Leena Manimekalai, an Indian filmmaker based in Canada, has been attacked online with thousands of violence, rape and death threats after posting the poster of her short film, Kaali, which was screened in the Canadian city of Toronto over the weekend. viral on social media. A hashtag, “Leena Manimekalai arrest”, began to circulate. On Tuesday, two police cases – one in the Indian capital, Delhi, and another in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh – were filed against the director and others involved in the film for “disrespectful portrayal” of a Hindu god and allegedly “offensive”. religious sentiments”. The High Commission of India in Canada also issued a statement, saying they had received complaints from members of the Hindu community about the poster and “urged the Canadian authorities and event organizers to withdraw all such provocative material.” Manimekalai wrote and directed the film as part of her graduate film studies at the University of Toronto. In the track, Goddess Kaali inhabits the body of Manimekalai and roams the streets of the city in search of belonging. The scene depicted in the film’s poster captured a moment where she shared a cigarette with a homeless man while dressed as a goddess. The Aga Khan Museum, which hosted the screening of the film in Toronto, apologized that the film and poster “inadvertently caused offense to members of the Hindu and other religious communities.” Manimekalai, who was born and raised a Hindu in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu but has now distanced herself from her religion, denied that her film was in any way disrespectful to the goddess or Hinduism. She defended her right to cultural freedom and freedom of expression in her art, and stated that she was “strongly opposed to censorship coming from within and without”. “In rural Tamil Nadu, the state I come from, Kaali is believed to be a pagan goddess,” he said. “He eats meat cooked with goat’s blood, drinks arrack, smokes bendy [cigarettes] and she dances fiercely… that is the Kaali I had embodied for the film.” In the days since the film’s poster appeared online, Manimekalai said she, her family and associates had received threats from more than 200,000 online accounts, which she described as a “big mass lynching” by right-wing Hindus. groups. “I have every right to take back my culture, traditions and texts from fundamentalist elements,” he said. “These trolls have nothing to do with religion or belief.” Manimekalai’s film is the latest in a long line of works, from films and TV series to commercials, comedy and theater, that have been accused of “hurting Hindu religious sentiments” in India in recent months, in what many see as a rapid erosion freedom of expression and the cultural sphere under the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Over the weekend, a theater performance in the state of Karnataka was disrupted by a right-wing Hindu vigilante group for featuring Muslim characters and depicting a Hindu-Muslim relationship. Both Manimekalai’s debut feature Sengadal and her next film Maadathy: An Unfairy Tale ran afoul of the Indian censor board. The director was also one of the few to speak out as part of the #MeToo movement and accused director Susi Ganesan of sexual harassment. Ganesan filed libel charges against her and her passport was temporarily confiscated. “I feel that the entire nation – which has now deteriorated from the biggest democracy to the biggest hate machine – wants to censor me,” Manimekalai said. “I don’t feel safe anywhere right now.”
