SS Rajamouli’s pan-Indian film RRR is
currently minting gold at the box-office. The film, which was released
in five Indian languages, is a fictional tale based on real life heroes
Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem who fought for adivasi rights and
stood up to the might of the British empire. While there is no
historical record of the two of them fighting together, the film
explores the idea of them meeting and uniting for a cause.
Soon after the film hit theatres though, it came under
criticism from a section of the audience for casting the two activists
in the mould of Hindu mythological characters. In the final sequence,
Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan), who took to wearing saffron robes as a
sanyasin and indulged in guerrilla warfare against the British in real
life, transforms into Lord Ram of the Ramayana, accompanied by the
chanting of Sanskrit verses. Komaram Bheem (Junior NTR), a Gond tribal
activist who fought against the Nizam of Hyderabad and British rule in
real life, is depicted as both Hanuman, Lord Ram’s faithful devotee, and
Bheem of the Mahabharata, who is known for his physical strength. In
doing so, the film combines religion with nationalistic fervour, thereby
misrepresenting the legacy of the two men. The depiction has been
welcomed by the audience in many theatres with cries of ‘Jai Shree Ram’.
Speaking
to TNM, Srinivas SV, Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at Azim
Premji University, says that historical distortion aside, the intention
behind such a reimagination may have been to make a film that appeals
across the country.
“Since Rajinikanth's Enthiran in 2010, there has been a
renewed interest in making pan-Indian films in the south. It was a
large-scale production aimed at the national market. You cannot make
such a huge film unless you crack the language barrier. There have been
films since then like Baahubali, 2.0, KGF, Pushpa and
so on. Different industries are trying this out and drawing in talent
from multiple industries to target audiences across the country. Hindi
is obviously a big part of it. RRR is among these films, and
the question you may want to ask is if such a representation was done
under the pressure of having to address the Hindi market which seems to
have a preference for very aggressive nationalism,” he says.
Film critic Sankeertana Dantuluri says that she found the dynamic
between Ram and Bheem to be unequal: “As far as the first half goes, the
fictionalised characters stay fictional. Bheem pretending to be a
Muslim man also felt like a nice touch—one minority [Bheem being an
adivasi man] can trust another, but the way Bheem interacts with Ram is
dubious. Ram sits comfortably in a chair and Bheem comes with his plate
and sits down at his feet—the intention could be to show that an adivasi
man is more comfortable with the ground. I am not sure if it's just me,
but Ram is positioned above Bheem is what I felt it looked like.”
She goes on to add that she found the recasting of the activists as
Hindu mythological figures to be “confusing”: “The mythological turn in
the second half is so confusing. I understand a Telugu commercial
filmmaker's inclination to bring Hindu mythology into the mix. Even a
filmmaker like Sekhar Kammula couldn't resist naming his lead pair
Ram-Sita in Godavari. It could be just as harmless here, but a
sloka-esque bit plays when Ram Charan comes out dressed as Alluri
Sitarama Raju—all accessorised, I might add—and it's about god and not
the freedom fighter. The same happens when Bheem comes out of the water.
Rajamouli is probably trying to amp up the moment, but it translates to
him taking the populist route. He said in an interview that he wanted
the country to know about these Telugu freedom fighters, but RRR tells the viewer nothing about them. If anything, they are crammed to suit the film's narrative.”
RRR comes close on the heels of another blockbuster, Vivek Agnihotri’s Hindi film The Kashmir Files,
which was released in theatres on March 11. The only well-known actor
in the cast of the film is Anupam Kher, but it became a massive hit, earning Rs
100 crore in just eight days. The film is a fictional story inspired by
real events surrounding the forced exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from
their homeland in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. While several Kashmiri
Pandits have applauded the film for portraying their real life trauma,
others from the community have distanced themselves from its factual inaccuracies and palpable anti-Muslim propaganda (as Dr Nitasha Kaul wrote for TNM, “This movie emphasises the exceptionalism of Kashmiri Pandit suffering and the ubiquity of Kashmiri Muslim barbarity.”)
The BJP has been promoting the film aggressively; just a day after
its release, director Vivek Agnihotri, actor Pallavi Joshi (who is
married to Vivek and has acted in the film), and producer Abhishek
Agarwal met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who appreciated the team
for making the film. That the PM should meet the team so promptly, and a
few days later use it to attack his political opponents, speaks volumes about the importance given to the film by the ruling party. Following this, several states with BJP-led governments made the film tax-free.
However, nobody from the BJP has so far condemned the open calls for
violence against Muslims that have been made in theatres across the
country.
