ZERO mak­ers want us to be­lieve that Sikhs are dumb and can­not dis­tin­guish be­tween a Katar and a Kir­pan. In re­sponse to the com­plaint of Delhi MLA and DS­GMC gen­eral sec­re­tary Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa, the Zero team has said, “Your con­cern is duly noted and we wish to re­spect­fully clar­ify that the film does not de­pict a Kir­pan. The film­mak­ers have been care­ful not to hurt the feel­ings of any com­mu­nity in­clud­ing the Sikh com­mu­nity.”

“The im­age shows a dag­ger pop­u­larly known as ‘Katar’ in the In­dian sub­con­ti­nent and is nowhere close to a ‘Kir­pan’ that car­ries the dis­tin­guished bless­ing of be­ing Khalsa.” fur­ther read the state­ment.

Re­act­ing to this, the Singh Sabha Mum­bai gen­eral sec­re­tary Man­mo­han Singh has said, “This is un­ac­cept­able. They are sim­ply try­ing to by­pass the is­sue.” The Singh Sabha has com­plained to the CBFC and has said that “This is un­ac­cept­able and an ab­solutely un­nec­es­sary af­front to the Sikhs.”

In the com­plaint, Singh Sabha gen­eral sec­re­tary has men­tioned that “Singh Sabha Mum­bai and other Sikh bod­ies have been reg­u­larly urg­ing the CBFC to ap­point a Sikh mem­ber to its body as was the prac­tice in the past, but un­for­tu­nately this has not hap­pened de­spite re­peated re­quests for this.  As much it is the fault of the movie mak­ers, it is of the CBFC, which does not carry out the nec­es­sary cuts.”

The com­plainant has fur­ther stated that, pro­ducer-di­rec­tor Aanand L. Rai had an­tag­o­nised the Sikhs for the movie Man­marziyan also.

Singh Sabha Mum­bai has sought dele­tion of the ob­jec­tion­able scene and asked the CBFC to re­call its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion till the dele­tion is done.

As Sikhs take um­brage to the is­sue, an ad­vo­cate from Mum­bai -Am­rit­pal Singh Khalsa has pe­ti­tioned the Bom­bay High Court and the mat­ter is likely to come up soon. The pe­ti­tion says, “The of­fi­cial poster of the Zero Film is Blas­phe­mous in na­ture and its re­lease has re­sulted on di­rect at­tack on fun­da­men­tal rights of the pe­ti­tioner so too Sikh pop­u­la­tion at large.”

 Also Read: Shah Rukh Khan’s ZERO in­sults Kir­pan, Sikhs an­gry

The pe­ti­tion fur­ther says that, “The Kir­pan which is most im­por­tant in­te­gral part of faith in Sikh Re­li­gion has been scorned to the least limit, for every Gur­sikh or Am­rit­d­hari Sikh five ar­ti­cles viz Kir­pan, Kachera, Kanga, Kada, Kesh are of ut­most im­por­tance, a Gur­sikh or Am­rit­d­hari Sikh will even lay down his/​her life in de­fend­ing the Ar­ti­cles of faith but will never ever com­pro­mise on the dig­nity on the 5 Ar­ti­cles of faith.”

It fur­ther elab­o­rates that, The word “Kir­pan” (Gur­mukhi: ਕਿਰਪਾਨ ) has two roots – the first root is: Kirpa (ਕਿਰਪਾ ) which means “Mercy, grace, com­pas­sion, kind­ness” and the sec­ond root is Aan (ਆਨ ) which in turn means “Ho­n­our, grace, dig­nity”.

Re­spond­ing to the oft-re­peated ar­gu­ment that “it is just a movie”, the pe­ti­tioner seeks an an­swer from the court on the count, “Can an ar­ti­cle of faith hav­ing ut­most im­por­tance in a par­tic­u­lar re­li­gious be­lief be gim­micked for pub­lic amuse­ment?”

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Am­rit­pal Singh Khal­sa’s pe­ti­tion is against Shah Rukh Khan, pro­duc­ers Gauri Khan, Karuna Bad­wal, di­rec­tor Aanand L Rai, Dis­trib­u­tors Red Chill­ies En­ter­tain­ments, pub­lic­ity chan­nels YouTube Space Mum­bai, Twit­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Google In­dia and the chair­per­son and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Cen­tral Board of Film Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and seeks the im­me­di­ate with­drawal of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is­sued to the film and if it not has been cer­ti­fied, the ap­proval may be granted only af­ter the ob­jec­tion­able scenes are deleted and the poster is fully with­drawn from all of­fline and on­line plat­forms.

Mum­bai, 7 No­vem­ber 2018, WSN News Bu­reau