Opinion Vandita Mishra writes: On Dhurandhar’s loud splash and some gathering silences
The blockbuster frames a 'New India' of hard lines, its unflinching violence becomes a metaphor for erasure of the meeting ground, real and imagined
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. (File image) Watching Dhurandhar 2 recently was to listen to its apocalyptic sound and high octave fury. The rage was against Pakistan, depicted as bleak, brutish and lawless, whose destiny, 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 an 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 monster hit frames a “New India”, led by Narendra Modi, who appears in glowy footage of his 2014 victory speech and 2016 demonetisation address, blurring the line between cinema and a cinematic kneeling before the powerful. In this New India, patriotism and nationalism draw unforgiving lines, communal identity is underlined, and there is no meeting ground — the film’s unflinching violence becomes a metaphor for it.
You could say this is standard stuff of the spy thriller, we’ve seen such exaggeration and caricature in Hollywood films before. But Dhurandhar 2 is also remarkable because it swaggered into theatres amid gathering patches of an enforced quiet. Its noise draws attention to the 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. The court denied them bail. Their silence has merged with that of those arrested only a few days later, in two rounds of a police crackdown on March 20 and 24, on another small Iftar party by a stream, about 300 km away in Shravasti.
In the Varanasi case, the police took a video the young men posted on social media, and filled in the blanks. Amid shifting claims, it slapped sections of the law ranging from deliberately hurting religious sentiments to polluting the river to, belatedly, extortion. The state swoop-down on an 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. It is the river that runs through stories, memoirs and poems, across faiths, in different languages. It bears witness. And Varanasi is the city of twisty lanes where you must negotiate a way forward with others. Here, tea shops still provide nooks to savour the unhurried rituals of banter and story-telling. A good argument is relished, not merely won or lost, in Varanasi.
On March 13, six days before Dhurandhar 2 released, a primary school teacher in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri was suspended without a show-cause notice or inquiry, for putting out, on the evening of March 12, a satirical Facebook video on rising LPG prices, in which he mimicked PM Modi. The MP High Court stayed his suspension, but a piece of the silence may have settled down in Shivpuri, as 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 travels far: Uploading an Iftar video, poking fun at the powerful, has consequences.
Perhaps the teacher in Shivpuri should have known what was coming — for some time now, cartoonists in the country have held back from drawing PM Modi. The robust tradition of political cartoons in India has been unsparing of prime ministers in the past. PMs were cartooned for saying something, and for not speaking — many took aim at the silence of PV Narasimha Rao. But PM Modi’s cartoons have been dwindling, over the last five years or so especially.
The reason could be any one or all of the following — PM Modi has successfully projected himself as above the fray; his party bows to him and much of the Opposition is spooked by his perceived winnability; his government is vindictive; he wears the mantle of “Hindu” leadership.
There are other silences, too, such as the nervous one descending on campus after Delhi University introduced in March new rules for students’ protests, mandating physical applications, written permissions and a full set of speakers and attendees. The innocent silence of the five-year-old from Kanpur that points to 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 with the other silences, because speaking up is hard work and can be costly.
The writer is National Opinion Editor, The Indian Express. vandita.mishra@expressindia.com
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