Release date:
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July 28, 2017
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Director:
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Madhur Bhandarkar
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Cast:
Language:
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Kirti Kulhari,
Neil Nitin Mukesh, Tota Roy Choudhury, Anupam Kher, Satyajeet Sharma, Sheba
Chadha, Manav Vij, Ankur Vikal, Zakir Hussain, Mohan Kapoor
Hindi
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Indu Sarkar is Madhur Bhandarkar’s cleverly titled film on the
1975-77 period when Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi got President
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a state of Emergency across the country,
allowing her, in effect, to be a Constitutional dictator. It is one of the most
dismal phases in India’s post-Independence history, marked by the imprisonment
of all Indira’s political opponents, a clamp-down on free speech and the press,
and several human rights violations including, most famously, a programme of
forced mass sterilisation of men across age groups.
With the Emergency
in the foreground, Bhandarkar brings to us the story of the titular protagonist
(played by Kirti Kulhari), an orphan in Delhi who has spent her entire life
trying to overcome a congenital stammer. Teenaged and surnameless, Indu wants
nothing more than to be a good wife to some man some day. On the eve of the Emergency, she meets a Bengali named Navin Sarkar (Tota Roy
Choudhury), a government official whose star is rising due to his known
proximity to a prominent Congress politician. Indu and Navin marry, and she
lives out an opinionless existence as his servile spouse until one day during
the Emergency, she happens to venture into Turkman Gate area in Delhi, where
the police are engaged in a street battle with residents opposing the bulldozing
of their houses by the sarkar (government).
Indu is fictional
but the police firing on civilians during the Turkman Gate slum demolition
is very much a part of recorded history. Our heroine’s life changes forever
when she brings home two children whose parents go missing in the melee that
day.
There is rich irony in the fact
that some Muslims believe Turkman Gate exemplified Indira’s son Sanjay Gandhi’s
“anti-Muslim agenda” (read “Turkman Gate relives Emergency horror”, The Times
of India, June 2015, and John Dayal and
Ajoy Bose’s book For Reasons of State: Delhi Under the Emergency,
excerpted on The Wire in June 2015). The irony comes from the fact that Congress
has always positioned itself as a secular party, and is currently at
loggerheads with the ruling BJP, which makes no bones about its majoritarian,
anti-minority agenda.
Bhandarkar
– a committed admirer of the BJP – is clearly conscious of the parallels, which
should explain why he completely excludes Sanjay’s wife Maneka Gandhi from Indu Sarkar. No doubt, portraying Maneka
in the film would have been most inconvenient, considering that she was
reportedly constantly by Sanjay’s side through the Emergency, yet she is a Union
Minister in the present BJP government and her son Feroz Varun Gandhi is also a
BJP member.
If
Bhandarkar had had the courage to reference Maneka in his film, he could have
made a cutting statement on how, at least in the context of the Congress’
attacks on minorities during the Emergency and the BJP’s anti-minorityism
since its inception in the 1980s, these parties are two sides of the
same coin. He does not. Instead, he chooses to appease the present
establishment, erasing Maneka from the Emergency and showing Sanjay throughout
the film in the company of other known figures from that period: prototypes of
his real-life shadows Rukhsana Sultana, V.C. Shukla and Jagdish Tytler among
others. (Sanjay,
oddly enough, is named “Chief” and not Sanjay here, Sultana’s surname is only mentioned in passing, the others are not named
but each is styled to resemble the person they are obviously based on.)
The writer-director’s lack of academic objectivity is his film’s Achilles heel. Still, Indu Sarkar is interesting in certain ways. The leading lady, for one, is a telling metaphor for the voiceless who find their voice when faced with extreme injustice. The talented and underrated Kulhari, who was brilliant in last year’s Pink, lends relatable sensitivity to Indu. Neil Nitin Mukesh manages to extract something out of his role, even though Sanjay Gandhi is written here with no nuance and no graph whatsoever. Mukesh’s styling as Sanjay is remarkable. Seeing him on screen is almost like seeing the late politician’s doppelganger.
With the benefit of a
better-developed part, Tota Roy Choudhury is notable as Indu’s authoritarian husband,
as is Satyajeet Sharma playing the Minister Om Nath. (Note: Choudhury’s name is
misspelt in the credits as “Totaroy Chaudhary”.)
These positives, however, are overshadowed by Indu Sarkar’s political iffiness and often shallow writing. For one, apart from Indu, Navin and Om Nath, the rest are all cardboard cutouts and hangers-on. In choosing to downplay the other Indu, namely Indira (and by that I mean not just her fleeting appearance in Indu Sarkar but also in what appears to be her limited role in the goings on), Bhandarkar unwittingly lays almost the entire blame for Emergency atrocities on Sanjay. The character played by Anupam Kher, leader of a group of non-violent, anti-Emergency activists, is clearly an allusion to Jayaprakash Narayan – in Indu Sarkar the great man is reduced to a one-line concept.
In failing to rein in his biases,
the director has missed an opportunity with Indu
Sarkar. The Case of the Missing Maneka is one of many questionable choices
he makes here. By casually setting the film’s first mass sterilisation scene in
a largely Muslim area, he appears to be wordlessly pandering to the prevailing “Hum
paanch, hamare pachchees (We five, our 25)” prejudice against the Muslim community
in the country.
Bhandarkar, who once made that
lovely Chandni Bar (2001) with Tabu,
has delivered a qualitative downslide post-Fashion
in 2008. His Heroine (2012) was
steeped in clichés, and 2015’s Calendar Girls was both crass and regressive. To be fair, Indu Sarkar’s writing (story and screenplay by Anil Pandey and
Bhandarkar, dialogues by Sanjay Chhel) is more mature than those last two
films. We are certainly spared his by-now-predictable template (such as
satellite scenes in which household help and others from less advantaged
economic classes discuss their bosses, a stereotypical gay supporting
character, etc), which is a huge relief.
However, better does not mean
good. While Indu Sarkar’s narrative
is more engaging than Bhandarkar’s recent works, it is still inadequate.
At one point, an
important character in Indu Sarkar reminds a lawyer that she is
anti-government, not anti-national, “deshdrohi
nahin, sarkar virodhi.” It is a
comment perfectly suited to the Emergency, while also mirroring present-day
India where anyone who questions the ruling party, the prime minister or the
government is labelled “anti-national” by their supporters, and where several
commentators have spoken of the country being in a state of undeclared
Emergency. Imagine how beautifully that statement could have been used to
remind us that humanity repeats the mistakes of the past because we ignore our
history. For that to happen though, Indu
Sarkar required writing of greater depth and analysis, with less political
selectiveness. As things stand, it is a matter-of-fact narration of certain
events, with very little layering, elevated by good acting. We know the
Emergency happened. Can you provide us with insights that go beyond mere facts?
And if you cannot, what is the point?
To say that Indu Sarkar is better than Heroine
and Calendar Girls is hardly a
compliment to the man who made Chandni
Bar and Page 3.
Rating
(out of five stars): **
CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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139 minutes
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
