Hey Ram, Hey Nathuram

It’s a moment in the film that leaves you unnerved. The year is 1947 and a carnageis on in the streets of Calcutta. As Hindus and Muslims fight it out, a staunch member ofthe Hindu group boldly proclaims: "There’s one man responsible for all thisblood-spilling-Barrister Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi." This then is the burdenKamalahaasan’s much-awaited film Hey Ram carries. Of audaciously, blatantly examininga long-suppressed view that Gandhi, stripped of the respectful suffix, was paradoxicallyresponsible for that blood-tinged dawn.

Kamalahaasan structures the three hours of his film as an exploration into the wounded‘Hindu’ soul and leaves only the last half hour to make a belated, feeble casefor Gandhi. By which time the audience has lost interest and Gandhi comes across as a merecardboard figure, sans life and coherence, whose only preoccupation in life is to go on apadayatra to Pakistan.

The film focuses on a (Hindu) commoner’s conviction that the man described as theMahatma, in a political obstinacy that many saw as partisanship, gave muscle to the Muslimcommunity in whom lay dormant the seeds of bloody war. Kamalahaasan plays Saket Ram, whoselife turns upside down the day his wife (Rani Mukherjee) is raped brutally and her throatslit by a bunch of rioters. Kamalahaasan carries through an attempt at even-handedness byshowing an almost equal number of perpetrators from both communities but Muslims alwaysseem to be initiating the violence in his film, while the Hindus merely retaliate.

A point which has angered Muslims in Mumbai. Not many of them went to see the filmwhich was released on February 18. Though first-week collections stood at 81 percent-reasonable, though modest considering the film’s big banner-they’re likelyto go down in the following weeks. Also, during the first show at Metro cinema, someMuslims rose in protest when Amjad (a token Gandhian Muslim in the film, anuncharacteristically subdued performance by Shahrukh Khan) is shown protecting his friendSaket Ram in a soda factory where a lot of Muslims are in hiding. They objected to thefact that a Muslim could protect a rabid Hindu. Tensions rose when others in the audienceasked the protesting Muslims to shut up and sit down. It forced the cinema hall managementto inform the police, who stood outside in readiness, just in case.

The fact is, Hey Ram packages Hindutva and anti-Muslim rhetoric in a high-pitched,viewer-friendly idiom that instantly strikes a chord. Alluring leitmotifs like the dhoti,janeoo, the swastika and tilak are thrown in for good measure along with spirited cries ofVande Mataram. There’s the menacing yet immensely charismatic Hindu leader ShriramAbhayankar. The audience clings on to every word he speaks. Like when he sneeringlyequates the slogan Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai to bakri-kasai bhai-bhai.

Pointing to specific instances, All India Muslim Mahaz chairman Farooq Azam says:"We object to Hey Ram because it insults the minorities. It seems to say only theMuslims were responsible for the riots. It has a scene where a tailor brings in 20 men andrapes a Hindu woman."

Azam is probably among those who have not seen the film since it’s three and not20 Muslims who’re shown as raping Saket’s wife. But three or 20, it’senough for Azam to insist Kamalahaasan "portrays a false impression of Gandhiji andseems to have come under pressure from the RSS".

Given the film’s focus on contentious events in Calcutta, it would’ve perhapsbeen too much to expect no reaction from a city not known for being phlegmatic. This time,of course, it wasn’t the RSS that was laying siege to freedom of expression, but theYouth Congress which led protests against the film. Led by Chhatra Parishad’sSukhendu Roy and Sushanta Ghosh and Seva Dal’s Hiran Majumdar, they objected to"unsavoury comments" about Gandhi and took strong exception to Rani Mukherjeereciting lines from Jibananda Das’ poem Rupashi Bangla in the backdrop of what wastermed as a "very objectionable" love scene. Second-rank leaders and studentsstormed cinema halls, tore up posters and shattered windowpanes.

Cultural protests are nothing new to Calcutta. In the ‘70s it was the cpi(m-l)that disrupted the screening of Dev Anand’s Prem Pujari, on grounds that it portrayedChinese communists as villains. Some two decades later, pro-cpi(m) groups bashed up thecrew of City of Joy. They also set cinema halls ablaze and at least one person died inconnection with Roland Joffe’s shooting in Calcutta. Recently, the BJP threatenedbloodshed if Water were to be shot in the city. With Youth Congress workers now in action,the cycle of political intolerance seems complete. All parties are now tarred with thesame brush: if the Naxalites’ holy cow is China and Hindutva is the BJP’sshibboleth, Gandhi it is who is goading the Chhatra Parishad on to the streets.

Thankfully, Hey Ram didn’t generate the kind of fire Water has. In Mumbai, perhapsbecause it’s the Muslims who have been offended and in Calcutta because the protestshave been criticised from all quarters. AICC secretary Ajit Jogi was quick to condemn theact. Said he: "Non-violence is our way, I have to find out more about what theChhatra Parishad has done, but we don’t approve of such protests." State leadersSaugata Ray and P.R. Das Munshi emphasised that the party was not involved at all andindeed opposed such tactics.

Says observer Charubrata Ray: "The Congress reaction is worrying. It means eventhe staid political middle ground and hitherto sober elements are falling prey to culturalintolerance." Others see a different twist to the tale. That, caught in ano-man’s land between the CPI(m) and Trinamul, the protests "are an act ofidentity assertion for a party still groping to recover its lost relevance in nationalpolitics," as a wag put it.

As the scenes of acrimony mirror, verbally or otherwise, what happens on screen, onefigure who fades in the process is Gandhi, the "voice of sanity". Hema Malini,an Iyengar housewife in the film, at one point says how when a common man fasts, he fallssick but when "the Mahatma fasts, the country gets freedom". It’s a lineyou almost miss.