The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Valley to Bastar, films meet elections in the great countdown
DURING A visit to Jammu on February 20, and ahead of his trip to Kashmir, which would mark his first to the Valley since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi remarked: “I do not know what the film is all about, but yesterday I heard on TV that a film is coming on Article 370. Good, it will be useful for people to get the correct information.”
Thepmwasreferringto Article 370, the Yami Gautam-starrer, whichwasreleasedjustdaysafter
Modi returned from Jammu.
In 2019, also an election year, Modi had made a reference to another Bollywood film, about another incident involving Kashmir, while addressing the inaugural event of the National Museum of Indian Cinema in Mumbai. “How’s the josh?” he asked the crowd, including many Bollywood personalities, borrowing a dialogue from the blockbuster Uri, which was based on the “surgical strikes” by the Indian Army on Pakistan soil following an attack on an Army base in Uri.
Gautam stars in both the films while Aditya Dhar, who directed Uri in 2019, has produced Article 370.
Besides Uri, 2019 had seen Mission Mangal, which was based on the life of ISRO scientists behind India’s Mars Orbiter Mission; and The Accidental Prime Minister, centred on the tenure of Manmohan Singh.
Five years apart, Bollywood again appears to be in sync with the government on its political messaging ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
Bastar: A Naxal Story will hit the theatres on March 15. The film’s trailer talks of the Naxal movement, and the killing of 74 security personnel by the Naxals.
It adds that the killings had been “celebrated” by students at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Actress Adah Sharma, who plays an IPS officer, says in the trailer: “In Bastar (Chhattisgarh), Naxals want to break the country and those supporting them are pseudo-intellectual, Left liberals from big cities... I will gather these vaampanthis (Leftists) on the street and shoot them in public view.”
The teaser saw protests in JNU, with some students demanding “immediate action” against the team of the film.
A week after Bastar: A Naxal
Story, Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, a biopic on RSS ideologue Veer Savarkar, is scheduled for release. It is directed by Randeep Hooda, and stars him. Hooda says in the teaser that he “does not hate Gandhi but hates non-violence”. Last year saw Gandhi Godse – Ek Yudh, a film that imagines a fictional scenario in which Gandhi meets his killer Nathuram Godse.
2023 also saw The Vaccine War, directed by Vivek Agnihotri of The Kashmir Files fame, which told the story of the Modi government's efforts to come out with an indigenous vaccine at the height of the Covid pandemic.
2024 kicked off with Main
Atal Hoon, based on former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee; while Accident or Conspiracy: Godhra is in the works. Mid-year will see Emergency on the events from 1975 under Indira Gandhi. It stars Kangana Ranaut as the former PM.
Bastar: The Naxal Story has been made by the same team that was behind 2023's The Kerala Story which, as per its makers, was based on “the true story of 32,000 young women” from Kerala held captive at ISIS camps after being converted to Islam. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was among
those who slammed the film for “taking up the Sangh Parivar propaganda of projecting the state as a centre of religious extremism”.
Vipulamritshah,theproducer of both the films, says Bastar: A Naxal Story is “based on evidence” of events that happened between 2007-2013. “There have been recent reports that the Naxal threat is now bigger and that the threat has spread into the cities,” he told The Indian Express.
Asked about the protests in JNU over the film, Shah said: “You cannot deny that there is a strong lobby in JNU that is active.”
He added: “This (the film) is not pro-government, but this is pro-india. There is a right agenda. Our film talks about what is good for India. Now, if the BJP speaks similarly, it is their political stand.”
Dhar earlier told The Indian Express that Article 370, with two women in lead roles, champions “women’s empowerment” and is based on “a pure story”.
Meanwhile, in Andhra Pradesh
Headed for simultaneous Assembly and Lok Sabha polls, the state is also seeing a political war play out on the big screen.
First came Yatra 2 on February 8, a follow-up to 2019's Yatra, which had highlighted the late Congress leader and former Andhra CM Y S Rajashekhar Reddy's 1,500-km padyatra that was seen to have catapulted the Congress to victory in the state in 2004.
The latest iteration highlights the rise of his son and current CM Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy following the events after his father’s death. It focuses on the “odarpu (condolence)” yatra that Jagan undertook in April 2010 to meet families of those who are said to have either committed suicide or died of shock after hearing the news of YSR’S death in a chopper crash.
The film also has actors playing the roles of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu, both of whom allegedly try to stop Jagan's yatra.
Mahi V Raghav, the director of Yatra 2, says it made sense to time the release with the elections, adding: “For me, the story has drama. It does not matter if it is about a sitting CM. What matters is if the story has universal drama. The father-son bond is at the core of my film on Jagan’s journey.”
Then there was Rajdhani Files on February 15, which was based on Jagan's three-capital proposal, stuck in court and facing other controversies. The CM had proposed the setting-up of three capitals, with Amaravati as the legislative capital, Kurnool as the judicial capital and Visakhapatnam as the administrative capital, as a way of “decentralising development”.
After its release, the film was dragged to court, with YSRCP general secretary Lella Appi Reddy filing a petition in the High Court for a stay. The court granted an interim stay, but only for a day.
The film did not perform well at the box office.
On March 1, director Ram Gopal Varma’s take on Andhra politics — he calls it his “political commentary” — titled Vyooham was released. As per the teasers, the film depicts all the major figures of current Andhra politics, including Jagan, Naidu, his son Nara Lokesh, and actor-turned politician Pawan Kalyan.
The trailer shows Naidu and Kalyan, who have stitched up an alliance, don’t get along, and hints at Kalyan's CM aspirations.
A follow-up called Sapatham is planned.