Rang De Basanti - Film Review New
(Dir: Rakyesh Mehra), Produced by Rakyesh Mehra, Ronnie Screwvala

By Nakul Krishna

'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,' goes the opening line of Allen Ginsberg's Howl . Ginsberg, of the group of now-legendary Beat poets, refers to a different generation from the one Rakeysh Mehra portrays in his would-be iconic Rang De Basanti . For Ginsberg and his fellow observers of the 60s (though Howl was first heard in 1956), in India and in the West, youth was all righteous outrage, indignation and protest. Their rather ambitious target was the System itself -- not for them the half-measures of Home Rule, parliamentary land reform and State Socialism. Theirs was a struggle that evolved from principles that did not know national boundaries: peace over war, equality over imperialism, justice over exploitation. To quote the daddy of them, Charu Majumdar -- the first of the Naxalites -- 'the spontaneous struggles of the petty-bourgeois youths and students have created a stir from one end of India to another.'[1]

That generation totters now into harmless dotage. Survivors of the struggle (no doubt) shake their heads disapproving of today's much less radical 'youngsters', reminisce fondly about 'their time'. The often-spoken question being, what has happened to our young? Whither the spark, the youthful idealism? What happened ? A broad 'liberalization' covers it for most: what will our young men and women protest, sucked as they have been into the vortex of cable TV consumerism. All roads lead to apathy. The question is one worth returning to.

In Rang De Basanti (henceforth RDB ), director Mehra works with a plot of huge potential: an English film-maker (with only slightly accented Hindi) comes to India to shoot a film about the 'Young Guns' of the anti-colonial struggle -- Bhagat Singh and company -- to come upon Aamir Khan and group whom she promptly casts in their parts. Their journey from apathetic University layabouts to worthy analogues of the revolutionaries they play in the film fills the next hour and half.

Not to be cynical, but the authenticity of Mehra's portrayal of Youth is almost too great to be entirely intentional. India's youth (constituting a good half of its population, as the media rarely tire of informing us), or that portion thereof that inhabits its big cities as part of the 'middle class', is exactly as Mehra shows them to be. In the first half of the film at least, everything is real. College boys do say such things as "Sexy jacket bro" and their engagement with issues is as shallow as Mehra shows it to be. On their choice of music, the eclectic nature of their 'hangout places' (today dhaba, tomorrow lounge bar), Mehra is shockingly dead-on.

From a good many points of view, RDB has no flaws. The characters are well cast, A. R. Rahman's music is brilliant and the screenplay is shot as a series of superbly mounted set-pieces: Lutyens' Delhi and Punjab come alive with a vibrancy that is born of better feelings than the nostalgia of the Yash Chopra types. With RDB , Bollywood hits the gas on its road trip to technical supercompetence. If Mehra had found a way of applying his technical gifts to a less engaging theme, he might have gotten off with praise for his craftsmanship. However, he insists on taking on grander questions. Before the intermission, Nation, Corruption, Secularism and Rebellion (among other things) have begun to populate his colourful frames.

On rebellion, the film is as profound as a t-shirt slogan to that effect; well, this is hardly The Life of Fidel Castro . It has safe Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai stories on offer; hardly a cardinal sin. Then Corruption (you can hear the capital C) makes its ugly appearance as a vile Defence Minister who (we are assured) is responsible for the crash of a MiG that killed its pilot, a friend of Aamir and gang. There follow many rounds of violent recrimination, culminating in two massacres and one assassination. At stake is an idea of nation, betrayed by a corrupt polity.

It is a pity that this nation starts in Delhi and ends in Punjab. Bengal and Maharashtra (hardly less virulent in the anti-colonial struggle), the north-east and the South have no place in the film's imagination (though they are well represented in the film's cast). Given that the film draws its inspiration from Bhagat Singh and not Khudiram Bose (among others), this might be understandable. However, the larger question of whom or what to blame for India's troubles receives a curious (while commonplace enough) answer. In the plush middle-class homes the film inhabits, it is easy to maintain the happy delusion of corruption being India's worst problem. Might it be, however, that the problem actually has to do with a State that is simply not representative of the aspirations of its disparate citizens? An easy enough inference to make, but one that Mehra seems to miss completely.

Now the film's focal point, Bhagat Singh, is a tough nut to crack at the best of times. On the one hand he stands for a certain manly, robust (Punjabi?) critique of non-violence that no doubt leaves veteran Gandhi-baiters with a warm and fuzzy feeling. (Here, as played briefly by Tamil Young Turk Siddharth, he acquires a softness, a poetic sensitivity that is new.) On the other, his avowed atheism and Marxism can be off-putting in several quarters. Consider his rhetoric, as employed in the leaflets thrown in the Central Assembly Hall along with the bombs: they speak of a 'Trade Disputes Bill', a 'Press Sedition Bill', of 'alien bureaucratic exploiters' whose blood must be shed 'at the altar of the [inevitable] 'Great Revolution' that will bring freedom to all, rendering the exploitation of man by man impossible.'[2]

Bhagat Singh's revolution would hardly end with the British quitting India. Inquilab is a bigger deal than that.  Progressive politics is conspicuous in the film for its strange absence. Social change may be effected by joining 'politics, the IAS or the IPS.' The choice is somehow between chest-thumping nationalism of the RSS type and complete apathy. Not to romanticise, say, the Naxalites. Far from it. But a whiff of their rhetoric should be evidence of the real contest between radical Youth and a faltering nation-State. There are in fact larger things at stake. Perhaps it is the Nation that is too petty a thing to die for.


Notes.
[1] http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mazumdar/1966/x01/x01.htm
[2] http://www.shahidbhagatsingh.org/april8.asp