People's Democracy

THIS monsoon, it is raining Bhagat Singh in Mumbai. Three of the five films on the revolutionary have been released. These films are being seen as examples of the cannibalisation of an authentic anti-colonial people’s hero for profit and jingoism. Two of these films come with the prestige and money power of big banners attached to them. One, Shaheed: 23 March 1931, produced by Dharmendra, features his son Bobby Deol as Bhagat Singh. The other, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, comes from Tips Films with Ajay Devgun playing the lead under Rajkumar Santoshi’s direction.

There is reason to look at both films skeptically. Sunny Deol starred in Gadar, one of the most communal and jingoistic films in recent times, and has evolved a brand identity around a combination of anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan rhetoric in several films. Getting brother Bobby to do Bhagat Singh is an effort to cash in on that image. Rajkumar Santoshi’s films, on the other hand, have been a mixed bag. While in some films Santoshi has displayed touches of sensitivity, his recent films have included the jingoistic Pukar, for which its hero received the National Award from a jury that included the editor of the RSS mouthpiece.

The Deol version of the cinematic life of Bhagat Singh has been entirely predictable: historically inaccurate, loud, tasteless, pop-patriotic. Rajkumar Santoshi’s version has sprung a surprise: contrary to the fears of skeptics, it is well made, historically fairly accurate, sober, and, in the context of commercial cinema, politically progressive.

Bhagat Singh, of course, is one of the most enduringly charismatic figures of the Indian anti-colonial struggle, a martyr at 23, who has passed into countless folk songs, plays, and films. In Shaheed: 23 March 1931 he comes across as a romantic, jingoistic and somewhat moronic youth. The film is full of inaccuracies. For instance, Lala Lajpat Rai, the Congress leader who later went with the Hindu Mahasabha, is shown to be a Ghadar Party leader! The chronology is often unclear, as is the location of several scenes. None of the comrades of Bhagat Singh register: even Sukhdev and Rajguru appear merely as appendages to the hero. The film, like any Bombay potboiler, showcases the hero, Bobby Deol, at the expense of all else. Except, of course, brother Sunny Deol, who appears as Chandrashekhar Azad. Sunny merely repeats his by now well-known film persona: a loud, jingoistic, he-man. Expectedly, Bobby Bhagat and Sunny Azad monopolize screen time. In the event, the film becomes a love story between two brothers.

Through the film, there is not a single scene or dialogue that tells us anything about Bhagat Singh’s ideology. More shockingly, he is turned into a theist, and a Hindu nationalist. Early in the film, Bhagat Singh sings a patriotic song at a function where the backdrop on the stage has an image of ‘mother’ India: a woman’s picture rising out of a saffron map of the country. This, of course, is an image systematically disseminated by the RSS in which the country is seen in its original, undivided state, which is also the fascist fantasy of the future akhand Hindu rashtra. In the Dushehra Bomb scene, Bobby Bhagat metomorphosizes into a Ram-like figure, setting the effigy of Ravan on fire with a shot from his pistol. Later in the film, when his mother comes to meet him one final time, he asks her not to be morose, for he will be born again. When asked the perfectly reasonable question of how she is to recognize him in this future birth, she is told to look out for the mark of the hanging on his neck. And later still, when the prison official comes to him pleading that at least now, in his final hour, he should recall God, Bobby Bhagat refuses, because recalling God is only an external act: God resides in each one of us!

This from the mouth of the man who, awaiting death in the condemned cell, wrote in that famously spirited celebration of atheism, ‘Why I am an atheist’: "I know in the present circumstances my faith in God would have made my life easier . . . . But I do not want the help of any intoxication to meet my fate. I am a realist." His atheism was not a mechanical subscription to a conspiracy theory: "Unlike certain of the radicals I would not attribute [the] origin [of the idea of God] to the ingenuity of the exploiters who wanted to keep the people under their subjection by preaching the existence of a supreme being and then claiming an authority and sanction from him for their privileged positions, though I do not differ with them on the essential point that all faiths, religions, creeds and such other institutions became in turn the mere supporters of the tyrannical and exploiting institutions, men and classes. Rebellion against the king is always a sin, according to every religion."

