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Indu Sarkar needs to be seen especially for how relevant it is now

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Kaveree Bamzai
Kaveree BamzaiJul 28, 2017 | 18:25

Indu Sarkar needs to be seen especially for how relevant it is now

Is Madhur Bhandarkar's Indu Sarkar opportunistic? Yes. Is it a movie that needed to be made? Yes again. Is it a movie that needs to be watched? Yes, yes.

The story begins with Indu, an orphan who stammers, lives a quiet upstanding life in Sarojini Nari Niektan and has one simple goal in life - to be a good wife. She marries Navin Sarkar, a young clerk in the office of a minister who may or may not be Vidya Charan Shukla.

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Therein begins her journey and that of India, that like her, learns to speak up for itself. Words and phrases deemed to be anti-national are excised from newspapers, Opposition leaders are put in prison without trial, thousands are sterilised under duress, and hundreds of slums demolished in what is now known as the Turkman Gate massacre.

At the helm of affairs is the son of the prime minister, who looks quite like Sanjay Gandhi, who is forever accompanied by a woman in dark glasses and chiffons called Farzana (yes, that's Ruksana Sultana), a man who favours safari suits and is called Nath (yes, we know Kamal Nath), another with a goatee who may or may not be Jagdish Tytler, and a man called Kumar who is insulted by the man who could be Sanjay for not following his orders (yes, possibly Inder Kumar Gujral).

 

On the other side, JP is merely seen on posters but the man spearheading the "second freedom struggle" is a man called Nanaji (clearly Nanaji Deshmukh), played by Anupam Kher. Nanaji is a master of disguise and rallies young people around him in the cause of freedom, not in the least of whom is Shivam, clearly George Fernandes, who splits from them eventually and chooses violence as a form of struggle.

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While there is no doubt that Nanaji, who began life as an RSS pracharak, played a significant role in the anti-Emergency struggle, it is also interesting that Madhur Bhandarkar chose to highlight his role.

One of RSS' abiding embarrassments is its collaborative role with the British during India's freedom struggle. It has never been able to reconcile its hyper nationalism with its abject role during the freedom movement. So here we have Nanaji as the magnet for the underground revolutionaries with JP only a person to be mentioned in slogans.

Bhandarkar's movie goes a long way in burnishing RSS' credentials as a force for freedom. But in what is perhaps the greatest ironies of his film - or possibly an intended consequence, so kudos to him - that the film ends up highlighting the dangers to freedom that continue to exist even today.

As the fictional Indu (played quite brilliantly by the talented Kirti Kulhari) says in a stirring speech: "Sabse bade loktantra main sab chup hai. Kisi ko to cheekhna padega."

Morchabandi, pressbandi, nasbandi, there's a ban on everything, she says, while the government carries on a Sukhi Bharat Abhiyan.

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"Saara desh yahi keh raha hai, enough. Sarkar hame batayigi ab kya kahen, kya dekhen, kya sune, kitne bachen paida karen," says a hairdresser telling everyone how Kishore Kumar has been banned on All India Radio.

indubd_072817061432.jpg
A still from Indu Sarkar.

Hmm, remind anyone of anything?

Indira Gandhi makes a fleeting appearance, when it comes to declaring elections, after an IB report tells her that her party will win 320 seats. It's Sanjay Gandhi who is portrayed here as a comic book villain (which, going by reports is not far wrong). He is brusque, prone to losing his temper, with a tendency to give orders that are impossible to carry out.

From sterilisations to demolitions, from 20-point programmes to five-point programmes, he is all about helping "Mummy" and lessening pressure on her. Oddly, his wife, now a BJP MP, does not figure anywhere in the movie.

The movie is quite accurate in its portrayal of all the minor characters - including representing Kishan Chand's suicide (Kishan Chand being the lieutenant governor at the time). It's also able to capture the Delhi of the 1970s, from Bobby to Sholay, from Sheila Talkies to India Coffee House. It's also able to represent the courage of journalists during that time, especially those who worked for Himmat (which was run by Rajmohan and Ramchandra Gandhi rather than Nanaji).

There are signboards saying "Political conversations are banned till further notice" and posters of films like Kallicharan and Bullet.

Yeh desh nahin jhuknewala, yeh desh nahin ruknewala, says a poem Indu writes for her husband's political master. It's something that we may as well be saying now.

Last updated: July 30, 2017 | 13:03
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