The Kerala Story and the draw of tax-free cinema

The Kerala Story is now tax-free in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana. On the other hand, governments in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have received notices from the Supreme Court to explain why the movie is not being allowed to run smoothly in theatres there.

In 2015, the Akhilesh Yadav government ruling Uttar Pradesh made an unprecedented eight films tax-free in the state. These films included mainstream juggernauts like Bajrangi Bhaijaan, PK and plucky indies like Manjhi: The Mountain Man. Though the Yadav government claimed it was down to the content and the social relevance of these films that made them qualify for the special status, not all of them can really be measured with similar yardsticks for quality and craft. Not all were viewed similarly either. The exemption given to Aamir Khan’s PK was met with widespread criticism in UP, for the film was deemed to have hurt religious sentiments. Therein lies the point, or at least an indication of the general direction exemptions have trended of late. With Madhya Pradesh declaring the hotly debated The Kerala Files tax-free, the bureaucratic rope that governments extended as a token of support has now turned into an electoral comment. It’s your film vs my film, as opposed to good films vs bad films.

V. Shantaram’s Jhanak Payal Baje (1955), a love story about two musical prodigies, was possibly the first film to be exempted from state levied taxes. The following year, Mother India, was exempted from paying its share of the taxes by the then Morarji Desai government. At the time, the symbolism of a bureaucratic offer represented more than just economic advantage. It also represented a form of approval for an industry, unhesitatingly embracing social and class issues. Cinema was seen as an ally in the larger objective of intellectual enlightenment. The working-class man was on our screens, regularly grappling with life, until he disappeared overnight, leaving to us a canon of cinema that infantilized its audiences and endowed the empty rhetoric of heroism. Cinema’s relevance has probably never dwindled but it’s social relevance, tax or no tax, possibly has.

Taxation works like a whimsical feudal system. In this context, states decide what they want to charge and what they don’t. Priorities change, and so do intentions. For a brief period, UP was adamant on positioning itself as a film-friendly state; a movement set in motion by the unlikely hit and consequent popularizing of the Hindi belt by Bunty aur Babli (2005). Gujarat has on different occasions allowed extensive exemptions – lasting years at times - to help generate homemade stories and also revive a difficult industry. Tamil Nadu has historically used exemption as a way to strengthen its already solid star-obsessed industry. There is even a story about a Tamil film dropping two English words from its title, only to qualify for the state’s exemption criteria. What those criteria are, though, is anyone’s guess. While states have in the past used this arbitrary flick of the wand to actually promote good, national-interest cinema (Chak de India, Dangal). Others have used it to incentivize film production, general collection and a rudimentary interest in the land’s cultures and traditions (most recently Zwigato in Odisha). Of late, though, things have become murky and unsubtle.

Deepika Padukone’s Chhapaak, a middling film about a significant social issue, possibly deserved a tax-free status across the Indian landscape. Padukone’s appearance at the JNU protests before the Covid pandemic began in earnest, though, tipped the balance of opinion against her film. Vivek Agnihotri’s, The Kashmir Files, in contrast, rode the tide of majoritarian interest. A film so hotly debated that viewing it became a display of political intent. It’s also a film uninterested in debating the many complexities of Kashmir’s tortured past. Instead it utilizes a legitimate wound to further slit, whatever nerve for kinship the many people of this country, have nurtured and protected.

In the absence of a core criteria, art being subjective and all, there seems to be no method to this manicured madness anymore. Because the very reception of stories has become a motivated, shrill exercise in responding to political opponents, what will suffer eventually are the stories and the motivation with which they are created. Then there is the argument of what actually makes for national-interest storytelling. Akshay Kumar’s many roles as saviour extraordinaire (Toilet Ek Prem Katha, Airlift, Mission Mangal, etc., etc.), or something as graceful and aspirational as a Rocket Boys on streaming. Or maybe something as life-affirming and enjoyable as a Pathaan. The moment you start seeing culture through the prism of electoral posturing, it stops being the stories we crave, and see ourselves in.

It’s probably ironic that The Kerala Files and Sudhir Mishra’s Afwaah released on the same day. Both arguably suffer from similar flaws. They are principled evocations of arguments, as opposed to a studious analysis of on-going debates. Neither is actually interested in listening to the other side. What is worse is that each is relevant to a side of the political divide for that very reason. This blatancy, the lack of nuance, hurts both sides. Exemptions might elevate short-term prospects, but unless justified by a standardized scale, they are increasingly becoming symptoms of wider petty bureaucratic battles. At least cinema could have and probably should have, been left out of it.