OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | Looking Back At Arundhati Roy’s Role In The Saga of Bandit Queen | Farrukh Dhondy

“You claim it was a brief fascination

My response is that’s an insensitive claim

It was in fact love’s only inclination

Denying which has only one to blame.”

From The Scottish Ballads of Doll McKhanny

The internationally acclaimed writer and activist Arundhati Roy has written about her relationship with her mother in her latest book. The news previews say she has also written about the campaigns she supported.

There may be one which may not feature prominently in this memoir. That was her assiduous attempt to have the film Bandit Queen legally banned. And more!

I met Arundhati decades ago when I was a commissioning editor at UK’s Channel 4 TV. She brought me her screenplay called Electric Moon, which I liked and commissioned. It was produced and broadcast by Channel 4. Through the process of editing it I, perhaps naively, thought we had become firm friends. (But as they say: “Apney munn ki mein jaanoo aur oonkay munn ki Ram”?).

Years later, I adapted for filming my ex-wife Mala Sen’s book about Phoolan Devi, a Dalit girl, sold when barely eight years old in a bargain marriage, raped, kidnapped, treated violently by Thakurs and the police and bandit gangs and then rose, through circumstance, to be the leader of a vengeful gang herself.

Several writers I commissioned attempted the screenplay. It didn’t work. I had to clandestinely take on writing it myself or the budget allocated to my department for the film would be cancelled. I worked with Shekhar Kapur and the film Bandit Queen resulted.

Bobby Bedi, the producer, invited Arundhati to a preview, after which Arundhati drove to Phoolan Devi’s house and proposed that they get the film legally banned as it portrayed her being raped. Shekhar’s depiction of these were later internationally acclaimed as truthful, discreet and campaigning!

Phoolan, Arundhati, with veteran lawyer Indira Jaisingh, went to the Delhi high court and pleaded to have the film banned.

As the case continued and was reported, Channel 4’s insurance premiums on all its films went up. Disaster!

Bobby had already begun negotiations with Phoolan’s husband and I went with a Channel 4 cheque book to Delhi and handed over an agreed sum to him.

That morning Phoolan went to court with one of the affidavit-signing lawyers, walked past Ms Roy and gang, ignoring their questions, went into the court and withdrew the case.

When Phoolan emerged, Ms Roy, in distress. accosted her in Hindi: “You have made choothiyas of us!” Phoolan brushed past her saying, “You were that from birth!”

The film was released and won an official prize at Cannes. Phoolan proudly displayed it in her parliamentary election campaign to demonstrate what Dalit women suffer.

It was when I returned to London that I heard that the French publisher Robert Lafont had sent a young writer to India to write a biography of Phoolan, which they could then sell to Hollywood as they had successfully done with Dominique Lapierre’s City of Joy. I was told this writer was in touch with Ms Roy.

Soon after, Michael Grade, Channel 4’s boss, called me to his office and showed me a petition signed by Ms Roy and about ten others asking him to dismiss me from my job. Michael said he could only think of one use for such a piece of paper. He said I should reply, which I did telling the petitioners they had failed and advising them to go some distance and have sex.

I knew two of the signatories -- Praful Bidwai was a friend of my late ex-wife Mala. She was in my office, with my translator friend Firdaus Ali, when she, in great distress, said Bidwai had had an accident and his marrow was infected with a fatal, incurable disease. Firdaus overheard the name of the disease and said his cousins were working in Birmingham on precisely that. He called them and they said they had found the cure but couldn’t release it until it underwent trials. Somehow, Firdaus persuaded them to give him a sufficient dose which was sent to Bidwai who was, as a result, cured. There are, of course, no binding ethical rules of gratitude!

Another signatory was one Pankaj Butalia, from whom I had earlier commissioned a documentary about Shakespeare in Mizoram. Now he wanted me sacked??? Curiouser and curiouser! I wrote and published a limerick:

“There once was a man called Bue-Talia/ Who painted his arse in a Dahlia --/ A rupee a smell/ Went down fairly well/ Two rupees a lick was a failure.”

Then a Robert Lafont operative rang from France. Would I suspend the release of Bandit Queen for six years? They would “make it worth my while!”. What??? A bribe to sabotage a Channel 4 property? I again suggested, repeating myself, that he should immediately traverse some space and have sex. And before I put the phone down, I said: “Remember Agincourt, Waterloo and now Bandit Queen!”

Subsequently, Bandit Queen was sent by the Indian Producers’ Association to compete for an international Oscar. Did Ms Roy and her friends go to a Delhi judge’s home on a Sunday and ask him to instruct the Indian Producers’ Association to withdraw it? Won’t speculate! A Delhi judge did instruct the IPA and it was vindictively withdrawn!

I look forward to noticing the absence of most of this from Ms Roy’s book. No doubt her prose will glister.