Over the top

A fake bin Laden provides some laughs along with a sharp comment on the “war on terror”, the media, and US policy on Afghanistan.

By Laxmi Murthy

A spoof about the US ‘war on terror’, the Pakistani desperation to emigrate and a satirical take on the media’s obsession with ‘Breaking News’ could go badly wrong in hands that excel in slapstick or melodrama. But right from the disclaimer about resemblance to any person living or dead being purely ‘coincidental’, director Abhishek Sharma pulls it off, tongue firmly in cheek. The pun in the title which could be read as ‘Without you, Laden’, or ‘Your bin Laden’. Onward, smart acting and witty dialogues effortlessly steer the film through potential minefields, quite literally. (more…)

How James Cameron’s Avatar relates to the exploitation of Indigenous People of the world and India

By Guest Blogger Rohini Hensman

With forced expulsion and violence on their homeland, persecuted outsider-advocates, and commercial mining interest driving it all, James Cameron’s Avatar has striking parallels to events on the ground in India.

The plot of Avatar is relatively simple. In the year 2154, a colony of humans has been set up by RDA corporation on Pandora, an exotic planet inhospitable to humans but rich in a rare and incredibly valuable mineral, ironically named unobtanium. RDA is keen on exploiting this natural resource but the indigenous inhabitants, the Na’vi, are an obstacle to this goal, since the unobtanium lies beneath the forest they inhabit, with the biggest deposit beneath their ancestral Hometree. In a science fiction flourish, the humans interact with the natives through the Avatar programme, which blends the DNA of individual human beings with that of the Na’vi to create Na’vi avatars which can be controlled by the mind of the human. Through this, they can establish contact with the Na’vi, find out about them and their habitat, and try to persuade them to cooperate with the company. But should they fail, the military wing is poised to remove them by force. Our heroes, including Jake, a paraplegic ex-marine, who adopts his deceased twin brother’s avatar (which represents a sizable investment by the corporation) connect with the natives and learn to appreciate their culture. When the powers-that-be get impatient and give Jake and his colleagues an hour to convince the Na’vi to vacate their habitat, they rebel against their paymasters in an attempt to protect the Na’vi from ecological ruin and genocide.

The contemporary relevance of this film derives from the fact that, as the recent UN Report on the State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (United Nations 2010) reminds us, there are still 370 million indigenous people in the world. Many are still being subjected to displacement and dispossession, and suffer physical abuse, imprisonment, torture and even death if they try to assert their rights. Nowhere is this more true than in India’s forest belt, where the Adivasis are being displaced from their traditional habitats by the pursuit of ‘development’, of late driven mainly by commercial interests including mining. As an official report notes, ‘As tribal areas are also rich in mineral resources, the mining projects proposed such as in Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh threaten the very existence of tribal people’ (Government of India 2008).

Indeed, the heart-breaking moment in Avatar when the ancestral Hometree of the Na’vi is destroyed, and many are killed while the rest are displaced, could well be a metaphor for what is happening in the state of Chhattisgarh in Central India, where the security forces of a fascist state government, together with a state-sponsored, largely tribal militia (Salwa Judum), have driven tens of thousands of Adivasis out of their villages and destroyed them. In the process, many have been injured, tortured, raped and killed. One non-tribal activist fighting against these injustices, renowned Dr Binayak Sen, was arrested and kept behind bars for over two years on false charges; another, Himanshu Kumar, had his Gandhian ashram destroyed, and has suffered continuous harassment. Journalists and human rights activists trying to investigate and report on the situation have been assaulted physically and kept out. Inordinate effort was needed to get Sodhi Sambho, a young Adivasi woman who was witness to a massacre, the medical treatment she needed for her bullet-shattered leg; yet even in hospital she remained a virtual captive of the state police, effectively cut off from journalists and even from her lawyer in the case pertaining to the massacre. Three other witnesses were detained by the police, who are the alleged perpetrators: the very opposite of a witness-protection programme (Jha 2010; Iqbal 2010; Sethi 2010).

