Taurus – A Parable of Freedom of Speech
A mouthful of water makes the traveler splutter. A koi
fish leaps restlessly in a shallow pond. This proverb fits aptly when applied
to those lecherous theoreticians—or rather, pompous intellectual mandarins—who
compelled the authorities of the Kolkata Film Festival to withdraw Russian
director Alexander Sokurov’s Taurus.
The film painstakingly portrays the crippled body, helplessness, insecurity, despair, and uncertainty of Lenin, the Bolshevik hero, in his final days. It lays bare the character of Lenin as both a representative of bourgeois society and leader of the proletariat. Sokurov’s fault lay in showing the prophet of Marxism not as a grand messiah, but as a mortal of flesh and blood—one who makes mistakes, seeks atonement, and is far from optimistic about the world.
In Bengal, the so-called “Stupid Federation of India”—a communist student body whose members often pronounce and even write “Lenin” as Lelin—passed judgment on the film without seeing it, or at best without engaging their grey cells after watching it. They cast hostile glances and did not rest content with mere indignation. They forced the festival authorities to ensure that ordinary people could not see it. Though the party’s political wing and the festival committee (that is, the government) claimed the opposite, the incident as a whole demonstrated how, even under the regime of a supposedly liberal and cultured leftist Chief Minister, assaults on personal freedom and freedom of speech can occur. After all, this was a regimented party—where internal discipline is said to outweigh individual will.
So perhaps the Western philosophers were right. They have long argued that Nazism, Fascism, and Communism are but two sides of the same coin. Indeed, the masked dance of Fascism beneath the cloak of Liberalism finds its most grotesque expression within Communism—as with Stalin, as with Mao, as with Ceausescu. Marxism, by its very nature, does not believe in democracy, art, or artistic freedom. It shackles dissent with chains.
Most intellectuals, as well as ordinary people around the world, do not revere Lenin. Rather, they dwell upon his political and personal deceit. He was hardly so exalted a figure that his character may never be critiqued. Many scholars equate Lenin, Stalin, and Mao with Hitler and Mussolini—hideous figures of history. The abuses, tyrannies, and indiscriminate killings of erstwhile communist states were fascistic tendencies, revealing that such regimes were hostile to democratic structures.
In truth, every political figure in history is flawed, a mixture of virtues and vices. Some rise higher by the weight of human values, others sink lower. Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln, as human personalities, stand far above Lenin, Stalin, or Hitler—this is common knowledge.
Taurus is nothing more than a narrative depiction of a revolutionary leader’s final years—Lenin’s psychological disintegration. If a director chooses to make such a film, what objection can there be? The audience can decide for themselves what is true and what is false. Is Lenin a celibate monk, a saintly guru beyond all critique? Are his devotees’ emotions so fragile? Where, then, does the line blur between Marxism, which claims to be scientific, and guru-worship? Indeed, from half-educated comrades who still call him Lelin, nothing better can be expected. Once again, the event has proven that Bengal’s illiterate Marxists truly believe in guru-cultism.
Astonishing indeed! A film screened and praised in Lenin’s own country suddenly becomes intolerable for Bengal’s half-communists. Their god, they say, has been insulted. Sokurov—celebrated in Europe as the worthy successor of Tarkovsky—has provoked the wrath of this gang called SFI.
One recalls that when Sokurov’s first documentary was banned in the old Soviet era, Tarkovsky himself rose to defend him and criticized the government. This world-renowned director had three films selected by the Kolkata Film Festival’s own committee this year. It is they who have the prerogative to decide which films will be screened. What right then do Bengal’s communists or SFI—the CPM’s Bajrang Dal—have to interfere? Power of authority, or sheer arrogance? And yet, without even seeing the film, the left leadership issued statements. Will Bengal’s cultural flag remain imprisoned in the hands of a dictatorial party’s functionaries? Will they decree what people may see, what they may hear?
These leaders claimed that Taurus had wounded the emotions of the city’s Lenin devotees. What a bizarre logic! By that standard, if anyone published a critique of Anil Biswas, it would be banned too—lest it injure his devotees’ emotions. By the same argument, when Lalu Prasad stopped L. K. Advani’s Ram Rath, he hurt the sentiments of Ram-bhaktas—should he then have been jailed?
Meanwhile, a sycophantic half-director of the Left, whose films fail to find distributors and only get shown in the state-run Nandan theatre through party patronage, held a press conference at Nandan merely to parrot the Alimuddin Street line.
