Saswat Blog
All that's Left!
Lage Raho Munna Bhai: The Mahatma Strikes Back!
By Saswat Pattanayak
Well, some news is actually good!
Like the news that Munna Bhai is back with his friend Circuit to the silver screen! In an unflinching tribute to his beloved late father Sunil Dutt, who is much missed in this brilliant sequel, Sanjay Dutt has made more than acting come alive. Writer-Director Raju Hirani has once again excelled in popularizing the conventionally absurd, eulogizing the most susceptible, and sketching raw feelings with innate deftness of a master filmmaker.
None of the Mumbai films released this year made much sense this year, with the sole exception of Madhur Bhandarkar’s Corporate, which dealt with feminism’s oppositional intersection with capitalism in a profoundly relevant manner. And in fact, all the rest of the flicks this year, were disastrous experience for someone who has grown up admiring Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt when it comes to Hindi film industry. In fact, the much touted movies like Kunaal Kohli’s Fanaa, and Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna were so pathetic that they deserve entry into the Bollywood Hall of Shame.
Before rushing to ImaginAsian theater, I had a sneak review of Lage Raho Munna Bhai, which did not say much (actually Jason Buchanan got the film’s plot wrong).
Moreover, the film really caught me off guard with introduction of Mahatma Gandhi, considering that with the exception of Kamal Hassan’s Hey Ram (2000), none of the recent movies have treated the Mahatma in a worthy light. In fact, the current crops of Hindi film industry directors have developed some sort of an obsession with making films ridiculing Gandhi and his ideals. So when Munna Bhai got Gandhi as his conscience keeper, it was alarming in the beginning. Indeed, in a scene, Munna came to practice “Gandhi-giri”, and rather displayed some of his own brand of “Dadagiri” to get things done. But as the movie proceeded, there were more complex crossroads between theory and practice that easily left anyone with a deep impression for appreciation.
Just like its predecessor, Munna Bhai MBBS, which radically destroyed the halo around the unholy medicos, this film while actually glorifying the academia, also does its bit to sensitize the fact that no knowledge is good, if it’s not shared. In a bitter way, it denounces the academic elitism of the ivory towers, and the gross arrogance characteristics of the ‘educated’ class, which apathetically witnesses powerful Godmen get away with superstitious spells, and takes active part in promoting such belief structures. It goes even to an extent of patronizing the Marxist analysis of history which is based on mass, not iconic struggles. When an elite history professor flaunts his knowledge on Gandhi, Circuit offers him a slice of his knowledge: history of the misguided youths.
Skillfully done, even the most ardent Gandhian would derive immense pleasure from the absolutely riveting portrayal of the Mahatma. On the flip, devoid of the Kamal Hassan sophistication in filming the Gandhian methods, Lage Raho Munna Bhai may have ended up simplifying Gandhi albeit a bit too much. But looking from the perspective of someone who equates October 2 with a ‘dry day’, the lessons from history is very well learnt with the vulnerabilities and humility intact.
Sunil Dutt legacy:
Lage Raho Munna Bhai has unforgettable moments of Sanjay becoming a radio personality first, to woo his love, then to spread Gandhian messages, and finally to win back his love. One can only recall that Sunil Dutt indeed began his career as a famous radio personality on Radio Ceylon hosting an extremely popular “Lipton Ki Mehfil” in early 1950’s.
Beyond the obvious, Sunil Dutt would have continued to be proud of his son Sanjay, who has been in the past variously accused in aiding of terrorism cases. Like a statesman of high caliber and integrity that his father was while contesting polls from Mumbai, Sanjay Dutt has always silenced his apprehensive critics through his commitment to social justice instead. Sanjay’s unwavering allegiance to his father’s legacy can be traced in movies of his later career. A little known film “Tathastu” made this year starring Sanjay Dutt also reflects the father-son relationship at most beautiful junctions.
Sunil Dutt and his wife Nargis (Fatima Rashid) were widely known as brilliant leading stars for some of the finest Hindi cinemas of yesteryears. But the part that they have most inspired Sanjay with were their commitment to peoples’ causes. Nargis whose progressive works were well known was nominated to Rajya Sabha by Indira Gandhi herself. And Sunil Dutt, through his commitment to carry on the tasks that Nargis had left behind, joined politics in later part of his career. Contesting from Congress ticket would not have come easy for someone in Mumbai, the stronghold of right-wing Hindu fanatic bosses who continue to have a hold over film industry operatives. And yet, Dutt through sheer dedication in his various involvements at grassroots levels, won from his constituency for five terms and passed away while being at office. Not as a successful politician, rather as a conscientious objector and a secular progressive activist, Sunil Dutt liked to live his life.
Whereas right-wing hawkish Indian political leadership celebrated India’s nuclear state status, it should be remembered that Sunil Dutt went from Nagasaki to Hiroshima in order to condemn nuclear weapons. During Punjab crisis, despite anti-Congress wave, he walked 2000 km with his daughter and others from Mumbai to Amritsar in order to plead for peace. At a time when the country was enamored with being declared a superpower (a kind of ‘dadagiri’ if you may) in the making, Dutt traveled through the entire South Asian region in a peace expedition called “Hands Across the Borders”. More importantly, when Babri Masjid was demolished by the Hindu brigade in 1993, Sunil Dutt resigned from his seat as a Member of Parliament, in an exemplary gesture against the communal politicians. Such was the legacy of Sunil Dutt who led his entire political life fighting the communal elements spreading hate and religious intolerance. A peacenik, secularist, progressive politician, and a relentless campaigner in care for cancer and HIV/AIDS affected.
A lesson worth reliving:
Amidst the much mushroomed Bollywood movie scene that proclaims individualistic love, worse, individualistic infidelities, (of the Karan Johar and Mahesh Bhatt variety), misplaced history lessons of free market youths (like Rang De Basanti, hastily made films about Bhagat Singh), of inundated Diasporic cinema of regressive value (Deepa Mehta range of Fire and Water), of sheer reactionary brand of patriotism (Fanaa, Sarfarosh, Border etc), one has to pause awhile and watch Lage Raho Munna Bhai for whatever it has to offer. Its not just principles of Ahimsa and Satyagraha that rejuvenates the undoubtedly best film of this year, but also the fact that anyone in the world can be a Mahatma, and indeed many already are Mahatmas through their committed lives for the sake of others. These Mahatmas are ordinary people like Munna and Circuit who even reform themselves to incorporate Gandhi’s talisman which behooves on us to take steps for the poorest of the poor and to behave appropriately to bring happiness in lives of people we otherwise consider ‘lower’ than us.
For a generation of Indians who take fancy in opposing reservation policies for the oppressed class of people, for those youths who take great pride in their ‘superior’ religions and ‘higher’ castes; for those youths who take pride in their ‘high culture’ sophistication in pursuing ‘cleaner’ high society life, those who gloat in their higher ‘merit’ academic lifestyles, and for those arrogant and innocent and cool and the chic, Lage Raho Munna Bhai will probably provide the greatest lesson of life. This film is the quintessence of the Marx and the Mahatma.
A must-see. A must-felt movie.
Well, some news is actually good!
Like the news that Munna Bhai is back with his friend Circuit to the silver screen! In an unflinching tribute to his beloved late father Sunil Dutt, who is much missed in this brilliant sequel, Sanjay Dutt has made more than acting come alive. Writer-Director Raju Hirani has once again excelled in popularizing the conventionally absurd, eulogizing the most susceptible, and sketching raw feelings with innate deftness of a master filmmaker.
None of the Mumbai films released this year made much sense this year, with the sole exception of Madhur Bhandarkar’s Corporate, which dealt with feminism’s oppositional intersection with capitalism in a profoundly relevant manner. And in fact, all the rest of the flicks this year, were disastrous experience for someone who has grown up admiring Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt when it comes to Hindi film industry. In fact, the much touted movies like Kunaal Kohli’s Fanaa, and Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna were so pathetic that they deserve entry into the Bollywood Hall of Shame.
Before rushing to ImaginAsian theater, I had a sneak review of Lage Raho Munna Bhai, which did not say much (actually Jason Buchanan got the film’s plot wrong).
Moreover, the film really caught me off guard with introduction of Mahatma Gandhi, considering that with the exception of Kamal Hassan’s Hey Ram (2000), none of the recent movies have treated the Mahatma in a worthy light. In fact, the current crops of Hindi film industry directors have developed some sort of an obsession with making films ridiculing Gandhi and his ideals. So when Munna Bhai got Gandhi as his conscience keeper, it was alarming in the beginning. Indeed, in a scene, Munna came to practice “Gandhi-giri”, and rather displayed some of his own brand of “Dadagiri” to get things done. But as the movie proceeded, there were more complex crossroads between theory and practice that easily left anyone with a deep impression for appreciation.
Just like its predecessor, Munna Bhai MBBS, which radically destroyed the halo around the unholy medicos, this film while actually glorifying the academia, also does its bit to sensitize the fact that no knowledge is good, if it’s not shared. In a bitter way, it denounces the academic elitism of the ivory towers, and the gross arrogance characteristics of the ‘educated’ class, which apathetically witnesses powerful Godmen get away with superstitious spells, and takes active part in promoting such belief structures. It goes even to an extent of patronizing the Marxist analysis of history which is based on mass, not iconic struggles. When an elite history professor flaunts his knowledge on Gandhi, Circuit offers him a slice of his knowledge: history of the misguided youths.
Skillfully done, even the most ardent Gandhian would derive immense pleasure from the absolutely riveting portrayal of the Mahatma. On the flip, devoid of the Kamal Hassan sophistication in filming the Gandhian methods, Lage Raho Munna Bhai may have ended up simplifying Gandhi albeit a bit too much. But looking from the perspective of someone who equates October 2 with a ‘dry day’, the lessons from history is very well learnt with the vulnerabilities and humility intact.
Sunil Dutt legacy:
Lage Raho Munna Bhai has unforgettable moments of Sanjay becoming a radio personality first, to woo his love, then to spread Gandhian messages, and finally to win back his love. One can only recall that Sunil Dutt indeed began his career as a famous radio personality on Radio Ceylon hosting an extremely popular “Lipton Ki Mehfil” in early 1950’s.
Beyond the obvious, Sunil Dutt would have continued to be proud of his son Sanjay, who has been in the past variously accused in aiding of terrorism cases. Like a statesman of high caliber and integrity that his father was while contesting polls from Mumbai, Sanjay Dutt has always silenced his apprehensive critics through his commitment to social justice instead. Sanjay’s unwavering allegiance to his father’s legacy can be traced in movies of his later career. A little known film “Tathastu” made this year starring Sanjay Dutt also reflects the father-son relationship at most beautiful junctions.
Sunil Dutt and his wife Nargis (Fatima Rashid) were widely known as brilliant leading stars for some of the finest Hindi cinemas of yesteryears. But the part that they have most inspired Sanjay with were their commitment to peoples’ causes. Nargis whose progressive works were well known was nominated to Rajya Sabha by Indira Gandhi herself. And Sunil Dutt, through his commitment to carry on the tasks that Nargis had left behind, joined politics in later part of his career. Contesting from Congress ticket would not have come easy for someone in Mumbai, the stronghold of right-wing Hindu fanatic bosses who continue to have a hold over film industry operatives. And yet, Dutt through sheer dedication in his various involvements at grassroots levels, won from his constituency for five terms and passed away while being at office. Not as a successful politician, rather as a conscientious objector and a secular progressive activist, Sunil Dutt liked to live his life.
Whereas right-wing hawkish Indian political leadership celebrated India’s nuclear state status, it should be remembered that Sunil Dutt went from Nagasaki to Hiroshima in order to condemn nuclear weapons. During Punjab crisis, despite anti-Congress wave, he walked 2000 km with his daughter and others from Mumbai to Amritsar in order to plead for peace. At a time when the country was enamored with being declared a superpower (a kind of ‘dadagiri’ if you may) in the making, Dutt traveled through the entire South Asian region in a peace expedition called “Hands Across the Borders”. More importantly, when Babri Masjid was demolished by the Hindu brigade in 1993, Sunil Dutt resigned from his seat as a Member of Parliament, in an exemplary gesture against the communal politicians. Such was the legacy of Sunil Dutt who led his entire political life fighting the communal elements spreading hate and religious intolerance. A peacenik, secularist, progressive politician, and a relentless campaigner in care for cancer and HIV/AIDS affected.
A lesson worth reliving:
Amidst the much mushroomed Bollywood movie scene that proclaims individualistic love, worse, individualistic infidelities, (of the Karan Johar and Mahesh Bhatt variety), misplaced history lessons of free market youths (like Rang De Basanti, hastily made films about Bhagat Singh), of inundated Diasporic cinema of regressive value (Deepa Mehta range of Fire and Water), of sheer reactionary brand of patriotism (Fanaa, Sarfarosh, Border etc), one has to pause awhile and watch Lage Raho Munna Bhai for whatever it has to offer. Its not just principles of Ahimsa and Satyagraha that rejuvenates the undoubtedly best film of this year, but also the fact that anyone in the world can be a Mahatma, and indeed many already are Mahatmas through their committed lives for the sake of others. These Mahatmas are ordinary people like Munna and Circuit who even reform themselves to incorporate Gandhi’s talisman which behooves on us to take steps for the poorest of the poor and to behave appropriately to bring happiness in lives of people we otherwise consider ‘lower’ than us.
For a generation of Indians who take fancy in opposing reservation policies for the oppressed class of people, for those youths who take great pride in their ‘superior’ religions and ‘higher’ castes; for those youths who take pride in their ‘high culture’ sophistication in pursuing ‘cleaner’ high society life, those who gloat in their higher ‘merit’ academic lifestyles, and for those arrogant and innocent and cool and the chic, Lage Raho Munna Bhai will probably provide the greatest lesson of life. This film is the quintessence of the Marx and the Mahatma.
A must-see. A must-felt movie.