Professor Srinivas points out that the cries for ‘Jai Shree Ram’ during RRR are probably influenced by the trend prevailing in theatres after the release of The Kashmir Files. “RRR was
conceived years ago, and these cries of ‘Jai Shree Ram’ in theatres
were not happening at that time. This sloganeering is happening on a
massive scale with The Kashmir Files and it’s possible that it
will die out. If irrespective of what Rajamouli thinks the film becomes
an object of mobilisation, we have to accept that,” says Srinivas.
The brave Hindu and the brutal Muslim
The success of The Kashmir Files shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has closely followed the saffronisation of
Bollywood after the BJP came to power in 2014. Nationalism, Hindu
honour, historical Hindu icons, Hindu suffering in the past and
contemporary military strength have all become popular subjects for
filmmakers in Bollywood. Simultaneously, there has been a subtle and
increasingly not-so-subtle othering of the Muslim community through a
rhetoric that emphasises the brutality of Islamic invaders and their
zeal for forcibly converting the native population.
‘Ghar Wapsi’ (Returning home) is a pet project of the Sangh Parivar
(the family of Hindu nationalist organisations that came out of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; the BJP represents the Sangh in politics)
that was openly advertised soon after Modi became the Prime Minister in
2014. The focus of the project is to ‘reconvert’ people from other
faiths to Hinduism on an assumption that their ancestors had left the
Hindu fold either by force or devious tactics.
In an article
titled ‘Bollywood: ‘Othering’ the Muslim on screen’ published in
Frontline magazine, authors Pranav Kohli and Prannv Dhawan write, “Since
2016, the [Hindi] industry has produced a number of historical epics
such as Bajirao Mastani, Padmaavat, Manikarnika, Panipat and Tanhaji.
However, Bollywood’s turn to history is not a turn to history per se
but a turn towards Hindu history. The recent wave of historical fiction
in Bollywood focuses on highlighting stories that have “never been seen
before” but are actually just Hindutva versions of familiar histories.
In their rhetoric and packaging, the Hindutva gloss on history is
presented as a kind of exclusive scoop—sensationalist historiography for
the masses, as it were. These supposedly forgotten epics are ‘revived’
for celluloid and used to retrospectively construct the Hindu fold.
Erasing the complexity of medieval politics as exemplified in constant
internecine conflict between medieval monarchs, these films homogenise
Hindu monarchs by juxtaposing them against Muslim ‘invaders’.”
In The Kashmir Files, the protagonist, a Kashmiri Pandit
student, delivers a rousing speech towards the end about the suffering
of his people — and this includes a reference to Sikander Shah Miri, a
Muslim king who invaded Kashmir in the 1300s, and is said to have
destroyed temples and shrines. The film artfully links medieval history,
from a time when the geographical contours of what we now identify as
one nation was ruled by various kings, to modern history where the
political and social contexts are completely different. In the cinematic
rendering of history, the brutal, destructive rulers are always Muslim
while the benevolent, brave kings are always Hindu. The trend has caught
on in the Marathi film industry too. Marathi filmmaker Digpal
Lanjekar’s popular historical films, the latest being Pawankhind, are on the same premise. The teaser of upcoming Marathi film Har Har Mahadev,
directed by Abhijeet Deshpande, hails Chhatrapati Shivaji as the king
who stood up against injustice at a time when the dishonour of women and
the destruction of temples were not considered to be crimes. The
voiceover in the trailer is by far right wing MNS leader Raj Thackeray.
Watch: Teaser of Har Har Mahadev
In the south Indian film industries, however, historical dramas
haven’t followed the Hindu-Muslim binary corressponding to Good and Bad
that has become the norm in Bollywood in the last decade. These films
tend to include a ‘good’ Muslim character even if it is a tokenistic
gesture - like Baba Khan in Sye Raa, which is based on the
resistance led by Narasimha Reddy against the British in 1856. Malayalam
cinema, which caters to a demographic that has a higher percentage of
Muslims in the population when compared to other states, has produced
historical dramas that have Muslims in the lead. Mohanlal’s Marakkar: Arabikadalinte Simham has
the actor playing a Muslim character, Kunjali Marakkar, who fought
against the Portuguese in the 16th century. Nivin Pauly’s Kayamkulam Kochunni
is based on a Muslim highwayman who robbed from the rich and gave to
the poor in the early 19th century. However, a film on Variyankunnath, a
prominent leader of the Malabar Rebellion of 1921, ran into controversy after
right wing groups objected to it. Though director Aashiq Abu and actor
Prithviraj withdrew from the film, the production company has said that
it intends to go ahead with it.