Some Adivasis have joined the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (also known as ‘Maoists’ or ‘Naxalites’) in order to fight the state security forces, even though the goal of the CPI(Maoist) (capturing state power) and its methods (destruction of schools and infrastructure, recruitment of child soldiers, summary execution of those labelled as informers, etc.) are inimical to the welfare of the Adivasis and their own demands (Human Rights Watch 2008). The central government is supporting a military attack on the Maoists, despite the fact that many unaffiliated Adivasis will be caught in the crossfire, even though its own report  makes it clear that so long as unchecked violations of the legal and constitutional rights of Adivasis continue, they will continue to be pushed into the ranks of the Maoists. It is probably in recognition of this fact that the government is considering legislation that will restrict mining by private sector companies in tribal areas, and take into consideration constitutional provisions for the protection of tribal communities and their rights. Mining companies are already lobbying against this proposed restriction of their access to our earthly equivalents of unobtanium. Unless there is even stronger counter-lobbying by tribal rights, human rights and environmentalist groups, it is unlikely that this legislation will ever make it to the statute books. Poor implementation of the otherwise laudable Forest Rights Act (2007) demonstrates that pressure for implementation is equally important.

The bows and arrows of the Adivasis are as ineffective against the firepower of the invaders as they are in Avatar. Yet they do have weapons that were not available to the Na’vi: legal and constitutional rights, environmental laws, international law, greater knowledge of the devastating environmental impact of deforestation and militarism, and modern information and communication technologies. Struggles in the real world are more complicated and messy than the clearcut fight between good and evil in the world of Avatar: the invaders are not necessarily White; some of the indigenous people may collaborate with them while others may join groups like the Maoists whose interests clash with their own; indigenous people belonging to different tribes may fight each other for control over the same territory; some tribal customs may be extremely oppressive, especially to women; for many indigenous people, their biggest problem may be the discrimination and exclusion they face in mainstream society; and all these actors have to share the same planet, in some cases the same country. But despite these over-simplifications, the happy ending of Avatar encourages us to hope that the surviving indigenous people of the world, including the Adivasis of India, can win sufficient control over their lives and habitats to secure freedom from poverty, indignity and violent abuse.

Rohini Hensman is a researcher and writer active in the women’s liberation, trade union, human-rights and anti-war movements in India and Sri Lanka.

by Guest Blogger Partha Banerjee

Caution: Don’t spend your time, money or patience on it. Believe me. I just did. By default, I’m now a free idiot.

Is the new-generation India so painfully dumb that it can’t understand the difference between truth and make-believe, reality and dream, or even fun and pain? Or, it’s way too complicated when it’s a new-wave Bollywood version of entertainment-awareness-social-change-cocktail served by Coke messiah Amir Khan?

When truth is layered-in with a fake cake in such a cumbersome way that you don’t really know which one to choose: cheap fun or grim reality? You want to be a part, if not protagonist, of the desperately-needed social change, but you know that something’s dead wrong in the messaging, and yet, you can’t quite figure out where the problem is. But you paid handsomely at the box office to get in, and you don’t want to come home not laughing or not crying. However hard you need to force yourself to do it, like a bad gas that simply wouldn’t pass. (Sorry, but Khan used the element plenty.)

Three hours of non-stop Hindi Blitzkrieg of dialoguing, monologuing, dancing, donkeying, monkeying, stomping, romping, jumping, kissing, pissing, sciencing, philosophizing, teaching, testing, teasing, cheating, beating, stealing, healing, sobbing, crying, tear-jerking, gate-crashing, driving, dying and birthing…you name it…just to drive on one message…like that bad gas…that it’s time the Indian supercolonial academia change…and free itself of learning by rote…and enter an era of free thinking!

Wow!

Unfortunately, every bit of masala Amir Khan and his idiots uses to cook up the story is straight from the dingiest Bollywood kitsch kitchen, where the entire purpose of filming is done around the known theme of profit by making the dumb dumber, and the dumber the dumbest. And when so many idiots are employed, free and licensed to teach free thinking to new-generation India, it’s no more a dream. It’s a nightmare.

