What NOT to do if you are a patriot. Review on Rang De Basanti

According to parliament records, 157 pilots and 35 civilians have been killed in MIG-21 plane crashes in the thirty year period between 1971 and 2001. Though the reasons for each crash are specific to that crash, it can be safely said that pilot misjudgement and technical failure account for majority of crashes. It has to be noted that no one is blaming the pilot for being careless or rash; in fact, only the best pilots who perform exceptionally well in training programmes are selected to train on the MIG-21 keeping in view how unforgiving it is of pilot errors; so the competence of the pilots is never in question. But even the best in the business can make mistakes, especially in driving such an elaborate and complicated plane like the MIG-21. The family and friends of the dead pilots often, understandably, find it difficult to admit that their friend/loved one can make a mistake because of the veneer of invulnerability the pilot has acquired due to his/her successful training record. So they often find it comforting, and reasonable, to convince themselves that the crash happened due to a technical failure.

It is a delicate issue where emotions run high, and it must be handled as such. So when a movie is made on a MIG-21 crash and you see the Defence Minister accusing the pilot to be rash and careless, you start to smell something fishy because that is not what happens in reality, for ''rash and careless'' is very different to ''error in judgement''. You start to wonder why the pilot's death is glorified while the Defence Minister is set up deliberately as a villain, why the film-maker is giving you a distorted view of the truth. You start to question whether he is exploiting the emotionalism inherent in the story to make his point. You start to feel you are being cheated.

Rang De Basanti starts with Sue McKinney (Alice Patton) coming to India from England to make a documentary on the revolutionary movement that occurred just before the Gandhian Era during the struggle for independence. She is deeply affected by the diaries of late jailer James Mckinney, her grandfather, who has come into personal contact with the great personalities of that age like Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Rajguru etc. She meets her friend Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) in Delhi and they go to Delhi University to find some actors for her documentary. After a few futile searches, Sue meets Sonia's friends DJ (Aamir Khan), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), Karan (Siddharth) and Sukhi (Sharman Joshi) who she decides are perfect for the roles of Azad, Ashfaq, Bhagat Singh and Rajguru respectively. Sonia as Durga Bhabhi and Laxman Pandey (Atul Kulkarni) as Bismil complete her cast.

The first half deals with how the six actors, though first chafing Sue's project, slowly grow into their roles and complete a part of the documentary. Along the way, all of them venture into unchartered territory in terms of what they feel about the country and how to change it. The narrative is a mixture of funny one-liners, colourful settings and occasional whisks back to the 1920's where we see our actors as the characters they are playing. The plot takes a turn early in the second half when Ajay (Madhavan), Sonia's fiancé, gets killed in a MIG-21 plane crash which shatters the small world the students live in. The Defence Minister rubs salt in their wounds by calling Ajay a rash pilot and when the friends organise a protest against him in front of India Gate, he orders a lathi charge which injures Ajay's mother badly. Enraged at all this injustice done to them, the five friends decide to kill the Defence Minister and the movie rolls on to its scarcely believable climax.

Siddharth and Soha Ali Khan give stand-out performances among the university students. Aamir, Sharman, Kunal and Atul do justice to their roles and perform well in whatever space they have been given. Alice Patton does well as the English girl passionate about the Indian revolutionary movement. Guest stars like Madhavan, Om Puri, Anupam Kher and Kirron Kher are adequate. Music by A.R.Rehman is good. You don't really notice any glaring gaps in the direction or cinematography either. But where the movie fails, in my opinion, is its storyline, script and the message it is supposed to carry.

Let me reiterate one point, for it is a pivot on which the entire movie turns. No defence minister or IAF spokesperson has ever called a pilot 'rash and careless' in connection with a MIG-21 crash. The reason cited has always been 'error in judgement' caused not due to lack of skill or experience but due to the sheer complexity of the planes. The movie ignores this point conveniently and shows the defence minister publicly accusing Ajay as a careless pilot, which to me, not only misrepresents the facts but also makes us, the viewers, hate the minister with all our guts and sympathize with our heroes. Add to that the overly dramatic lathi charge where Ajay's mother gets beaten out of consciousness and our hatred for the minister grows even further. As if that's not enough, we are helpfully informed that Ajay sacrificed his life to save a few civilians and the trifecta is complete. The movie uses a twisted version of the truth and combines it with a lot of tear-jerking scenes to win us over.

What does the movie offer us in way of a solution? Absolutely nothing. The ''IAS bano, IPS bano'' line is just a typically juvenile way of looking at things because it assumes that a good political system is the only measure of development of a country. For standards of living to improve there has to be a collective growth in education levels, health standards and employment opportunities coupled with a decrease in population. In addition, notwithstanding what the movie would have you believe, the nation is definitely not going to the dogs; it is a safe bet to say that today's generation is much more educated than the last two and if the same trend continues, we should be seeing visible results in about a century or so. We only became free sixty years ago. We need to be patient.

Funnily enough, this movie does a great job of telling you what NOT to do to exhibit your patriotism. Murdering the defence minister on his early morning walk, even if it is as easy to do as shown in the movie, is definitely not the way to go. If you are a student and you are keen to be a good citizen, be a good student first, get your degree in the shortest time possible and start working responsibly. This idea is not as sexy as the one they show in RDB, but it is more sensible and more useful for the country.