Nationalism, fascism and cinema
The authorship of We or our Nationhood Defined, published in
1939, has been controversial as the book itself. It was said to have
been written by MS Golwalkar, the second chief of the RSS, and the book
reportedly made him an influential figure in the organisation since it was the first text that laid out the Sangh’s ideology in great detail. The book, which envisions the
building of a Hindu Rashtra and calls Hindus a ‘race’ while calling
people belonging to other religions as ‘foreigners’, also glorifies
Germany for its anti-Semitism, fascism and treatment of minorities.
Golwakar later claimed that the book was actually authored by Ganesh
Damodar Savarkar, one of the five founders of the RSS and older brother
of VD Savarkar, and that he’d only translated it from the original
Marathi. In 2006, the RSS disowned the
book. However, the core ideology of the RSS stems from this text and
the Islamophobic, Hindu pride rhetoric that has become mainstream and
normalised now can be easily traced back to the book.
The RSS’s open admiration
for German dictator Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
in its early years is no secret. Interestingly, both these leaders
extensively used cinema as a means to control the masses.
In an email interview with TNM, Dr Frank P Tomasulo, Core Certified
Professor of Graduate Film Studies, National University (San Diego),
lays out several characteristics that defined the fascist films from
Germany: “The Nazi cinema of Germany, as distinguished somewhat from the
fascist cinema of Italy, was very much involved with (1) a cult of
personality around Adolf Hitler (especially in the documentaries), (2)
the use of German tropes – the eagle, flags and banners, buildings from
the First Reich, the Holy Roman Empire – as well as mythological
references to Germany’s Nordic heritage to instill patriotism for the
Fatherland, (3) lines of organised masses in parades (Cf. Triumph of the Will, (4) displays of the inferiority of other races (especially in Jeu Seuss)
– including comparisons to rats and other vermin, (5) stereotypical
representations of Jews as cunning, unclean, and deceitful; Gypsies as
thieves; Communists as subversive and unpatriotic, and (6) cinematic
techniques that glorify Der Fuehrer and the new German state
(post-Weimar): moving camera to show that Deutschland is “on the move
again,” low camera angles on Hitler and other Nazi leaders to make them
appear powerful, backlighting to lighten the hair colour of dark-haired
Nazis to make them appear more Nordic and fair-haired, and use of the
telephoto lens in crowd scenes to suggest that admiring gatherings of
das Volk [common people] were solidly close together in their support of
the Third Reich.”
German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary Triumph of the Will,
which was commissioned by Adolf Hitler and released in March 1935, is
till date cited as a prominent example in any discussion on fascist
propaganda films. The director, who was considered to be a ‘cinematic genius’ for her film techniques, was a favourite of Adolf Hitler. Triumph of the Will
is on the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by
more than seven lakh Nazi party sympathizers. The previous year, Hitler
had become the Chancellor of Germany, and the first concentration camp
for communists and his political opponents was set up in Dachau. By the
end of his reign in 1945, there were over a thousand concentration camps
in Germany and other parts of German-occupied Europe.
Though Leni later distanced herself from Hitler and claimed that
she was “apolitical” and was not a Nazi herself, it’s impossible not to
view her work in the political climate in which her films were made.Tirumph of the Will begins
with the following text [translated to English from German]: “20 years
after the outbreak of the World War/ 16 years after the beginning of
German suffering/ 19 months after the beginning of the German rebirth/
Adolf Hitler flew once again to Nuremberg to hold a miltary display over
his stalwarts.”
Describing the film in his essay ‘The
Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema: Triumph of the Will’, Dr Tomasulo
says, “...Hitler repeatedly stressed that one could not sway the masses
with arguments, logic or knowledge, only with feelings and beliefs. True
to form, the documentary establishes a “cult of personality” around its
“star”, a mystical aura associated with Nature, religion, and a
“folkish” family-based patriotism.” Dr Tomasulo goes on to discuss how
the film projected Hitler as a messiah of the masses, mixing religious
imagery with patriotic fervour and nationalistic ideals.
These films found ready resonance with the audience because the
“German national character” (as writer, cultural critic and film
theorist Siegfried Kracauer put it) was conditioned by decades of
“education, rituals (saluting the flag, the Sieg Heil salute) customs,
symbols (the swastika), geography (i.e., the Heimat) and, especially,
the nations’ history (wars, unification, military conquests and
defeats), books (Goethe), music and popular song (the Horst Wesel song),
opera (Wagner), theatre, art and, finally, cinema (Riefenstahl).
Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels ensured that German culture was Nazi
culture and relied on the nation’s glorious mythic past to demonstrate
the ongoing greatness of Deutschland (“Deutschland Uber Alles”),” Dr
Tomasulo points out. In Nazi Germany, only films that were in line with
the state's ideology could be released.
