‘We don’t want freedom from Brahmanvad,' says film director and right-wing Twitter activist

On Friday Vivek Agnihotri’s film Buddha in a Traffic Jam was screened at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. The filmmaker, along with actor Anupam Kher – who appears in the film – spoke at the University’s campus on the current debate around nationalism and azaadi.

Agnihotri, who maintains a high profile as a right-wing activist on Twitter, says (video above), “I can guarantee you that no boy in any Indian university knows what Manuvad is.” (He uses the word “ladka”, excluding women students.)

Agnihotri adds, “Manuvad talks about varna and not caste, so a Brahmin can become a Shudra and vice versa. Which is a different matter."

And if that's not enough, Agnihotri caps it with: “We don’t want freedom from Brahmanism because that has led to the upliftment of this country."

A report in MidDay, quoting Agnihotri, says that he wrote the film “a few years ago when he was disturbed by the way a nexus of professors-intellectuals-NGOs and Naxalites was brainwashing students and using them as ‘intellectual terrorists’”.

In light of the debate over the necessity of using the phrase "Bharat Mata ki jai", Agnihotri tweeted this:

Anupam Kher also spoke at the University. In the clip below a student asks him about the depiction of an ugly face for the radical left in the film, but not for the radical right. Kher’s answer: “I am sure you have a lot of financier friends, you make a film against the RSS.”