Devangshu Datta: Liked Rang De Basanti? Prove it

VIEWPOINT

Let's start with a disclaimer""the last Hindi movie I watched through at a hall was Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak the day after it premiered. My niece, who has since completed her PhD, asked me to escort her to QSQT as a treat after she sat for a tough set of high-school exams.

I thought it was a somewhat painful variation on one of Shakespeare's most painful plays. It had far too much in the way of music. I have, of course, seen snatches of many Hindi movies in the decades since on TV. But I've never sat and watched one through. I have attention deficit disorder (ADD) when it comes to movies""I have sat through a total of six in the last 18 years.

Recently, somebody told me that the chap who debuted in QSQT had done an "extremely powerful, mainstream, political polemic", alias Rang De Basanti. My informant teaches sociology at the D School and so I wasn't surprised at the description. Nor was I surprised that Aamir Khan had produced an unusual take on contemporary India.

The only time I met him was when he was reading excerpts from his friend Kiran Nagarkar's God's Little Soldier at the book launch. He impressed by the way he tossed off an emotive (and very funny) description of a Mohurram procession and then fielded questions from the audience.

No, I didn't get close to him. Aamir was surrounded by a bevy of mature bluestockings""all college profs and some of them quite fetching. But that brief encounter was enough to suggest that this guy actually had thought his way through quite a few social issues.

Many of you will have seen RDB; so I won't bore anyone with the potted plot. I've watched large chunks of it on Home Theatre while sitting amidst friends and sampling Glen Drummond of a balmy evening.

It was obvious this had something special simply due to the emotions it evoked. The last time I saw that sort of public display was when watching snatches of Lagaan and before that, Roja. Middle-aged members of the intelligentsia were wiping their eyes and metaphorically chucking coins at the flat screen as RDB unfolded.

Mostly, people seemed to approve of the concept of slaughtering corrupt bureaucrats and politicians. If one goes by the box-office numbers, the approval cuts across demographic divides.

The movie's done well everywhere and deservedly so. Anybody who is not a paid-up member of the Neta-Babu Nexus has loved it. For that matter, several Babus have gone publicly on record saying they liked it as well.

The emotion is absolutely genuine but it reeks of double standards. Each of us lives in a cesspool of corruption and we are creatures of that environment, tainted with the same stripes as the Babus and the Netas, who define its parameters.

Indians are actually even more compulsive bribe-givers than bribe-takers if we go by comparative global surveys. The Bribe Giver's Index has India at no: 1 whereas it is no: 27 on the Business Competitiveness Index on the basis of improving business environment. Arguably that means levels of corruption in India's government are actually coming down""but our businessmen are still among the sleaziest in the world.

Let us for argument's sake say that on the basis of RDB's box-office showing, most people would consider it a good thing if the streets ran with the blood of corrupt Netas and Babus. Going by the number of chaps with outstanding criminal cases who grace the benches of Parliament, it's easy to suggest that MPs would not be exempt from the hit list of public opinion.

Now how would those who liked the film react to the death sentence given to Afzal Guru? After all, the man was attempting that kind of a thing, even though he was dictated by other considerations.