Filmmakers to issue appeal against voting for the BJP to ‘save democracy’

New Delhi: ‘Save Democracy’, an umbrella body of independent filmmakers, is mulling to campaign against the ruling rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in upcoming Lok Sabha election 2019, a media report said on Saturday.

Over a hundred members of the filmmaking community from across India, most of them independent filmmakers, have come together under the umbrella of ‘Save Democracy’ to issue an appeal to the people of India not to vote for the BJP in the upcoming elections, reported The Hindu.

‘Save Democracy’ has said that “unleashing of polarisation and hate politics; marginalisation of Dalits, Muslims and farmers; steady erosion of the cultural and scientific institutions; and increasing censorship” are among many reasons why they have come up against the BJP.

“All that is at stake now and that fascism threatens to strike us hard if we don’t choose wisely in the coming Lok Sabha election,” they said in a statement, according to the report.

Save Democracy has also alleged that ever since the BJP came to power in 2014, the country has been polarised along religious lines.

“They are now using mob lynching and cow vigilantism to split the country communally,” says the report

“Any individual or institution that raises the slightest dissent is labelled ‘anti-national.’ ‘Patriotism’ is how they grow their vote bank. It goes on to point to romanticising and exploiting the armed forces as another one of its strategies, even risking the nation engaging in war,” Save Democracy has said.

Well-know names like Vetri Maaran, Anand Patwardhan, Sanalkumar Sasidharan, Sudevan, Q, Deepa Dhanraj, Gurvinder Singh, Pushpendra Singh, Kabir Singh Chowdhry, Anjali Monteiro, Praveen Morchhale, Devashish Makhija and festival director and editor, Bina Paul are among the few that have constituted ‘Save Democracy’.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)