Mumbai, India - He fought Fascism in the 1940s armed with little more than a crumpled suit, a bemused look and funny walk. Now Charlie Chaplin is embroiled in another battle of beliefs, this time with India’s Hindu extremists.
Radicals in the southern state of Karnataka have stymied plans to erect a 20m (67ft) statue of the film star because he was a Christian. The move comes amid a campaign against Western culture that has raised concerns that parts of India are being “Talebanised” by Hinduism’s far Right.
The Chaplin sculpture, which would have shown him in his baggy trousers and bowler hat, was being built at a cost of about 3.5 million rupees (£48,600) near the town of Udupi, the site of several important Hindu temples. It was to form part of a set for a dance routine in a film but work ground to a halt when Hindu activists chased the workers away and buried the materials.
Hemant Hegde, the film-maker, told local reporters that he abandoned the project after being threatened by a mob of 50 people whose leader told him: “We will not allow you to construct a statue of a Christian actor.”
The protesters were said to belong to the Hindu Jagarna Vedike (Hindu Enlightenment Group), a group linked to an attack on a Christian school in the same state last May. They demanded that Mr Hegde instead erect a statue of Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century Hindu missionary to the West.
Mr Hegde told a local TV channel: “I’m really surprised that people would associate Charlie Chaplin with being a Christian and not allow the statue.” Chaplin, whose 1940 masterwork The Great Dictator mocked Hitler and Nazism, might also have been confused: the British-born actor was baptised into the Church of England but later avowed himself agnostic.
Commentators warned that the dispute was part of a wider revolt by extremists who claim that Indian values are under attack from Western cultural imports. One of the most shocking incidents came in January when a mob of followers of the Sri Ram Sena (Lord Ram’s Army), a radical Hindu group, assaulted young women in a pub in Mangalore, a college town also in Karnataka.
Valentine’s Day celebrations, kissing in Bollywood films and cheerleaders at Indian Premier League cricket matches are also targets. The Times of India said yesterday: “With amazing regularity, petty and prejudiced acts that rip at the social fabric of society are hitting the headlines.”
The local head of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist and India’s main opposition party, said there was no place for Chaplin in the region. “If the locals are against such a statue, I am also against it,” he told The Times of India. “Why should one bother so much about Charlie Chaplin, who was not even an Indian?”
Karnataka has one of the poorest records for anti-Christian violence in the country. According to the Global Council of Indian Christians, at least 112 anti-Christian attacks were recorded in the state last year.
The state government, control of which was won by the BJP last year, said recently that it was considering laws that would govern the circumstances under which Hindus could convert to Christianity. Pro-Christian advocates claim similar laws already in place have provided the pretext for anti-Christian violence in other states.
Speaking in favour of the proposed new laws, S. Suresh Kumar, the Karnataka minister for law, justice and human rights, said: “Poor and uneducated Hindus are becoming victims of false propaganda against Hinduism.”