Newsmaker | Better sue than ‘sorry’: The Kamal Haasan row fits the filmmaker’s script

The controversy began last week at the audio launch of Thug Life, the Haasan film scheduled for a June 5 release, in Chennai. In a moment ironically meant to signal cultural unity, Haasan said: “Uyire Urave Tamizhe”, or “My life and my family is Tamil.” He then turned to Kannada actor Shiva Rajkumar, who was present at the launch, and added: “Your language (Kannada) was born out of Tamil. So you are included in this.”

Soon, there were protests in Karnataka, where any presumed insult to Kannada is a lightning rod. The fact that the subject of the remarks, Shiva Rajkumar, is the son of the late Kannada matinee idol Rajkumar didn’t help. Pro-Kannada organizations like the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike called for a boycott of the Haasan film, unless he tendered an unconditional apology.

Haasan refused, and Raajkamal Films International, the production company in which he is a director, opted instead to go to the Karnataka High Court seeking police protection for the film’s release.

On Tuesday, the court pulled up the filmmaker instead. “You may be Kamal Haasan, but any citizen has no right to hurt the sentiments of the masses,” Justice M. Nagaprasanna said, adding: “One apology would have solved everything… Now you have come to court seeking protection from a situation you created.”

The court did not take kindly to the filmmaker’s defence that “An apology is required where there is malice.” “That is ego… Freedom of expression cannot be stretched to hurt someone’s sentiments,” Justice Nagaprasanna said.

In a letter made public Tuesday, Haasan did express regret, but stopped short of an apology. “It pains me that my statement at the Thug Life audio launch – spoken out of genuine affection for the legendary Dr Rajkumar’s family – has been misunderstood and taken out of context,” he wrote. “Like Tamil, Kannada has a proud literary and cultural tradition that I have long admired…I never have been, nor would I ever want to, give room for public unrest and animosity.”

However, those familiar with Haasan’s public life are not surprised, with the actor who is known for his bold, unconventional and often brilliant choices on screen, bearing the same unapologetic, defiant, confident stance off it – often not the most prudent course. This is one reason his political career has been marked by several missteps.

He launched his own party, the Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM), in 2018, vowing to fight corruption, denouncing the state’s Dravidian parties, and promising a third front. A year later, the MNM contested all the seats in Tamil Nadu in the Lok Sabha elections, and while it didn’t win any, managed a decent performance in some urban areas.

In 2021, the MNM contested the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, and again didn’t win any seat, getting only 2.52% of the votes. Soon, its top leaders quit – including officers-turned-politicians from the bureaucracy to police, as well as party vice-presidents and candidates.

Among those who rebelled was Haasan’s right-hand man R Mahendran, who accused him of ignoring the grassroots and relying on “corporate-style consultants”. Haasan dismissed the exodus, likening it to removing weeds from a garden.

In 2024, Haasan hitched his party to the DMK-led ruling front in Tamil Nadu, having seemingly overcome his reservations regarding both the DMK and AIADMK being “symbols of Dravidian decline”. Now, he is set to go to the Upper House in Parliament with the DMK’s support.

V Jayadevan, a veteran linguist who was a professor of Tamil at the University of Madras, said Haasan’s logic regarding the Tamil-Kannada connection was flawed. “Proto-Dravidian is the common ancestral language from which Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam evolved. While Tamil retains many features of Proto-Dravidian, it is inaccurate to claim that Kannada emerged from Tamil. That’s a misreading,” he told The Indian Express.

Jayadevan added: “Robert Caldwell, who pioneered comparative studies of Dravidian languages, referred to Proto-Dravidian as a reconstructed, imagined linguistic system. Tamil shares more features with this proto-language, yes, but that doesn’t make it the mother of the others. These are sister languages. Both Kannada and Tamil have rich, fantastic traditions. Both have fanatics too. It’s this complex mix of brilliance and spirit that is behind language chauvinism and protests (on both sides).”

Yet, it is impossible to ignore Kamal Haasan the artiste, whose talent leapfrogged the North-South divide long before OTT came into play. A child star at age five, a dancer, director, screenwriter, producer, and an actor with, for one, more than 50 broken bones from stunts, he is known to live and breathe cinema.

Haasan’s colleagues such as Khushbu, another actor-turned-politician, calls him an “encyclopaedia of cinema”, one who spotted value in television at a time when the big stars scorned it, and one who deployed prosthetics to artistic heights.

When he ran into problems with his 2013 film Vishwaroopam, whose ambitious plot included America’s war on terror post-9/11, he followed up with an equally controversial sequel, whose spy story had a plot link to World War II. Both films turned out to be commercial successes. In 2022, Haasan’s Vikram became one of the highest-grossing Tamil films of all time, in the process rescuing him reportedly from a financial crisis.

At 70, an age at which few can boast of headlining a film even while making a political debut, Haasan perhaps believes he owes little to anybody. Even if it’s an apology.