Does Bollywood North Indianise all our stories?

Leading up to the release of R Balki's Padman, the much-touted Akshay Kumar-starrer based on the life of social entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganatham, a Facebook post by Pune-based student Abhilasha Cherukuri raised a larger socio-cultural question. Muruganatham, who created low-cost sanitary napkin-making machines, sparking a hygiene and menstruation revolution across rural India, is from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. Why then, demands the post, which had been liked over 1,000 times and shared by 349 users at the time of publication, has the character based on this man been reimagined as a North Indian (Lakshmikant Chauhan) instead?

Cherukuri does not seem to view this as an isolated incident either, citing the example of Airlift (2016), also starring Akshay Kumar, where "the real life story of Mathunny Mathews, a Malayali Christian businessman...was written into the movie as Ranjit Katyal, a Punjabi character". Talking about what she calls the "convenient white-washing of the Tamil and Malayali identities of Muruganathan and Mathews and writing them into scripts as savarna North Indian characters," Cherukuri condemns the erasure of the ethnic identities of these "real people", whose extraordinary stories amount to more than entertainment. While the post garnered substantial support, it also encouraged rebuttal in the comments section, most of them structured around the arguments of commercial feasibility, wider reach and creative license.

So does Bollywood's "retelling of lived experiences and personal histories" suffer the limitations of Hindi-belt driven, commercially motivated film making, or is there more to such cinematic judgement than meets the eye? Directors R Balki (Padman) and Avinash Das (Anaarkali of Aarah) debate it out.

Avinash Das, Director, Anaarkali of Aarah

This isn't a new phenomenon — Tamilian, Bengali and other regional characters have long been shown speaking in Hindi, with a certain character-defining regional accent flavouring these dialogues, adding depth to the back story. At times, that accent has been slightly exaggerated as with Mehmood, but that very emphasis delivered in the right vein can be a great mechanism for weaving regional diversity into your narrative.

This is all the more important when the story is drawn from, or based on, real life. Or, as in the case of Padman, based on a real character — one that is living and fighting for social changes as we speak. To ignore that context and retailor the basics of the character for a certain audience or business target, for me, is a betrayal of sorts. I look forward to the day when movies are story/plot-centric, rather than hero-centric. Give the audience a great story, and they wouldn't care where it is set. Do movies like Chennai Express, or remakes of Baahubali and Kabali, made with the South Indian sensibilities intact not find an audience in the North? Does the South Indian audience not lap up a Dangal set in Haryana?

It isn't a North VS South debate alone. The issue of diversity and representation, since cinema, as a popular medium, has the power to effect social changes. It is a stronger possibility now more than ever, when movies with small casts, or movies set in small towns — like Gangs of Wasseypur or Bareilly ki Barfi, Ranjhana and Tanu weds Manu — are connecting successfully with audience all over, piloted entirely by good storytelling. It isn't impossible to show a character from Tamil Nadu speaking in Tamil-accented Hindi in a believable way. Delhi Bengalis don't necessarily speak in Hindi amongst family, do they? But the Hindi, flavoured with Bengali nuances, worked so beautifully in Piku. Alia Bhatt's Bihari-tinted Hindi in Udta Punjab was spot on, thanks to her dedication and Pankaj Tripathi's (language) coaching. Training in regional language/accents is now a distinct option, and so is retaining local/regional aesthetics in Hindi-driven Bollywood.

Hindi, for its part, cannot be treated with a standardised dialect in a country as vast as India. If Hindi is Punjab-UP-Haryana, it is Rajasthan and Bihar too. In Padman's trailer, the Madhya Pradesh dialect of Hindi (where the story is set) is barely reflected in how Akshay Kumar speaks. As an example, 'agar kahani Ranchi mein hain, aur aap ka actor Mumbai ke kaede mein baat kar raha hain, wo kaunsa cinematic justice hua? (If the story is set in Ranchi, and your actor speaks in Mumbai Hindi, how is that cinematic justice either?)' Language aesthetics is an ignored area that needs immediate attention in Bollywood.

If I can get a little politically incorrect, I'd say that the so-called nationalists within Bollywood are doing a great job of subtly altering history. Sadly, the audience is more likely to remember Akshay Kumar as the hero, instead of Arunachalam Muruganatham as he really is.

R Balki, Director, Padman

Consider this — I am making a movie inspired by the life and spirit of Arunachalam Muruganatham. It is not a biopic, it is a cinematic adaptation of the spirit of this incredible character, whose struggles and achievements I wish to relay to the largest possible audience. As far as Bollywood is concerned, this audience is largely Hindi speaking, with limited knowledge of Tamil.

Here, I have the option of keeping Muruganatham's geographical background and making him speak in Hindi anyway (for the purpose of comprehension). But cinematically, it would be unnatural to show a Tamilian in Tamil Nadu speaking in fluent Hindi, as it would be strange to show your average Bombay fellow communicating only in Tamil. Muruganatham, for instance, can understand Hindi, but speaks it brokenly. Now, if I were to make a Tamil biopic on Muruganatham's life, I'd stick to the details, and the details run deeper than language wars. If I kept his name and location intact, people would still have questions about whether his wife really was the way she has been portrayed in the movie, or if the name of that street in Coimbatore is really as shown.

My movie is not one with a character called A Murugantham, speaking in Hindi and living in Madhya Pradesh. That would be weird. My character is called Lakshmikant Chauhan, whose journey is similar to Murugunatham's.

Being a South Indian, I know well how to weave in Murugunatham's spirit, as a man and as a South Indian, into the character even when there's a departure from the geographical specifics. It is an interpretation of the spirit of that man, who is, above all, an Indian. Why should the language that is helping me tell his story to so many, be seen as a problem? I will use the best possible elements at my disposal to tell a story, and in this case, deliver a strong message, with the creative license for improvisations. Unless of course, I am making a film about Gandhi, where the character is called Gandhi, where I cannot possibly make him a South Indian — although we South Indians would love that!

When you see the movie in its entirety, you would not come away with a character that is a caricature or a buffoon in any way. You would think of a man who used his limited access to achieve the impossible.