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Sedition and tambola: How 'Court' defines us

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Sanjay Rajoura
Sanjay RajouraMay 05, 2015 | 15:54

Sedition and tambola: How 'Court' defines us

A Dalit poet-performer is accused of sedition; a middle class prosecution lawyer discusses the merits of olive oil and cooks for her diabetic husband, a human rights lawyer goes for a cucumber facial when his face is blackened by fanatics; and a judge refuses to hear a Christian lady's case because her sleeveless dress disturbs the court's decorum.

No, this is not my review of the film Court. This is a review of who we are.

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And who we are is nothing short of criminal. A 65-year-old Dalit is hounded by archaic laws and an intolerant state. His fault? He cries out to fellow Dalits to rise up and fight, through his songs and writings. The majority of social media-browsing republic in India have no clue or no inclination to know, let alone empathise with how the odds are stacked up against dalit activists like Narayan Kamble in Court.

Yet, the film Court tells us how so-called normal, middle class aspirational lifestyles are making us immune to manufactured prosecutions. The film is not really about Narayan Kamle. It is about how complicit we all are in the crushing of dissent. Because we are too busy going through the motions of our GDP-friendly, take-home-salary preoccupations.

But we live in the times when even the right to protest is counted as an anti-state activity, disrupting social order. For how long can we bury our heads in the sand and pretend that ours is a shining national narrative?

Throwing a man into jail, denying him bail and forgetting the key is the new normal. We are too busy consuming anti-immigrant, Marathi-manoos plays masquerading as our evening comic entertainment.

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The film cleverly juxtaposes two sets of realities: one in which a manual scavenger has to drink before he downs himself into the cockroach-filled, poison-spewing sewers of our smart cities. While the other India, living safely in gated communities, drinks at pubs and picnics for leisure.

Many reviewers of this film have said that this is a scathing indictment of the way our courts work. But for me, it's not just about the judicial system. This film is about the normalisation of our collective apathy and creeping social entropy.

The public prosecutor mouths 100-year old colonial laws to charge a dalit activist with spreading terrorism against the Indian state with bombs and "anything else". In the evening, she walks out of the court and casually praises a co-passenger's sari on the local train. These are seemingly normal people with no realisation as to how they are being insidiously politicised by the state, its instruments and by popular culture.

"But where is the bomb?" asks the defence lawyer in court. The prosecutor says with unblinking self-confidence that apart from all kinds of bombs and weapons, there is also that all subsuming word "anything" in the law. Is it just me or did it remind you of the "etc" category that Indian authorities used to deplane Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai?

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Isn't this how a certain kind of rhetoric is getting normalised in India nowadays?

The final moments of the film are extremely funny. The judge, who presides over the case, goes for a picnic party with other cheerful middle class families to a waterpark. The customary coconut is smashed in front of the bus and a group picture is taken to start the trip. What follows in the bus is not difficult to guess. Yes its "antakshri", that sedative of the unthinking masses. This is quickly followed by tambola, a game invented by almost-humans. The judge dispenses advice to fellow-picnickers about IIM graduates' pay packages, and offers numerology and astrological stones to cure the speaking disability of a child.

And you wonder that such people will get to define what constitutes a seditious act.

A long-drawn scene in the film shows how the court empties out before vacation, the lights are switched off one by one and the door is locked, leaving the camera and the viewer in complete darkness.

For Dalit poets and activists, that's what the court has to offer - darkness. Meanwhile let us all go play tambola!

Last updated: February 13, 2016 | 13:03
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