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Rang De Basanti: The Neo-Colonial Success Story
By Saswat Pattanayak
Rang De Basanti, the biggest movie to come out of Bollywood in years is a landmark in Indian cinema history. It created records on its revenue collections in the opening week at least in 10 cities. On the opening weekend it made a phenomenal $4.79 million. In the UK alone, after its fourth weekend it raked in GBP 700,000. In India, some theatres had to start a 6am show just for this instant blockbuster!
A commercial success of a cinema does not reflect its artistic values. Indeed money-spinners are not known for their social-realism value either. But going by the critics and their almost undisputed claims about the stature of this movie as both an eye-candy and an old warrior, I am unflinchingly affected. My close friends and associates back in India have been urging me to watch the film, few have narrated how much they are shaken out of their shell from watching this film, some have even told me in jest that it was as good as what Nirvana was supposed to be.
The more thoughtful ones might contemplate over the subtle genius that is at work in a movie that’s both here and there, both happy and sad, both anti Gandhi, and anti-rightists. They will even, as a reviewer above states, gloat over the fact that here is finally a movie not meant for the “aam-junta”!
My Take:
True, this movie was not produced for the “aam-junta”. Its elitist bias is evident reel after reel, and this is something that could have made the audience throw up. But it turns out that the ‘educated’ class of India is far more eager to dissociate itself from the aam-junta (the masses) and this movie provides just the outlet.
I full agree with the reviewer’s comments that this is a movie that’s about Bhagat Singh and his comrades and yet it actually produces an effect that creates a class society of the elites and the masses! I also agree that here is a film that reminds people of their forgotten patriotism, that makes them call Gandhi names, and lets them think they don’t have to be the part of the silent majority!
Ironic, but if we read between the lines, we can get the essence of such a film that clearly creates an intellectual division, it rouses people to abandon the silent majority, it definitely takes a stand in favor of the “thinking elites”. And in doing so, the movie does an irreparable damage to the young generation’s worldview.
Postcolonial Ignorance:
Rang De Basanti, in my humble opinion, is one of the most uncritical movies ever made on postcolonial India. It not only centers around a bunch of disoriented well-to-do youths, it even normalizes them as representative of the Indian youths in general. In doing so, the focus is again exactly in line of the commercial Bollywood ideology: the privileged class as the representative voice. In doing so, it silences the majority effectively ( hence, there is nothing called a ‘silent majority’ by default, films like this which focuses on the ‘model minority’ class actually creates and perpetuates the concept of a silent majority). So its not that after the movie, people do not want to be part of the silent majority, its just that the movie has made them the vocal minority now. As vocal minority they do not want to carry on an agenda with the silent majority. What a smudge.
In the post-1947 period India has treaded more on the colonial roadmap than on the sweet will of a majority population. The colonial roadmap is one that’s founded on the British-gifted bureaucratic structure that continues to hunt to this date, but yet it forms the minority elite class in India. The majority of people of India are largely disgruntled, frustrated, angry and never silent. It’s just that their voices are never heard on the media, press and film industry owned by greedy industrialists and producers. These myth makers then go on to form the core of Bollywood thought control industry. As a result RDB focuses on an elite minority in few cities who actually bike around and booze late into nights at campfired elite colleges, and supposes these are worth the screenings. That there is nothing wrong with being rich and spoilt (I still don’t understand why rich kids are called ‘spoilt’ with a wink, instead of being called as ‘horrible greedy money launderers’, with scorn), indeed when the aam-junta could not pass the screening test, the rich kids end up giving best of their lives.
A clear case of ignorance of the director lets the film center around only the ‘educated’ youths who despise education. The truth is a huge majority of students in India still are poor strugglers for a decent education through sheer willpower. The problem is we are so enamored by the exceptions (as they appear newsworthy) that we forget the rules. And our commercial film directors have invariably always focused on the exceptions as the desirable rules so that it draws attention (the shock factor and sensation sells).
To sum it, Rang De Basanti, is not reflective of the Indian youth. It may be valid only in case of some educated drunkards in big cities who in fast career fascination or in idolization of pep culture might have preferred to say ‘Who Bhagat Singh’? And the media by playing on this cliché has almost turned it into an irrefutable truth that people now find easy to identify with. As a pointer, just look at any annual Independence Day issue of India Today and Outlook magazines, where the lousy reporters go interview some students of Hindu College or Lady Sri Ram and then conclude that Indian youths do not know what happened in 1942 or what was the real name of Mahatma Gandhi. And mind you, these magazines sell for this enlightenment piece—to resonate/reassure either an ‘oh at least I know’ or ‘see, I told you, I am not alone’ feeling. Rang De Basanti follows this extremely conventional model. And the students then think “its hip not to know about Gandhi—after all he was such a failure, omigosh!” Needless to say, to fight Gandhi, the media have now got Bhagat Singh, not as a anti-religious, communist hero, but quite the contrary, a business brand for the coke generation that wants an “instant young handsome trigger-happy Gandhi-basher”. Most of the things being projected about Bhagat Singh in the media is factually inaccurate and painful, yet Bollywood goes on cashing his name as it is cashing Emraan Hashmi’s serial kisses.
Colonial Amnesia:
Let’s presuppose that no Indian youth actually thought twice about the martyrs. Now, after our British lady explains their sacrifices, what do the young converts have to say? “My dear Sue, what the f**k was your grandfather doing on our land?” Hell, no. Not even a sentiment remotely connected to anti-British feeling has been expressed, which they should have logically said. To much cheer, they plan, the murder of a corrupt defense minister…
Naturally, they did not air the anti-imperial, anti-colonial speeches of Bhagat Singh. Else the well-meaning Mehra could not have made a ‘universally appealing’ movie that could rake in million pounds in the United Kingdom! In the face of a lip-treated critic of British rule, this constant fascination with Britain is one of the most shameful produce to have come out of the Bollywood garbage can. Exactly in line with all those Hindi movies where the actresses proudly flaunt Union Jack on their tops and denims to dance around the trees and clubs, this movie ends up almost glorifying a British filmmaker. The white woman in the movie is the only character without a fault. She is the only one who apparently knows everything about Indian history. She is the one who informs the Indian youths about what their history was. In the face of indifference of the youths, she is the one to remind them of Indian freedom struggle. And nowhere does she draw a critic of the British Empire as the most ghastly episode in India’s history that has left behind a culturally rich society of India as a today’s English speaking paupers’ call center den.
Nowhere has she felt that she is the opportunistic researcher taking her participants into a ride she has no control over, by creating inspired terrorists out of them. If Mehra would have studied how the classical anthropologists from the West have historically traveled to India to study and civilize their hostile “tribes” who were of course systematically oppressed by the former’s ruling classes, then he would have thought twice before hiring a British actress to educate the Indian youths.
The grander narrative of the white rescuing the brown from the brown has been such an overplayed theme since the days of the Raj, that to see a similar theme after all these years is at its best a despised déjà vu.
The Essentialism Fallacy:
Not only the Indian youths never question the postcolonial roadmap, they are depicted to be wise when they plan to attack the elected representatives in power, and when they die, they are shown as parallel to the freedom martyrs. Nothing could be more absurd than this. It’s not the violence which is a problem here. Indeed no revolution in the world has been non-violent in nature. But no revolution is based on murdering of few oppressors either. The sacrifices Bhagat Singh had made was part of a constant struggle against the imperialists. Historically at that point it was required that he had his revolutionary thoughts recorded well in the court of law so that more organized efforts could take place. He formed left wing political platform to recruit people, to train them, to disseminate Lenin’s speeches among them. He drafted future constitution for an independent India of his dreams, with lots of careful planning. To sensitize people about the need of revolution and to sow the seeds methodically is the mantra of the martyrs everywhere, so that the fruits of their labor won’t go waste. This is what Che Guevara did, or nearer home, this is what Safdar Hashmi did. They educated the people wherever they went. They organized and they agitated them. That is cardinal to revolution.
But to call a popcorn film that waits for suspense at the end where solution comes in form of murders, as a revolutionary cinema, is an insult to the concept of revolution. It’s an insult to the concept of social realism or socialist realism cinemas. If it had to glorify Bhagat Singh et al, the intention was noble. But at the same breadth to glorify a British filmmaker, and some inspired terrorists, is a shame in the name of politically sensible cinema. For the records, Bhagat Singh had flatly refused to accommodate any person who was describing his/her self as belonging to any religion, be it Hinduism or Islam, or Sikhism etc. He had flatly refused entry of any British into his party (just like Malcolm X had refused the Whites, not because he suspected them all the time, but because he did not want to waste time after exceptions, when he had the rules with him). Bhagat Singh had categorically differentiated his philosophy from the philosophy of terrorism and acts of violence. He had always denounced the terrorists as counter-revolutionary. A revolutionary does not kill to eliminate. Revolutionaries kill to replace structures. They plan well ahead like Castro did, they organize mass scale taking the “aam-junta” into account like Mao did, they help the needy people through social activism like Black Panthers did. The heroes of Rang De Basanti were neither of these. And that’s why they are a shame. And hence, at the least, Bhagat Singh would be deeply shocked to see a British woman filming his legacy using these useless parasites as substitutes, if he were to visit today.
The Gunga Din Factor:
Remember Gunga Din story by the racist Kipling. In the movie produced in 1939, the British colonialists face tribal uprising in India. Of course tribal are the savages who were being “civilized” by the British. The British soldiers were well meaning, humorous, and full of life (just like our Sue in RDB). And the tribal are the ignorant and arrogant. So on every occasion the British used their fists to knock some brains into the tribal, the audience had a good time. (Just like the audition session in the RDB where none of the Indians could follow Sue, and everyone failed to speak out “Inquilab Zindabad” correctly and it led the audience on a roar.) And when one of the Indians then betrayed his fellow people and sacrificed his life so that his people could be defeated, the audience was all moved! Bertolt Brecht, the soul of the great peoples’ theatres said: “Throughout, Indians were considered as primitive creatures, either comic or wicked: comic when loyal to the British, and wicked when hostile.”
Such was the power of colonial, propagandist cinema that moved people back those days. Such continues to be its power that we feel enlightened by British education still, and ashamed of identifying with our “aam junta.” Instead of finding out the root cause (that’s called radicalism—going to the roots) of the corruption and poverty in Indian society—which is largely due to the irreversed British power structure, we hopelessly cheer a group of idiots who go and kill an element of the society (that’s called fanaticism—kill the personal enemy at all costs). RDB is disturbing, to say the least, for it proposes a solution to the audience—a so-called solution that’s dangerously counterproductive.
People need to know that it’s not the nature of George Fernandez that leads him to do business with the coffins of the air force officers, or the inseparable trait of the BJP to buy cracked weapons from Russia. And it’s not going to change if we just go kill the defense minister or murder a couple of rightists. That’s reactionary action—an action the ruling class is quite adept at exercising to rule over us (think awhile, the defense minister in the movie would have just killed these people—like the government of India eventually did)..These solitary murders at such arbitrary phases of anger do not maketh a revolution of any nature. A systematic, methodical overthrow of the current bureaucratic structure and a replacement of the same with peoples’ cooperatives is the first need of the day. And to even understand this, one needs to study the unique history of India, which has not been based ever on mindless violence, but rather on very strategic, organized mass efforts by people to force the colonialists out of our lands. People did not emerge as freedom fighters because of personality clashes with their parents. Certainly not because someone’s father was guilty of corruption as the film showed. But because they were supremely rooted with the social problems of the age and wanted to eradicate them through freedom struggles. Likewise, our minds need to come out of gross ignorance of the factors leading to corruption. For that to happen, we shall need a complete dissociation with the global capitalists, as well as a staunch refusal to accommodate their domestic partners in crime—both of which bribe our ministers and bureaucrats well enough to take all of us for a ride. The business barons, the staunch capitalists, are ruling the orders of the day today by maintaining the anti-people democratic regimes in power, which in turn benefit their own similar class interests.
The businesses pour in millions in election campaigns of their favored politicians who win the polls even without visiting the constituencies. This is the biggest sham in the world today in the name of democracy. By killing a couple of political stooges, nothing will ever be replaced. Maybe, some leaders will change the seats. Like they say in Britain: The King is dead. Long live the King. We need to replace the power structure, not change hands of power from one Morarji Desai to one Charan Singh.
Indeed, the very film producers who dine with the corrupt politicians of Maharashtra will continue to spin millions of dollars by making so-called ‘different’ movies to intoxicate the masses into thinking that the solution lies in the surprising twist at the end of the movie, not at beginning of their organized resistance against the unequal society funded by capitalistic economy. We need predictable revolutions, not unpredictable acts of terrorisms.
Rang De Basanti, the biggest movie to come out of Bollywood in years is a landmark in Indian cinema history. It created records on its revenue collections in the opening week at least in 10 cities. On the opening weekend it made a phenomenal $4.79 million. In the UK alone, after its fourth weekend it raked in GBP 700,000. In India, some theatres had to start a 6am show just for this instant blockbuster!
A commercial success of a cinema does not reflect its artistic values. Indeed money-spinners are not known for their social-realism value either. But going by the critics and their almost undisputed claims about the stature of this movie as both an eye-candy and an old warrior, I am unflinchingly affected. My close friends and associates back in India have been urging me to watch the film, few have narrated how much they are shaken out of their shell from watching this film, some have even told me in jest that it was as good as what Nirvana was supposed to be.
They are not alone. The various reviewers have been unequivocal. Just watch this: “A phenomenon of sorts... would be an apt way to describe this movie. One of the most unique, touching and awe-inspiring movies.....More a tale of humanity, morality, and taking a stand rather than being part of the silent majority. Its audacious spirit becomes its beauty. 'A Generation Awakens' - It surely does.”
Then: “It is rare that such a well-crafted and beautifully told story is seen in Hindi cinema.” And : “A well-made film, it caters more to the elite and the thinking viewer than the aam junta or the masses.”
