Liberals in A Terrific Jam
- In Movie Reviews
- 05:55 AM, May 25, 2016
- Pradyumna
Liberals are seriously upset with “Buddha in A Traffic Jam”. There are mainly three reasons for it.
First, the film portrays Maoists in their true colors: as the criminals, extortionists and killers that they really are.
Second, it depicts the nexus between underground Maoists and their suave over-ground collaborators, using academia as example.
Third, it does the above in a western, un-Bollywood cinematic idiom that the supposedly hide-bound orthodox Hindu ought to balk at, but the hip liberal can’t object to.
Let us explore these three reasons in some detail.
1. Buddha… is not “The Root Cause Theory”
If Vivek Agnihotri wanted to win liberals’ stamp of approval for a film on Maoists, he should have injected “nuance” into it. There is plenty of nuance in the film and I’ll come to it shortly, but this nuance is the kind that instead of placating, infuriates even more.
Liberals are willing to make concessions on the matter of showing Maoists as killers, but (and this is a very big but), the film must also show “root causes”. Here is a plausible liberal-friendly story-line: an idealistic young man is angered by the exploitation of tribals (root cause). He takes up cudgels on their behalf and then faces brutalization by the state. In the course of time, he becomes (unfortunately) like his tormentors (police, politicians, capitalists … the real bad guys) and commits what are, liberals agree, some avoidable excesses. The denouement comes when, on the battlefield, he falls, but with mission accomplished: tribals and even his unwitting victims finally understand that he is a man more sinned against than sinning; and come around and rally for his noble cause. As these newly-awakened masses unite and march (a montage of shuffling feet shot at ground level from the fallen anti-hero’s field of view), his eyelids shut close. Darkness. Screen blanks out. Credits roll….
I know. This is not a very original plot. It is crass. In fact, this was done already, and liberals stood up and clapped when credits rolled.
Liberals’ idea of “nuance” is that the Maoist, if he must be shown as a bad guy at all, must be shown in Fifty Shades of Grey. But how can Agnihotri do it without compromising his art? What “nuance” is possible on the subject of Maoists really? Statistics and facts speak for themselves. Leftwing terrorism is the biggest threat facing India. The overwhelming majority of Maoists’ victims — yes, class enemies — are poor people. Every time Naxals mass-murder some more lower-rung policemen, more families become impoverished. Stories abound of Maoists’ sexual abuse of women, including women of their own cadre. They kill viciously and brutally. I recall a bone-chilling news-story of the murder by Maoists of a “police informer”: the victim was Dalit, polio-stricken, and his life was snuffed out by crushing his head with boulders.
Note that liberals themselves feel under no obligation to offer “nuance” to those they dislike. Should Anand Patwardhan make a film on “Hindu fundamentalism”, (no prizes for guessing who would be the villain of the piece, with nary a single redeeming feature about him), liberals celebrate him, run interviews with him and publish glowing reviews of his film. Liberals take “Final Solution”, the greatest and most “realistic” film ever made on Gujarat Holocaust, to exhibit all over town. Critics drool. “Propaganda film” is not a term that occurs in their reviews.
In other words, Agnihotri exercised a privilege that is meant to be exclusive to liberals. The subject is Maoism for Christ’s sake, and he’s supposed to do The Root Cause Theory. How dare he follow the Parzania template?
2. Buddha… triggers denial: “chor ki daadi mein tinka”
Akbar’s ring was stolen. He asked Birbal to find the thief and recover the jewel. Birbal rounded up suspects, addressed them and announced that he divined the thief. The thief was the one with a piece of grass stuck in his beard. On hearing this divination, the startled thief covered his beard with his palm. There was no piece of grass, but the thief was caught.
The moral of the story is that the person who has something to hide tends to be nervous.
That Maoists and Islamic terrorists have over ground collaborators, wielding white-collar jobs in media, academia and the NGO sector, is a public secret. There is this innocent professor who teaches English at a Delhi University college. There is this angelic doctor who nurses poor people in the jungle. The minor twist to their altruistic lives is that both are being prosecuted in courts for their not-so-secret lives as Maoist collaborators.
