Frontline
January 1999
Special Report

Fear of fire

Hindu fundamentalists are protesting against Fire because it is a threat to
male ownership of women

Ileft the film hall feeling some what disoriented and disturbed. I could not have guessed what was to follow. Stone–throwing and morchas the following week. Rabid protest at a perfectly sane and sensitive depiction of womanhood. And worse still, 50 men stripping down to their knickers outside Dilip Kumar’s house to protest his espousing the cause of the film and of the individual’s right to creative expression. It has been a very disquieting display of macho aggressiveness, the naked male body being used (en masse) to intimidate anyone who dares to protest. The choice of this weapon tells us something about the Fear of Fire!

The film disturbs. Disturbs because one can recognise with a terrible and regrettable sense of deja vu, the assumptions of the patriarchal male. Mehta creates the elder male character, played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda, pursuing his own goal (of spiritual moksha under a guru), living out his own script single–mindedly, completely oblivious to any needs or aspirations of his wife (Shabana Azmi). In fact, he is self–righteous in his religiosity, making a virtue out of his self–centric worldview.

When his wife asks him the obvious question: "What about me?" his answer is brutal and at the same time innocent. It does not occur to him that the woman has any sexual rights at all. He tells her that in his spiritual salvation, she will have played her part as a good wife should, by lying next to him in bed every time he needs to test his self–control. Not a flicker of understanding of what his triumph (in control) did to her each time. One is almost sorry for his emotional limitations; how can one so imperceptive lead a full and meaningful life? What all do (such) men lose out on because of their crass insensitivity?

The younger character, played by Javed Jaffery, is also a victim in a sense. While the elder brother is a victim of our social constructions of malehood, the younger one is drawn into a marriage he does not want, as a result of a socially accepted fiction that marriage miraculously cures all ills, including insanity and involvement with undesirable/alien partners. Though this character is roundly condemned by viewers for neglecting an attractive and nubile wife (Nandita Das) for a Chinese girl, he is only doing what he had said he would do.

He loves the Chinese girl and what is wrong with that? (Can we overcome our xenophobia in the interest of sanity?) How about condemning the family system that demands that he bring home a suitable bride of suitable background who will soundlessly slip into the groove and perform all the chores required to nurse a very old mother–in–law and also fulfil her economic function as cook in the family restaurant?

Never mind if his libido and his emotions are invested elsewhere. Marriage will cure him of this aberration. Does this family have a right to control the choices of its youngsters by pulling the purse–strings and depriving them of any economic independence?

The greyer side of this character emerges in the scene when he mechanically downs his pyjamas to perform the sexual act with his wife — a marital ritual he does not mind performing when he is in the mood (never mind her mood), with no emotion and no tenderness. Her refusal to be the receptacle of his semen shocks and humiliates him. The only way to salvage his dignity is to lash out.

A woman must be a passive recipient of sex — when and how her husband wants it. Not for her to ask for it, not for her to refuse it. As Dr. Mohan Agashe succinctly put it at a public meeting (in Pune) to protest the protest against Fire: "You cannot say ‘no’ in the marital bed. Nor can you say ‘yes’ outside the marital bed. So it’s violence on both sides!"

Men may choose to use you, or not to use you for their pleasure; men control your sexuality. Fire shows women choosing to own their own resources — their talent, their skills and even their sexuality. At one point Nandita Das says: "We’ll run away and start a restaurant". After all, the two men are living off the earnings from the skill of the women. The women make a choice. They act on it. And the film vindicates their independence.

The fundamentalists may rave and rant about lesbianism being un-Indian and unnatural — neither charge has any foundation whatsoever in history or science. But that is not what has got them into a panic. It is the threat to male ownership of women. It is fear of Fire — what if women really begin to claim their own bodies as their own?

MADHAVI SHAHANI KAPUR
(The writer is principal, Rewa-chand Bhojwani Academy, Pune)
 


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