Sabko rang de... Review on Rang De Basanti

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The time was different then – in the early 1970s – when the entire nation was all smiles and dreamy-eyed watching good-looking men and women, nicely dressed, running around trees and singing melodious tunes to fill our hearts with feel-good thoughts. Then entered the screen a lanky, somewhat gawky, frown-faced, tall, young man with a pistol in his hand, restlessly looking around, red-eyed, to kill people who tormented him. The much-celebrated middle-class dream, in one stroke of imagery, was transported back from ice-capped mountains, serenading streams, and scintillating landscapes; and founded itself on what unfolded in the back lanes of urban slums, shady marketplaces, and filthy side walks. The make-believe world of song-and-dance revelry and nice-guys-never-question school of morality-boosting suddenly turned fusty.

The anti-hero had arrived, with Amitabh Bachchan. For the first time in Indian cinema, ‘anger’ was portrayed as a ‘primary human emotion’: an ordinary citizen taking on the powers-that-be. The ‘angry young man’ ripped apart a concocted reality the middle class was always made to believe in: life is elsewhere, behind the iron wall, and you cannot pull it down to reach there.

The middle class had just woken up, indolently though. For how long could the new-found zeal of Independence have lasted, if nothing changed in people’s backyards? For how long could they have believed that they were part of the ‘nation-building’ programme, if they had no say in it? For how long could they have bartered their aspirations with deceptive, momentary happiness, if that got them neither a voice nor a sense of belonging? The sentiment was brewing in societal platforms, quietly taking shape, with the historic student movements in the 1960s and 1970s. And, on the cinematic front, came the anti-hero – probably accidentally – who represented such emotion (looming frustration, mounting disillusionment, and accumulating anger) that people of his time found it difficult to express though they had it nurturing deep inside and for too long. He looked into your eyes and told you: ‘you could actually hit back, buddy’.

But, the ordinary cine-goer was being cheated again, unknowingly, as it was only the case of starry-night blues being replaced by rock-strewn romance of the age of un-reason. So, the powers-that-be too saw no harm in being portrayed as the fall-guys so long as cine-goers were beguiled to buy newly-packaged dreams passed on to them as ‘hope’ for a new age! So, he killed the bad guys, and not a single word was written condemning him.

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But, hold on, time has changed. When four young men, on screen, frustrated with the way their friend was killed in a MiG crash as a result of a shady deal by a defence minister, in a fit of ‘anger’, kill the minister, the urban gentry – politicians, bureaucrats, media persons, corporate heads and their white-collared brigades, and the likes – lose its sleep. Rakeysh Mehra’s RDB(Rang De Basanti)is much an object of their hatred.

Why did RDBscare them? It wasn’t the first time in Indian cinema that the bad guy was killed to give way for the nicer guys to lead a sane life! Rather, ever since Amitabh Bachchan ushered in, that has been the essential ingredient for most Indian films to pull the audience out of a high-voltage, spurious cathartic experience, so that the audience goes home and sleeps nicely! Well, here is the catch: RDBmeans exactly the opposite. It makes a loud statement: ‘the brewing anger of a generation may burst anytime, anywhere, in whatever inane way, so wake up!’

There is an intriguing point of divergence between the earlier bad-guys-must-be-killed narratives and that of RDB: you do not have to be a missionary, well-meaning, godly, unrealistic figure like Inspector Vijay (in Zanjeer) to rise to a cause; rather that loud, repelling, slipshod, naïve brat who you chose to ignore at the beer bar last night may surprise you this morning on the front page of newspapers by doing what you have exactly been thinking of doing for years. In other words: the more-than-life-size image versus the man-on-the-street; dream versus real-life situation; moralistic symbolism versus existential compulsions; political correctness versus raw human instinct!

When Karan Singhania and Daljit kill the minister, it is sheer human instinct. When Karan kills his own father, it is pure, uncorrupted dilemma of a youth seeking to justify his existence. When the four friends decide to surrender in a rather dramatic fashion, it is a mission (howsoever bizarre it looks).

But, in the thick of the action, when they were confessing their ‘benevolent crime’ to the entire nation through the national radio system and declaring that they have surrendered, the police get a directive from the powers-that-be: ‘no one should survive.’ And, take it, no one survives. And that is the essence of the film. The original Inquilaab movement of the 1920s – brilliantly weaved into the main plot – is no visual gimmickry there. It is there to accentuate the fact that ‘the state has not changed even 60 years after Independence, and that the state never learns.’

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Well, at the outset, all that is portrayed in RDB is again nothing new to Indian cinema. We have seen many other guys-next-door taking on the powerful. But, none threatened anyone in real life, let alone making someone lose sleep. That is because they all fall prey to a typically flawed marketing mantra of the formula-sick dream factory: the audience would not buy tickets to watch people who look or think like them, or situations that they live in. So, the protagonist vis-à-vis the situation has to be seen high above the eye level of the audience.

Here comes RDB, and breaks the rule of the game. RDB makes it simple: hate him or like him, the youth you so callously reject as boisterous and non-serious today can usher in a revolution, because he is learning to question. And don’t drive him away so violently, when he comes to you with a question, like what you did to the peaceful candlelight protest at India Gate. He may not even allow you to do a morning walk next morning to reduce your fat belly. He would try to solve his problem the way that he knows.

If that happens, one does not know whether it would mean anarchy or revolution. But, one thing is for sure: the end of politics, governance, business, and journalism by cowards. The edifice will crumble. So, don’t shed tears over sleepless nights; rather watch the film over and over again till you get the points right, and get ready for a dose of questioning. Writing off the film or calling it ‘bizarre’ cannot kill an idea that is waiting to rip apart the economic superstructure built by the elite, cocooned intelligentsia.