A few days ago, I woke up to a disturbing video playing in my newsfeed. It was that of a helpless Bihar professor, Sanjay Kumar, being thrashed ruthlessly by a group of goondas for allegedly insulting beloved former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on social media.
I saw them drag him out in the street from his home and thrash him, punch him and kick him while his horrifying cries for mercy rang hollow in their ears.
Watching the graphic video clip was unnerving to say the least but, then again it would be safe to say that we’ve now become much more desensitized to violent imagery coming out of India.
From the countless gau rakshaks lynchings that took place this year to the innocent men who were murdered in Assam recently due to baseless rumors circulating on WhatsApp, the Angry (disenfranchised) Indian Man is increasingly taking the law in his own hands.
To make matters worse, John Abraham is stoking that fire with his new outing, Satyamev Jayate – a blockbuster film, released on Independence Day no less, that fuses nationalism and extreme violence so tightly together as though to imply that one cannot live without the other.
“Satyamev Jayate is commendably an anti-corruption polemic but unlike other Bollywood films with a similar theme, this one offers no solace or guidance.”
The first scene of the film alone is bone-chilling; John Abraham’s vigilante cop burns an allegedly corrupt cop alive on a pier using pure Indian ghee of course because patriotism!!
Satyamev Jayate is commendably an anti-corruption polemic but unlike other Bollywood films with a similar theme, this one offers no solace or guidance. Instead, the film plays to the Angry Indian Man’s two most primal fantasies 1) that taking justice into your own hands is a noble act and 2) that violence is the only solution in the dystopia that is today’s India.
Releasing a film of this nature during this tumultuous time in Indian history is undoubtedly irresponsible on both John Abraham’s part and the studio’s.
I mean, really, what were they thinking?! Is John Abraham, whose career has been lying dormant for the past few years, that desperate for a career comeback?!
It’s one thing for Bollywood films to tap into the zeitgeist, which many of the good ones successfully do, but its another thing entirely to tap into its nether regions and dwell there.
