Remember Mars Attacks! - the 1996 comic sci-fi movie where skull-faced, bug-eyed Martians invade Earth and go about incinerating pretty much everything they come upon? The evil critters are finally vanquished - not by tanks or nuclear warheads - but by the simple expedient of blasting them with music. Indian Love Call, a piercing, yodelling number by American country singer Slim Whitman, broadcast around the globe, terrifies the aliens and makes their outsized craniums explode like pricked balloons.
Well, British special forces in Libya seem to have taken a leaf out of the Mars Attacks! playbook. This week it was reported that they were using Bollywood music to fight Islamic State (IS) and drive them out of the town of Sirte. Acting on the advice of a Pakistan-born British intelligence official, the psychological operations unit of the force intercepted IS communications and bombarded them with Bollywood music. The idea is to infuriate and unnerve the jihadis who live by an ultra-orthodox interpretation of Islam and consider music to be frivolous and unholy.
British troops, along with Libyan forces, have also set up two huge speakers in two cars outside Sirte and have been using them to blare Hindi chartbusters at dawn. There is no intelligence yet on the specifics of these weapons of mass distraction. But it is safe to assume they aren't stuff like Nanha munna rahi hoon, desh ka sipahi hoon. Or Ae maalik, tere bande hum. Maybe more like Munni badnam hui, darrling tere liye. Or, Sheila! Sheila ki Jawa-aa-ni/I'm too sexy for you/Main tere haath na aani.
Granted, those joyless jihadis won't get all the words - unless there are some Indian or Pakistani recruits in Libya who can translate - but they'll get the drift. And, who knows, faced with melody coupled with such staggering moral turpitude, maybe they'll throw up their Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers and run away yelling, Crazy kiya rey!
But here's the thing. Why did the Brits pick Bollywood music to launch a psychological war against IS? Yes, soldiers of the modern Caliphate in-the-making do profess to abhor music. In a statement put out in 2014, they said, "Songs and music are forbidden in Islam, as they prevent one from the remembrance of God and the Koran and are a temptation and corruption of the heart." But wouldn't Western songs have served just as well to needle the zealots? In fact, they would pack a double whammy - music plus Western, which stands for all things depraved in the IS lexicon.
Incidentally, torture by music is widely used by the CIA. Prisoners in Guantanamo were known to have been subjected to hours of loud music to break them. So when the West has such a cool collection of torture tunes, why turn to Bollywood songs to play mind games with terrorists?
Verily, it's enough to send India's offence industry into paroxysms of rage. Feelings are already running high after Tanmay Bhat, member of the comic outfit AIB, did that rather mean Snapchat video takedown of cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar and singing legend Lata Mangeshkar. To add insult to injury, The New York Times called Mangeshkar a "so-called playback singer", sparking yet another outcry. And now, to have our beloved Bollywood songs used as torture tools? If that's not sacrilege, what is? What were those blokes at the British special forces thinking? The nation would definitely want to know.
Jokes apart, the music of Bollywood is an astonishingly rich and varied smorgasbord, ranging from the achingly romantic to the joyfully rambunctious, from lilting melodies to dil dhadke beats, from high poetry to Hinglish hodgepodge, from the racy to the trashy. The ancients gave us immortal songs like Chaudhvin ka chaand (Chaudhvin Ka Chand, 1960), Raina beeti jaye (Amar Prem, 1972), Kahin dur jab din dhal jaye (Anand, 1971), Tere bina zindagi (Aandhi, 1975) and hundreds more. The moderns - composers like Shantanu Moitra, A R Rahman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and many others - are adding their own brilliance to that living, ever burgeoning, melodic mix.
Well, I don't know about the outrage addicts; I, for one, am rather chuffed that British troops are raining down Hindi film songs on IS jihadis. This way we get to be a part of the War on Terror without moving a muscle. Just sit back and let our famed "soft power" - Bollywood and its brand of music - soften up those barbaric baddies. The playlist remains a mystery, of course. But I'm hoping it includes such masterpieces as Tera pyar pyar pyar hookah bar (music and lyrics by the inimitable Himesh Reshammiya) or Pyar to hona hi tha (music by Jatin-Lalit). The utter senselessness of the one and the primeval howl of the other set your teeth on edge very nicely indeed.
If the allied forces deploy that kind of ammo, the fall of Fallujah could be nigh.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
