Vandita Mishra writes: On Dhurandhar’s loud splash and some gathering silences
Watching Dhurandhar 2 recently was to listen to its apocalyptic sound and high octave fury. The rage was, explicitly, against Pakistan, depicted as bleak, brutish and lawless, whose destiny and future, the film’s protagonist says, will now be decided by India. In a film in which the cross-border conflict seems always a frame away from invoking the internal religious divide, the rage was also directed at the Muslim Other. The narrative selectively blended fact with fiction, flattening complex events and histories.
The blockbuster self-consciously frames a “New India”, led by Narendra Modi, who makes an appearance in glowy footage from his 2014 victory speech and 2016 demonetisation address, blurring the line between cinema and, before the powerful, a cinematic kneeling. In this New India, patriotism and nationalism draw lines that are hard and unforgiving, communal identity is underlined, and the film’s unflinching violence becomes a metaphor for erasure of the meeting ground. There can be no compassion or empathy or nuance in this country in-the-remaking.
You could say this is the standard stuff of the spy thriller, and haven’t we seen such exaggeration and caricature in Hollywood films before. But Dhurandhar 2 is also remarkable because it swaggers into theatres amid gathering patches of an enforced quiet outside. Its noise and fury draw attention to the several silences that are also being Made in New India.
On March 15, four days before Dhurandhar 2 hit theatres, 14 young men were arrested for an Iftar party on a boat on the Ganga in the Prime Minister’s constituency of Varanasi after a complaint by a local BJP functionary. They were subsequently denied bail by the court. Their silence has merged with that of those arrested a few days later, in two rounds of a police crackdown on March 20 and 24, after a similar incident, another small Iftar party by a stream near an ashram, about 300 km away in Shravasti.
In the Varanasi case, the police took the video that the young men themselves posted on social media, and filled in the blanks. Amid shifting claims, escalating charges and uncorroborated evidence, it slapped sections of the law ranging from deliberately hurting religious sentiments to polluting the river, to, belatedly, extortion, in order to keep them in custody. The state’s hard-eyed and strong-armed swoopdown on a routine excursion on the river would be a travesty anywhere. It is especially so on the Ganga, in Varanasi.
Ganga is sacred for Hindus but it tugs at everyone’s hearts, regardless of their faith. It is the river that runs through stories, memoirs and poems in different languages. It bears witness. It is nurturing of an entire civilisation. To draw dividing lines in the waters of the mighty Ganga is the real act of defiling, not the Iftar party.
And Varanasi is the city of twisty lanes where you must step back and sideways to negotiate a way forward with others. Lines lose their straightness in Varanasi and tea shops still provide nooks, amid the daily to-and-fro, to savour the unhurried rituals and rhythms of banter and story-telling. Like its countless varieties of street food, a good argument is to be relished in Banaras, not merely won or lost.
On March 13, six days before Dhurandhar’s release, a primary school teacher in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri was suspended, without so much as a show-cause notice or inquiry, for putting out, on the evening of March 12, a satirical Facebook video on the rising LPG prices, in which he mimicked PM Modi. The Madhya Pradesh High Court stayed his suspension subsequently, but it will not be surprising if a piece of the silence has settled down to stay in Shivpuri, as it has in the homes and neighbourhoods of the accused in Varanasi and Shravasti. A message has been sent, and in the age of social media, it can travel further: Uploading an Iftar video, poking fun at the powerful, can have consequences.
The audacious teacher in Shivpuri should probably have known what was coming — for some time now, cartoonists in the country have held back from drawing PM Modi.
The long and robust tradition of political cartoons in India has been unsparing of prime ministers in the past. PMs were cartooned for saying something, and also for not speaking — PV Narasimha Rao’s silence was the subject for many a cartoonist. But PM Modi’s cartoons have been visibly dwindling.
The reason could be any one or all of the following — PM Modi has successfully projected himself above the fray; his party bows unquestioningly to him and most of the Opposition does not take him on directly; everyone is spooked by his perceived popularity and winnability; his government is vindictive; he wears the mantle of “Hindu” leadership. Whatever the reason, the effect is a shrinking of the PM cartoon, over the last five years or so, especially.
There are other silences, such as the nervous one descending on the campus after Delhi University introduced in March a new set of rules for students’ protests, mandating physical applications, written permissions, advance notice and a full set of speakers and attendees. The innocent silence of the five-year-old girl from Kanpur that points to acquiescences and complicities in a larger silencing — a few days ago, she gifted, or was made to gift, a toy bulldozer to Chief Minister Yogi. The Opposition’s continuing do-nothing silence, mixed up with all the other silences, because speaking up is hard work and can be costly.
Till next time,
Vandita
