| |
RIGHT
ANGLE
Fiza's
Tandav for Jehad
When embracing
terrorism becomes a glamour statement
By
Swapan
Dasgupta
For
all its reputation as the great repository of crassness, the Mumbai film
industry has always possessed a social conscience. From the subtle socialism
of Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zameen and Raj Kapoor's Shri 420
to the heady nationalism of Manoj Kumar's Upkaar and Mani Ratnam's
Roja, Bollywood has been responsive to the shifting strands of
public opinion. Far more than any other institution, it has managed an
adroit blend of fantasy and populism. Without indulging in the political
partisanship of Tamil cinema and the morbid social realism of Bengali
films, the film-makers of Mumbai have tackled both anti-establishment
outrage and patriotic euphoria. If Bollywood has kept one eye on the box
office, the other has never lost sight of what can loosely be called the
national good. Despite crude exploitations of blood, gore and sex, there
is a Lakshman Rekha the industry has tacitly respected.
 Khalid
Mohammed's much-hyped and skillfully marketed Fiza is not merely
an audacious endeavour to extend the bounds of tolerance, it is an attempt
to turn the notion of national good on its head. Starring a muscle-flexing
Hrithik Roshan and a Karisma Kapoor looking absolutely resplendent in
white, Fiza is being cleverly sold as a great Bollywood spectacular.
At one level it definitely is. The songs are unquestionably catchy and
Sushmita Sen's bewitching desert dance and Hrithik's tandav will
certainly come to be regarded as all-time classics. There are stomach-churning
scenes of violence and ample scope for tears. In short, the film successfully
encapsulates the great Bollywood entertainment formula.
Unfortunately,
the spectacle is only the garnishing. Behind the good, clean fun is a
dangerous theme calculated to nurture the charms of jehad in the minds
of impressionable Muslim youth. Fiza narrates the story of Amaan
(Hrithik), a lower middle-class Muslim who gets caught in the Mumbai riots
of 1992-93, escapes death at the hands of marauding thugs and finds sanctuary
in a terrorist gang led by one Murad Khan. For six years, even as his
distraught mother and sister await his return, Amaan wages jehad against
India. Finally, his sister Fiza (Karisma) locates him and brings him back
to Mumbai. However, unable to find a job and harassed by lumpens who convey
an impression of being Shiv Sainiks, Amaan drifts back to Murad. He kills
his tormentors, escapes arrest and is selected by Murad for a daring mission:
the murder of a Hindu and Muslim politician. He accomplishes the task
and in an emotional climax dies at the hands of Fiza, before the police
can get to him. Amaan dies an unrepentant jehadi.
For the
Muslim youth, the message of Fiza is clear: you cannot expect honour
and justice in a country where everything, from the state apparatus to
the common citizenry, is offensively communal. Jehad is the only recourse,
even if the outcome is inevitable martyrdom.
In the past,
the emotional dilemmas of Indian Muslims have been the subject of Hindi
films. In Garam Hawa, set in post-Partition India when migration
to Pakistan was an option, the powerful message was to join the mainstream
and fight for your rights. In Sarfarosh, a Muslim police officer
overcomes taunts and discrimination to bust an ISI terrorist network.
He establishes his centrality to Indian nationhood. In Fiza, a
relentless jehad against the state becomes the subject of glorification.
The target of Hrithik's seven-minute tandav (dance of destruction)
is quite unmistakable.
Top
|
|
In
India, youth is marked by impetuosity and prevented from getting ahead.
Elsewhere, of course, the young rule the world, says INDIA TODAY Deputy
Editor Swapan Dasgupta in 
