06-30-2004, 06:16 AM
Ms. Naqvi's is not a fair review. It is patently false that "Dev" depicts communal violence as between two equals: the unequal nature of the contest is illustrated by the fact that whereas the unscrupulous Muslim politician/gangster is ultimately taken away by the police, Milind Gunaji's Hindutvawaadi has to be released in a few hours, and returns home to loud cheers; more graphically, the scenes of Muslims burning and attacking Hindu-owned shops last for barely a minute, a fraction of the footage devoted to Sanghi hordes ravaging a Muslim mohalla. Nor is it only a question of footage, but of the KIND of images shown: the Muslim goons are shown ransacking shops and assaulting people, the Sanghi goons are shown stabbing, burning, raping, etc. To put it another way, Ms. Naqvi's problem is not with "Dev" so much as with the Ahmedabad audience. That the latter buys into Khosla's ideology does not make the film communal in some ultimate sense.
Ms. Naqvi is criticizing the film for not being secular in the liberal sense, but that is simply not Nihalani's concern; HIS focus seems to be: "EVEN IF you dislike/fear/despise the Muslim, what then?" It is not that Nihalani is propagating the sort of patronising secularism that has become the hallmark of India today (as Ms. Naqvi claims), it is that secularism is not the subject of "Dev" at all! It speaks volumes about how much the discourse of "secularism" (read: good) has colonized the political space that anything that is not secular is dismissed as "bad" or even sinister. Now, the reaction in the Ahmedabad cinema hall Ms. Naqvi is talking about IS sinister, but that is not because the people who were tittering were not secular, but because they appear to be viciously bigoted, and seem to be unable to regard difference as anything other threatening. To impose a "secularist" framework on what is patently a meditation on what happens to Hinduism in the face of Hindutva, and then to complain if the clothes don't fit, is hardly fair.
In the world of "Dev," there will be no Hindu dharma left if the Khoslas of the age hold sway-- the targeting of Muslims in "Dev" is thus not just the killing of innocents (thought it is manifestly that), it is ALSO the losing of one's soul, a fratricide that ends in a suicide.
[And lest I be accused of playing fast and loose with the film, I submit that my reading is firmly grounded in the film's text. Consider the following:
i. The film begins with a sloka from the Gita, explicitly evokes the Gita at numerous points, and in the pivotal scene between Dev and Furhan towards the end, Bachchan's dialogues seem to be paraphrases of Krishna's words to Arjun.
ii. Dev is the most devout person in the film (Furhan's father probably comes in second); Dev is regularly shown praying, Khosla not even once. Furhan himself, who takes it upon himself to avenge his father's death by killing Dev, is the arch-secularist, not religiously inclined at all, his face "un-marked" by beard, etc., but most importantly he is "secular" in his desire for retribution in the world, the political sign of which is that he cares more for his "qaum" than his God (whom he never mentions or involkes at any point in the film);
iii. The most memorable instance of prayer in the film belongs to Mangal Rao (played by Milind Gunaji), right before he embarks on his pogrom, when he TURNS HIS BACK ON GOD after completing his prayer--]
iv. As for the point about Muslims needing "broad minded" Hindus like Dev to make their case for them, let us accept certain facts: if the opposition to Hindutva were coming only from the 10-12% of the population classified as Muslim, and the 2-3% classified as Christian, then the game would have been lost a long time ago. The fact is that there are plenty of non-Muslims and non-Christians in India who are also resisting Hindutva. It is also sad but true that ABSENT Hindutva-resisting-Hindus, the anti-Hindutva struggle would take on simply a communal hue (this helps to explain how and why, when confronted with Hindus who are opposed to Hindutva, the Sangh resorts to outlandish theories of how such people are really anti- Hindu Marxists, that they are "self-loathers" or "Macaulayputras" or what not). Indeed I submit that the day opposition to Hindutva simply becomes a question of whether is Hindu or not, that is the day Hindutva will have triumphed in its long-term goal: of defining "Hindu" and "Hinduism" so that it is co-extensive with "Hindutva" and with the ideology of the Sangh
There is yet another reason why Dev speaks "for" Muslims in a sense, and Nihalani makes it explicit in the film, when Mangal Rao threatens Latif (the Muslim gangster/politician) that post-violence, if he and "his people" want to stay in "this country and this town," they will have to observe certain rules: (i) No-one is to complain about ill-treatment by Hindus; (ii) No-one is to file complaints against any Hindu who participated in the violence; (iii) No-one is to cooperate with any policy inquiry, media person, etc. Dev "speaks for" the Muslims in the film not because Nihalani has made a patronizing film, but because, as we are reminded everyday from Gujarat, the position of Muslims has become very tenuous where Hindutva reigns supreme.
v. Ms. Naqvi ignores the very last scene of the film, when it is Furhan Ali who is ascending the steps of the courthouse, with Dev's report in hand. At that point no-one is speaking "for" him, certainly not Dev. Ultimately this is an optimistic end no doubt (the embittered Furhan Ali decides to take up the cause in a legal way, abandoning the path of the gun), and perhaps this is unpalatably reassuring to Ms. Naqvi. Fine, one could certainly read it that way, but I think it is difficult to square that resolution (the Furhan Alis of Bombay setting aside their alienation and using the Constitution as their bulwark to speak for themselves and demand justice) with the notion that Muslims in the film can be spoken-form by the likes of Dev. One may critique the former for being too re- assuring, but not for being the latter.]
