Hindus protest at Bombay showings of Yorkshire's own Bollywood film
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Your support makes all the difference.A Bollywood movie produced by a pair of Huddersfield pharmacists is at the centre of a political storm in Bombay after provoking an explosion of violence by Hindu extremists.
The opening of Ek Choti Si Love Story ("A Simple Love Story"), financed by chemists-turned-film-tycoons Abdul Hafiz and Afzal Khan, descended into chaos after a complaint by its leading lady triggered riots at eight of the city's 17 cinemas.
Trouble erupted after the actor Manisha Koirala objected to a finished cut of the movie in which her character, a 28-year-old woman who is lusted after by a teenage boy, was portrayed by a thinly clad body double.
Fearing the public would believe she had personally disrobed for the scene, Ms Koirala, known as "the Julia Roberts of Bollywood", applied for a court order forcing it to be removed. But when the £500,000 film was finally released last week with the disputed sequence still intact, picture houses across Bombay were besieged by activists from India's fundamentalist Shiv Sena group.
Now Messrs Hafiz and Khan, who run a string of family chemists in West Yorkshire, have withdrawn the film from the city, though it remains on release elsewhere in India and is due to appear in British cinemas later this month.
Describing the film's rocky ride, Mr Hafiz, 44, said: "The funny thing is that the scene wasn't really saucy at all by Hollywood standards. All it showed was the body double in her nightgown embracing a man with a bare chest. At one point you briefly see a pair of legs too, but that's all.
"But because the film's subject is a bit controversial, Ms Koirala was worried that people might believe the woman was her, so she took us to court. The judge ruled that it was a very well made film, the scene was in very good taste, and the film didn't really make sense without it.
"However, when she appealed to another judge, he ruled the opposite and tried to recall all the copies of the film. The trouble was that, by that time, 97 prints and 50,000 DVDs had been sent out, so it was too late."
Mr Hafiz was in Bombay when the rioting broke out. "We were outside one of the cinemas in a car observing what was going on," he said.
"It was pandemonium. We felt a bit threatened when we were in Bombay, so we ended up making a very swift exit."
Police arrested 23 activists during the riots, and are still looking for a further 45.
The two aspiring movie moguls from Yorkshire have received wide coverage in the Indian media, but Mr Hafiz is doing his best to remain stoical about the incident.
His only hope, he says, is that Ek Choti Si Love Story will encounter a rather more subdued reception when it opens in Huddersfield.
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