Politicisation of language will happen but artistes and sportsmen will keep breaking it: Kamal Haasan – Times of India

The (imposition of) Hindi vs regional language has been a topic of debate for a while now and cinema is no exception. The language row has now spilled into films. The rising box office success of south films in Bollywood stronghold Mumbai and other non-southern states have led to heated discussions on social media and otherwise. Has the dominance of Bollywood as a solid money spinner nationally and overseas dwindled given its recent BO numbers? Is the south market now aiming to grab a bigger piece of the pie? Is the rising popularity of south cinema a threat to Hindi films’ market share and more?

One of our finest actors, Kamal Haasan opened up on the ongoing controversy during a press interaction in Mumbai. The senior actor was in the city to promote his upcoming film ‘Vikram Hitlist’ that also stars acclaimed actors Fahadh Faasil and Vijay Sethupathi. Without mincing words, he said, “Films speak the world language. Film language is a language on its own. We are a country with great diversity and unity. We might disagree on various things, we may not speak one language but we all say our national anthem with pride. None of the people down south know a single word of Bengali but they sing the National anthem with pride. That’s the only Bengali they know.”

Going a bit into history, he added, “We used to be princely states but our sensibility united us and we seem to have forgotten how difficult it was to put it all together. Cinema has played a huge part in uniting people. Cinemas are the only place where you don’t check what caste or community the man sitting next to you is. You get your ticket, you get the entertainment. That’s how the country should be. When you say south ka film successful ho raha hai, it’s an Indian film that is succeeding as opposed to a Hollywood film succeeding here. It doesn’t matter which part of the country made it. We learnt to make big films by watching Mughal-E-Azam and Sholay. Their scale was so big that Tamil and Malayalam films couldn’t afford to do that. When Sholay came, some of the Tamil filmmakers said they would never let these Hindi films come there because they could never make something like that so why should we allow them? We just saw them. Mughal-E-Azam didn’t just need intelligence but also guts. It took decades to get that film made. I have worked with the makers of Sholay and I never thought I would be able to even meet them, let alone work with them. We should understand and respect each other. If you like a film, appreciate it, doesn’t matter what language. Films don’t have a language.”

Speaking of reaching out to a wider audience, he explained, “I made Hey Ram in two different languages Hindi and Tamil. I wrote the Tamil dialogues while Manohar Shyam Joshi wrote the Hindi ones so there were no language discrepancies. There is still more potential in the south for Hindi cinema to grow. The reason that’s not happening is because of the linguistic barrier and we need to find ways to overcome that and reach out. And in spite of the language barrier, Hindi films are widely seen in the South. All this politicisation of language will happen but artistes and sportsmen are the people who will keep breaking it. Sachin Tendulkar is equally a hero for a Tamilian in Paramakudi, my native place in Tami Nadu, where they don’t know a single Hindi word but Tendulkar is the only Marathi word they can pronounce.”