The Great Indian Circus

A student of mine recommended me a movie the other day: Jana Gana Mana, a Malayalam movie released recently. Since the student insisted that I’d love it, I took the trouble to subscribe to Netflix in order to watch it. I was more interested in knowing whether the student had really assessed my tastes rightly than in the movie itself. I appreciate the student’s assessment now.

Jana Gana Mana raises many pertinent questions. Let me bring a few of them here.

1.     Does the law of the country ensure justice?

Not in India anyway. Not in present India for sure. Here justice is what certain powers decide as just and true. Innocent students with youthful aspirations become villains in present India while hardcore criminals are the legislators. The judges in our courts are court poets. In a country where people who were buried centuries ago are disinterred for the sake of adding glamour to the present emperor by way of contrast (glitter versus skeleton), in a country where a Chief Justice accused of sexual offences is promoted as a member of the upper house of the Parliament by none less than the Prime Minister, in a country where honesty is imprisoned again and again day after day, do you expect justice in the courts of law? Law is not justice, asserts this movie loudly and boldly. Explicitly. Laws are made by criminals. Justice is not a word in the lexicon of criminals who rule a country where a rape takes place every 15 minutes. Metaphorical rapes by the government take place here every second.

2.     Does the media bring us the truth?

The media is all about sensationalism, asserts the movie. Even before the post mortem is conducted on the body of a murdered woman, the media decides that she was raped before being killed. When a beautiful woman is killed, a rape adds colours to the death as far as media is concerned. Sensationalism. And the ratings that come with it. Indian media is little more than that.

I must say that Indian media today is worse than that. It is a slave. It is nothing more than a faithful dog that wags its tail to please the master who will otherwise send his armies (ED, CBI, IT, and what not) to raid the premises. The media is a joke today. The buffoon in the Great Indian Circus. The Ring Master occasionally trims his beard when his mirror threatens him with an answer like the one received by the fairy queen in Snow White’s story. And Snow Whites perish in the emperor’s dungeons. The sequel to this movie can consider this point. It must be pointed out that this movie makes fun of our present Emperor’s penchant for foreign goods while promoting a slogan like ‘Make in India’.

3.     What is politics ultimately about?

Power. What else. And how does the present regime maintain that power? By manipulating people’s emotions. You can get power in any democracy by doing good to the people. But doing good is not easy in a big country like India where people still love to copulate to populate. It’s way too easy to manipulate the emotions of people in order to win their votes. If you bring the gods into that game successfully, victory is decidedly yours. Manipulation of emotions.

If we can ban the note, we can ban the vote too. The movie says that explicitly. The warning is that dictatorship is not far. But India will accept dictatorship too. Because the country has been enslaved emotionally. With divine support!

4.     A milch cow called people

Once you have hoodwinked the people into believing that you are the saviour of their nation, their religion, their caste, etc, people become your slaves. You can be a bloody leech and suck their blood forever. Put taxes on everything including the fire in their belly. People will still shout slogans for you. People are cows. Give them the cow as the holiest entity and there you are! Gung-ho! Jai Sri ….

PS. This is obviously not a review of the movie. Not even a critique. Just my ravings. I love the student who assessed my tastes so well.