Thiruvananthapuram, 31 March(HS): Embarrassed and taken aback by the widespread flak from the Hindu community over the portrayal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, the producers of Emburan have decided to chop more than 17 scenes from the controversial movies.

This follows the post by senior RSS leader A Jayakumar, Pragna Pravah chief J Nandakumar and an article published in Organizer, the widely read mouthpiece of the Sangh.

A lawyer in the Supreme Court had made it known that he would be filing a petition in the court challenging the grounds on which Mohan Lal, the hero of the movie, was conferred with the rank of Lieutanant Colonel in the Territorial Army.

A Jayakumar, in his social media post, has termed the movie as anti national and anti-Sanatana Dharma. “What the censor board members failed to detect, the ordinary viewers could discern. The movie has a scene in which the villain says he would demolish the Mullaperiyar Dam with bombs, and this would result in millions of people getting drowned. This is a scenario which is unthinkable in the Hindu society,” said Jayakumar.

He said Mohan Lal and Gokulam Gopalan (one of the producers) may be reluctant to accept the allegation that this movie was produced to destroy them. “But I am not at all afraid to speak about it in the open,” he said.

There was an instance in 2020 when Prithviraj, the director of this movie, had planned to make a movie based on the life and times of Variyankunnanthu Kunhamamed, who is known as the butcher of the Hindus during the 1920 Moplah Rebellion. But Prithviraj’s ploy did not materialize, as he was exposed by the vigilante Kerala society that he was getting paid by Islamic terrorists to feature Variyankunnathu Kunhammed as an embodiment of everything that is good. “Variyankunnathu Kunhammaed was the one who led the Islamic zealots in the slaughter of nearly 2000 Hindus in the 1920 riots. Later, the ‘eminent historians’ in the country depicted him as the angel of peace who saved the Hindus,” said Sudheer Damodaran, Thrissur-based Sangh activist.

Swamy Bhargavaram, a Hindu monk at Thiruvananthapuram, said the censor board members who previewed the movie could have been ignorant about the Godhra riots, which are projected in the movie as the handiwork of Hindu terrorists. Sources in Tapasya, a socio-literary organization affiliated to the RSS, told HS that one of the office bearers of Tapasya who is a member of the board is under suspicion for his leanings to the CPI(M).

Hindusthan Samachar / Manohar Yadavatti