The nexus between “civil society” and Maoists is a taboo topic in liberal media. The camera never zooms in on the elephant in the newsroom. Buddha in A Traffic Jam breaches this taboo with the powerful character of Professor Ranjan Batki, admirably acted by the peerless Anupam Kher.
Note that there is a lot of nuance about Prof Batki. He is urbane. He is a scholar, a supportive husband and a loved teacher. Of small-city middle-class origins, as a kid he raised funds for Durga Puja. He was sucked into the Naxal vortex in his own student days, and made a pact with his comrades that he would take care of the over ground side of Revolution while they handled the underground part. But a B-school career has had its effect on him. He developed a taste for the good life - Dr Jekyll!
His Mr Hyde face is not all that manifestly hideous either. He is an ideological fanatic, not in it for money or self-aggrandizement. He may dream to see the streets of India flooded with the blood of Revolution, but he abhors killing. He is also troubled by the fact that his comrades in the jungle and in politics have turned Revolution into business. And even while recruiting his brightest students for his secret cause, he remains conflicted about that cause.
The closing scene sums up his character perfectly. In the middle of a confrontation with the protagonist, and in a state of mental agitation brought about by that confrontation, he screams at his aged father who interrupts his flow with a phone call. Then getting back to the confrontation, and losing it, the drained and defeated Batki calls up his dad to apologize to him for his rude behavior a few minutes ago. Deep down, Batki is a gentle and caring person.
So what can be the liberal’s problem with Batki? Precisely that he is not such a fictional character after all. He is too much flesh and blood. He is too close to real life for comfort. Liberals would actually have been happy if Batki were portrayed as a murderous man (just as the liberals would portray the right-winger: visualize a Bajrang Dal member with his blood-soaked Trishul), for then he could have been dismissed as a figment of Agnihotri’s fevered imagination.
Buddha… strongly makes the point that there are closet Maoists and Maoist-sympathizers among the everyday people around us. This is not a secret at all, but it is not supposed to be spoken loudly in public.
Case in point: one reviewer’s problem with “Buddha …” is that, believe it or not, the film “vilifies” “Naxal soldiers”. Soldiers? I am tempted to ask the reviewer’s employer whether it puts its employees to background checks.
3. Buddha… is hip!
The film’s protagonist belongs to the upper crust of westernized youth: a chain-smoking, beer-swilling, pub-hopping, metal-music-loving, f-word-spewing and frankly-fornicating minority. This is an elite that wields soft power and sets trends. Liberals see themselves both above it and part of it. They are above it ideology-wise, but part of it as a mindset-, and social-ethos-wise. So it is upsetting that one of their own social type, not a Trishul-wielding, bile-venting right-winger stereotype, should be shown busting the Maoist myth. Liberals instinctively grasp the impact of using a pink-panties crusader as also a spokesperson for anti-Maoism. That is not what the pink panties script was meant to be.
The movie is sophisticated in a way Hollywood-inclined urban sophisticates are prone to view sophistication. The editing is slick. There is both hard rock and soulful (sufi?) music. The script — from the lording of a petty neta over a cowering tribal man, to the drunken banter of friends in a pub, to the flirting of a young man with an older married woman, to the refined conversation at a professor’s dinner table — is mostly gripping. The acting too, all-round, is superlative, a few sub-par patches notwithstanding.
Finally, for an alleged “rightwing” film, Buddha in A Traffic Jam will likely never be screened at, say, RSS headquarters. The dialogue, both in Hindi and in English, is full of profanity. There are even a couple of sex scenes, including one in which the hero sees a prostitute. The film defies caricaturing, but hey, you can’t accuse liberals of not trying.
It is a well-made film, but has its share of weaknesses. In fact, to discuss it purely in terms of liberal reactions to it is to do injustice to it. But perhaps a full-length review is for another day.
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