What’s In A Name? CBFC’s Ban On ‘Janaki Vs State Of Kerala’ Ignores Sita’s Real Strength And Feminist Legacy

When Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name?” He really did not anticipate that it could carry within it a whole argument, especially in India, a country where names carry a lot of weight.

So, when the Central Board for Film Certification (CBFC) put a ban on the Malayalam film ‘Janaki vs State of Kerala’, it stirred a hornets’ nest, with the Film Employees Federation of Kerala (FEFKA) condemning the ban and threatening to launch a protest.

The board has demanded that the name of the titular character and that of the movie be changed, as ‘Janaki’ is associated with Goddess Sita and, hence, cannot be shown as a victim of abuse.

This directive from the film board is quite unsettling on two counts: First, it endorses the highly patriarchal view of putting women on a pedestal as an example of supreme piety and purity to be followed by the rest of the tribe.

The unsettling bit here is that the board members include four women, all actors, two of whom are social activists, with one working on women’s empowerment.

The second unsettling fact is that the highly qualified members, comprising academicians, thinkers, dramatists and poets of some repute, including chairman Prasoon Joshi, have, deliberately or otherwise, misunderstood what Sita, the cohort of Ram, stands for.

They have only focused on the divinity aspect of Devi Sita, who, in their narrow view, epitomises sacrifice and duty, the two parameters on which women in India have come to be measured since the times of Manu, and have missed the greater significance altogether.

Sita doesn’t represent only sacrifice and duty, she is a symbol of moral and emotional strength, which she displayed right from the time she left the secure environs of a palace life to her being abandoned by the man she stood with against all odds.

She exercised her right as an equal partner when she chose to follow her husband into the wilderness at a time when women were supposed to follow the diktats of men, especially if the man was a king. It is her inherent strength that shines through when the character of Sita is analysed, not the fact that she was an incarnation of Goddess Lakshmi.

The film Janaki vs State of Kerala is the story of a woman who faces abuse and decides to fight the system that lets her down in every aspect. The focus here should not be on the abuse, as most people tend to do, but on the courage and steely resolve that she displays when she chooses to fight the perpetrators. Sita would have done the same.

There cannot be a better name for the protagonist than Janaki. We name our children after Gods and Goddesses in the hope that they imbibe the values and ideals they represent and draw strength from their lives, even if they are mythical. It is not demeaning, rather, a celebration of strength.

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