Again: “I don't remember when I last saw a movie that had a story to tell and a message to give -- and did so in a real, gritty manner without being either preachy or dreary.” and : “One of best movies of recent times. Makes you sit up and think about what you can do to help the country better !” More: “A thought-provoking, soul-stirring wake up call to the youth of India...Engrossing entertainment meets taut social comment with perfect timing in Rang De Basanti. Wake up India, Rang De Basanti is here! A pure delight, Rang De Basanti is a cult film - the sort that comes along in a long time, and will raise the bar for everyone.”
Viewers say: “We would have got freedom faster, if Gandhi wasn't standing in the way” and the BBC: “An entertaining mix of romance, history and social commentary, this quality production takes Hindi cinema in a fresh direction... Accomplished and universally appealing, this is the way Bollywood films should be made.”
There is a flip review theme too which invariably rejects the movie’s approach to solutions of modern Indian crises: “the bloody violence”. These could be purely Gandhians, or Gandhi-bashers depending on what side of the political fence they come from, since the movie does quite a bit to expose the right-winger communal and corrupt agendas, even as denouncing Gandhian tactics as counterproductive.
The more thoughtful ones might contemplate over the subtle genius that is at work in a movie that’s both here and there, both happy and sad, both anti Gandhi, and anti-rightists. They will even, as a reviewer above states, gloat over the fact that here is finally a movie not meant for the “aam-junta”!
My Take:
True, this movie was not produced for the “aam-junta”. Its elitist bias is evident reel after reel, and this is something that could have made the audience throw up. But it turns out that the ‘educated’ class of India is far more eager to dissociate itself from the aam-junta (the masses) and this movie provides just the outlet.
I full agree with the reviewer’s comments that this is a movie that’s about Bhagat Singh and his comrades and yet it actually produces an effect that creates a class society of the elites and the masses! I also agree that here is a film that reminds people of their forgotten patriotism, that makes them call Gandhi names, and lets them think they don’t have to be the part of the silent majority!
Ironic, but if we read between the lines, we can get the essence of such a film that clearly creates an intellectual division, it rouses people to abandon the silent majority, it definitely takes a stand in favor of the “thinking elites”. And in doing so, the movie does an irreparable damage to the young generation’s worldview.
Postcolonial Ignorance:
Rang De Basanti, in my humble opinion, is one of the most uncritical movies ever made on postcolonial India. It not only centers around a bunch of disoriented well-to-do youths, it even normalizes them as representative of the Indian youths in general. In doing so, the focus is again exactly in line of the commercial Bollywood ideology: the privileged class as the representative voice. In doing so, it silences the majority effectively ( hence, there is nothing called a ‘silent majority’ by default, films like this which focuses on the ‘model minority’ class actually creates and perpetuates the concept of a silent majority). So its not that after the movie, people do not want to be part of the silent majority, its just that the movie has made them the vocal minority now. As vocal minority they do not want to carry on an agenda with the silent majority. What a smudge.
In the post-1947 period India has treaded more on the colonial roadmap than on the sweet will of a majority population. The colonial roadmap is one that’s founded on the British-gifted bureaucratic structure that continues to hunt to this date, but yet it forms the minority elite class in India. The majority of people of India are largely disgruntled, frustrated, angry and never silent. It’s just that their voices are never heard on the media, press and film industry owned by greedy industrialists and producers. These myth makers then go on to form the core of Bollywood thought control industry. As a result RDB focuses on an elite minority in few cities who actually bike around and booze late into nights at campfired elite colleges, and supposes these are worth the screenings. That there is nothing wrong with being rich and spoilt (I still don’t understand why rich kids are called ‘spoilt’ with a wink, instead of being called as ‘horrible greedy money launderers’, with scorn), indeed when the aam-junta could not pass the screening test, the rich kids end up giving best of their lives.
A clear case of ignorance of the director lets the film center around only the ‘educated’ youths who despise education. The truth is a huge majority of students in India still are poor strugglers for a decent education through sheer willpower. The problem is we are so enamored by the exceptions (as they appear newsworthy) that we forget the rules. And our commercial film directors have invariably always focused on the exceptions as the desirable rules so that it draws attention (the shock factor and sensation sells).
To sum it, Rang De Basanti, is not reflective of the Indian youth. It may be valid only in case of some educated drunkards in big cities who in fast career fascination or in idolization of pep culture might have preferred to say ‘Who Bhagat Singh’? And the media by playing on this cliché has almost turned it into an irrefutable truth that people now find easy to identify with. As a pointer, just look at any annual Independence Day issue of India Today and Outlook magazines, where the lousy reporters go interview some students of Hindu College or Lady Sri Ram and then conclude that Indian youths do not know what happened in 1942 or what was the real name of Mahatma Gandhi. And mind you, these magazines sell for this enlightenment piece—to resonate/reassure either an ‘oh at least I know’ or ‘see, I told you, I am not alone’ feeling. Rang De Basanti follows this extremely conventional model. And the students then think “its hip not to know about Gandhi—after all he was such a failure, omigosh!” Needless to say, to fight Gandhi, the media have now got Bhagat Singh, not as a anti-religious, communist hero, but quite the contrary, a business brand for the coke generation that wants an “instant young handsome trigger-happy Gandhi-basher”. Most of the things being projected about Bhagat Singh in the media is factually inaccurate and painful, yet Bollywood goes on cashing his name as it is cashing Emraan Hashmi’s serial kisses.
Colonial Amnesia:
Let’s presuppose that no Indian youth actually thought twice about the martyrs. Now, after our British lady explains their sacrifices, what do the young converts have to say? “My dear Sue, what the f**k was your grandfather doing on our land?” Hell, no. Not even a sentiment remotely connected to anti-British feeling has been expressed, which they should have logically said. To much cheer, they plan, the murder of a corrupt defense minister…
Naturally, they did not air the anti-imperial, anti-colonial speeches of Bhagat Singh. Else the well-meaning Mehra could not have made a ‘universally appealing’ movie that could rake in million pounds in the United Kingdom! In the face of a lip-treated critic of British rule, this constant fascination with Britain is one of the most shameful produce to have come out of the Bollywood garbage can. Exactly in line with all those Hindi movies where the actresses proudly flaunt Union Jack on their tops and denims to dance around the trees and clubs, this movie ends up almost glorifying a British filmmaker. The white woman in the movie is the only character without a fault. She is the only one who apparently knows everything about Indian history. She is the one who informs the Indian youths about what their history was. In the face of indifference of the youths, she is the one to remind them of Indian freedom struggle. And nowhere does she draw a critic of the British Empire as the most ghastly episode in India’s history that has left behind a culturally rich society of India as a today’s English speaking paupers’ call center den.
Nowhere has she felt that she is the opportunistic researcher taking her participants into a ride she has no control over, by creating inspired terrorists out of them. If Mehra would have studied how the classical anthropologists from the West have historically traveled to India to study and civilize their hostile “tribes” who were of course systematically oppressed by the former’s ruling classes, then he would have thought twice before hiring a British actress to educate the Indian youths.
The grander narrative of the white rescuing the brown from the brown has been such an overplayed theme since the days of the Raj, that to see a similar theme after all these years is at its best a despised déjà vu.
The Essentialism Fallacy:
Not only the Indian youths never question the postcolonial roadmap, they are depicted to be wise when they plan to attack the elected representatives in power, and when they die, they are shown as parallel to the freedom martyrs. Nothing could be more absurd than this. It’s not the violence which is a problem here. Indeed no revolution in the world has been non-violent in nature. But no revolution is based on murdering of few oppressors either. The sacrifices Bhagat Singh had made was part of a constant struggle against the imperialists. Historically at that point it was required that he had his revolutionary thoughts recorded well in the court of law so that more organized efforts could take place. He formed left wing political platform to recruit people, to train them, to disseminate Lenin’s speeches among them. He drafted future constitution for an independent India of his dreams, with lots of careful planning. To sensitize people about the need of revolution and to sow the seeds methodically is the mantra of the martyrs everywhere, so that the fruits of their labor won’t go waste. This is what Che Guevara did, or nearer home, this is what Safdar Hashmi did. They educated the people wherever they went. They organized and they agitated them. That is cardinal to revolution.
But to call a popcorn film that waits for suspense at the end where solution comes in form of murders, as a revolutionary cinema, is an insult to the concept of revolution. It’s an insult to the concept of social realism or socialist realism cinemas. If it had to glorify Bhagat Singh et al, the intention was noble. But at the same breadth to glorify a British filmmaker, and some inspired terrorists, is a shame in the name of politically sensible cinema. For the records, Bhagat Singh had flatly refused to accommodate any person who was describing his/her self as belonging to any religion, be it Hinduism or Islam, or Sikhism etc. He had flatly refused entry of any British into his party (just like Malcolm X had refused the Whites, not because he suspected them all the time, but because he did not want to waste time after exceptions, when he had the rules with him). Bhagat Singh had categorically differentiated his philosophy from the philosophy of terrorism and acts of violence. He had always denounced the terrorists as counter-revolutionary. A revolutionary does not kill to eliminate. Revolutionaries kill to replace structures. They plan well ahead like Castro did, they organize mass scale taking the “aam-junta” into account like Mao did, they help the needy people through social activism like Black Panthers did. The heroes of Rang De Basanti were neither of these. And that’s why they are a shame. And hence, at the least, Bhagat Singh would be deeply shocked to see a British woman filming his legacy using these useless parasites as substitutes, if he were to visit today.
The Gunga Din Factor:
Remember Gunga Din story by the racist Kipling. In the movie produced in 1939, the British colonialists face tribal uprising in India. Of course tribal are the savages who were being “civilized” by the British. The British soldiers were well meaning, humorous, and full of life (just like our Sue in RDB). And the tribal are the ignorant and arrogant. So on every occasion the British used their fists to knock some brains into the tribal, the audience had a good time. (Just like the audition session in the RDB where none of the Indians could follow Sue, and everyone failed to speak out “Inquilab Zindabad” correctly and it led the audience on a roar.) And when one of the Indians then betrayed his fellow people and sacrificed his life so that his people could be defeated, the audience was all moved! Bertolt Brecht, the soul of the great peoples’ theatres said: “Throughout, Indians were considered as primitive creatures, either comic or wicked: comic when loyal to the British, and wicked when hostile.”
Such was the power of colonial, propagandist cinema that moved people back those days. Such continues to be its power that we feel enlightened by British education still, and ashamed of identifying with our “aam junta.” Instead of finding out the root cause (that’s called radicalism—going to the roots) of the corruption and poverty in Indian society—which is largely due to the irreversed British power structure, we hopelessly cheer a group of idiots who go and kill an element of the society (that’s called fanaticism—kill the personal enemy at all costs). RDB is disturbing, to say the least, for it proposes a solution to the audience—a so-called solution that’s dangerously counterproductive.
People need to know that it’s not the nature of George Fernandez that leads him to do business with the coffins of the air force officers, or the inseparable trait of the BJP to buy cracked weapons from Russia. And it’s not going to change if we just go kill the defense minister or murder a couple of rightists. That’s reactionary action—an action the ruling class is quite adept at exercising to rule over us (think awhile, the defense minister in the movie would have just killed these people—like the government of India eventually did)..These solitary murders at such arbitrary phases of anger do not maketh a revolution of any nature. A systematic, methodical overthrow of the current bureaucratic structure and a replacement of the same with peoples’ cooperatives is the first need of the day. And to even understand this, one needs to study the unique history of India, which has not been based ever on mindless violence, but rather on very strategic, organized mass efforts by people to force the colonialists out of our lands. People did not emerge as freedom fighters because of personality clashes with their parents. Certainly not because someone’s father was guilty of corruption as the film showed. But because they were supremely rooted with the social problems of the age and wanted to eradicate them through freedom struggles. Likewise, our minds need to come out of gross ignorance of the factors leading to corruption. For that to happen, we shall need a complete dissociation with the global capitalists, as well as a staunch refusal to accommodate their domestic partners in crime—both of which bribe our ministers and bureaucrats well enough to take all of us for a ride. The business barons, the staunch capitalists, are ruling the orders of the day today by maintaining the anti-people democratic regimes in power, which in turn benefit their own similar class interests.
The businesses pour in millions in election campaigns of their favored politicians who win the polls even without visiting the constituencies. This is the biggest sham in the world today in the name of democracy. By killing a couple of political stooges, nothing will ever be replaced. Maybe, some leaders will change the seats. Like they say in Britain: The King is dead. Long live the King. We need to replace the power structure, not change hands of power from one Morarji Desai to one Charan Singh.
Indeed, the very film producers who dine with the corrupt politicians of Maharashtra will continue to spin millions of dollars by making so-called ‘different’ movies to intoxicate the masses into thinking that the solution lies in the surprising twist at the end of the movie, not at beginning of their organized resistance against the unequal society funded by capitalistic economy. We need predictable revolutions, not unpredictable acts of terrorisms.
Now that Crash won, and We lost
Please click here for an abridged version of this
article, published by New American Media.
By Saswat Pattanayak
(This was written long before Crash won the Oscars. I am so happy I was right. It was important for Crash to win, because the system looked from the privileged views needed to prevail over the experiences of the unheard immigrants, because thats the only way the system needs to justify its (in)justice...And for the rest of us, we all know what's Oscars all about! )
“We made a choice to deal directly with race. We just kept digging at the truth and just did not care what it sounded like. We knew it was ugly. But if it’s truthful, if it’s real, if it’s right, if it serves the story we could do it. We just didn’t allow ourselves to be put off by its ugliness. Race is nothing if it’s not ugly, and no one is going to pay any attention to the storytelling if we try to get round that.”
--Bobby Moresco, Writer, “Crash” (In an interview from the DVD).
