Art, Defanged
In the run-up to the 2024 elections, the films that hit the big screens, the books showcased on the windowfronts, and the music crawling into our ears, has mostly sung the songs of propaganda. It’s art without dissent; art that rages for the machine.
Sometimes, it’s surreal for me to remember that Rang De Basanti even exists. Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and starring superstar Aamir Khan, the 2006 musical/drama was a huge mainstream success. It broke box office records and became India’s official entry to major international film awards. It featured a number of famous faces, a memorable soundtrack, romance, comedy, action, patriotism.
And yet, this wasn’t an ordinary blockbuster. The glossy surface of the film was layered with the simmering heat of political revolution. RDB begins with the arrival of a British film student to New Delhi at the turn of the 21st century. She wishes to make a film about Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru—freedom fighters who were branded terrorists by colonial powers in the 1930s, but have been exalted as revolutionaries by India. She meets a motley crew of young citizens to star in her project, but soon, the past bled into the present. The corruption and authoritarianism of modern India—highlighted by the death of an Air Force flight lieutenant—urges the actors portraying the revolutionaries to take up the cause of revolution of their own: this time, against the Indian rulers of our independent state.
By the end of RDB (spoiler alert), Mehra’s insinuation could hardly be clearer: India’s ruling powers may have passed hands from the British to the Indian, but the cruelty towards the common man remains the same. Another inquilaab—revolution—is needed, and it might get violent. Much like the British did in the freedom struggle, the Indian state brands the youngsters as terrorists—but filmgoers, like history itself, will remember them as revolutionaries.
This was over 18 years ago; which means that, Indian children born around the time of RDB’s release are eligible to vote in their first Lok Sabha elections in 2024, to participating in determining our country’s political future. But these ‘2006 Babies’ have come of age in a nation where the existence of anti-government political art like Rang De Basanti seems unfathomable. It is hardly the same country where art was allowed to loudly reimagine the world, where art and artists could lock horns against the establishment, where anti-establishment could be celebrated with bombast. Where theatres across the nation were packed with moviegoers, and radio stations played the songs of rebellion.
For these 2006 Babies, mainstream anti-establishment in art may seem like a fever dream. Nowadays, it seems like any form of popular, contemporary art that questions the narratives of the ruling regime or dares to swim against the party line is suppressed, banned, blocked, deleted. In the run-up to the 2024 elections, the films that hit the big screens, the books showcased on the windowfronts, and the music crawling into our ears, has mostly sung the songs of propaganda. It’s art without dissent; art that rages for the machine.
A flood of institutional pressure, economic pushback, and creative stifling have blunted many of the sharp edges of Indian arts. As a result, in the heat of perhaps the most consequential elections in the history of independent India, mainstream art provides little resistance to the deluge of tyranny, choosing to navigate safely free from the murky waters of deeper introspection
Art and artists have faced pressure from authority from years. Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was banned in India by the Rajiv Gandhi Congress government in 1988, fearing religiously-motivated violence by the perceived blasphemy in the novel (nobody who has actually the read book would agree with this perception). The paintings of artist M.F. Husain drew the ire of fundamentalist groups for alleged obscenity and blasphemy in the 90s and early 2000s. Both Rushdie and Husain lived in exile from India following the controversies.
But if art faced pushback in the past, something far more sinister has happened since the rise of the BJP government in the past decade: a flood of institutional pressure, economic pushback, and creative stifling have blunted many of the sharp edges of the Indian arts. As a result, in the heat of perhaps the most consequential elections in the history of independent India, mainstream art provides little resistance to the deluge of tyranny, choosing to navigate safely free from the murky waters of deeper introspection. Instead, the arts we’re now left with is often—at best—a distraction from the tyranny and the abyss, or—at worst—propaganda that uplifts the tyranny to a higher pedestal.
Almost four years ago, I’d written about how paid social media posts, ‘hashtag activism’, and the looming threat of bans and boycotts had impacted a number of films and OTT shows which presented narratives or characters that allegedly insulted the tenets of India pro-government party line—i.e., anything that questioned the idea of the sanctity of India’s dominant upper caste idea of Hinduism, anything that highlighted failures and cruelties of the Indian state, or expressed sympathy with the opposing lines of the culture wars. These included films like Padmaavat (2018), purportedly presented a Rajput queen in a ‘negative’ light, or series like Leila (2019), which dared to show a dystopian Indian future under an oppressive right-wing regime.
