Acharya Prashant: We have had a spate of movies in recent years where the protagonist is a de facto criminal—and he’s being lionized, absolutely glorified. I suppose one certain movie was Kabir Singh recently. If the hero in the popular consciousness himself is a debauched criminal, what do you expect the general populous to be? If your role model is a lout and a scoundrel, what do you expect is going to happen to the population?
And I’m not even talking of draconian or authoritarian measures, where you just increase censorship to a point where you start controlling and curbing all media rather than regulating it. I’m talking of a revolution in man’s consciousness. I’m talking about a situation where a movie like that is released, and the censor board does not even ask for cuts; no editing is needed. Fine, you want to release that movie? Go ahead and release it. I’m talking about a situation where nobody goes to watch that movie. Not that using the strong arm of the law you prevent that movie from reaching theatres.
I am not talking about one movie, please. I have nothing against a particular script writer or producer or anyone related to the movie. We are not isolated individuals, so I can’t have anything against an individual as such. It’s a genre of movies that I’m talking about. So, I’m talking of a situation where even if such a movie is released—and let it be released—the public taste is elevated to a point where the public finds it puke-worthy, distasteful. And the movie falls flat. Total collections over four weekends? Not even one crore. That would be the real disincentive for the producer against coming up with any such similar venture in the future.
After all, the final consumer of all kinds of nonsense is the individual, the common man, and that is where the change must happen. And it is not impossible. I’m not narrating some dream or utopia. It is very much doable. We want it to happen. Deep inside each of us is craving for it. Its time has come. Not that there was any point in history when its time was not there, but I suppose, as much as or probably more than any other point in history, right now we need that revolution in individual consciousness.