Our memory is indeed short. But we still recall how when Deepa Mehta’s Water was disrupted, the BJP’s Bajrang Dal used the same excuse of “hurt emotions.” Back then, the Left staged fierce protests. And yet within a year, the Left and Ram’s devotees sat side by side—their weapon this time not Hindu sentiment but Lenin sentiment. The same house-trained director, once prolific in denouncing Hindu nationalism, is now utterly silent on Marxist fascism.
The Bengali takes immense pride in art and culture. We still whisper proudly that Kolkata is India’s cultural capital, unmatched by any Nandan or Coffee House anywhere else. Sokurov’s Taurus paints Lenin as helpless, dejected, fated, regretful, suicidal, surrounded by intrigues of power, while the vulture-gaze of fascist Stalin hovered greedily over Russia’s fragile democracy. And is this not an allegory of present-day Bengal itself—where the outward liberalism of a leftist government is preyed upon by the hungry vulture-eyes of Stalinism?
And Sokurov, they claim, has distorted history. On the festival’s closing day, a lascivious Nandan-based group distributed pamphlets stuffed with “facts and proofs.” Leftist proofs! The very kind of proofs Irfan Habib and Romila Thapar use to twist India’s history. Reading such evidence only reveals one thing—that Marxism is a virus, which once shredded many nations, and that India can still be saved from looming disaster if this virus is expelled with truth and proof.
In Kolkata there is a man who propagates that the Sun revolves around the Earth, plastering walls with his message. Are Marxist buffoons any less deranged? Suppose a few scholars, influenced by this lunatic, wrote theories affirming his claim—would that make it truth? It is in this sense that I cite the example when speaking of those intellectuals defending the banning of Taurus. A thesis written on falsehood does not make falsehood true. Logically then, any grotesque untruth can be defended in the name of argument. But such defenders are not intellectuals—they are perverters of intellect.
Above all, an artist never identifies reality as it is—he reveals the truth inherent within reality. The true endeavor here is to transform Bengal’s culture into Stalinist culture. Across the world, ninety percent of twentieth-century art is anti-Fascist or anti-Communist, because ordinary people were most tormented by these two systems. Those who deny this truth erect Stalinist barricades to suppress it.
But even if Bengal bans Sokurov, how will the Buddhas, Bimans, and Anils of Alimuddin prevent the global tide? The world already knows the king is naked. By what sorcery will Alimuddin Street pull up its loincloth?
How is opposition to be faced? In Taurus, Lenin answers: either endure it, or ignore it. Stalin answers differently: eliminate it. Needless to say, Bengal’s communist fanatics believe in Stalin’s method—and their actions prove it every single day.
The film painstakingly portrays the crippled body, helplessness, insecurity, despair, and uncertainty of Lenin, the Bolshevik hero, in his final days. It lays bare the character of Lenin as both a representative of bourgeois society and leader of the proletariat. Sokurov’s fault lay in showing the prophet of Marxism not as a grand messiah, but as a mortal of flesh and blood—one who makes mistakes, seeks atonement, and is far from optimistic about the world.
In Bengal, the so-called “Stupid Federation of India”—a communist student body whose members often pronounce and even write “Lenin” as Lelin—passed judgment on the film without seeing it, or at best without engaging their grey cells after watching it. They cast hostile glances and did not rest content with mere indignation. They forced the festival authorities to ensure that ordinary people could not see it. Though the party’s political wing and the festival committee (that is, the government) claimed the opposite, the incident as a whole demonstrated how, even under the regime of a supposedly liberal and cultured leftist Chief Minister, assaults on personal freedom and freedom of speech can occur. After all, this was a regimented party—where internal discipline is said to outweigh individual will.
So perhaps the Western philosophers were right. They have long argued that Nazism, Fascism, and Communism are but two sides of the same coin. Indeed, the masked dance of Fascism beneath the cloak of Liberalism finds its most grotesque expression within Communism—as with Stalin, as with Mao, as with Ceausescu. Marxism, by its very nature, does not believe in democracy, art, or artistic freedom. It shackles dissent with chains.
Most intellectuals, as well as ordinary people around the world, do not revere Lenin. Rather, they dwell upon his political and personal deceit. He was hardly so exalted a figure that his character may never be critiqued. Many scholars equate Lenin, Stalin, and Mao with Hitler and Mussolini—hideous figures of history. The abuses, tyrannies, and indiscriminate killings of erstwhile communist states were fascistic tendencies, revealing that such regimes were hostile to democratic structures.
In truth, every political figure in history is flawed, a mixture of virtues and vices. Some rise higher by the weight of human values, others sink lower. Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln, as human personalities, stand far above Lenin, Stalin, or Hitler—this is common knowledge.
