Fenil and Bollywood

Bharati Dubey & Ambarish Mishra | TNN (THE TIMES OF INDIA; November 15, 2009)

Mumbai: Another Karan Johar release is facing the music, this time from the Shiv Sena. The party has objected to the bare-backed posters of Kareena Kapoor from the film, Kurbaan.

More than 100 Shiv Sainiks took to the streets and tore down posters of the film in Juhu, Marol and other parts of Andheri on Friday. A month ago, the MNS had objected to the use of the Mumbai’s old name, Bombay, in Johar’s Wake Up Sid; he had to bend over backwards to the chauvinists and the film had to be screened with a disclaimer.

Friday’s protests were led by Sena activists Jitendra Janawale in Juhu and Subhash Kanta Sawant in Marol. Sawant said: “We objected to the posters as they showed the actress semi-nude and we found to be in very bad taste. It violates our Indian culture.’’ The Sainiks also put a sari around Kareena in some of the posters.

A group of Sainiks even headed for Kareena’s residence and wanted to present a sari to her. But an officer said: “We deployed our people near the actress’s house but nothing untoward happened.’’ Kareena was said to have gone out for a shoot.

Additional commissioner of police (West) Amitabh Gupta said the Khar police station had been asked to register a case against the offenders.

An industry insider said political parties were picking on soft targets to get some mileage and the MNS’s impressive showing in the recent Assembly polls was “forcing’’ the Sena to look for rabblerousing issues. “The film industry has always been a soft target as the government does not take action against political parties,’’ the insider said.

“The government took a proactive decision in only one case, providing Anurag Kashyap with security; but that was because they knew that the director would never apologise to the MNS,’’ another source said. Kashyap, reacting to a question from a news channel about DevD being vulgar, said Raj Thackeray’s words were much more vulgar than his films.