Most... what the hell, make that all, politicians in India fall into any one of three categories: compromised, corrupt or completely venal. One would be tempted to say our politicians’ credibility has hit an all-time low if it weren’t for the fact that every time we think it couldn’t get any worse, it does. “This is the darkest it has ever been,” remarks Sudhir Mishra, director of the acclaimed Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2003), one of the few successful films to deal with political ideology.

Our politicos are now officially the men and women we love to hate; mean, murky streets ahead of even that other bete noire of ours, the police.

Proof? Good ol’ Bollywood, the best mirror of society’s changing moods and mores. For every film that shows a bumbling, servile or corrupt policeman, you will also find one that features the idealistic one who battles crooks, gangsters, terrorists and, who else, devious politicians. Many of them have become iconic characters, whether it is Sub-Inspector Anant Velankar in Shyam Benegal’s Ardh Satya (1983) or Amitabh Bachchan’s Inspector Vijay Khanna in Zanjeer (1973).

But think: When was the last time you saw an honest and/or respected politician in a major role in a Hindi film? Was it, perhaps, Anil Kapoor’s Shivaji Rao Gaekwad, chief minister for a day in Nayak (2001)? Considering that film could be categorised as a political fantasy of sorts, we might can that one. More recently, we saw Abhishek Bachchan’s Amol Arte in Paa (2009). But that character started off by telling his girlfriend, dump the baby or it’s bye-bye to my career and me, remember?

One could go on but let’s take the latest case in point: Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti, a film filled with lying, cheating, conniving, betraying, murdering politicians who will pull out every dirty trick in the book to hang on to that kursi and lal battiwaali car. The lower they stoop, the more the audience has loved it; the film has turned out to be one of the biggest hits of the year.

Jha obviously shares the average Indian’s dislike of politicians. “When did we ever have any respect for politicians? We have mistrusted them right from the time of Chanakya,” he points out. Observes Mishra, “In Raajneeti, I think the audience sees a certain truth. You’ve always thought of politicians with grey shades; now you’re told they’re not grey, they’re black. And the director says, ‘Let me show you just how black they are.”

Mind you, Raajneeti’s main players are not your usual greasy, dhoti-clad politicians with a lugubrious smile permanently pasted on their faces; these are smooth, nattily-clad, well-educated young men and women. They are not the standard-issue caricatures you’ll find in scores of Hindi films; they are, well, people like us. That’s why they’re so believable — and scary.

Jha, however, insists his movie is not a film about Indian politics but “a drama about the power struggle within a family, set against the background of elections and politics.” He argues, “It does not deal with any ideology in the sense that Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi does. It is not about the politics of the BJP or the Congress or any particular party, it is about the politics of the mind, of manipulation.” “What is politics but the art of controlling people?” chips in Mishra. “Some films talk directly about politics and people in politics, but most films have a political viewpoint; certainly, mine do.”

Box-office and other blues For a nation so obsessed with politics, we don’t make too many films that deal directly with this particular game and its players. And when you consider that so many of our stars from all over the country are both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs, and that Bollywood and politics are continually wooing each other, relatively few films pick up a subject that would seem to be tailor-made for the screen. Fewer still succeed at the box-office.

Is it because politics as a subject does not sell easily at the box-office? “No, producers imagine that it does not sell,” counters Mishra. “Also,” he adds, “film-makers are a little scared; you become very vulnerable when your film is ready to release. Just anybody can take out a morcha and stop the screening of your film. This is a very dicey business; you have a very small window to recover your money. If the film is not screened in its first week, the opportunity is gone.”

Even before the release is the one big hurdle that any film with strong political content or comments has to negotiate: the Censor Board. Jha, for instance, had to face some rather strange objections. In an election scene in which the widow of a slain political leader contests the elections (sounds familiar?), a bystander remarks, “Vidhwa vote le jayegi (The widow will walk away with all the votes.” No go, Jha was told; he had to change ‘vidhwa’ to ‘bitiya’ (daughter). Jha also had the dubious pleasure of seeing his film’s popularity and contemptuous portrayal of politicians underscored when Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and a group of BJP MLAs from Rajasthan were caught red-handed watching a pirated DVD of the movie in a hotel. Jha threatened to sue, but it takes more than that to embarrass our Teflon-coated elected officials.

The director had to move on. In any case, he remarks, “We are all playing politics with each other. Politics does not reside only in governance. There’s so much of it in a husband-wife relationship, too. Or between two people in love — don’t they manipulate each other when it comes to the question of getting married or not? We are forever manipulating and manoeuvering in our relationships; it is the politics of the mind.”

Now, that’s the sort of politics that Bollywood is most comfortable with. Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, anyone?

POL-BOILERS
Six recent films that made a strong political comment

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2003)
Director: Sudhir Mishra
A tender, brutal love story that pits a capitalist wheeler dealer against a Marxist idealist when they both vie for the love of a beautiful woman. Left-wing ideology and consumerist India meet in an achingly disturbing climax against the backdrop of the Emergency.

Yuva (2004)
Director: Mani Ratnam
Originally released in Tamil as Ayutha Ezuthu. Ratnam, one of India’s best-known observers of the uncomfortable confluence of the personal and political, brought the violent game of student politics back to the big screen.

Sarkar (2005)
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Call it the Indian version of The Godfather or Varma’s thinly-disguised take on Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray and his unconventional methods. This is a dark, stylish look at power and politics seen through the story of a father and his two sons, one wayward, one strong and silent.

Rang De Basanti (2006)
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
What does it take for student apathy to turn into political activism? In this film that switches cleverly from echoes of the freedom struggle to present-day politics, the death of a young pilot gives his friends a new perspective on patriotism and stirs them into action.

Gulaal (2009)
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Student politics, murderous ‘leaders’, amoral feudal lords, a right royal family feud with two illegitimate children staking their claim for a political inheritance — Gulaal is a blood-soaked tale.

Raajneeti (2010)
Director: Prakash Jha
No Hindi film has painted politi-cians with such sustained, intensely dark shades — in a manner that rings scarily true. Jha revisits the Mahabharata as different branches of a political family (including an illegitimate son) fight to win an election and control of a party.

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