Crash is indeed ugly, feel some members of the immigrant families and I agree. Over last few months, I have been talking to people who watched the bootlegged versions before the DVD was out, to the administrators who are promoting diversity at workplace, to students who are assigned to write a paper after the campus screenings get done. Unequivocally, no movie in recent history has affected people like this one. Wondering if it was for better or worse, I juxtaposed my own perspectives to the narrative below.
The first clue came from a South Asian friend, and software engineer based in Virginia: “I think it tells us that we are all capable of our prejudices. But should we all profess them? Should we just laugh at bigotry and then forget conveniently?”
A good point for an unforgettable movie. If mainstream cinema educate and entertain at the same time, what did Crash have to say? What did it teach the immigrants about their shared histories of conflicts, and their unique backgrounds of confrontations? About their levels of assimilation, acculturation and adaptations? Regarding the identity crisis in a pluralistic society?
A scholar from the Middle East was apparently infuriated after screening of the movie was done at University of Maryland last week. “This movie misleads. There was considerable shock at the way Iranians were mistaken for Arabs. Why should the anti-Arab sentiments be flared up without any defense?”
Not only the affirmations of identities have become quintessential for the movie, but they have been achieved through replays of pigeonholes. There is a psychological numbing of the rebellious, and an uncanny triumph of the conformists. For example, Anthony is the rebel, the only potential revolutionary in the movie. He epitomizes the angry black youths, who are disenchanted by the existing system. The director even gets him to name the top Black Panthers to justify his sentiments. He talks issues around white supremacy. He talks about black stereotypes. Quite right.
But when it comes to life, what does he do throughout the movie? He steals cars. He abandons a “Chinaman” after running a stolen car over him. Quite paradoxical till this point in the movie, considering that he had been shown having a concern over how the poor are relegated to large windows of public buses for humiliation sake.
And then this same character who talks about Bobby Seale, Huey Newton and Fred Hampton becomes the fallen guy of Crash. A successful black television producer who makes every attempt to fit well within the system says Anthony that he “embarrasses” his own self. Not only has he been portrayed in a stereotyped manner to represent the young rebel who mends his ways for the better even while he talks about the Panthers, he focuses on all things abjectly wrong.
The moral of the story for Anthony is that it’s better to fit well within the framework than to protest. Not out of any defeat, but from realization that he had been plain wrong. To prove that point, the director has Anthony displaying his mended ways by freeing the Thai/Cambodian people and by enjoying a bus ride in the end.
First, Paul Haggis gets away with a gross portrayal of the ideals that Black Panthers stood for. He gets Anthony to cite the black radicals of the 70’s to justify his earlier vents. But omits the actual argument. The Panthers were not fighting to reclaim respect in a racist society. They were demanding a just society based first on economic emancipation. As Fred Hampton, one of Anthony’s heroes in this movie, said in 1968: “We never negated the fact that there was racism in America, but we said that the by-product, what comes off of capitalism, that happens to be racism. That capitalism comes first and next is racism. That when they brought slaves over here, it was to make money. So first the idea came that we want to make money, and then the slaves came in order to make that money. That means, through historical fact, racism had to come from capitalism. It had to be capitalism first and racism was a byproduct of that.”
The film gave away an impression that the Panthers must have been wrong somehow even without exploring the theme of capitalism. Nowhere in the movie, is any of the anger ever directed at capitalism. The intersection between socio-economic class and race has simply not been explored. Crash implied we just need more Anthonies, who will behave well and mend their ways and liberate the new tortured immigrants by offering them soups (and not fight the power that enslaved them in the first place).
Events are crucial to a process. So the crimes in the movie (consequently, the stolen car and damaged store) are important. But the understanding of process is even more necessary to contextualize the events. And the film leaves the audience guessing on the process (the root causes of racial tensions, the factors leading to everyday crime). We know that the store of the Persian business family gets ransacked. What we don’t know is why were they being perceived as Arabs. And why was it so wrong to be Arabs in America? Who sows the seeds of hatred and promotes the system. What was the law and order system doing to protect the small businessman’s store? If the district attorney addresses the press over his stolen car, why does the Iranian man not go challenge the police for negligence of security? Why instead he has to go shoot at a working class man? And then feel pacified at his failure to find an answer to the motives behind the crime that affected his entire lot.
The damaged store was portrayed as an act by minority groups who are infuriated by Arabs, not as a negligence of the security forces, nor as an act of terrorism by the power structure that fuels such suspicions. This is a deliberate underestimation of working class intelligence. Immigrants in the US do raise voices against the system every now and then. We just don’t get the message, because comfortable filmmakers continue projecting them as vulnerable, docile subjects incapable of raising class-consciousness.
Several attempts at making the movie comical has made it all the more pathetic. There is no macabre humor. There is just stereotypical mockery. Anthony argues that black waitresses don’t attend to black folks in restaurant much, because they assume there won’t be tips. His friend Peter then asks him “How much did you leave?” Anthony: “You expect me to pay for that service?” Peter roars into laughter along with the audience. Sure, now we are convinced.
Likewise, to push the issue of individual perceptions further, there are two white cops. Between them, one is a proclaimed racist (Officer Ryan, who has apparently spent 11 of his 17 years under a black officer). But he turns out to be the life-savior of the grateful black woman he once molested. And the cop who is aghast at his racism actually is the one to pull his trigger at an innocent black man out of suspicion. So what do we get in the end? Two human beings with “normal” prejudices. And both are “good cops”, by incidence or intent. It’s not the system of law and order that’s purposely biased against the minorities-- the movie says-- it’s just the individuals with different nuances, like any other.
Crash deals with issues, but addresses them through individuals alienated from the larger gamut of systematic circumstances. It deals with serious stereotypes, but normalizes them by ignoring the causes of disparities. In an attempt to portray the “real thing”, it overtly exaggerates the conventional (even a reformed Anthony says in the end with relief: “dopey fuckin chinamen&rdquo
.
Indeed, part of the reason why different immigrant groups do not relate to their shared common history of struggles is because they have been portrayed as being antagonistic with each other to begin with. So the only element they need to show allegiance to then becomes the power structure that permits their existence as individual blocks. Rejoicing the diverse cultures make the task all the more difficult for the ethnic minorities to perceive their oneness. Prof. Vijay Prashad says in “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting” (2001): “To respect the fetish of culture assumes that one wants to enshrine it in the museum of humankind rather than find within it the potential for liberation or for change.” He talks of the need of a “horizontal assimilation” among the immigrant groups. “Consider the rebel Africans, who fled the slave plantations in the Americas and took refuge among the Amerindians to create communities such as the Seminoles; the South Asian workers who jumped ship in eighteenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, to enter the black community; Frederick Douglass’ defense of Chinese “coolie” laborers in the nineteenth century; the interactions of the Black Panther Party with the Red Guard and the Brown Berets in the mid-twentieth century; and finally the multiethnic working-class gathering in the new century.”
If Prashad was finding links for liberation, then Paul Haggis, director of Crash, was finding the lineages amidst the same multiethnic working class of new century. And Haggis perfected the art of stereotyping the lineages of hopelessness in Crash.
By Saswat Pattanayak
(This was written long before Crash won the Oscars. I am so happy I was right. It was important for Crash to win, because the system looked from the privileged views needed to prevail over the experiences of the unheard immigrants, because thats the only way the system needs to justify its (in)justice...And for the rest of us, we all know what's Oscars all about! )
“We made a choice to deal directly with race. We just kept digging at the truth and just did not care what it sounded like. We knew it was ugly. But if it’s truthful, if it’s real, if it’s right, if it serves the story we could do it. We just didn’t allow ourselves to be put off by its ugliness. Race is nothing if it’s not ugly, and no one is going to pay any attention to the storytelling if we try to get round that.”
--Bobby Moresco, Writer, “Crash” (In an interview from the DVD).
Crash is indeed ugly, feel some members of the immigrant families and I agree. Over last few months, I have been talking to people who watched the bootlegged versions before the DVD was out, to the administrators who are promoting diversity at workplace, to students who are assigned to write a paper after the campus screenings get done. Unequivocally, no movie in recent history has affected people like this one. Wondering if it was for better or worse, I juxtaposed my own perspectives to the narrative below.
The first clue came from a South Asian friend, and software engineer based in Virginia: “I think it tells us that we are all capable of our prejudices. But should we all profess them? Should we just laugh at bigotry and then forget conveniently?”
A good point for an unforgettable movie. If mainstream cinema educate and entertain at the same time, what did Crash have to say? What did it teach the immigrants about their shared histories of conflicts, and their unique backgrounds of confrontations? About their levels of assimilation, acculturation and adaptations? Regarding the identity crisis in a pluralistic society?
A scholar from the Middle East was apparently infuriated after screening of the movie was done at University of Maryland last week. “This movie misleads. There was considerable shock at the way Iranians were mistaken for Arabs. Why should the anti-Arab sentiments be flared up without any defense?”
Not only the affirmations of identities have become quintessential for the movie, but they have been achieved through replays of pigeonholes. There is a psychological numbing of the rebellious, and an uncanny triumph of the conformists. For example, Anthony is the rebel, the only potential revolutionary in the movie. He epitomizes the angry black youths, who are disenchanted by the existing system. The director even gets him to name the top Black Panthers to justify his sentiments. He talks issues around white supremacy. He talks about black stereotypes. Quite right.
But when it comes to life, what does he do throughout the movie? He steals cars. He abandons a “Chinaman” after running a stolen car over him. Quite paradoxical till this point in the movie, considering that he had been shown having a concern over how the poor are relegated to large windows of public buses for humiliation sake.
And then this same character who talks about Bobby Seale, Huey Newton and Fred Hampton becomes the fallen guy of Crash. A successful black television producer who makes every attempt to fit well within the system says Anthony that he “embarrasses” his own self. Not only has he been portrayed in a stereotyped manner to represent the young rebel who mends his ways for the better even while he talks about the Panthers, he focuses on all things abjectly wrong.
The moral of the story for Anthony is that it’s better to fit well within the framework than to protest. Not out of any defeat, but from realization that he had been plain wrong. To prove that point, the director has Anthony displaying his mended ways by freeing the Thai/Cambodian people and by enjoying a bus ride in the end.
First, Paul Haggis gets away with a gross portrayal of the ideals that Black Panthers stood for. He gets Anthony to cite the black radicals of the 70’s to justify his earlier vents. But omits the actual argument. The Panthers were not fighting to reclaim respect in a racist society. They were demanding a just society based first on economic emancipation. As Fred Hampton, one of Anthony’s heroes in this movie, said in 1968: “We never negated the fact that there was racism in America, but we said that the by-product, what comes off of capitalism, that happens to be racism. That capitalism comes first and next is racism. That when they brought slaves over here, it was to make money. So first the idea came that we want to make money, and then the slaves came in order to make that money. That means, through historical fact, racism had to come from capitalism. It had to be capitalism first and racism was a byproduct of that.”
The film gave away an impression that the Panthers must have been wrong somehow even without exploring the theme of capitalism. Nowhere in the movie, is any of the anger ever directed at capitalism. The intersection between socio-economic class and race has simply not been explored. Crash implied we just need more Anthonies, who will behave well and mend their ways and liberate the new tortured immigrants by offering them soups (and not fight the power that enslaved them in the first place).
Events are crucial to a process. So the crimes in the movie (consequently, the stolen car and damaged store) are important. But the understanding of process is even more necessary to contextualize the events. And the film leaves the audience guessing on the process (the root causes of racial tensions, the factors leading to everyday crime). We know that the store of the Persian business family gets ransacked. What we don’t know is why were they being perceived as Arabs. And why was it so wrong to be Arabs in America? Who sows the seeds of hatred and promotes the system. What was the law and order system doing to protect the small businessman’s store? If the district attorney addresses the press over his stolen car, why does the Iranian man not go challenge the police for negligence of security? Why instead he has to go shoot at a working class man? And then feel pacified at his failure to find an answer to the motives behind the crime that affected his entire lot.
The damaged store was portrayed as an act by minority groups who are infuriated by Arabs, not as a negligence of the security forces, nor as an act of terrorism by the power structure that fuels such suspicions. This is a deliberate underestimation of working class intelligence. Immigrants in the US do raise voices against the system every now and then. We just don’t get the message, because comfortable filmmakers continue projecting them as vulnerable, docile subjects incapable of raising class-consciousness.
Several attempts at making the movie comical has made it all the more pathetic. There is no macabre humor. There is just stereotypical mockery. Anthony argues that black waitresses don’t attend to black folks in restaurant much, because they assume there won’t be tips. His friend Peter then asks him “How much did you leave?” Anthony: “You expect me to pay for that service?” Peter roars into laughter along with the audience. Sure, now we are convinced.
Likewise, to push the issue of individual perceptions further, there are two white cops. Between them, one is a proclaimed racist (Officer Ryan, who has apparently spent 11 of his 17 years under a black officer). But he turns out to be the life-savior of the grateful black woman he once molested. And the cop who is aghast at his racism actually is the one to pull his trigger at an innocent black man out of suspicion. So what do we get in the end? Two human beings with “normal” prejudices. And both are “good cops”, by incidence or intent. It’s not the system of law and order that’s purposely biased against the minorities-- the movie says-- it’s just the individuals with different nuances, like any other.
Crash deals with issues, but addresses them through individuals alienated from the larger gamut of systematic circumstances. It deals with serious stereotypes, but normalizes them by ignoring the causes of disparities. In an attempt to portray the “real thing”, it overtly exaggerates the conventional (even a reformed Anthony says in the end with relief: “dopey fuckin chinamen&rdquo
.