In 1930s Italy, Mussolini established a gigantic film studio,
Cinecittà , which produced numerous fictional films called “white
telephone films” because the presence of white telephones indicated a
bourgeois household. Unlike Nazi Germany, which specialised in dramas
and horror movies, Dr Tomasulo says, the films that came out of fascist
Italy were mostly comedies.
“In this case, the propaganda value was not in direct
support of the fascist regime but, rather, as a distraction for the mass
audience – akin to the “bread and circuses” of ancient Rome, which took
the public’s awareness away from politics. Another fictional genre was
the Roman Empire and gladiator epics, which depicted the “glory of Rome”
so as to extend that ancient grandeur (and military success) to the
contemporary rule of Mussolini,” he says.
Italy, too, produced films that glorified masculinity and violence in the guise of nationalism.
"On the documentary side, Italian cinema churned out
numerous films that glorified Italian youth (especially boys) and how
they might improve their physiques and conditioning. They extolled the
many beachfront health camps set up by the regime, supposedly to get the
youth in shape – but mainly used to train them for future military
service, under the guise of physical well-being. More noxious and
propagandistic was the epic Scipione l'africano, which was commissioned by Mussolini shortly before Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. Benito Mussolini
commissioned an epic film depicting the exploits of the ancient general
Scipio. Not surprisingly, the movie won the Mussolini Cup as the
greatest Italian film at the 1937 Venice Film Festival, which also became a venue for fascist-sponsored cinema,” Dr Tomasulo says.
Cinema as a canvas for propaganda
In India, where the Hindi film industry is the largest, the
BJP has been cognizant of the power that cinema has over the people. In
December 2018, PM Modi met with a delegation ‘from the film and
entertainment industry’ – though this was an all male, all Bollywood
delegation – and followed it up with two more meetings
with Bollywood within a space of a month. After the first meeting, a
reduction on Goods and Services Tax (GST) for film tickets was announced,
a move that was highly appreciated by the film industry. In January
2019, the PM met several A-list stars and filmmakers from Bollywood to
discuss how the industry could contribute to “nation building”.
Several stars like Akshay Kumar and Kangana Ranaut, who
have publicly praised the PM and are known to amplify the BJP’s
political stances and ideology through their choice of films, interviews
and social media interactions, have reaped the benefits too. In April 2019,
just days before the fourth phase of the General Elections, PM Modi
gave Akshay Kumar a ‘non-political’ exclusive interview —the ‘tough’
questions included how the PM liked to eat mangoes. The interview
happened after the Election Commission refused to allow the release of PM Narendra Modi, a biopic, before the elections were concluded. Kangana Ranaut was permanently suspended from
Twitter in May 2021 for hate speech and violating Twitter’s policies
repeatedly. Later that year, she received her fourth National Award from
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu. Director Vivek Agnihotri, who made The Kashmir Files
and received a warm welcome from the PM, is known to have coined the
term “urban naxals” to refer to anyone who expresses “anti-national”
opinions (meaning, questioning the government).
The fact that films promoting a certain narrative are
becoming money-spinners is a huge encouragement for Bollywood filmmakers
to persist with the trend. In January 2019, Uri: The Surgical Strike became
a massive hit, earning over Rs 300 crore at the worldwide
box-office.The film, which presents a fictionally dramatised account of
India’s response to the attack carried out by Pakistani insurgents in
2016, was released three months before the General Elections were set to
begin in India. Uri underlines the idea that India under the
current leadership is a ‘new India’ which will not put up with such
insults.The film’s release was also around the same time that PM Modi revealed what he had told the soldiers going in for the strike. While the Opposition attacked the PM for politicising an
army operation for votes, many of his supporters were exultant to see
how India had responded “effectively” to the attack on the big screen.
In contrast, films like Mulk [2018] which deal with the widely prevalent Islamophobia in the country are rare in Bollywood. Films like Raazi [2018] and Sardar Udham [2021]
that have handled complex subjects without devolving into
chest-thumping hypernationalism are also too few and far between.
Meanwhile, Adipurush, an adaptation of the Ramayana and a mega budget film directed by Om Raut who made Tanhaji,
is expected to release in 2023. The pan-Indian film, made on a budget
of Rs 500 crore, will come out the same year that the long disputed Ram
temple in Ayodhya is expected to be inaugurated. The temple has been the RSS’s dream project for over 30 years, and has had a constant presence in the BJP’s manifesto.
The next General Elections in India will be held in 2024.
Also read: How BJP and its affiliates are using Shivaji statues to mobilise BCs in Telangana
A still from Padmavati
