Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] Kerala State secretary M.V. Govindan has condemned award-winning director Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s purported statement at a government-sponsored film conclave on Saturday that aspirant filmmakers hailing from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) communities, and also women, require at least “three weeks of intense” training before getting State funding for movies and documentaries.
Speaking to reporters in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday (August 5, 2025), Mr. Govindan stated that Mr. Gopalakrishnan had claimed his words at the recent cinema conclave were in good faith and subsequently misconstrued.
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“Mr. Gopalakrishnan says he did not mean them. Nonetheless, the colloquy smacked of feudal putrescence. Such discourses are an injustice to a modern, democratic and progressive society such as ours,” he said.
Mr. Govindan said Kerala had relegated the oppressive caste system, which he termed an “artificial feudal-era construct to rank human merit and assign positions in society in a prejudiced manner, to the dustbin of history.”
