Urban Naxals: The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam

by Vivek Agnihotri

Around 11 AM, I start getting several calls from unknown phone numbers. At about 11.45 AM, Anupam Kher calls me to find out why the media is calling him. He wants to know if we have any documentary evidence to substantiate that JNU indeed discriminated against our film. I brief him and mail him all the documentary evidence. By 12.30, Rahul Shivshankar of NewsX breaks the news and soon, almost all TV news channels start beaming the news on how Buddha In A Traffic Jam is stuck in the JNU jam. Calls start pouring in. News channels insist on talking to me live. Almost every channel and newspaper cover it in their headlines. Social media is abuzz with the controversy, deciding the balance of power between the left and the right. Only two channels, who have been extra vocal about JNU and the FoE issue, never mention it – Barkha Dutt’s NDTV and Rajdeep Sardesai’s India Today. Also, as expected, nobody from the film industry, not even the champions of FoE, stand up in my support.