Indeed, part of the reason why different immigrant groups do not relate to their shared common history of struggles is because they have been portrayed as being antagonistic with each other to begin with. So the only element they need to show allegiance to then becomes the power structure that permits their existence as individual blocks. Rejoicing the diverse cultures make the task all the more difficult for the ethnic minorities to perceive their oneness. Prof. Vijay Prashad says in “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting” (2001): “To respect the fetish of culture assumes that one wants to enshrine it in the museum of humankind rather than find within it the potential for liberation or for change.” He talks of the need of a “horizontal assimilation” among the immigrant groups. “Consider the rebel Africans, who fled the slave plantations in the Americas and took refuge among the Amerindians to create communities such as the Seminoles; the South Asian workers who jumped ship in eighteenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, to enter the black community; Frederick Douglass’ defense of Chinese “coolie” laborers in the nineteenth century; the interactions of the Black Panther Party with the Red Guard and the Brown Berets in the mid-twentieth century; and finally the multiethnic working-class gathering in the new century.”
If Prashad was finding links for liberation, then Paul Haggis, director of Crash, was finding the lineages amidst the same multiethnic working class of new century. And Haggis perfected the art of stereotyping the lineages of hopelessness in Crash.
Kudos, Khushboo! Shine, Sania!!
By Saswat Pattanayak
Take heart.
Opinions of two Indian Muslim Women have actually rocked the mainland India. First, it was Tamil actress Khushboo who told the Tamil edition of India Today that pre-marital sex is okay “provided safety measures are followed to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases”. And now, it is the Tennis star Sania Mirza who said the size of the dress she wants to wear is her prerogative.
And what’s so criminal in holding these views? Views regarding women sexuality and men sexuality in the first case. And the dress code for teenage girls in the second case. I guess, it is the politics that’s criminal. The crude politics of conservatism and the media.
Conservatism:
The politicians and volunteers of the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) who are working under the banner of a Tamil Protection Movement in their crusade against Khushboo are brothers-in-arms of the Mumbai-based staunch Hindu outfit Shiv Sena. They have a natural ally in Sunni Ulema Board, a self-proclaimed Muslim moral group. Four of them together have found some more interesting bedfellows: the mainstream media.
The interesting thing about these moral police forces in India is none of the above actually represent any Indian population of worth. Far from that, they do not even represent the groups they claim to be leading.
DPI at work!
DPI is interested only in publicity, like its political counterpart Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is greedy for power. The BSP showing its true colors has partnered even with the right-wing BJP (which is predominantly Brahmin party) in political seat-sharing. Naturally enough, since their formation the so-called representatives of the Dalits have no support among the “backward” peoples of India, despite their national party status, BSP has hardly have any success except in just one state. A national party claiming to have base all over the country has won 0 seats in 24 out of 25 states where it fielded its candidates. Out of 435 of its contestants, only 19 won in the 14th Lok Sabha Election. All of them only in Utter Pradesh, where it lost 61 seats!
PMK, another new nationalist wing like DPI, is also a case in point. Since it has condemned both Dravidian parties of the South, DMK and AIADMK, one would assume it would not join hands with either of them. Or at least, never with the right-winger Hindu nationalists like BJP. Well, not exactly. It was part of the BJP combine when Vajpayee was in power. And now, it lends support to the Congress combine at the center with DMK as a partner. And it has 0.55% voteshare in India in 2004 down from 0.65% voteshare in 1999. So one can imagine its support base even in the South where it has won in total 6 seats (and zero in rest of India).
The lesser said about Shiv Sena, the better. Even with more than 80% of Indian population in India professing a Hindu way of life, this self-proclaimed protector of Hindu interest has hardly ever made its presence felt outside only one state: Maharashtra (that too, more in the name of Marathi nationalism). It rose to power after murdering Krishna Desai, the immensely popular communist leader of Maharashtra who was an invincible symbol among textile workers. Ever since, Shiv Sena has espoused right-wing views and led to communal riots one after another.
Sunni Ulema Board: I am sorry, but I had never heard of this name before. Neither have many of my Muslim friends. Not even those who stay in Hyderabad. Wonder where they came from? They certainly are not the Muslim clerics nor are the national arbitrators of religion-related issues for the country’s more than 160 million Muslims.
If Dalit Panthers, the Shiv Sena, the Sunni Ulema Board, the BSP and the PMK are not worth anything in India, since they all combined together do not gain support of even one percent of Indian population, how come they (just three of them this time—DPI, PMK and Sunni Ulema) are the forces that led to the crisis of Khushboo and Sania.
All of us know that Khushboo is such a heartthrob of South India cinema that people have even worshipped her (literally, yes!). Only a decade ago a temple was built in Tiruchirapalli town for Khushboo despite the fact that she is a Muslim. She is a national award winning actress of India (that’s the highest accolade an actor receives, by the way).
And for the still uninitiated (is anyone there?), Sania Mirza is one of the current leaders of India in every sense. She has very rightly overpowered the national obsession with Cricket and has rose to prominence first as a woman, then as a Muslim, and then as a tennis champion to have entered Grand Slam events. The 18-year-old is the first Indian woman to break into the top 50 WTA rankings too.
In other words, as contrasted with the political outfits who are not known outside the boundaries of their own sycophancy (how many had even honestly heard of DPI or PMK or SUB), these two women are nationally (and even internationally) renowned and respected.
And yet, both of them have tendered public apologies recently. Khushboo for saying the right things, and Sania for not even having said anything as reported.
...and the Media:
All thanks to the mainstream media. The corporate, controversy-hungry media. Nothing happened to India Today magazine for having run the surveys and the stories and for inviting Khushboo to write about gender issues. Nothing happened to Hindustan Times for having asked Sania questions to respond regarding dress code.
Vir Sanghvi today has written an excellent piece in support of Sania. Sanghvi wrote:
Thus Mr Sanghvi has managed to steer clear of the controversy. After all, she did not say that at his Summit. What he conveniently does not mention is the intent of HT coverage of Sania. Was it to showcase just a success? Well, we had a miss universe and a formula one champion on the same panel. Then how come, Sania got all the coverage on the reported story of the day?
The story headline: Sania breaks silence on dress fatwa against her.
Wow! Was that not sensational enough a headline? Was Sania at the summit for that purpose? To provide that headline? So that her life threat will be revisited? It was meant to be a leadership summit and Sania was to be presented as a role model for Indian youths, along with two other achievers. This story by HT correspondent Namita Bhandare has hardly any mention of other two panelists and 90% of the story covers Sania only (and only about her skirt issues about which she had voluntarily chosen not to comment earlier). The savvy editor got the question right. The event was powerful enough (what with all the celebrities –from Sonia Gandhi to Manmohan Singh). And Sania gave in to the hungry journalists.
So, that does not take away the grim reality which still is to be posed as a question. India Today got its sales. Hindustan Times got a breaking story that it got the words off the mouth of Sania for the first time etc. And other media publications linked both of them together and came up with a theory that suggested Sania supporting Khusboo. Natural, ain’t it? I have worked as a journalist of small repute too. I should be knowing.
For a ‘crime’ that led Khushboo to surrender at court, any misrepresentation of Sania’s statements with Khusboo’s attitudes was going to be dangerous. No, not from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which is the arbitrator of religion based cases in India. In fact, Khalid Rashid of the Law Board had said way back in September, “What Sania wears in (the) tennis court is the demand of the game. Perhaps, the fatwa (edict) was issued to gain cheap publicity.” Dangerous it was to prove, through the mainstream press. After the Muslim Board and Sania had both dismissed the so-called fatwa two months back, what led a responsible editor to pose the question that he did (regarding the dress code), if not to expect a headline worthy controversial story (which he eventually got!).
Khushboo should not have apologized. After all, they are her opinions. She never mentioned them under any pressure. Yet she broke down, because of the way the media blew up the entire issue and gleed at the prospect of photographing a dozen of angry Dalit Senas. She is in trouble now. Real judicial trouble with half a dozen cases piling against her! So much for the freedom of speech that the media enjoy, but not the people. Or the women.
Sania must not have apologized either. After all, she never even said that she supported Khushboo. For statements she never made, her effigies are now being burnt down by the same southern conservatives who are taking turns to protest against her and Khushboo. Sania, well aware of the mud, wants to now get out of it. And like all of us, she does not wish to go to jail. And so she even had to go to the extent of condemning pre-marital sex, a topic she had nothing to do about. Why should a celebrated tennis star need to condemn pre-marital sex for whatever reason? But she is forced to do all these, thanks to the impoverished mainstream media. She knows, her silence will be taken as a support. And this implicit support will lead to explicit media coverage.
What a shame! What hypocrisy! Do we not talk about sex and wear short clothes? When the majority Indians have other real issues to worry about, why even give one inch space to these publicity hungry organizations that are after the blood of two immensely praiseworthy Indian women?
There is certain correctness in speaking out what is apt. Basically, why should men expect virgin wives to begin with? And why should someone play tennis with trousers? Considering also the contrary stock: do men take a virginity test? Or are soccer players banned or even male tennis players wear trousers? Only the real sick minds could think the way these dangerous outfits are preaching or viewing players on field.
As Rasheeda Bhagat says, “The Khushboo episode will blow over sooner than later, but what about the double standards practiced in our society?”
Throwing tomatoes, rotten eggs and slippers or calling actresses prostitutes (as a Dalit actor-director Thangar Bachan did in August this year, leading to his outrage with Khushboo) are signs of degraded mentality. And the vast majority of us have actually failed to get rid of those conservative mindsets despite their scant presence among the outfits. We did not send Bachan to court for something that outrageous. Because the news is when the man bites the dog, remember? If the woman says something contrary to male norms, then its news!
But hey, this is a wake-up call. Now is the time not to support the sensational media into forcing these two very courageous Indian Muslim Women to come forth with statements of apology for anything they said and done. We must show our pride over what they have said, and what they have done. What we need is more of them: More Khushboos. More Sanias.
Take heart.
Opinions of two Indian Muslim Women have actually rocked the mainland India. First, it was Tamil actress Khushboo who told the Tamil edition of India Today that pre-marital sex is okay “provided safety measures are followed to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases”. And now, it is the Tennis star Sania Mirza who said the size of the dress she wants to wear is her prerogative.
And what’s so criminal in holding these views? Views regarding women sexuality and men sexuality in the first case. And the dress code for teenage girls in the second case. I guess, it is the politics that’s criminal. The crude politics of conservatism and the media.
Conservatism:
The politicians and volunteers of the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) who are working under the banner of a Tamil Protection Movement in their crusade against Khushboo are brothers-in-arms of the Mumbai-based staunch Hindu outfit Shiv Sena. They have a natural ally in Sunni Ulema Board, a self-proclaimed Muslim moral group. Four of them together have found some more interesting bedfellows: the mainstream media.
The interesting thing about these moral police forces in India is none of the above actually represent any Indian population of worth. Far from that, they do not even represent the groups they claim to be leading.
DPI at work!
DPI is interested only in publicity, like its political counterpart Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is greedy for power. The BSP showing its true colors has partnered even with the right-wing BJP (which is predominantly Brahmin party) in political seat-sharing. Naturally enough, since their formation the so-called representatives of the Dalits have no support among the “backward” peoples of India, despite their national party status, BSP has hardly have any success except in just one state. A national party claiming to have base all over the country has won 0 seats in 24 out of 25 states where it fielded its candidates. Out of 435 of its contestants, only 19 won in the 14th Lok Sabha Election. All of them only in Utter Pradesh, where it lost 61 seats!
PMK, another new nationalist wing like DPI, is also a case in point. Since it has condemned both Dravidian parties of the South, DMK and AIADMK, one would assume it would not join hands with either of them. Or at least, never with the right-winger Hindu nationalists like BJP. Well, not exactly. It was part of the BJP combine when Vajpayee was in power. And now, it lends support to the Congress combine at the center with DMK as a partner. And it has 0.55% voteshare in India in 2004 down from 0.65% voteshare in 1999. So one can imagine its support base even in the South where it has won in total 6 seats (and zero in rest of India).
The lesser said about Shiv Sena, the better. Even with more than 80% of Indian population in India professing a Hindu way of life, this self-proclaimed protector of Hindu interest has hardly ever made its presence felt outside only one state: Maharashtra (that too, more in the name of Marathi nationalism). It rose to power after murdering Krishna Desai, the immensely popular communist leader of Maharashtra who was an invincible symbol among textile workers. Ever since, Shiv Sena has espoused right-wing views and led to communal riots one after another.
Sunni Ulema Board: I am sorry, but I had never heard of this name before. Neither have many of my Muslim friends. Not even those who stay in Hyderabad. Wonder where they came from? They certainly are not the Muslim clerics nor are the national arbitrators of religion-related issues for the country’s more than 160 million Muslims.
If Dalit Panthers, the Shiv Sena, the Sunni Ulema Board, the BSP and the PMK are not worth anything in India, since they all combined together do not gain support of even one percent of Indian population, how come they (just three of them this time—DPI, PMK and Sunni Ulema) are the forces that led to the crisis of Khushboo and Sania.
All of us know that Khushboo is such a heartthrob of South India cinema that people have even worshipped her (literally, yes!). Only a decade ago a temple was built in Tiruchirapalli town for Khushboo despite the fact that she is a Muslim. She is a national award winning actress of India (that’s the highest accolade an actor receives, by the way).
And for the still uninitiated (is anyone there?), Sania Mirza is one of the current leaders of India in every sense. She has very rightly overpowered the national obsession with Cricket and has rose to prominence first as a woman, then as a Muslim, and then as a tennis champion to have entered Grand Slam events. The 18-year-old is the first Indian woman to break into the top 50 WTA rankings too.
In other words, as contrasted with the political outfits who are not known outside the boundaries of their own sycophancy (how many had even honestly heard of DPI or PMK or SUB), these two women are nationally (and even internationally) renowned and respected.
And yet, both of them have tendered public apologies recently. Khushboo for saying the right things, and Sania for not even having said anything as reported.
...and the Media:
All thanks to the mainstream media. The corporate, controversy-hungry media. Nothing happened to India Today magazine for having run the surveys and the stories and for inviting Khushboo to write about gender issues. Nothing happened to Hindustan Times for having asked Sania questions to respond regarding dress code.