For that is what he was, a true revolutionary, not a romantic terrorist. He, along with his comrades, was clearly moving towards socialism and Marxism when his life was brutally snubbed out by the colonial regime. His comrades included Shiv Verma, who helped found the Communist Consolidation at the Andaman Cellular Jail, and went on to become the UP state secretary of the undivided CPI and came with the CPI (M) after the split, and Ajoy Ghosh, who became CPI’s general secretary. That Bhagat Singh was not a lone hero, but one of a remarkable group of revolutionaries, is something that The Legend of Bhagat Singh brings out quite admirably. Not only does Ajay Devgun bring passion and maturity to his portrayal in the lead role, his supporting cast – Sushant Singh as Sukhdev, D Santosh as Rajguru, Akhilendra Mishra as Azad, Raj Babbar as Sardar Kishan Singh and Farida Jalal as his mother – are all superb. The other revolutionaries, Jatin Das (who died on the 63rd day of the epic group hunger strike undertaken by the revolutionaries in jail for better conditions), Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Shiv Verma, Ajoy Ghosh, etc., are not only mentioned, but their faces and personalities linger in the mind.

The politics of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) is also brought out. In fact, in a powerful speech at the historic Phirozeshah Kotla conference of the organisation (where the word ‘socialist’ was added to the HRA), Bhagat Singh outlines his vision of freedom: that it cannot mean merely the replacement of the white man by the brown man, but that freedom must stand for freedom from want, hunger, poverty, and oppression for the working classes: in a word, socialism. This is a theme that runs through the film: early on, as students, when Bhagat, Sukhdev and Bhagwati are first introduced to the idea of socialism by their teacher Vidyalankar, we see in the background pictures of Marx and Lenin; through the film, Bhagat Singh stresses the need to reach out to the workers and peasants; we see striking workers of Bombay being lathicharged as a prelude to the revolutionaries deciding to protest the Trade Disputes Bill and the Public Safety Bill; when they are asked in court if they even understand what their slogan means, we see each of the revolutionaries spell out the meaning of revolution in a stirring sequence of pithy one-liners; and finally, as the jail staff come to march Bhagat Singh to his death, we find him reading Lenin. If press reports are to be believed, the Censor Board shockingly intervened to have some more references to Lenin and the Communist Party edited out.

What also comes out is the secularism of the revolutionaries. This is brought out in songs and in many scenes, but what is perhaps most significant is when, early in the film, we hear the revolutionaries disapproving of Lala Lajpat Rai’s flirting with the Hindu Mahasabha. That the film actually criticises the Lala is significant, not simply because he is a nationalist icon, but because it is his death that the revolutionaries avenged by killing Saunders. Nor is Bhagat Singh’s atheism concealed: his mother makes a reference to it fairly early in the film, and finally, as he mounts the steps of the gallows, he says to the prison official who implores him to remember God: ‘I have neither fear of death, nor belief in God.’

The other nationalist leader who comes in for criticism in the film is Gandhi. This is cause for some uneasiness, given the RSS antipathy to the Mahatma. Yet, the fact remains that Gandhi’s role in the episode was questionable. Talks between Gandhi and the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, began on February 17, 1931 and culminated on March 5 with the famous Gandhi-Irwin Pact. Bhagat Singh and his comrades were hung on March 23. What did Gandhi do in these eighteen days? Certainly, he did not make the commutation of death sentences to life terms a condition for signing the pact. A G Noorani, in his excellent study, The Trial of Bhagat Singh opines: "Gandhi alone could have intervened effectively to save Bhagat Singh’s life. He did not, till the very last. Later claims . . . are belied by the record which came to light four decades later. In this tragic episode, Gandhi was not candid either to the nation or even to his closest colleagues about his talks with the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, on saving Bhagat Singh’s life." What the film also brings out is that it is the growing influence of the revolutionaries that forced the Congress, which had till then been asking for dominion status, to adopt ‘purna swaraj’ as its slogan.

This is of course not to say that the Santoshi version is flawless, cinematically or politically. For instance, one would have liked to see more of the substance of Bhagat Singh’s brilliant defence in court, not just its rhetoric, or to find some reference to his fierce opposition to the caste system. Moreover, Bhagat Singh’s intellectual calibre is not fully apparent, nor is his voracious reading. His love of poetry is likewise absent. Even more jarring is the absence of Ashfaqullah, one of the main architects of the Kakori action, from the film. The British, particularly Lord Irwin, come across as somewhat dull in the head, as does Nehru. And the romantic angle could have been avoided.

What is heartening, however, is that a film like this has actually been made in the present times, when the commercial film industry has produced a succession of jingoistic, communal films. Regardless of the fate of the film at the box office, that surely is cause for a small celebration.