Less than one election cycle later, it seems unfathomable to even envision another Leila. Bans and boycotts have been decreed for much milder thoughtcrimes, such as the Dev Patel film Monkey Man, the release of which has been suspended (perhaps permanently) in India for some of its political commentary. In early 2024, Netflix India took down the Tamil drama Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food just a month after its release after backlash from right-wing Hindu groups for showing a Brahmin chef cooking meat. Projects like Anurag Kashyap’s adaptation of Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City or Prime Video’s political satire Gormint seem to have been similarly shelved, permanently, often to fearful self-censorship by producers or promoters.
But it’s simply not enough to ban content with somewhat-controversial political themes. The people need entertainment, and recent trends in India cinema have leaned towards a deluge of films filled with plot-lines and narratives adapted directly out of the BJP’s political talking points. These include films like The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story, Article 370, The Vaccine War, JNU: Jahangir National University, or Swantantrya Veer Savarkar. Beyond these barefaced propagandas, there have been the slew of usual ‘patriotic’ movies that play it safe with their themes of promoting the idea of Indian exceptionalism, without questioning the core of India’s own flaws: Tejas, Uri, Fighter, or basically anything Akshay Kumar or Kangana Ranaut have acted in over the past decade. There have also been a number of high-octane, high-action, big-budget releases like Adipurush, RRR, Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva, the Baahubali series, etc, which have found safety and success in mythology and a sanitized version of historical events.
The latter trend clearly piggybacks off the cinema from a close neighbour which has a considerable lead over India in terms of promoting the party-line: China. A number of the biggest cinematic hits in Chinese cinema have focused on narratives that glorify military conquests (real or imagined) or mythologies that celebrate China’s cultural chauvinism, including The Battle of Lake Changjin, Operation Red Sea, My People, My Country, and more. Indian films of this genre are often high on CGI and low on substance, and thus, only relay a short shelf-life in human memory.
In the time I’d spent living in Beijing a decade ago—when, in comparison, India still used to feel like a considerably more tolerant and liberal society—I was often startled by the lack of any contemporary cultural artifact that wrestled directly with the communist state. Books that dissented against the regime were rarely found in China, and authors and artists like Ma Jian, Ai Weiwei had to seek exile for following the pursuit of truth to its rebellious ends.
There was no Ma Jian in Chinese bookstores; instead, there were grand eye-catching volumes of books on architecture, interior design etc, forms of art that could be presented as politically neutral, or even leaning towards the aesthetics of the Party. It is the world as envisioned in the books of Ayn Rand, and a practice similarly adopted in India, too. ‘Progress’ is often limited to infrastructure, to leaving a brash human skid mark on the world: more roads, more bridges, flyovers, statues, stadia. Things that cost effort and money and resources, that make the news, but don’t, ultimately, say anything. Art that is toothless. The biggest architectural projects are so expensive that they hardly belong to an artist alone: they are commissioned by big business, or often, by big government, and thus, can be reshaped for a political message. Take for example the new Central Vista redevelopment project in New Delhi, which critics claimed was promoting the chosen aesthete of Hindu nationalism and away from India’s secular cores. Similarly, controversy arose when the site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was revamped into a soulless complex of mannequins and laser shows.
In this slow erosion of creativity, there has been little resistance from mainstream artists and creators: even those less tainted by the partisan divisions. Films like Bheed (2023) or Afwaah (2003) tackle themes of misgovernance during the COVID-19 Lockdown or mob violence towards minorities in India, but eventually, flinch from pulling their punches at any true confrontation with the failure of recent Indian polity. Meanwhile, the mainest of mainstreams of Bollywood continue to churn out the same, predictable, Hindu upper-caste, upper-class, musical blockbusters, the Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaanis, ensuring that our Ministry of Mass Distraction continues to operate without a hitch, with a foot-tapping soundtrack that plays at neighbourhood functions, Ambani pre-wedding celebrations, and Spotify charts.
Musically, the increase in political authoritarianism has given a refreshing rise to independent or somewhat ‘underground’ artists rebelling through song, including acts like Swadesi (“Kranti Havi”), Lifafa (“Wahin Ka Wahin”), Ahmer, Therakural (“anti-Indian”), or Poojan Sahil. In 2019, months before the last Lok Sabha elections, the soundtrack for the hip-hop blockbuster film Gully Boy interloped the popular grassroots chants for Kashmiri sovereignty into the rebel rap song “Azadi” by Divine and Dub Sharma.