Taurus is nothing more than a narrative depiction of a revolutionary leader’s final years—Lenin’s psychological disintegration. If a director chooses to make such a film, what objection can there be? The audience can decide for themselves what is true and what is false. Is Lenin a celibate monk, a saintly guru beyond all critique? Are his devotees’ emotions so fragile? Where, then, does the line blur between Marxism, which claims to be scientific, and guru-worship? Indeed, from half-educated comrades who still call him Lelin, nothing better can be expected. Once again, the event has proven that Bengal’s illiterate Marxists truly believe in guru-cultism.
Astonishing indeed! A film screened and praised in Lenin’s own country suddenly becomes intolerable for Bengal’s half-communists. Their god, they say, has been insulted. Sokurov—celebrated in Europe as the worthy successor of Tarkovsky—has provoked the wrath of this gang called SFI.
One recalls that when Sokurov’s first documentary was banned in the old Soviet era, Tarkovsky himself rose to defend him and criticized the government. This world-renowned director had three films selected by the Kolkata Film Festival’s own committee this year. It is they who have the prerogative to decide which films will be screened. What right then do Bengal’s communists or SFI—the CPM’s Bajrang Dal—have to interfere? Power of authority, or sheer arrogance? And yet, without even seeing the film, the left leadership issued statements. Will Bengal’s cultural flag remain imprisoned in the hands of a dictatorial party’s functionaries? Will they decree what people may see, what they may hear?
These leaders claimed that Taurus had wounded the emotions of the city’s Lenin devotees. What a bizarre logic! By that standard, if anyone published a critique of Anil Biswas, it would be banned too—lest it injure his devotees’ emotions. By the same argument, when Lalu Prasad stopped L. K. Advani’s Ram Rath, he hurt the sentiments of Ram-bhaktas—should he then have been jailed?
Meanwhile, a sycophantic half-director of the Left, whose films fail to find distributors and only get shown in the state-run Nandan theatre through party patronage, held a press conference at Nandan merely to parrot the Alimuddin Street line.
Our memory is indeed short. But we still recall how when Deepa Mehta’s Water was disrupted, the BJP’s Bajrang Dal used the same excuse of “hurt emotions.” Back then, the Left staged fierce protests. And yet within a year, the Left and Ram’s devotees sat side by side—their weapon this time not Hindu sentiment but Lenin sentiment. The same house-trained director, once prolific in denouncing Hindu nationalism, is now utterly silent on Marxist fascism.
The Bengali takes immense pride in art and culture. We still whisper proudly that Kolkata is India’s cultural capital, unmatched by any Nandan or Coffee House anywhere else. Sokurov’s Taurus paints Lenin as helpless, dejected, fated, regretful, suicidal, surrounded by intrigues of power, while the vulture-gaze of fascist Stalin hovered greedily over Russia’s fragile democracy. And is this not an allegory of present-day Bengal itself—where the outward liberalism of a leftist government is preyed upon by the hungry vulture-eyes of Stalinism?
And Sokurov, they claim, has distorted history. On the festival’s closing day, a lascivious Nandan-based group distributed pamphlets stuffed with “facts and proofs.” Leftist proofs! The very kind of proofs Irfan Habib and Romila Thapar use to twist India’s history. Reading such evidence only reveals one thing—that Marxism is a virus, which once shredded many nations, and that India can still be saved from looming disaster if this virus is expelled with truth and proof.
In Kolkata there is a man who propagates that the Sun revolves around the Earth, plastering walls with his message. Are Marxist buffoons any less deranged? Suppose a few scholars, influenced by this lunatic, wrote theories affirming his claim—would that make it truth? It is in this sense that I cite the example when speaking of those intellectuals defending the banning of Taurus. A thesis written on falsehood does not make falsehood true. Logically then, any grotesque untruth can be defended in the name of argument. But such defenders are not intellectuals—they are perverters of intellect.
Above all, an artist never identifies reality as it is—he reveals the truth inherent within reality. The true endeavor here is to transform Bengal’s culture into Stalinist culture. Across the world, ninety percent of twentieth-century art is anti-Fascist or anti-Communist, because ordinary people were most tormented by these two systems. Those who deny this truth erect Stalinist barricades to suppress it.
But even if Bengal bans Sokurov, how will the Buddhas, Bimans, and Anils of Alimuddin prevent the global tide? The world already knows the king is naked. By what sorcery will Alimuddin Street pull up its loincloth?
How is opposition to be faced? In Taurus, Lenin answers: either endure it, or ignore it. Stalin answers differently: eliminate it. Needless to say, Bengal’s communist fanatics believe in Stalin’s method—and their actions prove it every single day.
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