Vir Sanghvi today has written an excellent piece in support of Sania. Sanghvi wrote:
“On Friday evening, my jaw dropped as TV channel after TV channel reported that Sania’s remarks about the Khushboo controversy at the HT Summit had angered clerics. On Saturday, the newspapers reported this story. The problem was: Sania had said nothing about Khushboo or about pre-marital sex during our session. I should know. I was the moderator. Could it be, I wondered, that some enterprising reporter had grabbed Sania (and Narain and Natalie, who were quoted as agreeing with her) as the session ended, and asked a few leading questions?
Possibly. But the reports were quite specific. Sania was supposed to have made these remarks during our session at the HT Summit. Which, I knew, she had not.”
Thus Mr Sanghvi has managed to steer clear of the controversy. After all, she did not say that at his Summit. What he conveniently does not mention is the intent of HT coverage of Sania. Was it to showcase just a success? Well, we had a miss universe and a formula one champion on the same panel. Then how come, Sania got all the coverage on the reported story of the day?
The story headline: Sania breaks silence on dress fatwa against her.
Wow! Was that not sensational enough a headline? Was Sania at the summit for that purpose? To provide that headline? So that her life threat will be revisited? It was meant to be a leadership summit and Sania was to be presented as a role model for Indian youths, along with two other achievers. This story by HT correspondent Namita Bhandare has hardly any mention of other two panelists and 90% of the story covers Sania only (and only about her skirt issues about which she had voluntarily chosen not to comment earlier). The savvy editor got the question right. The event was powerful enough (what with all the celebrities –from Sonia Gandhi to Manmohan Singh). And Sania gave in to the hungry journalists.
So, that does not take away the grim reality which still is to be posed as a question. India Today got its sales. Hindustan Times got a breaking story that it got the words off the mouth of Sania for the first time etc. And other media publications linked both of them together and came up with a theory that suggested Sania supporting Khusboo. Natural, ain’t it? I have worked as a journalist of small repute too. I should be knowing.
For a ‘crime’ that led Khushboo to surrender at court, any misrepresentation of Sania’s statements with Khusboo’s attitudes was going to be dangerous. No, not from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which is the arbitrator of religion based cases in India. In fact, Khalid Rashid of the Law Board had said way back in September, “What Sania wears in (the) tennis court is the demand of the game. Perhaps, the fatwa (edict) was issued to gain cheap publicity.” Dangerous it was to prove, through the mainstream press. After the Muslim Board and Sania had both dismissed the so-called fatwa two months back, what led a responsible editor to pose the question that he did (regarding the dress code), if not to expect a headline worthy controversial story (which he eventually got!).
Khushboo should not have apologized. After all, they are her opinions. She never mentioned them under any pressure. Yet she broke down, because of the way the media blew up the entire issue and gleed at the prospect of photographing a dozen of angry Dalit Senas. She is in trouble now. Real judicial trouble with half a dozen cases piling against her! So much for the freedom of speech that the media enjoy, but not the people. Or the women.
Sania must not have apologized either. After all, she never even said that she supported Khushboo. For statements she never made, her effigies are now being burnt down by the same southern conservatives who are taking turns to protest against her and Khushboo. Sania, well aware of the mud, wants to now get out of it. And like all of us, she does not wish to go to jail. And so she even had to go to the extent of condemning pre-marital sex, a topic she had nothing to do about. Why should a celebrated tennis star need to condemn pre-marital sex for whatever reason? But she is forced to do all these, thanks to the impoverished mainstream media. She knows, her silence will be taken as a support. And this implicit support will lead to explicit media coverage.
What a shame! What hypocrisy! Do we not talk about sex and wear short clothes? When the majority Indians have other real issues to worry about, why even give one inch space to these publicity hungry organizations that are after the blood of two immensely praiseworthy Indian women?
There is certain correctness in speaking out what is apt. Basically, why should men expect virgin wives to begin with? And why should someone play tennis with trousers? Considering also the contrary stock: do men take a virginity test? Or are soccer players banned or even male tennis players wear trousers? Only the real sick minds could think the way these dangerous outfits are preaching or viewing players on field.
As Rasheeda Bhagat says, “The Khushboo episode will blow over sooner than later, but what about the double standards practiced in our society?”
Throwing tomatoes, rotten eggs and slippers or calling actresses prostitutes (as a Dalit actor-director Thangar Bachan did in August this year, leading to his outrage with Khushboo) are signs of degraded mentality. And the vast majority of us have actually failed to get rid of those conservative mindsets despite their scant presence among the outfits. We did not send Bachan to court for something that outrageous. Because the news is when the man bites the dog, remember? If the woman says something contrary to male norms, then its news!
But hey, this is a wake-up call. Now is the time not to support the sensational media into forcing these two very courageous Indian Muslim Women to come forth with statements of apology for anything they said and done. We must show our pride over what they have said, and what they have done. What we need is more of them: More Khushboos. More Sanias.
Lesser Gifts of the Western Gods
By Saswat Pattanayak
The other side to child labor. Does it provide for a hope?
This postcolonial report won the “One World Broadcasting Trust / Unicef 1998 Advancement of Children’s Rights award”. And now available for direct viewing online. Click here to watch.
Also important to remember that Titu makes a living, nurtures a dream and does not give up. The reality is indeed more interesting than any fiction. And more painful.
Recent Oscar fancies include child prostitution in south Asia. Indeed, the movie Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids got India the Oscar she needed as much as late Mother Teresa got the Nobel Prize that India deserved! Apparently the story of Sonagachi was not meant to be shown to Indians, because the film makers think it would violate the identity issues of children (as though Calcuttans don’t have cyber cafes on the streets).
Makes one wonder about the socio-economic parameters and where the line is drawn between 'subject to exploitation' and 'right to make a living'. More importantly, one needs ponder the grueling reasons behind any further justification. And the other pressing question is regarding the exoticism of third world poverty.
At the one hand, child labor (commercial sex or injurious workplace) is a reality. Not everyone has the privilege to escape this reality. Nor the audacity. Nor the worldview. Nor the comfort or time to devise a luxurious worldview.
On the other hand, it’s a perpetuation of an oppression cycle. Its not simply another work. It never is. It's a systematic byproduct of an evil world system we abide by, that has such intrinsic elements well woven. One can argue the case for the Netherlands and the red lights there may not blind the eyes with as much discomfort as streets of Kolkata. Or the thousands of software sweatshops sponsored by the first world for the 'call centers' to take orders 24/7, which are indeed glorified tech-slavery of our age!
The well meaning audience may put the blame squarely upon the individuals who are voluntary participants in the process of unjust labor. But the point many miss is that Bangladesh, as in this movie, is a residue of a bigger world whose rules are largely written by systems of such oppression that we have all contributed in nurturing, especially people in the first world. Geographical disadvantages, political readiness, economic standing and class divides are just few of them. Titu is just one protagonist, who like millions of other child laborers and commercial sex workers, deserves all the praises of the world to be able to persist to live despite the inflicted hardships.
And yes, Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski need not fear about identities of children born to third world prostitutes. The children do not feel ashamed of their parents. If they were, they would not pose for the camera. It’s the detached film-makers who need feel ashamed for telling the story that’s been narrated almost all the time (that children get exploited in Dhaka or Kolkata), but for not telling the story of how it came to such a pass (that Dhaka nearly got driven to a stage of no-return thanks to American interventions using Saudis to uproot Mujibur Rehman because of his stress on secularism and pro-Soviet stances; or the implantation of Missionaries of Charity, which in the name of so-called God’s grace, aggravates poverty by declaring not a war, but preaching that “poverty is gift of God” so that generations of slum children grow up to earn it dividends and also become starry-eyed participants in such stereotypical movies).
In any case, I think there is some hope. It’s surely a triumph of the laborers. And a disaster for the capital evangelists who presume that liberalized economy, after all, is where the buck stops. And the mind.
The other side to child labor. Does it provide for a hope?
This postcolonial report won the “One World Broadcasting Trust / Unicef 1998 Advancement of Children’s Rights award”. And now available for direct viewing online. Click here to watch.
Also important to remember that Titu makes a living, nurtures a dream and does not give up. The reality is indeed more interesting than any fiction. And more painful.
Recent Oscar fancies include child prostitution in south Asia. Indeed, the movie Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids got India the Oscar she needed as much as late Mother Teresa got the Nobel Prize that India deserved! Apparently the story of Sonagachi was not meant to be shown to Indians, because the film makers think it would violate the identity issues of children (as though Calcuttans don’t have cyber cafes on the streets).
Makes one wonder about the socio-economic parameters and where the line is drawn between 'subject to exploitation' and 'right to make a living'. More importantly, one needs ponder the grueling reasons behind any further justification. And the other pressing question is regarding the exoticism of third world poverty.
At the one hand, child labor (commercial sex or injurious workplace) is a reality. Not everyone has the privilege to escape this reality. Nor the audacity. Nor the worldview. Nor the comfort or time to devise a luxurious worldview.
On the other hand, it’s a perpetuation of an oppression cycle. Its not simply another work. It never is. It's a systematic byproduct of an evil world system we abide by, that has such intrinsic elements well woven. One can argue the case for the Netherlands and the red lights there may not blind the eyes with as much discomfort as streets of Kolkata. Or the thousands of software sweatshops sponsored by the first world for the 'call centers' to take orders 24/7, which are indeed glorified tech-slavery of our age!
The well meaning audience may put the blame squarely upon the individuals who are voluntary participants in the process of unjust labor. But the point many miss is that Bangladesh, as in this movie, is a residue of a bigger world whose rules are largely written by systems of such oppression that we have all contributed in nurturing, especially people in the first world. Geographical disadvantages, political readiness, economic standing and class divides are just few of them. Titu is just one protagonist, who like millions of other child laborers and commercial sex workers, deserves all the praises of the world to be able to persist to live despite the inflicted hardships.
And yes, Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski need not fear about identities of children born to third world prostitutes. The children do not feel ashamed of their parents. If they were, they would not pose for the camera. It’s the detached film-makers who need feel ashamed for telling the story that’s been narrated almost all the time (that children get exploited in Dhaka or Kolkata), but for not telling the story of how it came to such a pass (that Dhaka nearly got driven to a stage of no-return thanks to American interventions using Saudis to uproot Mujibur Rehman because of his stress on secularism and pro-Soviet stances; or the implantation of Missionaries of Charity, which in the name of so-called God’s grace, aggravates poverty by declaring not a war, but preaching that “poverty is gift of God” so that generations of slum children grow up to earn it dividends and also become starry-eyed participants in such stereotypical movies).
In any case, I think there is some hope. It’s surely a triumph of the laborers. And a disaster for the capital evangelists who presume that liberalized economy, after all, is where the buck stops. And the mind.
Beyond the Frame
05/08/05 16:40 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
“Beyond the Frame-Alternative perspectives on the war
on terrorism” is a compilation of interviews with
Seth Ackerman, Belquis Ahmadi, Joan Blades, Maliha
Chishti, Noam Chomsky, Jo Commerford, Kevin Danaher,
Cynthia Enloe, Henry Giroux, Janine Jackson, Robert
Jensen, Sut Jhally, Darryl Kimball, Michael Kimmel,
Mhahsa Khanbabai, Naomi Klein, Manning Marable, Mark
Crispin Miller, Bernie Sanders, Ritu Sharma, Vandana
Shiva, and Alisa Solomon.
The video brought out by Media Education Foundation deals with issues such as media’s role, women & the Afghan war, homeland security, war resistance, democracy and war, the Iraq war & growing militarism. The only down-side: the price. Too expensive. Gives me reasons for wondering why certain progressive materials need to be so expensively priced? One of the answers I conceive is it works in two ways: either because they don’t own it, and because owing to paucity of funds, they are eventually owned by 20th Century Fox and the others! Heads we lose, tails they win.
The video brought out by Media Education Foundation deals with issues such as media’s role, women & the Afghan war, homeland security, war resistance, democracy and war, the Iraq war & growing militarism. The only down-side: the price. Too expensive. Gives me reasons for wondering why certain progressive materials need to be so expensively priced? One of the answers I conceive is it works in two ways: either because they don’t own it, and because owing to paucity of funds, they are eventually owned by 20th Century Fox and the others! Heads we lose, tails they win.
Jacob the Liar
04/08/05 12:59 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
Jacob the Liar (1974) is the film about a poor Jewish
worker who overhears a radio broadcast about Russia’s
march towards defeating Germany. The Nazi would not
of course rest until they find out who among the Jews
have been spreading the words. Jacob becomes such a
source of hope for the Jewish workers that he says he
has a radio in the Ghetto. And then when the troubles
begin.
A film about exclusive media, official propaganda, mass hope for survival and subsequent defeat of dreams. The film made in East Germany, is a masterpiece about how we have withered with time. (this German movie is different from the more famous comedy made in the 90's in English by the same name)
A film about exclusive media, official propaganda, mass hope for survival and subsequent defeat of dreams. The film made in East Germany, is a masterpiece about how we have withered with time. (this German movie is different from the more famous comedy made in the 90's in English by the same name)
Z (1969) the Movie
03/08/05 19:22 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
A movie based on the assassination of the prominent
leftist doctor Grigoris Lambrakis, that led to the
military junta in Greece.
Simply one of the greatest political thrillers. A must-see for anyone interested in the cold-war, red-scare, CIA interventions, Costa-Gavras, Oscar nominations, pacifism, socialism, press freedom, democracy, the letter Z (he is alive!).
Simply one of the greatest political thrillers. A must-see for anyone interested in the cold-war, red-scare, CIA interventions, Costa-Gavras, Oscar nominations, pacifism, socialism, press freedom, democracy, the letter Z (he is alive!).
