Hindi cinema's Weltanschauung

Lag Ja Gale: Indian Conventional Cinema’s Tryst With Hitler

Author: Fareed Kazmi

Publisher: Aakar Books

Pages: 200

Price: Rs 595

Social media was recently abuzz after fake pictures of highways and buildings appeared in a newspaper ad. The newspaper apologised later, but many pointed out that the photos had been sent by the client.

Whatever the case may be, for those in power across the world, their image is marred not only by thousands of fake pictures but also narratives mostly against minority communities. Much effort has gone into combating these pictures, narratives and ideas, but like the leaves of Jack’s magic beans they continue to sprout.

Many know that the pictures in the ad were fake. So are the narratives that they see in the media and WhatsApp. So why use them in the first place?

Enter Adolf Hitler. “The function of propaganda is [...] not to make an objective study of the truth, insofar as it favours the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly,” he wrote.

Farid Kazmi’s Lag Ja Gale: Indian Conventional Cinema’s Tryst With Hitler must be seen in the backdrop of these political disruptions.

Mr Kazmi deconstructs Indian cinema’s heroes and villains and its plotlines to show that the story of conventional cinema is a continuing one from the Weltanschauung (worldview) of Hitler. His expansive research explores and invites readers to join and critically examine this continuity, this project of nation-building reflected in cinema from Mother India to Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and their re-establishment of feudal/patriarchal/ brahminical power.

Mr Kazmi doesn’t comment much on the Indian political scene. His book focuses on analysing how what the heroes of conventional cinema believe aligns with what Hitler had outlined in Mein Kampf. And since cinema builds a reality, a nation even, readers must analyse what kind of nation the cinema is building.

What the hero of the conventional cinema defeats, what Hitler wanted defeated, Mr Kazmi points out, is the “other”. It doesn’t matter if it is the Jew, the Muslim, the queer, the woman, the dalit, the adivasi or the disabled. The “other” is that which stands in the way of the glorious nation, that which is stopping it from achieving its true potential.

Mr Kazmi argues that in this sense of defeating the “undesirable”, of restoring the traditional glory of the great nation, that Indian cinema’s conventional heroes follow in Hitler’s footsteps. If one believes his argument then it can be said that the Hindu Rashtra of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is being built block by block from Shahenshah to Shershaah.

To then imagine and actively work towards the lofty ideals of liberty, equality and freedom beyond caste, gender identity, sexual orientation, faith, ability, language, region and other such differences is a task that would require us to question our own complicities in the marginalisation of and violence against those who are different from us.

This is a task that Indian cinema conveniently avoids. The only self-reflection that the hero ever has is that he needs to be more traditional, more family-oriented, more invested in upholding the structures of his beloved nation state. There is a mocking disgust for its democratic institutions but never a critical engagement.

Though the book fails to analyse the validity of this disgust, of questioning where this lack of faith in the institutions emerges from, it still shows how the anger is translated not in reforming those institutions but in legitimising the personality cult of one man (and sometimes woman in films like Mardani), one messiah against it.

One can see the parallels in our own and in world politics. The perception building around the personality of the Supreme Leader(s) is a massive task that needs constant engagement. His grandiosity must always be contrasted with his sacrifice. 

Mr Kazmi picks up choicest films to prove this.

It can be argued that such parallels may be found anywhere if one really goes looking for them. In that sense, Mr Kazmi’s book could be seen as a flight of fantasy. It cannot be denied, however, that Indian conventional cinema continues to contribute in building a nation in its narratives that is beyond criticism, beyond reproach. Its institutions are useless and the people need the saving grace of a man—cisgender, heterosexual, upper caste, muscled.

One glaring limitation of the book is that Mr Kazmi analyses only Hindi films under the banner of Indian cinema. Readers may have benefitted from his insights into how Bengali or Malayali or Marathi or Gujarati or Bhojpuri or Assamese cinema constructs the nation state and whether they, too, redefine Hitler’s Weltanschauung.

Mr Kazmi also falls short of critically engaging with queer critiques of Indian cinema. Its focus on Hitler perhaps doesn’t allow it to venture into analysing how Indian cinema has queer-coded a people who were among the first to be affected by Nazi Germany and perhaps the last to have any semblance of apology or compensation.

That said, the book’s critical engagement with the Hindi films with which we have grown up is useful in critiquing and deconstructing the cinematic worldview in our changing political climate.

The reviewer is a queer writer, translator, organizer and facilitator based in Allahabad. @chaubeydharmesh