Asks its director to ‘suitably edit’ the movie or face legal action for defamation

As the nation recalled the imposition of the Emergency on its 42nd anniversary last week, an attempt by filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar’s cinematic take on the period has run into rough weather with Congress leader Jagdish Tytler threatening him with legal action.

Mr. Tytler told The Hindu that he had been watching television when he came across the trailer of the film Indu Sarkar where he saw “a person who resembled me” being portrayed in a negative light. “I was surprised to see this as much of the time during the Emergency, I was in Canada and returned only at the fag end of that event.”

‘Had a restoring role’

He then wrote a strongly worded letter to Bhandarkar, insisting that his role “was more of restoring the situation”. He added that “from Canada I wrote a letter to Sanjay Gandhi about how I was disturbed by various news of the Emergency. I am categorically mentioning that I was not part of the Emergency, and this can be corroborated from the book written by (late) Vinod Mehta on the event and the leaders involved. He clearly says my role was only about promoting education during the Emergency.”

Mr. Tytler also insists that he is not threatening Bhandarkar but wants him to “suitably edit” his movie if his portrayal has been negative, or else he will be “forced to resort to legal action over defamation and sue for compensatory damages”.

Filmmaker surprised

The national award winning filmmaker said that he was surprised at the letter. “What has been released is just the trailer, the film has yet to be sent to the Central Board of Film Certification. I would ask everyone to calm down and watch the full film first,” he told The Hindu.

“What surprises me the most is that the Emergency is one of the most well documented events in India’s contemporary history, so there should be no doubts about who did what,” he said. “In 2015, Doordarshan showed a five-episode documentary on the Emergency, countless books have been written on the subject, nobody says a word. I don’t see why a fictionalised account of the event should raise this kind of objection,” he said.

“I would request everyone to watch the film before raising objections,” he added. Bhandarkar’s latest film is about a young girl who witnesses the horrors of the Emergency which leads her into turns her to radical politics.