Heart of the Beholder
By Saswat Pattanayak
Often times we are led to believe that the extreme religious fanatics oppose the prevailing administrations. The ruling governments condemn the extreme rightists and call for restrain. And the population is led to believe that the fanatical barbaric causes are espoused by a small minority of believers who have nothing to do with the political parties they are in support of, however right-wing or conservative they may be.
So the media often discuss in detail how former Indian PM Vajpayee used to be a right man in a wrong party, how the BJP (the right wing party) was in principle opposed to the extremist right wing bodies such as World Hindu Council, or RSS –even as the latter were bases which gave birth to the former! This brainwash goes to such an extent that people genuinely start believing that Advani (the alleged instigator of communal riots) now is being opposed by the extreme right-wingers for being soft on Pakistan.
Nearer home, the Bush administration is being criticized for being too liberal by the fellow right wingers. KKK is not yet dead, but we all were told that it was an organization of cowards who never got any administrative support. We were told that KKK were always critical of every government in power too, absolving them of any collaboration. Or that American Nazi Party has nothing to do with the moderate right wing politics at the Center. Or that McCarthy was an aberration, although communism was evil.
But all throughout these apparent oppositions of intra-right wing politics, what transpire are the victories of the right-wing agendas. Then what is portrayed is that with hesitations rife, things get acted out. Like India had a nuclear test done of the Hindu Bomb or America had an unfortunate war on Iraq. The reality is that, the fanatical aims are eventually fulfilled, albeit, amidst a more sophisticated public projection.
Why does it seem that complicated and not this simple? Are the religious fanatics really those wayward minorities that are disliked by the ruling elites? If that be the case, how is it that the administration finds no problem in endorsing much of the demands of the fanatics (on grounds of religious freedom, preaching, commandments at court, the war lobbies, propagating god’s words, incorporating religious practice within health sector, allowing religious parties to contest and lend supports, making issues out of abortion and gay marriage, etc &hellip?
If Martin Scorcese's “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988) was so successfully picketed by the right wingers across the country, a story to tell of it was never devised. Only recently, Ken Tipton’ own story was directed for “The Heart of the Beholder” (2005), a movie that has been dubbed as “the movie Hollywood was afraid to make”.
In no uncertain terms the film
captures what no previously made English
language film had ever accomplished. The reality
of how a sense of freedom is always granted with
religious sanctions is well juxtaposed with
hesitations of the ruling elites to take up
responsibilities for the ruckus. Going beyond
that, the true story of Tipton’s reveal how the
same elites feigning ignorance and publicly
maintaining distance from religious bigots are
actually very much hand-in-gloves with the
latter! Still going beyond that, Tipton shows
how he and his family go ahead to take revenge
on the believers than sit tight, shit scared.
If there has been a film that tells the story in Hollywood, this is the one to watch. Made independently, this may not hit your theatres. But if you get read this story, do spread the word! One way or the other, folks need to understand that the religious fanatics have always ruled the world, after devising a God as a justification of their rule and install few political groups who mock-fight with each other in a so-called democracy as their instrument of rule. And we, as believers in Jesus not as a tempted man or Buddha not as an avowed atheist, view the lens as prescribed, according to the terms of fanatics, to differ only in degree, not in types. And we assume that the fanatics cannot be among us, within us, even without questioning our own godly beliefs and levels of intolerances!
Often times we are led to believe that the extreme religious fanatics oppose the prevailing administrations. The ruling governments condemn the extreme rightists and call for restrain. And the population is led to believe that the fanatical barbaric causes are espoused by a small minority of believers who have nothing to do with the political parties they are in support of, however right-wing or conservative they may be.
So the media often discuss in detail how former Indian PM Vajpayee used to be a right man in a wrong party, how the BJP (the right wing party) was in principle opposed to the extremist right wing bodies such as World Hindu Council, or RSS –even as the latter were bases which gave birth to the former! This brainwash goes to such an extent that people genuinely start believing that Advani (the alleged instigator of communal riots) now is being opposed by the extreme right-wingers for being soft on Pakistan.
Nearer home, the Bush administration is being criticized for being too liberal by the fellow right wingers. KKK is not yet dead, but we all were told that it was an organization of cowards who never got any administrative support. We were told that KKK were always critical of every government in power too, absolving them of any collaboration. Or that American Nazi Party has nothing to do with the moderate right wing politics at the Center. Or that McCarthy was an aberration, although communism was evil.
But all throughout these apparent oppositions of intra-right wing politics, what transpire are the victories of the right-wing agendas. Then what is portrayed is that with hesitations rife, things get acted out. Like India had a nuclear test done of the Hindu Bomb or America had an unfortunate war on Iraq. The reality is that, the fanatical aims are eventually fulfilled, albeit, amidst a more sophisticated public projection.
Why does it seem that complicated and not this simple? Are the religious fanatics really those wayward minorities that are disliked by the ruling elites? If that be the case, how is it that the administration finds no problem in endorsing much of the demands of the fanatics (on grounds of religious freedom, preaching, commandments at court, the war lobbies, propagating god’s words, incorporating religious practice within health sector, allowing religious parties to contest and lend supports, making issues out of abortion and gay marriage, etc &hellip
?
If Martin Scorcese's “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988) was so successfully picketed by the right wingers across the country, a story to tell of it was never devised. Only recently, Ken Tipton’ own story was directed for “The Heart of the Beholder” (2005), a movie that has been dubbed as “the movie Hollywood was afraid to make”.
In no uncertain terms the film
captures what no previously made English
language film had ever accomplished. The reality
of how a sense of freedom is always granted with
religious sanctions is well juxtaposed with
hesitations of the ruling elites to take up
responsibilities for the ruckus. Going beyond
that, the true story of Tipton’s reveal how the
same elites feigning ignorance and publicly
maintaining distance from religious bigots are
actually very much hand-in-gloves with the
latter! Still going beyond that, Tipton shows
how he and his family go ahead to take revenge
on the believers than sit tight, shit scared.
If there has been a film that tells the story in Hollywood, this is the one to watch. Made independently, this may not hit your theatres. But if you get read this story, do spread the word! One way or the other, folks need to understand that the religious fanatics have always ruled the world, after devising a God as a justification of their rule and install few political groups who mock-fight with each other in a so-called democracy as their instrument of rule. And we, as believers in Jesus not as a tempted man or Buddha not as an avowed atheist, view the lens as prescribed, according to the terms of fanatics, to differ only in degree, not in types. And we assume that the fanatics cannot be among us, within us, even without questioning our own godly beliefs and levels of intolerances!
Gandhi as the marketplace of ideas (Part II): The Bhagat Singh Factor
By Saswat Pattanayak
Raj Kumar Santoshi’s film on Bhagat Singh was powerful, to say the least. It most appropriately showcased the hero and his missions. Among five films on Bhagat Singh released that year (2002), Santoshi’s movie topped. It was the only worthwhile cinematic experience one can have about the freedom fighter. And so far, the only film ever made on him that’s notable, anyway.
Bhagat Singh, for the uninitiated, was one of the radical faces of Indian freedom struggle. In a country dominated by centrist politics since post-British times, the sacred texts of Indian history never duly acknowledged the peasants’ movements in India to oust the feudal and foreign rules. Hence any film on Bhagat Singh was to be a welcoming scenario.
Yet it was not meant to be. At least it did not turn out so for me. Even as the movie addressed Bhagat Singh’s legacy, it induced what my adjacent movie-goers felt. Amidst several scenes in the film, members of the audience were exclaiming “shut up, bastard” when it came to any scene showing Gandhi. People watching the movie were almost up in arms against Gandhi who, according to them, was the reason behind Bhagat Singh’s death!
Gandhi was being called names. Which is not unlikely in a society which has grown egalitarian over the time to understand several nuances of Gandhi so as to study him dispassionately than merely hero-worship. At the same time, this sentiment has been played up both by the opportunistic Dalit movement and the fanatic Hindu organizations which have disgraced Gandhi in deeds and words for political ends. Hence, it was definitely another matter altogether to call him the enemy of the people, the killer of Bhagat Singh.
In a review which resounds few of my sentiments too, the author opines that Santoshi lacks some fairness. “He should have known that if a film were to be made on Gandhi, Bhagat Singh would have been regarded as a villain, not as a national hero,” the reviewer comments.
There lies my precise objection. Why does this instinct of posing one against the other in a hero-villain paradigm take shape? Why should Bhagat Singh, and not the then British rulers, be considered villain in a film about Gandhi? Whose interests do such theories serve? Any freedom struggle is not an individual prerogative: it necessarily ingrains within many different voices, different ideologies and ideologues. Speaking of the unique situation as India’s freedom struggle, it was neither aimed at overthrowing the empire, nor at securing civil rights, but at ensuring that the rulers needed to leave the colony alone. In this manner, it was unlike the evolutions in America, nor the revolution in Russia, nor the shift of power at South Africa. India’s freedom struggle was the kind where people of all walks of life participated (if not before the time Gandhi arrived, when it was limited to the armed forces, native rulers and some elites). And they participated not to make a compromise of legal adjustments, or royal massacres, but to secure back their own lands and throw the perpetrators out of the country. And they succeeded (for all those theorists who point out the exhaustion of the British following second world war, one needs only to look at the colonialism in the 1950’s and onwards in whole of Africa and parts of Asia to rationalize that there was no such haste for the British to leave India unless under compulsion!)
It’s important to remember that Bhagat Singh was not a wayward violent activist as he is often portrayed. Certainly he began as one. But soon he organized himself in relation to the people, in much a Gandhian way of providing leadership, for which he has always credited Gandhi. Although starting off as an anarchist, he later on embraced broad people-based struggle. He recognized the source of aura that Gandhi had in India and he understood that without mass scale organized efforts at uniting people, no revolution was going to be a reality.
Gandhi, obviously aware of the genuine efforts of the radicals was opposed only in spirit, since his stance of non-violence was in direct conflict. But for someone famously in support of gun over cowardice, Gandhi never cut off his relationship with members of the nationalist party who publicly supported the extremists, namely Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose, Motilal Nehru (who used to finance revolutionary Chandra Sekhar Azad), Maulana Shaukat Ali and Krishna Kant Malviya etc. Gandhi, the relentless worker among the poorest of the poor, was only too aware of the class conflicts that existed. For his brand of movement though, he needed mass mobilization, even if it meant that he extracted money from the domestic capitalists whom he treated as friends.
Hence, whereas the end was the same, the means were vehemently different. But this difference was not one that was meant to disrupt each other’s paths, let alone posing as challenges. The current intelligentsia assuming that Gandhi and Bhagat Singh and ilk were contradictory is misplaced. Contrary, they might have been at the best. In fact Bhagat Singh categorically refuted the claims that he was a terrorist or preacher of violence. “I am not a terrorist and I never was, except perhaps in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain anything through these methods. One can easily judge it from the history of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. All our activities were directed towards an aim, i.e., identifying ourselves with the great movement as its military wing. If anybody has misunderstood me, let him amend his ideas. I do not mean that bombs and pistols are useless, rather the contrary. But I mean to say that mere bomb throwing is not only useless but sometimes harmful. The military department of the party should always keep ready all the war-material it can command for any emergency. It should back the political work of the party. It cannot and should not work independently.” (ed. Shiv Verma, Selected Writings of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, New Delhi, 1986)
Even when he threw the bomb in the Assembly, it was not kill anyone, but to emphatically make the British realize that there was a voice they could no longer ignore. Bhagat Singh cried freedom at the Lahore Conspiracy case –January 21, 1930—in front of the magistrate in the court (lines which never appeared in any of the films ever made): “Long Live Socialist Revolution', 'Long Live the Communist International', 'Long live the people', 'Lenin's name will never die', and 'Down with Imperialism.' He subsequently went on to read the text of the following telegram in the court and asked the Magistrate to transmit it to the Third International:
This historic event is never mentioned in the popular media for obvious reasons. And 2002 was testament to that sentiment. In a ridiculous attempt to recreate a myth of Bhagat Singh as a nationalistic leader who would be best suited to the emotions of the detached youths of today, the right-wingers have declared Bhagat Singh as their hero!
One, because of their hand in assassination of Gandhi, they badly needed a hero who would have categorically challenged Gandhi. And two, as though to kill two birds with one stone, the hero would then be declared a domestic one who gave up life for India, and not for some leftist ideology. Of course his death would not have come had Gandhi intervened—hence Gandhi was decidedly the cause behind Bhagat Singh’s death, the arguments of the reactionaries go.
Bhagat Singh, hence stripped of his international commitment to wipe out imperialism, has over time been depicted as a sad hero who could not be saved, and the blame has always been put on Gandhi for his inaction. The truth, however is quite the contrary. In a letter that he wrote to his father (which I will later publish on the blog soon), Bhagat Singh was so defiant that one will find it incredible. In a world full of heroes who pleaded for their cases, Bhagat Singh called his own father a traitor and one who stabbed him on his back, for having considered a defense lawyer for him while he was on trial! He said it will be a tragedy if he defended himself, since the cause was not for him to survive, it was for the revolution to win the order of the day and it was required that he died for the cause!
For those who fantasized that Bhagat Singh would have been salvaged had Gandhi pleaded to the British, they only stand to insult the revolutionary’s ideals. For those who are bent upon making Bhagat a national hero instead of an international agitator of social justice, they are only murdering the values for which he gave up his life, with a smile and lots of hope.
Alas, it’s a different world now. And what a shame the world is.
Raj Kumar Santoshi’s film on Bhagat Singh was powerful, to say the least. It most appropriately showcased the hero and his missions. Among five films on Bhagat Singh released that year (2002), Santoshi’s movie topped. It was the only worthwhile cinematic experience one can have about the freedom fighter. And so far, the only film ever made on him that’s notable, anyway.
Bhagat Singh, for the uninitiated, was one of the radical faces of Indian freedom struggle. In a country dominated by centrist politics since post-British times, the sacred texts of Indian history never duly acknowledged the peasants’ movements in India to oust the feudal and foreign rules. Hence any film on Bhagat Singh was to be a welcoming scenario.