Ms. Naqvi is criticizing the film for not being secular in the liberal sense, but that is simply not Nihalani's concern; HIS focus seems to be: "EVEN IF you dislike/fear/despise the Muslim, what then?" It is not that Nihalani is propagating the sort of patronising secularism that has become the hallmark of India today (as Ms. Naqvi claims), it is that secularism is not the subject of "Dev" at all! It speaks volumes about how much the discourse of "secularism" (read: good) has colonized the political space that anything that is not secular is dismissed as "bad" or even sinister. Now, the reaction in the Ahmedabad cinema hall Ms. Naqvi is talking about IS sinister, but that is not because the people who were tittering were not secular, but because they appear to be viciously bigoted, and seem to be unable to regard difference as anything other threatening. To impose a "secularist" framework on what is patently a meditation on what happens to Hinduism in the face of Hindutva, and then to complain if the clothes don't fit, is hardly fair.
In the world of "Dev," there will be no Hindu dharma left if the Khoslas of the age hold sway-- the targeting of Muslims in "Dev" is thus not just the killing of innocents (thought it is manifestly that), it is ALSO the losing of one's soul, a fratricide that ends in a suicide.
[And lest I be accused of playing fast and loose with the film, I submit that my reading is firmly grounded in the film's text. Consider the following:
i. The film begins with a sloka from the Gita, explicitly evokes the Gita at numerous points, and in the pivotal scene between Dev and Furhan towards the end, Bachchan's dialogues seem to be paraphrases of Krishna's words to Arjun.
ii. Dev is the most devout person in the film (Furhan's father probably comes in second); Dev is regularly shown praying, Khosla not even once. Furhan himself, who takes it upon himself to avenge his father's death by killing Dev, is the arch-secularist, not religiously inclined at all, his face "un-marked" by beard, etc., but most importantly he is "secular" in his desire for retribution in the world, the political sign of which is that he cares more for his "qaum" than his God (whom he never mentions or involkes at any point in the film);
iii. The most memorable instance of prayer in the film belongs to Mangal Rao (played by Milind Gunaji), right before he embarks on his pogrom, when he TURNS HIS BACK ON GOD after completing his prayer--]
iv. As for the point about Muslims needing "broad minded" Hindus like Dev to make their case for them, let us accept certain facts: if the opposition to Hindutva were coming only from the 10-12% of the population classified as Muslim, and the 2-3% classified as Christian, then the game would have been lost a long time ago. The fact is that there are plenty of non-Muslims and non-Christians in India who are also resisting Hindutva. It is also sad but true that ABSENT Hindutva-resisting-Hindus, the anti-Hindutva struggle would take on simply a communal hue (this helps to explain how and why, when confronted with Hindus who are opposed to Hindutva, the Sangh resorts to outlandish theories of how such people are really anti- Hindu Marxists, that they are "self-loathers" or "Macaulayputras" or what not). Indeed I submit that the day opposition to Hindutva simply becomes a question of whether is Hindu or not, that is the day Hindutva will have triumphed in its long-term goal: of defining "Hindu" and "Hinduism" so that it is co-extensive with "Hindutva" and with the ideology of the Sangh
There is yet another reason why Dev speaks "for" Muslims in a sense, and Nihalani makes it explicit in the film, when Mangal Rao threatens Latif (the Muslim gangster/politician) that post-violence, if he and "his people" want to stay in "this country and this town," they will have to observe certain rules: (i) No-one is to complain about ill-treatment by Hindus; (ii) No-one is to file complaints against any Hindu who participated in the violence; (iii) No-one is to cooperate with any policy inquiry, media person, etc. Dev "speaks for" the Muslims in the film not because Nihalani has made a patronizing film, but because, as we are reminded everyday from Gujarat, the position of Muslims has become very tenuous where Hindutva reigns supreme.
v. Ms. Naqvi ignores the very last scene of the film, when it is Furhan Ali who is ascending the steps of the courthouse, with Dev's report in hand. At that point no-one is speaking "for" him, certainly not Dev. Ultimately this is an optimistic end no doubt (the embittered Furhan Ali decides to take up the cause in a legal way, abandoning the path of the gun), and perhaps this is unpalatably reassuring to Ms. Naqvi. Fine, one could certainly read it that way, but I think it is difficult to square that resolution (the Furhan Alis of Bombay setting aside their alienation and using the Constitution as their bulwark to speak for themselves and demand justice) with the notion that Muslims in the film can be spoken-form by the likes of Dev. One may critique the former for being too re- assuring, but not for being the latter.]