On May 3, 1955, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, at its Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India exhibition, screened a film titled The Story of Apu and Durga, later to be titled Pather Panchali or Song of the Little Road. It was well received, although it ran without subtitles.

This May 3, Satyajit Ray’s cinema turns 70. The maestro, incidentally, would have turned 104 on May 2.

If he were alive and still making movies, the most pressing question he would have faced could very likely be about his faith and spirituality. We live in a time of resurgent, assertive Hindutva and a highly reactive Islam. It is a time, ironically, like many of his movies, of black and white.

The maestro would be pressed to take a side.

It is not that he did not face that question during his lifetime. There had been a shrill crescendo of protests after his Devi (The Goddess) released in 1960. The movie is about a young woman who is tragically and almost forcibly elevated to divinity after her father-in-law dreams about her being the incarnation of the goddess.

Hindu conservatives were also furious when Ray’s Ganashatru (Enemy of the People) portrayed how the holy water or “charanamrita" got contaminated because of official corruption and apathy, endangering thousands of lives.

The narrative that Ray was unfairly critical of Hinduness got traction because of his Brahmo faith, a reformist and so-called “progressive" tributary of Sanatan Dharma, pioneered by Raja Ram Mohan........

© News18