Arts - the voice of true living values, says Deepa Mehta

"All art is political" - Deepa Mehta, the famous filmmaker, used this famous quote of Tony Morrison to swear affirmatively at New Delhi. She affirms that all artists around the world will never stop struggling to achieve freedom of speech, strive for not being succumbed by "self-censorship."

The films of Mehta always receive the great support from the audiences including Earth, Fire and Water. Especially, Fire and Water have caused dissenting arguments in India.

According to PTI, Mehta's point of view is that artists will always struggle for freedom of speech. If there's no conflict, we'll easy to forget the importance of freedom of speech. Fighting for something is the right way to realize how important it is. Also, she emphasizes that this fight possibly have no end.

Whereas some artists are ready to create a fight to raise their voice and express their feeling through what they did on their art, the others may have enough big fear to prevent themselves from doing so.

Mehta claims that artists have awareness of their scare. This scare may come from the climate. I don't mean to support self-censorship, I do know that there's tragic inside it. However, I also do know that the creation of art doesn’t have the purpose of making trouble.

In addition, no one dares to quote a statement which helps to solve these problems and put himself in unexpected controversy.

Today, at this moment, a woman raises her voice to clamp down independent voices and a culture of intolerance. Mehta emphasizes that art and culture play an extremely essential role in our times.

She added that it's not the times for solving the controversy. It's the times for reflecting what is really happening in our society through writing and film making. The writers and the filmmakers are going in the right ways. They provide us with the true value of society with the right tools. Therefore, we should watch, read and listen to what the society is saying and happening.

This is the public speech of the director on the sidelines of the inaugural JCB Prize for Literature. Here is the place she honored the ten most outstanding novels of the year.

Besides, Mehta, together with other members in jury council read more than 60 Indian books and over 15,000 pages.

Mehta excitingly said that there're a large number of works relating to ecology, history, especially mythology. Our generation is highly concerned with the situation we're involving now, culture or politics. Especially, there's many authors express their concern for humanity.

After reading, the jury will choose from these ten novels five outstanding works. The authors of these works will receive the final award of Rs 25 lakhs on October 27.

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