The angry mob wins

Behzti, a play considered offensive by Sikhs in Birmingham, England, has been shut down after violent demonstrations outside the theatre:

A theatre yesterday bowed to pressure from violent religious activists by cancelling the run of a play depicting rape and murder in a Sikh temple.

Two days after protesters smashed windows and tried to storm the stage at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, its executive director said that, faced with a repetition of the trouble, he could not guarantee the safety of his staff or the audience.
[...]
In the week before the opening night, the theatre had been involved in meetings with Sikh leaders. It agreed to allow them to write a statement of their objections, which was given to every member of the audience and read out prior to each performance.

However, the theatre refused to concede what the Sikhs really wanted: setting of the play away from a temple. Two days of peaceful protest were followed by the violence.

More than 80 police officers, including 30 in riot gear and dog handlers with alsatians, were drafted in to quell the trouble.

Mohan Singh, from the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Birmingham, welcomed the cancellation and said the theatre could have avoided the disturbances.

He said: "It is a very good thing that they have seen common sense on the issue but it has taken things to become violent before it happened.

"We were in negotiations with the Rep about a week ago and they did not budge.

"What precedent does this set? Will it happen again when people think peaceful protest is not going to work? Those are the answers we need." Mr Singh said he had received calls from all over the world by "outraged" Sikhs and said a decision not to cancel could have provoked bigger, more violent protests.

He rejected claims that the Sikhs were stifling free speech.

"Free speech can go so far," he said. "Maybe 5,000 people would have seen this play over the run. Are you going to upset 600,000 Sikhs in Britain and maybe 20 million outside the United Kingdom for that? Religion is a very sensitive issue and you should be extremely careful." The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, who had said the play would insult people of all faiths, said that calling it off was the "right decision" given the genuine worries about public safety. His spokesman, Peter Jenkins, said: "In the weeks leading up the play we felt very strongly that a play set in a temple would deeply offend the Sikh community.

"We did not ask for it to be cancelled but for the setting to be changed to, say, a Sikh community centre. With freedom of speech and artistic licence must come responsibility and the responsible thing to do is to change the setting."

Instead of standing up for freedom of expression, Britain's cabinet minister for "race equality" has offered little more than weasel words about how this mess is going to help the play in the long run:

A Home Office minister suggested yesterday that the violent protests that forced the cancellation of a play about Sikhs would ultimately benefit the author and the show.

Fiona Mactaggart refused to offer support for either the theatre, which came under siege, or the author, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, who is in hiding after reportedly receiving death threats.

She said that ticket sales for Behzti, a black comedy including scenes of rape and murder in a Sikh temple, would increase if the play returned to the stage because of the publicity caused by the violence.
[...]
Miss Mactaggart, the minister for race equality, said: "I don't think we will have seen the end of this play because of the protest. One of the things about protesters is that very often they create unintended consequences and I suspect that the message of the playwright will get a wider audience following this and the play might even get a new audience in another theatre.

"In my experience, very often the consequence of that [violent protests] is that the ideas of the play gain a wider audience than they would have had, had there not been such protests.

"That people feel this passionately about theatres is a good sign for our cultural life. It is a sign of a lively flourishing cultural life."

There's a kernel of truth there (The Independent printed an excerpt from the play yesterday, for example). It's also downright terrifying to see a cabinet minister trying to make excuses for an angry, violent mob - and it makes you wonder just what the Blair administration has in mind should that "religious vilification" law come into effect.

Posted by damian at December 22, 2004 07:41 AM