Quote:
"There were people who loved it [Fire], and I think some in India were appalled. Nobody was indifferent to it, and that is what's fascinating. The reaction of the fundamentalists to the film could happen to anything that challenges the patriarchal society, and that was the problem with Fire. The lesbian relationship was the most obvious thing for them to hang on to. I found out in talking on panels to people from Shiv Sena [which violently opposed the screening of the film] that what really offended people was that the women have a choice: 'How dare you portray women who choose to go against the traditional ways?'"
-- Deepa Mehta

Source:
McGowan, Sharon. "Excerpts from a Master Class with Deepa Mehta." In Women Filmmakers: Refocusing, edited by Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003. (p. 288)