Behzti Closes at Birmingham Theatre after Sikh Protests

Gurpeet Kaur Bhatti is a Sikh woman who lives in the UK. She’s a playwright of some promise as well. Her first play Behsharam (“Shameless” in English) was a commercial and critical success when it played at The Door in Birmingham and the Soho Theatre in London. She also has a feature film coming out called Pound Shop Boys, and she’s written for the soap East Enders. One would think the leaders of Britain’s Sikh community would be out in force to support her new play Behzti in its run at the Birmingham Rep. Saturday night, they were out in force, instead, protesting her work. Windows were broken, the police evacuated the theatre, and the play has closed. How appropriate that Behzti translates as “dishonor.”

The play is billed as a “black comedy depicting murder and sex abuse taking place in a fictional Sikh temple,” among other things. Apparently, the 400 or so Sikhs outside the theatre Saturday didn’t see the funny side of things. But since the play itself ran only a few nights, only a fraction of Birmingham’s 60,000 Sikhs could have seen it. A fair bet would be that not one of the protesters had seen the play before complaining about it. So, this is likely a protest of the uninformed.

All the same, the British religious community has circled the wagons to bash the thespians. Birmingham’s Roman Catholic Archbishop, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, said, "In recent weeks, the Sikh community has acted in a reasonable and measured way in representing their deep concerns to the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. I regret that the Repertory Theatre, in the interests of the common good, has not been more responsive. Such a deliberate, even if fictional, violation of the sacred place of the Sikh religion demeans the sacred places of every religion." With all due respect to the Archbishop of Birmingham, bullshit. But his group has a vested interest in keeping artists from talking about priests and altar boys anyway.

Here’s where free speech comes up against civility and respect for others. Ms. Bhatti, first of all, is not attacking someone else’s religion, but rather her own religious leaders and the portion of community of which she is a part that supports them. A white-skinned Anglican has the same right, but the point is that she might just have some extra experience that makes her criticism all the more valid. And Sikhism is the fifth most popular religion in the world, so the complaints of one woman in Britain are not likely to undermine it. Moreover, she did not voice her criticism in the temple disrupting religious activities. Rather, she said what she had to say at the theatre. As the director of the National Theatre Nicholas Hytner said,

The Western theatre was invented in Athens precisely to put on stage feelings that were too dangerous to experience in real life. Works of the imagination are designed to provoke powerful feelings. Through the theatre, those feelings are exorcised. The giving of offense, the causing of offense, is part of our business.