GUWAHATI: Bollywood movies returned to restive Manipur on Tuesday, 23 years after the militants enforced a ban on their screening.
As part of the 77th Independence Day celebrations, the Hmar Students’ Association (HSA), a Kuki-Zo tribal students’ body, screened Uri: The Surgical Strike at Rengkai in the hill district of Churachandpur. A projector was used to screen the film from 7:30 pm. Over 100 people turned up. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was also lined up.
Incidentally, the last time a Hindi movie screened at a theatre hall in Manipur was Kuch Kuch Hota Hai – in the late 1990s.
The HSA screened Bollywood movies to show its defiance against the ban on Hindi films. "As Indians, we must have access to arts and movies produced from all parts of India in public theatres," Lalremsang, who is an executive member of HSA, told The New Indian Express.
"The main reason behind the banning of Hindi films was that they (militants) considered Hindi films as foreign films which badly influenced Meitei/Manipuri culture. The state government till today backs this ban but we do not subscribe to it," Lalremsang said.
Churachandpur had a couple of theatre halls but they were shut down in the wake of the ban on the screening of Hindi films. Several others were shut down in the Meitei-majority Imphal valley.
"People here (Churachandpur) love to watch Bollywood films," the student leader said.
In 2000, the insurgent group Revolutionary People's Front issued a notice banning Hindi, specifically Bollywood movies, for allegedly destroying Manipuri culture, language and local film industry. The outfit believed Bollywood went against Manipuri values.
In due course, the militants confiscated thousands of video cassettes of Hindi films and music and burnt them as a mark of protest against the “Indianisation” of Manipur. The ban killed off the movie theatre circuit in the state.
It was because of the ban that the biopic on champion boxer MC Mary Kom could not be screened in Manipur, the state where she was born. Priyanka Chopra played the role of the boxer in the movie.
The Manipur government contested the fact that Hindi movies have not been screened in the state in the past 23 years, saying, "Although Hindi films are not banned in the state, they are not screened regularly in cinema theatres which is not under purview of the government. But Hindi films are still aired on various satellite and TV channels on a daily basis."
T Ramesh Singh, who is the deputy director (press and information) in the department of Information and Public Relations, said the Hindi movie Rocketry: The Nambi Effect was screened on August 20, 2022 at the auditorium of Manipur State Film Development Society and seen by Chief Minister N Biren Singh, his Council of Ministers, MLAs and many government officials.
Manipur has been witnessing widespread ethnic clashes between the majority Meitei and tribal Kuki communities since May 3 and so far over 160 people have been killed.