Balki Applauds For The Film-makers Who Announced To Return Their National

“Today is a breaking point when everyone is feeling slaughtered”, cited Bina Sarkar Ellias, a writer representing filmmaker Rafeeq Ellias, when asked why they had not returned their awards during past instances of intolerance.

Another 24 film-makers returned their awards over growing intolerance.

The decision to return National Awards, the letter said, was also a response to the government’s disparaging attitude towards 12 filmmakers – including Anand Patwardhan and Dibakar Banerjee – who chose to return their own awards last week.

Most prominent among them are Kundan Shah, who directed Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro in 1983, Saeed Mirza, who has won National Awards for his films Mohan Joshi Hazar Ho (1984) and Naseem (1996) and Virendra Saini, cinematographer of 1990 film Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro.

The movement was kick-started by writers, who gave away their Sahitya Akademi awards in a symbolic show of protest against the growing disregard for freedom of speech and the murder of three intellectuals. She had received the 1989 National Film Award for Best Screenplay for the documentary “In which Annie Gives it to those Ones”.

Nearly two weeks after 10 filmmakers returned their National Awards, 24 more people from the film fraternity on Thursday toed their colleagues’ line on “rising intolerance” and announced the return of their awards.

“This is the only National Award I have for Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and I feel very sad to part with it. I owe this award to my alma mater FTII; there would have been no JBDY if I had not studied at FTII”, he said at a press conference in Mumbai. “This is not a protest against BJP only- we’ve protested through our work against the Congress government too”, he said, adding the award money will be donated to charity, while the trophy will be given to the representatives of the I&B ministry. READ ALSO: Hema Malini: Award Wapsi is initiated by opposition to create problems for the Modi government The gesture that was meant to be a plea to the government to take notice of students’ demands and resolve their issue was also a protest against “growing intolerance” in the country, both of which Mirza felt were interlinked. I applaud them (the filmmakers) tremendously for doing this. “If we do not have the right to speak freely, we will turn into a society that suffers from intellectual malnutrition, a nation of fools”, she said.