It’s a nightmare just to sit through the three endless hours of plotting, subplotting, sub-subplotting, flashbacking and backflashing. It’s three hours of a very painful trial. Trial of your civility, social skills and patience. When completely disgusted after an hour and a half into the show, you just want to stand up, scream, kick the back of the front seat in the darkness of the theater, and leave. But you can’t. After all, you’re not really free to do that. Even an idiot wouldn’t do it.

My readers, friends, supporters and especially my critics always want to know what my problem is: why can’t I simply get some fun and be happy with fun and happy stuff? Why do I always have to be such a naysayer and badmouther at every Bollywood benchmark? After all, what’s so cool about always blasting big media and thereby making myself depressed, even more so than ever before? I did that with notable, famed and prospered big-ticket items such as Born Into Brothels and Slumdog Millionaire; I’m now web-spewing the same, predictable criticism of another big blockbuster that’s taking Indian families by storm — both in India and abroad! Why can’t I make some peace with reality, and learn to live with it?

Yeah, that’s a serious mental case, indeed.

Now, people are so tired of rave reviews, critiques and eulogies that 3 Idiots (I’m sure you’ve long figured it out) got, it wouldn’t be wise to do a shot-by-shot, sequence-by-sequence post-mortem, although one would be tempted to do it, just for the “fun.” I’d rather select a handful only for a hindsight.

1. The opening sequence of idiot Farhan’s faked illness on a just-took-off Air India plane. (Please don’t try it. You’ll be quickly arrested, beat up and jailed, maybe, even on terrorism charges). The once-wildlife-photographer-aspirant, father-forced engineering student, who’s now suddenly an accomplished photographer with a number of books out, gets a call from one Rancho, his face turns green, as if scared to death. But Rancho, they later tell us, is only his pal, his soul brother he met ten years ago — calling from some unknown place for some unknown reason. But to answer him, Farhan decides to feign a heart attack on board, and forces the pilots to turn around for an emergency landing. He then walks out of his wheelchair with a simple comic gesture, and dissolves into the street crowd.

(My critic: “But didn’t you get the fun, you wet blanket? Oh, it was so funny! Loved it.”)

2. Rancho straps himself with idiot Raju’s critically ill, paralyzed father on a scooter, and drives him to hospital for a save, thereby meeting his doctor girlfriend Pia who was also, as it turns out, daughter of the Hitler-ish college director. (Please don’t try this method to save a patient. You’ll kill them; and law will quickly get back to you. Unless you’re an Indian Amir or a member of his now-famous idiot club). In my time I’ve seen quite a few Bollywood insanities, and this one would definitely make a short list. And it’s so inhumane to the point of cruelty, only to match with Raju’s poor mother scratching his bed-ridden husband’s eczema with a roller pin and then using it to make rotis for her son and his invited friends.

(Critic: “Ha ha, was it funny! Laugh laugh laugh…giggle giggle giggle…”)

3. A climax-subclimax drama of idiot Rancho and his idiot Indian engineering gang delivering Pia’s sister Mona’s baby at the college, taking online-video instructions from Pia. (Please don’t try it, period). Other than the totally ludicrous and nonsense drama of the pingpong-tabletop-childbirthing under Rancho’s stewardship and collective laboring, the corniness is simply absurd and truly unbearable. I’ve never seen so many otherwise healthy-looking men crying so much, so pathetically.

(Critic: “You just don’t get it. It was a metaphor, a symbol, a dream scenario. Like, this is how it should be. It’s an Amir utopia. He’s making the young generation think. Love it.”)

I have another metaphor in my mind. In ten years the movie spans, no one idiot grows up. Telling, the globalized Indian generation considered. We might say, not ten, it’s twenty.

I have a feeling had one looked carefully, they could even find those idiots wearing the same stars-and-stripes underpants they wore ten years ago. The ones they flashed globally. That was “balatkar” indeed, in my opinion.

Ah…”All Izz Well.”

Partha Banerjee is a New York-based writer, teacher and media and human rights activist .