Popular Dubbing Artiste Shankar Protests Against Dubbed Films in Kannada, Calls It a Fight For Pride

Bengaluru: He is one of south India’s most well-known dubbing artistes, having dubbed his voice for over 4,000 films in a career spanning 30 years. He has won the ‘Nandi’ award of the (former) Andhra Pradesh government eight times, and one Tamil Nadu State award for his voice-overs. Dubbing his voice for different languages has been bread, butter and jam since 1986 for P Ravi Shankar.

And yet, this week, Shankar found voice to join the protest against dubbed films in Kannada at the demonstrations held by Kannada activist groups in Bengaluru. So what makes a dubbing artiste hit back at his own daal-roti? It’s a fight for the pride of Kannada films, he says.

“I am ready to face anything for the pride of Kannada film industry, as I wanted to take a stand in this issue. As a senior dubbing artiste who has worked all over India, I would say I am strictly against dubbing films, and, moreover, there are no Mahabharata or Ramayana kind of movies that are to be dubbed. Everything comes with the same commercial formulae,” says the veteran.

Since Friday, March 3, Bengaluru and other towns have been besieged by random protests against dubbing of non-Kannada films into Kannada. The protests have been triggered by the release of Satyadev IPS a Kannada dubbed film of the Ajith-starrer Tamil film Yennai Arindhal.

It was the first big-ticket dubbed film getting released after over 50 years – when an unwritten ‘ban’ on dubbing has been practised across Kannada films and television serials. Films and serials have only been ‘remade’ in Kannada, never dubbed, since 1962 when Kannada groups launched a rather protectionist battle against dubbing. The Competition Commission of India had, two years back, shunned this ban on dubbing, upholding the right of the viewer to watch programmes in the language of his choice.

An earlier feeble attempt at a dubbed movie being released in mid-2016 went by almost unnoticed, as it wasn’t a big name.

Satyadev IPS however, was to be released on Friday at 40 theatres. Protests by Kannada groups stalled its release in most theatres, the film finally making it to just nine screens. The film’s distributors hope to extend this to at least ten more theatres this Friday, but prominent actors like Darshan and Jaggesh have joined the anti-brigade rallies this week.

Surprising then, that a dubbing artiste too would join such a rally. And yet, Ravi Shankar did just that, batting for the ban on dubbing.

“I can’t take things lightly, as non-Kannada films especially films of big stars like Pawan Kalyan, Rajnikanth, Ajith and Vijay are being bought by distributors for maximum number of screens. This is affecting the growth of Kannada films,” he says, in an interview with News18.com.

Shankar, who has worked in the Kannada, Tamil and Telugu industries, says Kannada films are passing through a crucial phase, battling competition from other industries in the next few weeks. As such, there aren’t enough theatres willing to screen local movies.

“Other (non-Kannada) movies make huge revenues, and Karnataka viewers play a major role in their profits. In addition to the profits they make in their language, why do they want their films to be dubbed and released again? Then Kannada films will go into more losses,” Shankar says.

Born in Andhra, he grew up in Chennai but feels Karnataka is a place that embraces people from all other States who come here for a livelihood.

Asked about the argument from the pro-dubbing campaigners who say Kannada kids are deprived of good educational programmes in channels like History or NatGeo, purely because they may not understand other languages, Shankar says Kannadiga kids ‘don’t need’ such programmes. “We have enough number of education television programmes in Kannada that have been made over the last two decades. We don’t need dubbed cartoons or programmes for our children,” he argues.