NEW DELHI // A spy thriller about a Kathak dancer foiling a terrorist attack on New York has set off a fierce free-speech debate, hectic court cases, and a rift between the central government and the state of Tamil Nadu.
The release of Vishwaroopam, a 1.2-billion-rupee (Dh83m) film starring one of the biggest names in Tamil cinema, Kamal Haasan, was blocked last week by the state government after Muslim groups protested that it portrayed Muslims in poor light.
"There is a danger that the public may view any Muslim with a beard as a terrorist waiting for an opportunity to plant a bomb," said M H Jawahirullah of the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, one of the groups objecting to the film.
J Jayalalithaa, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, said at a press conference yesterday that "there were apprehensions that Muslim demonstrations could turn violent ... Should I have allowed violence and then stepped in?"
In the past week, the film's release has been banned in the United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Vishwaroopam continues to play in Tamil Nadu's neighbouring states without any mishap, although the producers have added a disclaimer to the credits: "All Muslims are not terrorists, and the characters depicted in this film are imaginary."
The plot of Vishwaroopam revolves around an Afghanistan-based terrorist group that is planning a dirty bomb attack on New York, and the hero's attempts to thwart that attack.
"There's a montage of these terrorists being trained in Afghanistan, but this has nothing to do with Indian Muslims," said TK Balaji, a Chennai-based entrepreneur who made a six-hour bus journey to Bangalore in the neighbouring state of Karnataka yesterday to watch the film.
On Tuesday night, a high court judge, acting on a petition by Haasan, set aside the government's ban. But on Wednesday morning, a high court bench that included Tamil Nadu's chief justice reversed the decision, even as police moved to block screenings of the film.
In an emotional 10-minute press conference on Wednesday outside his house in Chennai, Haasan – a Hindu but given a Muslim-sounding name by his profoundly secular father – said that he was "fed up".
"When M?F Husain can do it, Kamal Haasan can do it," he said, referring to the late Indian painter who was hounded out of the country by right-wing Hindu groups for his controversial depictions of Hindu goddesses. "I will have to seek a secular state for my stay ... Tamil Nadu wants me out."
Haasan, who is credited as the writer, director and producer of the Vishwaroopam, could petition the Supreme Court to lift the ban on the film, but has yet to do so. Yesterday, Ms Jayalalithaa indicated that the ban might be lifted if Haasan and the leaders of Muslim groups agreed jointly to delete objectionable portions of the film.
Sriram V Ayer, the founder and chief executive of NalandaWay Foundation, a Chennai-based non-profit that works with disadvantaged children, has pledged to not watch any film in his city's theatres until "justice is done".
He has started a Facebook group to get others to join his boycott to which more than 500 people have signed up.
"There is a growing tendency for mobs and fringe groups to take offence on any artistic expression and the state stooping to appease them in the guise of law and order," Mr Ayer said. "It is a very sad state of affairs."
The free-speech controversy over Vishwaroopam has exploded on to the national stage, with the central government – of which Ms Jayalalithaa's rival political party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, is a part – implicitly supporting Haasan. On Wednesday, the home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said: "We are a free society. There is freedom of expression. There is liberty for artists."
But Ms Jayalalithaa argued that her state's police force was inadequately equipped to guarantee security at each of Tamil Nadu's 500-odd cinemas.
"If the strength of the Tamil Nadu police would have been put on these theatres, what would we do about their regular duties?" she said.
Nikhil Mehra, a New Delhi-based Supreme Court lawyer, said Ms Jayalalithaa's ban on the film was "flawed from the start".
"There have been Supreme Court judgments saying that if there is an apprehension of a law and order problem, the state government has to handle the problem and protect free speech," Mr Mehra said. "According to the theory of precedent, the high court cannot be upholding the ban in the face of Supreme Court judgments."
"What is the role of the censor board, then?" Mr Mehra added. "There's a certain amount of confusion in all of this. It's important for Kamal Haasan to go to the Supreme Court, because this process has become rubbish now."
Ironically, in a landmark Supreme Court judgment, it was another Tamil film that was granted explicit judicial support of a filmmaker's right to free speech.
In 1989, the movie Ore Oru Gramathile (In A Village) had criticised caste-based affirmative action. After a political party threatened that its demonstrators "would not hesitate to damage the cinema", the Tamil Nadu government blocked its release.
The Supreme Court, however, directed the film to be released, stating: "The state cannot plead its inability to handle the hostile audience problem. It is its obligatory duty to prevent it and protect the freedom of expression."
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
twitter: For breaking news from the Gulf, the Middle East and around the globe follow The National World. Follow us
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Mozn%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202017%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Mohammed%20Alhussein%2C%20Khaled%20Al%20Ghoneim%2C%20Abdullah%20Alsaeed%20and%20Malik%20Alyousef%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Riyadh%2C%20Saudi%20Arabia%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20FinTech%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%2410%20million%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Raed%20Ventures%2C%20Shorooq%20Partners%2C%20VentureSouq%2C%20Sukna%20Ventures%20and%20others%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
