Art Chambers stopped ‘Sita Sings the Blues’ screening due to Hindus’ protest

Panaji (Goa): Art Chamber, Calangute, Goa planned to screen ‘Sita Sings the Blues’ movie produced by Anti-Hindu American Cartoonist Nina Paley. This movie denigrates Ramayana and depicts Sri Ram, Goddess Sita and Sri Hanuman in bad light. A panel of Hindus from Sree Sampraday, Shiv Sena, GMDSM, Divya Jagruti Pratishthan, Amma Bhagwan Pratishthan and HJS met Dy. District Collector Mr. Dashrath Redkar and demanded to stop this screening. HJS also immediately started awareness drive on its website and many devout Hindus also lawfully protested through phone and e-mail against this event.  Then Mr. Redkar immediately called organisers of the event to cancel the same. He also issued orders on phone to Calangute Police Station to ensure cancellation of the movie. Hence organisers had to cancel the screening of ‘Sita Sings the Blues’.

The panel of Hindus which met Dy. District Collector Mr. Redkar comprised Mr. Rajesh Korgaonkar of HJS, Mr. Ramesh Naik of Shiv Sena, Mr. Jayesh Thali of GMDSM, Retd. (Capt.) Dattaram Sawant of Divya Jagruti Pratishthan and Mr. Shrikant Parsekar of Sree Sampraday and many other devout Hindus.

Owner of the Art Center, Rudolf Ludwig has sent following comment to HJS.

On 15th Sept Gallery Art Chamber was scheduled to screen “Sita sings the Blues”. I am the owner of the Art Center and I wish to apologize having hurt the sentiments of fellow human beings. As I am not on the selection committee for the film screening I did not know its controversial content. After protests were pouring in on Thursday afternoon we had immediately decided to cancel the film and replaced with another film (“Tokyo”). This decision came much before the local authorities (DC)had been involved. Thank you for your understanding.

Art Chamber, Calangute, Goa is going to screen defamatory movie ‘Sita Sings the Blues’ by Anti-Hindu American cartoonist Nina Paley which denigrates Ramayana and depicts Sri Ram, Goddess Sita and Sri Hanuman in bad light. The movie is to be screened on 15 September 2011 at 7.30 P.M. Now it is duty of all devout Hindus to protest lawfully against the organisers so that they should stop screening of such defamatory movie.

The program details can be seen at : http://www.goa-art.com/gallery/Wallfly/programme.htm