Rang De Basanti- A Generation Awakens

Saw the movie Rang De Basanti yesterday and found it to be simply brilliant for several reasons.

1. The movie addresses issues that concern the youth in contemporary India
2. The movie portrays aspects of India’s Freedom Struggle rather objectively; there is no villainization of the Angrez and unduly glorification of the Indian.
3. The movie has permanent values to offer to the audience, which unfortunately not many Bollywood movies emphasize on these days…
4. The movie’s crisp editing helps maintain the flow of the story than marring it.
5. All the roles have been played to perfection by the actors; especially Aamir, Atul and Siddharth whom I felt were the best.
6. The music is apt for the movie and enhances its richness.
   

Rang De Basanti raises several questions with regard to the meaning of freedom and how the present day youth in India perceives its own history (often glorified in school textbooks). The movie starts off with Sue, a documentary film maker in London, reading her grandfather’s diary, who had been one among the representatives of the British Raj in India. His account of the fierce determination of the Indian freedom fighters, unshaken by the cruelties of the jail authorities and happily sacrificing their lives for the national cause, leaves a lasting impression upon her. She decides to shoot a documentary film based upon her grandfather’s diary in India but unfortunately her ideas are not welcomed by the production house in London with whom she is associated. Sue decides to accomplish the task all by herself and comes down to India without a second thought.

But in India she confronts a world, utterly different from that India of courage and sacrifice which she had read about in her grandfather’s diary. The youth, she realizes, are a bunch of cynics, who are carried away by Western culture and have little regard for their own tradition or history. In fact when she proposes DJ (played by Aamir) and his friends to play the role of freedom fighters in her film, the idea is received with sarcasm and laughter but later on they agree to work on it.

Slowly as the movie proceeds we see that DJ and his don’t-care-attitude-donning friends have begun to think and act differently. Playing the roles of Chandrasekhar Azad (Aamir), Bhagat Singh (Siddharth) and Ashfak (Kunal) in Sue’s movie, they become familiar with the story of India’s freedom struggle and this surely has its impact on the fellows. When their close friend, Ajay (played by Madhavan), an honest son-of-the-soil unlike them, dies in an MiG crash, all due to the lackadaisical attitude of the Defence Ministry, the idea of revolution and fighting for a cause becomes meaningful to them.
Individuality is freedom lived and these group of friends understand it no better than now, when they have the opportunity before them to assert their freedom. Ajay’s mother, played by Waheeda Rehman, Sonia (Soha Ali Khan, Ajay’s fiancé) and DJ & co organize a silent protest march on the streets of Delhi, asking the Defence Ministry for an explanation as to why MiG aircrafts are being manufactured with poor quality materials which is the main reason why many air crashes are taking place but the Defence Ministry deploys police personnel in the area and brutally attacks the protestors, in an effort to muzzle them.

Ajay’s mother runs into a coma due to severe head injuries and the other protestors too get wounded. Somehow this particular scene brought to my mind the recent Honda episode in which the workers silently protesting against the company’s labour policies were brutally beaten up by the police in Gurgaon. It isn’t too difficult to see the obvious nexus between political parties and heavy-pocketed MNCs that mint money using Cheap Indian Labour. The truth remains that anyone who raises his voice against injustice is considered as a miscreant by the powers-that-be and suppressed gradually.

Atul Kulkarni, who is a political worker, realizes that his own party leader and mentor is a bikaau (susceptible to being bought by money) and that all the party’s so-called idealistic slogans are a mere eye-wash. He is thoroughly disillusioned and decides to achieve his end by his own means. He grows closer to DJ & co now.

In a fit of fury, the friends decide to kill the Defence Minister, who they realize, can manipulate any situation with his political clout and get away with lapses. They decide not to forgive the corrupt minister, for putting the lives of young military officers at stake thus, and then spoiling their image by claiming them to be rookie pilots, who drive carelessly.

Very similar to the manner of approach of the freedom fighters, these young men, on a lazy winter morning, shoot the Defence Minister. Siddharth’s father, a politically influential man, is also connected with the Defence Minister’s corrupt work and Siddharth soon realizes this putting him to death that day at his home.

The movie ends on a tragic note when the young revolutionaries are shot dead in the All-India Radio station where they manage to narrate the story of their freedom and courage to the whole world. These young people are not terrorists who attack innocent people but believers in the religion of liberty who’d risk even their own lives for the sake of delivering justice. Through the media the message reaches to all that the struggle for freedom has not ended with the achievement of political freedom in 1947 and that every individual must continue to fight for his individual rights and thereby assert his freedom against the oppression of Government. The struggle for freedom is therefore a never-ending one in the history of mankind…

The movie is really an inspiring one. But I wonder how many will actually take the right lessons out of it. The movie had problems with the censor board and it isn’t difficult to ascertain as to why… It speaks the truth.

Those who have seen the movie are welcome to post their comments here.