Unitedly for Aamir

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

It was not just the English language papers, but even the Hindi ones in north India that covered the Aamir Khan row, with theatres in Gujarat refusing to show his latest Fanaa. Hindi daily Dainik Jagran had a front-page anchor, and the headline translated to saying that Aamir's obsession with social work (presumably his decision to participate in the Medha Patkar demonstration) was like a bone in his throat, refusing to either come out or go down. The previous day, the paper had a story on how Bollywood stars were supporting him, along with a picture of some of them.

Dainik Bhaskar had the story on page one on one occasion, and on page three on two others. It had a picture of the video parlour association burning Aamir's videos and the caption asking when this fire would get doused. The paper had an editorial criticising the move to ban the movie and even had a lead article on the edit page on the issue. Punjab Kesri had an interesting story on how five people came to Mumbai, from Vadodara, to watch the movie, but when they went back, they were declared to be anti-Gujarat by their fellow Vadodara-ites. The paper also had an interview of actor Shabana Azmi where she defended Aamir and said it was crazy to expect him to apologise for what he had said.

In the south, except a couple of days, Tamil daily Dinamalar didn't carry any news item relating to the opposition to screening of Fanaa. On May 27, in one of its pages, the daily carried a three-column story (about 250 words) on the opposition to screening of his film in Gujarat. On May 31, it carried a report saying that advertisers were pulling back Aamir Khan advertisements due to controvery over screening of his film. There were no reports on the comments or remarks by the film fraternity on the issue.

The issue didn't get much attention in the Kannada press either. Though all leading Kannada dailies Praja Vani, Vijaya Karnataka and Kannada Prabha carried small initial reports relating to the film's boycott in Gujarat, there was no coverage on the issue on subsequent days. Kannada Prabha had a small report in its magazine section on the day of the film's release. However, it did not discuss the implications of the film's boycott.