MISA play on Emergency torture sparks row in Kerala. MISA, a play that recounts the custodial torture and persecution suffered by activist and artist Snehalatha Reddy during the Emergency, has sparked a major social media controversy following its recent staging at the DYFI State Conference in Thrissur, Keralam.
Critics have accused the production of obscenity, objecting to certain intense and realistic scenes and costume choices. The cast, cultural figures and DYFI leaders, however, have defended the play MISA - Maintenance of Internal Security Act - as a powerful portrayal of "state terror and political repression".
Staged by Chilanka Floating Theatre, Kozhikode, at the heart of the play is Snehalatha Reddy - actor, producer, writer and activist who stood against the oppression during Emergency imposed in 1975.
The police arrested Snehalatha on May 2, 1976, and detained her under the MISA, which enabled detention without trial. She spent eight months in Bangalore Central Jail, enduring harsh prison conditions and torture.Released on parole on January 15, 1977, Snehalatha died just five days later.
"The purpose of the play has been achieved. It has reached where it needed to go," Chinnoos Chilanka, who plays the central character, said, responding to the controversy. "I will continue to come to the stage as Snehalatha Reddy, as Bilkis Bano and as others whose stories need to be told," Ms. Chilanka said.
"Those who look at only some scenes from the play through the lens of morality are trying to forget the severe persecution suffered by people during Emergency," said DYFI State secretary V.K. Sanoj.The debate is not new. Fifty years after Emergency, Kerala remains one of few states where its memory is kept alive through culture, not just politics. The play uses newspaper clippings - headlines "President Proclaims National Emergency", "Preventive Arrests: Press Censorship Imposed", "J.P., Morarji, Advani, Asok Mehta & Vajpayee arrested" - projected behind the actor to ground personal torture in state policy.
For DYFI, staging it at its state conference is political assertion: that state terror then and now must be remembered. For critics, the graphic depiction crosses a line.
But as Chilanka argues, discomfort is the point. Snehalatha Reddy, wife of poet Pattabhi Rama Reddy, was not a hardened revolutionary but a theatre artist who sheltered George Fernandes. Her custodial death became a symbol of how MISA was weaponised against civil society. To sanitise that torture in name of decency would be second erasure.