Oh God

Anahita Uberoi and Avanti Nagral rehearse for the play.

Few in the country would have heard of Agnes of God but for Joseph Dias of the Catholic-Christian Secular Forum. Dias, or “Bro Joe” as he is apparently called, put the play in the headlines when he sought a ban on its performance. It premiered in Mumbai last weekend, but many ticketed shows have been cancelled since. Bro Joe claims the play misrepresents Christianity. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India alleges that the play “is the wrongful portrayal of the character of lakhs of clergy, who are committed to a life of celibacy”. Mercifully, the Maharashtra government, no champion of free speech, has refused to heed the demand for a ban.

A 1982 Broadway production that was turned into an acclaimed film in 1984, Agnes of God is the story of a nun who gives birth to a child and claims an immaculate conception. Concepts like immaculate conception and virgin birth are seen to be central tenets of Catholic faith, and the play is accused of distorting them. The critics are not persuaded by the fact that the play has been performed many times over the past four decades without rocking the faith. Some claim the government has allowed the staging of the play because “Christians are seen as soft targets”. Is the clamour for a ban, then, an expression of Catholic machismo, a way of saying that the conservative Catholic can match her counterpart in other faiths when it comes to being intolerant of artistic interpretations of religion and religious ideas?
Sections of the church have often assumed these postures to reaffirm clerical supremacy over the laity.

Protests in the 1980s against the Malayalam play, Christuvinte Aram Thirumurivu, based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ, campaigns against films like The Passion of the Christ, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, and the legal harassment of rationalist leader Sanal Edamaruku, were meant to showcase the clergy’s mobilisational capabilities. It serves neither the faith nor the faithful.