But, of course, the dissenting sounds are an extreme minority, hardly heard over the bombast of party (and Party) anthems; the biggest music streaming hits at any moment (like they are almost everywhere in the world) are easy-breezy pop numbers pulped with themes of love, separation, or self-aggrandizing. More me, less we.
What is art if it’s not saying something, if it’s providing a new means to communicate higher emotional truths? There can surely be space for both: art that solely entertains, and art that causes a stirring emotional impact, that rebalances one’s sense of accepted truths. Art that isn’t simply accepting the answer, but is encouraging us to ask the questions.
The best literature in the world is exactly that: a question, a curiosity, a slight derangement of the presented world. When it comes to reading, however, one can find the impact of the cultural dullification quite clearly at any airport bookshop. This hasn’t happened overnight, of course: much of the best-selling fiction feature a retelling of mythological narratives or themes, including work by authors like Amish, Ashwin Sanghi, Kavita Kané, etc. It’s not just the cultural familiarity that makes this genre so ubiquitous in India: these books often deal with the safety of the past, without making a clear connection to how that past represents the precariousness of the present. They have found massive success in the Indian readers’ desires to turn back towards mythology in an entertaining, but ‘safe’ way: an exaltation, rather than a pondering.
There can surely be space for both: art that solely entertains, and art that causes a stirring emotional impact, that rebalances one’s sense of accepted truths. Art that isn’t simply accepting the answer, but is encouraging us to ask the questions.
As gods and demigods are refashioned for the modern age, few authors question the demarcations of the good and the evil: the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad. Characters are left uncomplicated, because any complication would also confound how their chosen leaders—inspired by Rama or Krishna or Vishnu or Hanuman—are perceived in the present day.
Meanwhile, non-fiction rules the roost, and while there is no shortage of available volumes penned by serious researchers and experts, the most popular books are of the self-help or motivational genre. In recent years, a large number of texts have hit the market perpetuating the greatness of the RSS/Hindutva message: books about BJP leaders like Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath, books that attempt to reframe the narratives of historical figures like Savarkar, books that mimetically parrot the government’s decrees about a rising new Bharat (not India).
The bookstores, OTT platforms, theatres, music steaming services, etc. may be accused for a small share of the blame, but eventually, capital wins in a capitalism. If truly curious art is deplatformed in the mainstream, it’s merely responding to the demands of the mainstream.
Often, films and books are banned or ‘deplatformed’ because they may have a social message that challenges or differs from the mainstream narrative for India. But the real death of art is when the artists themselves—authors, songwriters, filmmakers, painters, playwrights, etc.—practice self-censorship, because, under an oppressive environment, any expression of a truth becomes too much of a headache. Recall the case of novelist Perumal Murugan, who briefly ‘retired’ from writing, announcing himself ‘dead’, due to protests and litigation that followed his novels.
This self-censorship spells the end of creativity and imagination, of what I believe to be the truest expression of humanity through art: art that is unfiltered, that express deeper truths, art that speaks the unspeakable, art that exists in itself—not to serve the agenda of the powerful, but to take the power back for the people.
What we’re left with is art defanged, films and music and books and paintings created without a pulse—blurring the lines between artificial and real intelligence—art that announces itself with grand P.R. campaigns to inevitably go easily down the oesophagus, like going to a gaudy restaurant only to order flavourless khichdi, so soft and mushy that one doesn’t even need to bite to contend with it.
In the end, we have a generation of the voting populace—around the ‘2006 Babies’—who have never lived in an India where citizens could even imagine an inquilaab against authority, where creators could create free of institutional pressures. Where a delicious meal could be served alongside a bitter, sometimes-unpalatable pill: a realization that no revolution is possible without some radical reimagination.
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Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar, whose fiction, translation, and poetry have appeared in Gargoyle, The Literary Review, The Bombay Review, The Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and more. He is the founder of the Indian basketball blog Hoopistani and has contributed to NBA India, SLAM Magazine, FirstPost, and more. His debut novel is forthcoming on the Aleph Book Company. You can find him on Twitter: @karanmadhok1 and Instagram: @karanmadhok.
