, the censor board had no experts and historians on their panel to evaluate the merits and demerits of Hey Ram?
When I opened up my book and quoted datas and dates they were at a loss. One of the panelists even asked me why I’ve made a Hindu fanatic chant Vande Mataram in his speech. According to him, the chant belongs to the Congress! I couldn’t retaliate, because the one asking this question was sitting in an important chair. My purpose was not to argue about discrepancies in the censors’ argument but to get the film out in the best possible way. I know their attitudes only too well. Hey Ram was probably my 60th or 70th run-in with them.
You are kidding!
No, I am not. My guru, K Balachander, always got into trouble with them. He made it a point never to attend a censor meeting. He thought he might become physically sick. So I’d attend on his behalf. We’ve played little games with them wherein we slipped in things they couldn’t detect. In one of my early films, the hero says to a woman, “Look, you’ve brought me to spend the first night in a room chilled by the air conditioner. I’m a villager, and I’m not used to this chill. Everything has shrivelled up. How do you expect me to perform?” When they gave me the line, I said, fine. I feel sex is treated as something dirty; why don’t they cover the carvings at Konarak with plastic sheets? Anyway, the above film was a huge hit. Women saw it and giggled. Only my mentor, Mr Balachander, threw a fit. He asked, “How dare you do something like this?” I agreed with him. But it was just a game. In the same film, I used the Tamil word for ‘BC’ 39 times. Have I shocked you? Well, I kept saying it repeatedly in the film and in such a funny manner that the censors didn’t mind. After I had done three or four other films, someone woke up to it. By then, my character had condemned enough sisters of the country. I remember there was a film by Bharati Raja in which a woman says, ‘Drink my menstrual blood!’ I’m not shocked by such language. In fact, I feel expletives help to check violence in our society. What I mean is, verbal expression of anger like ‘I’ll kill you’ prevents an individual from actually implementing the threat. People who store up their anger are very dangerous. A man who shouts and screams like a madman isn’t a madman after doing so. There’s a beautiful motto of living from Subramaniam Bharati. It says, ‘Practice anger’.
You enjoy courting trouble, don’t you?
I keep walking into trouble. But I sleep peacefully with myself. That’s my problem. I can’t keep my conscience aside. This fellow wakes me up each night to ask me questions. Sometimes I don’t have the right answers. I end up looking sheepish in front of him (laughs).
So so brilliant, and yet Hey Ram didn’t work in certain parts of India?
It didn’t work anywhere. Critics were kind. But Hey Ram was a commercial disaster. Hey Ram, which was so edge-of-the-seat that audiences slipped out of their seats and out of the theatres (laughs). Even when I was making it, people asked me what the hell I was doing. Such expenses, for what? I said it was a promise I made to myself. Like a spouse and a house. Yes, I was in a financial soup. It could’ve gone either way. It went the unsuccessful way, which wasn’t very convenient financially. One producer forced me to cut down my remuneration at the last minute. But as an actor, I’ve no complaints. I’m one of the highest-paid actors in the country. Thanks to my brother Chandra Haasan, who looks into my tax problems, I’ve zero tax arrears. That leaves me with no surplus funds for Swiss bank accounts at all. But I sleep very peacefully at night. When I hear the thud of boots down my corridor, I don’t cringe in fear. You can call it virtuous stupidity. But it’s a comfortable life.
They even said you were self-indulgent in Hey Ram?
That’s because the publicity in Mumbai made them feel there was much more of Shah Rukh Khan. Okay, Javed Akhtar Saab is a good writer. He wrote Seeta Aur Geeta. Tell me how many scenes there are in it without one or the other, Hema Maliniji, except when the villain growls on screen.
Historicals seldom work?
Just because my Hey Ram or Raj Santoshi’s Bhagat Singh failed, let’s not question the audiences’ historicity. Didn’t Sohrab Modi make many successful historicals? Maybe they were hyperbolic. But what’s wrong with that? History, after a point, becomes mythologised. It’s in our blood. I‘m happy for Aamir’s star power. ‘Kamal Haasan the Star’ always genuflects before Kamal Haasan the Filmmaker who warns the star to be careful. The director is the star, though the actor won’t always admit it.
Which are the Hindi films you’re most proud of?
Hey Ram. A German scholar has opened up a website where he has reviewed Hey Ram along with Guru Dutt’s Pyasa. He thinks the two films are in the same league. Our Hey Ram went wrong with the audience. I’m not angry with the audience for rejecting it. When people call it a great film now, it doesn’t make any sense. It was like Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool. Not enough people went to see Hey Ram.