Yet it was not meant to be. At least it did not turn out so for me. Even as the movie addressed Bhagat Singh’s legacy, it induced what my adjacent movie-goers felt. Amidst several scenes in the film, members of the audience were exclaiming “shut up, bastard” when it came to any scene showing Gandhi. People watching the movie were almost up in arms against Gandhi who, according to them, was the reason behind Bhagat Singh’s death!
Gandhi was being called names. Which is not unlikely in a society which has grown egalitarian over the time to understand several nuances of Gandhi so as to study him dispassionately than merely hero-worship. At the same time, this sentiment has been played up both by the opportunistic Dalit movement and the fanatic Hindu organizations which have disgraced Gandhi in deeds and words for political ends. Hence, it was definitely another matter altogether to call him the enemy of the people, the killer of Bhagat Singh.
In a review which resounds few of my sentiments too, the author opines that Santoshi lacks some fairness. “He should have known that if a film were to be made on Gandhi, Bhagat Singh would have been regarded as a villain, not as a national hero,” the reviewer comments.
There lies my precise objection. Why does this instinct of posing one against the other in a hero-villain paradigm take shape? Why should Bhagat Singh, and not the then British rulers, be considered villain in a film about Gandhi? Whose interests do such theories serve? Any freedom struggle is not an individual prerogative: it necessarily ingrains within many different voices, different ideologies and ideologues. Speaking of the unique situation as India’s freedom struggle, it was neither aimed at overthrowing the empire, nor at securing civil rights, but at ensuring that the rulers needed to leave the colony alone. In this manner, it was unlike the evolutions in America, nor the revolution in Russia, nor the shift of power at South Africa. India’s freedom struggle was the kind where people of all walks of life participated (if not before the time Gandhi arrived, when it was limited to the armed forces, native rulers and some elites). And they participated not to make a compromise of legal adjustments, or royal massacres, but to secure back their own lands and throw the perpetrators out of the country. And they succeeded (for all those theorists who point out the exhaustion of the British following second world war, one needs only to look at the colonialism in the 1950’s and onwards in whole of Africa and parts of Asia to rationalize that there was no such haste for the British to leave India unless under compulsion!)
It’s important to remember that Bhagat Singh was not a wayward violent activist as he is often portrayed. Certainly he began as one. But soon he organized himself in relation to the people, in much a Gandhian way of providing leadership, for which he has always credited Gandhi. Although starting off as an anarchist, he later on embraced broad people-based struggle. He recognized the source of aura that Gandhi had in India and he understood that without mass scale organized efforts at uniting people, no revolution was going to be a reality.
Gandhi, obviously aware of the genuine efforts of the radicals was opposed only in spirit, since his stance of non-violence was in direct conflict. But for someone famously in support of gun over cowardice, Gandhi never cut off his relationship with members of the nationalist party who publicly supported the extremists, namely Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose, Motilal Nehru (who used to finance revolutionary Chandra Sekhar Azad), Maulana Shaukat Ali and Krishna Kant Malviya etc. Gandhi, the relentless worker among the poorest of the poor, was only too aware of the class conflicts that existed. For his brand of movement though, he needed mass mobilization, even if it meant that he extracted money from the domestic capitalists whom he treated as friends.
Hence, whereas the end was the same, the means were vehemently different. But this difference was not one that was meant to disrupt each other’s paths, let alone posing as challenges. The current intelligentsia assuming that Gandhi and Bhagat Singh and ilk were contradictory is misplaced. Contrary, they might have been at the best. In fact Bhagat Singh categorically refuted the claims that he was a terrorist or preacher of violence. “I am not a terrorist and I never was, except perhaps in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain anything through these methods. One can easily judge it from the history of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. All our activities were directed towards an aim, i.e., identifying ourselves with the great movement as its military wing. If anybody has misunderstood me, let him amend his ideas. I do not mean that bombs and pistols are useless, rather the contrary. But I mean to say that mere bomb throwing is not only useless but sometimes harmful. The military department of the party should always keep ready all the war-material it can command for any emergency. It should back the political work of the party. It cannot and should not work independently.” (ed. Shiv Verma, Selected Writings of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, New Delhi, 1986)
Even when he threw the bomb in the Assembly, it was not kill anyone, but to emphatically make the British realize that there was a voice they could no longer ignore. Bhagat Singh cried freedom at the Lahore Conspiracy case –January 21, 1930—in front of the magistrate in the court (lines which never appeared in any of the films ever made): “Long Live Socialist Revolution', 'Long Live the Communist International', 'Long live the people', 'Lenin's name will never die', and 'Down with Imperialism.' He subsequently went on to read the text of the following telegram in the court and asked the Magistrate to transmit it to the Third International:
'On Lenin Day we send hearty greetings to all who are doing something for carrying forward the ideas of the great Lenin, we wish success to the great experiment Russia is carrying out. We join our voice to that of the International working class movement. The proletariat will win. Capitalism will be defeated. Death to Imperialism'.
This historic event is never mentioned in the popular media for obvious reasons. And 2002 was testament to that sentiment. In a ridiculous attempt to recreate a myth of Bhagat Singh as a nationalistic leader who would be best suited to the emotions of the detached youths of today, the right-wingers have declared Bhagat Singh as their hero!
One, because of their hand in assassination of Gandhi, they badly needed a hero who would have categorically challenged Gandhi. And two, as though to kill two birds with one stone, the hero would then be declared a domestic one who gave up life for India, and not for some leftist ideology. Of course his death would not have come had Gandhi intervened—hence Gandhi was decidedly the cause behind Bhagat Singh’s death, the arguments of the reactionaries go.
Bhagat Singh, hence stripped of his international commitment to wipe out imperialism, has over time been depicted as a sad hero who could not be saved, and the blame has always been put on Gandhi for his inaction. The truth, however is quite the contrary. In a letter that he wrote to his father (which I will later publish on the blog soon), Bhagat Singh was so defiant that one will find it incredible. In a world full of heroes who pleaded for their cases, Bhagat Singh called his own father a traitor and one who stabbed him on his back, for having considered a defense lawyer for him while he was on trial! He said it will be a tragedy if he defended himself, since the cause was not for him to survive, it was for the revolution to win the order of the day and it was required that he died for the cause!
For those who fantasized that Bhagat Singh would have been salvaged had Gandhi pleaded to the British, they only stand to insult the revolutionary’s ideals. For those who are bent upon making Bhagat a national hero instead of an international agitator of social justice, they are only murdering the values for which he gave up his life, with a smile and lots of hope.
Alas, it’s a different world now. And what a shame the world is.
Gandhi as the marketplace of ideas (Part I)
By Saswat Pattanayak
Gandhi was never out of the limelight. But since a couple of years now, he has been in it for all the wrong reasons.
The pan-African movement recognizes him as a crude Indian nationalist by citing that he never stood up for the then South African Black people as much he did for the Indian population. The Indian rightists ruling class abhor Gandhi for his alleged anti-nationalist stance when it came to his professed compassion for the Muslims. The bourgeois intellectual film directors Raj Kumar Santoshi and Shyam Benegal have portrayed Gandhi in ways to suit their standpoints: movies have been made to celebrate Bhagat Singh and Subhas Bose only so that their characters can clash with Gandhi. The pacifists have used Gandhi to show that we don’t need any violence at all, as though that were the lessons Gandhi demonstrated. The conservatives have utilized Gandhi to prove that religious fundamentalism is the path to God and hence prayers should be made compulsory in schools. Dalits think Gandhi was their worst enemy. Brahmins think Gandhi was their worst enemy.
Gandhi is back in limelight. I shall allow myself to swim in the bundle of contradictions and take a retake on my own view of the first para: maybe he has been in it for all the right reasons.
So that we be forced to rethink. Not to rethink Gandhi per se, which is the act, several interest groups are hard-pressing for the people to do. For I don’t think Gandhi being right or wrong is all that important (since no person can logically be right all the time—where will that leave the relativity of judgments leading to the mindless wars we have witnessed—the need is not to be right all the time, but to be right for the just causes). To me, what’s crucial is our motives for evaluating him the way we have done...
Gandhi was never out of the limelight. But since a couple of years now, he has been in it for all the wrong reasons.
The pan-African movement recognizes him as a crude Indian nationalist by citing that he never stood up for the then South African Black people as much he did for the Indian population. The Indian rightists ruling class abhor Gandhi for his alleged anti-nationalist stance when it came to his professed compassion for the Muslims. The bourgeois intellectual film directors Raj Kumar Santoshi and Shyam Benegal have portrayed Gandhi in ways to suit their standpoints: movies have been made to celebrate Bhagat Singh and Subhas Bose only so that their characters can clash with Gandhi. The pacifists have used Gandhi to show that we don’t need any violence at all, as though that were the lessons Gandhi demonstrated. The conservatives have utilized Gandhi to prove that religious fundamentalism is the path to God and hence prayers should be made compulsory in schools. Dalits think Gandhi was their worst enemy. Brahmins think Gandhi was their worst enemy.
Gandhi is back in limelight. I shall allow myself to swim in the bundle of contradictions and take a retake on my own view of the first para: maybe he has been in it for all the right reasons.
So that we be forced to rethink. Not to rethink Gandhi per se, which is the act, several interest groups are hard-pressing for the people to do. For I don’t think Gandhi being right or wrong is all that important (since no person can logically be right all the time—where will that leave the relativity of judgments leading to the mindless wars we have witnessed—the need is not to be right all the time, but to be right for the just causes). To me, what’s crucial is our motives for evaluating him the way we have done...
Why Salman, Why now?
By Saswat Pattanayak
There is no news in the items being circulated by the media about Bollywood actor Salman Khan’s connection with the Underworld. Instead the news that should be worth a credential follow-up now is: Why is Salman in the news now?
First, the conversations that are making news now were published by Hindustan Times way back in August 2001. Salman has since denied that the alleged voice was his. And there were absolute silence over the issue since then. Obviously because first, it violates the right to privacy that two consenting adults have in talking to each other on any topic and hence making it legally inadmissible in court of law, and two because since four years the police has failed to establish if it was genuinely Salman's voice.
Secondly, to contextualize the times, let’s look at what’s new happening in India leading the news media to suddenly revisit Salman (his acting career has not ceased and in fact his latest film was released only last week. Even his last film Lucky made good earnings.)
On the downside, the powerful Aishwarya Rai very famously and bitterly has decided to break off. Incidentally her arch-rival Sushmita Sen not only co-stars with Salman, but is pleading for the new movie not to be banned. The people keen on banning the film are the right wing brigade which have gone on rampage to ransack cinema halls across the country. Their leader, the Hindu leader Advani has been recently charged for his anti-national activities at Ayodhya. Hence, the focus of the media has successfully shifted from Advani to Salman now.
Amidst all these, the media houses are very hard pressed to “break” this news of underworld connection with cinema stars. Almost none of the journalists point out the obvious (bound as they are not to kill the suspense), that even the most patriotic of Indian movies are made by underworld money. World’s largest film industry has historically been financed by the underworld money and in this sense, Dubai’s contribution to promoting Indian cultural integrity (Hindi films and the Indian religion of Cricket) need not be dismissed as abrasively.
Without the involvement of the underworld, India-Pakistan series would never have been a success, making Cricket a South Asian extravaganza than a colonial classicism played by Aussies and Brits. Likewise most of the superstars, producers, actors and film fraternity today would never have risen as high without active financing of the laundered money. To get surprised at an Indian actor talking to the underworld is childish. The public memory may be proverbially short, but we all know the extent to which the filmdom celebrates its existence at the parties hosted by Dubai financiers. Money rules and indeed without a governmental support to filmdom as an “industry” there have been ways to
There is no news in the items being circulated by the media about Bollywood actor Salman Khan’s connection with the Underworld. Instead the news that should be worth a credential follow-up now is: Why is Salman in the news now?
First, the conversations that are making news now were published by Hindustan Times way back in August 2001. Salman has since denied that the alleged voice was his. And there were absolute silence over the issue since then. Obviously because first, it violates the right to privacy that two consenting adults have in talking to each other on any topic and hence making it legally inadmissible in court of law, and two because since four years the police has failed to establish if it was genuinely Salman's voice.
Secondly, to contextualize the times, let’s look at what’s new happening in India leading the news media to suddenly revisit Salman (his acting career has not ceased and in fact his latest film was released only last week. Even his last film Lucky made good earnings.)
On the downside, the powerful Aishwarya Rai very famously and bitterly has decided to break off. Incidentally her arch-rival Sushmita Sen not only co-stars with Salman, but is pleading for the new movie not to be banned. The people keen on banning the film are the right wing brigade which have gone on rampage to ransack cinema halls across the country. Their leader, the Hindu leader Advani has been recently charged for his anti-national activities at Ayodhya. Hence, the focus of the media has successfully shifted from Advani to Salman now.
Amidst all these, the media houses are very hard pressed to “break” this news of underworld connection with cinema stars. Almost none of the journalists point out the obvious (bound as they are not to kill the suspense), that even the most patriotic of Indian movies are made by underworld money. World’s largest film industry has historically been financed by the underworld money and in this sense, Dubai’s contribution to promoting Indian cultural integrity (Hindi films and the Indian religion of Cricket) need not be dismissed as abrasively.
Without the involvement of the underworld, India-Pakistan series would never have been a success, making Cricket a South Asian extravaganza than a colonial classicism played by Aussies and Brits. Likewise most of the superstars, producers, actors and film fraternity today would never have risen as high without active financing of the laundered money. To get surprised at an Indian actor talking to the underworld is childish. The public memory may be proverbially short, but we all know the extent to which the filmdom celebrates its existence at the parties hosted by Dubai financiers. Money rules and indeed without a governmental support to filmdom as an “industry” there have been ways to