Bollywood's controversial filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt has launched a campaign against GM foods. He gives his reasons for making Poison on the Platter
Mahesh Bhatt should be a happy man. His latest release Raaz — The Mystery Continues is doing well at the box -office — the only Bollywood hit of the season, he claims. He has won his fight with the censors over some contested scenes of the heroine in a bathtub and Raaz (meaning “secret” in Hindi) is showing without any cuts. The horror film has done surprising well at the box-office, according to industry reports.
Yet, it was a sombre Bhatt that Delhi saw last week. Not the flamboyant producer of what is practically an assembly line of films that push the boundaries of sex and violence, the maker of what one woman in the audience called “morally decadent films” but the activist who shows up the fault lines in our society. It was not the Mahesh Bhatt of Dushman, Murder and Gangster fame, but Mahesh Bhatt the activist and documentary filmmaker who highlights the pernicious effects of issues such as communalism, HIV/AIDS, insurgency, and calamities like drought and cyclones.
Yes, Bhatt makes documentaries, too. It keeps him connected to the real world, he says. And it is a world that he finds is becoming ever more lethal because something as basic as food is no longer safe. We can no longer be sure of what we are eating because seed companies are putting toxins into our crops, genetically modifying our staple food items such as rice and brinjal, with no idea of what the consequences could be. Hence, a passionate, frightening film called Poison on the Platter, a 40-minute documentary on the dangers of genetically modified (GM) food — an unusual project for a mainstream Bollywood filmmaker.
Unusual, perhaps, but important, says Bhatt. It’s a film that says the fundamental right of the people to choose the kind of food they eat is being snatched away because multinational seed and pesticide companies are now pushing GM crops in India in a surreptitious manner and contaminating our sources of cereals and vegetables. “The production of genetically modified food is an act of bio-terrorism. Should we remain silent and let the biotech companies use us as guinea pigs in India?” demands Bhatt, who presents and anchors the film.
Poison on the Platter comes at an interesting point. India is in the process of releasing its first GM food, the Bt brinjal, at a time when the whole regulatory process for granting approvals to GM crops is being questioned in the Supreme Court of India. A number of organisations and scientists are on the warpath, demanding an overhaul of the regulatory process and a moratorium on GM testing till proper testing facilities are put in place. An added problem is that GM foods have already been detected in the country since chips and other processed items from the US have been allowed into the country without any checks.
Yet, it’s curious that Bhatt should have become involved in such an esoteric debate. Nothing odd about it, says the man who is known for his many crusades. “It’s a grim reality facing the country. My ears are the people who are out there in the field who know what’s going on.” And for Bhatt, it’s not so much the rights and wrongs of GM food as the fact that people who have been raising uncomfortable questions about the consequences of GM foods have been marginalised. His anger is directed primarily at officialdom and the media (see interview below).
More From This Section
Poison on the Platter has been conceptualised and produced by Ajay Kanchan, who has made several other documentaries with Bhatt. Among these are Make No Mistake: It Spares Nobody (about the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and children); Bearing the Brunt, which shows how unregulated mining is making Rajasthan ever more vulnerable to drought; and Beginning of Life, a portrayal of life in Nagaland where ordinary people are paying the price for being caught between militants and the security forces.
The Kanchan-Bhatt association has helped both men.
If Kanchan’s films have enjoyed a certain cachet for being produced with the famous filmmaker, Bhatt, too, has gained something: an understanding of the problems in the real world. Says Kanchan, “Bhatt saab once told me: ‘I narcotise society with my feature films and redeem myself with these documentaries’”.
But the two worlds are not so disparate, as Bhatt has discovered. The plot of Raaz and Poison on the Platter share a bizarre similarity, a fact that strikes Bhatt during our discussion on his different worlds and perspectives. In Raaz, an activist discovers that a pesticides plant operated by a multi-national is contaminating the holy springs of a pilgrimage spot where millions come to bathe. Instead of closing the plant, the polluting company gangs up with the religious heads and local shopkeepers to kill the activist, backed by corrupt officials and the local police.
“I didn’t realise there was such a close analogy with what is happening on GM foods,” says a bemused Bhatt. In the fictional world of Raaz, the ghost of the activist comes back to haunt the evildoers. In the real world, activists will have to rely on a Bhatt documentary to further their cause.
| The fifth doctor
How did you get interested in GM? |
I said this argument against GM foods by those people who are being dubbed as anti-progress, anti-technology needs to be heard. These are the whistle-blowers whose voices are being muzzled because they are saying all is not well with the GM miracle taking place in our backyard. They are like the fifth doctor in the Anacin ad whose voice is not reaching the people.
All that we hear is that the GM technology is going to solve the food problem of this country and anyone who questions that claim, anyone who goes to that fifth doctor is dubbed a Luddite or a paranoid.
Why should the dissenters be muzzled?
It’s an age-old trick of power centres. They marginalise the voices of dissent because they want to restrict the discourse. Then they ridicule the dissenters, they attribute motives to them and raise issues about the lack of a scientific temper. We always put the whistle-blower in the dock.
Is the film about widening the debate?
The film is about giving a platform to those voices whose credibility we are convinced about, whose track record shows they have done a lot of work on this.
Such as?
All those organisations, activists and scientists interviewed in the films and people like Jeffrey Smith (an American researcher and campaigner) who has been an insider and has two brilliant books to his credit. I have read parts of Seeds of Deception and it’s a fantastic book.
Why do you think the debate is so restricted?
This country is given to authority-worship. It’s a society in which you accept unquestioningly what is said by those in authority. The media is to blame to a large extent. The Indian media is self-serving, timid. Instead of serving the people and being the watchdogs, they have become the lapdogs of those in power.
What about the scientists?
What I find appalling about scientists is that they talk in absolutes. They accuse a religious man of talking in absolutes and putting a full stop to all discourse. But scientists, the persons who should be open to all kinds of doubts, questions, have been mostly silent or ready to accept what they have been told.
Poison on the Platter is a scary film.
I hope people are jolted by this film. You need to be shrill. It’s important for people like me to climb on to the rooftop and scream. In India we have the problem of ignorance, widespread illiteracy. You and I might be aware of the problems of GM food and have concerns about it. But what about all the vulnerable people who know nothing of the catastrophe that’s about to hit them. Is the nation thinking of poorest of the poor, the most vulnerable person as Gandhiji told us to? I don’t think so. At the end of a hard day’s work, that poor person will not know that what he is putting into his mouth is poison. If we remain silent, we are all guilty.
Do you plan to take this further?
I can only do what I’ve been doing in any other field whether it is communalism or terrorism, whether it’s an issue of HIV/AIDS or insurgency in Nagaland. I amplify what the people are saying and reach that to a wider audience. I was on this TV debate where I locked horns with Deepak Pental (Delhi University vice-chancellor and a scientist who is closely involved with GM crops). He was saying we cannot turn the clock back and that we have to move with the times. So I asked him, “What is the tearing hurry to push the fast forward button when we don’t have enough evidence on GM crops?”
What do you think your film can do?
We hope the film will kickstart something in this nation, an open debate. Let the experts come out and bare it all. Then let people decide what food should come into their homes, their stomachs. We need to be open about this. Otherwise all our claims about being concerned about the environment, about the future of the human race will be bogus.
