Leena Manimekalai shares another smoking picture, reacts to row on Kaali poster

Amidst the outrage in some groups over a poster for Leena Manimekalai’s documentary Kaali, where the titular goddess is seen smoking and holding an LGBTQ+ flag, the filmmaker has shared another picture that has irked the religious right even more.

Earlier today, Manimekalai shared a picture of rustic performers dressed as Shankar and Parvati smoking on a street. She has not specified whether the image is from her film or just one she found online.

Kaali was part of the ‘Rhythms of Canada’ section at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.

Earlier this week, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activist filed a complaint against Manimekalai, accusing her of hurting religious sentiments with her poster. Soon, India's high commission in Ottawa got into the act, saying it had received complaints from several local Hindu groups and urging the organizers of ‘Rhythms of Canada’ to withdraw the poster.

Speaking to The Guardian newspaper, Manimekalai said, “In rural Tamil Nadu, the state I come from, Kaali is believed to be a pagan goddess. She eats meat cooked in goat’s blood, drinks arrack [country liquor], smokes beedi [a locally made kind of cigarette] and dances wild. That's the Kaali I had embodied for the film. I have all rights to take back my culture, traditions and texts from the fundamentalist elements. These trolls have nothing to do with religion or faith.”

The filmmaker described the trolling she has been receiving online as “grand-scale mass lynching” and said she feels threatened everywhere: “It feels like the whole nation that has now deteriorated from the largest democracy to the largest hate machine wants to censor me. I do not feel safe anywhere at this moment.”