Taking back the country

My Mirror column:

Mulk addresses the subject of Islamic terrorism with not just heart but honesty. It doesn’t shy away from the real tough questions.

Two trailers were shown in the Delhi cinema in which I watched Anubhav Sinha’s Mulk. The first was of Vishwaroop II, which marks veteran Tamil actor Kamal Haasan’s return to the tale begun in Vishwaroop I, where he played Vishwanath, a Kathak teacher in New York who turns out to be an ex-RAW agent named Visam Kashmiri.

The second trailer was of a film called Genius, which is Gadar: Ek Prem Katha director Anil Sharma’s launch vehicle for his son Utkarsh, featuring Sharma Junior as an orphan brought up by priests in the Krishna Janmabhoomi terrain of Mathura-Vrindavan. His two passions are science and Hinduism: when he isn’t reciting Sanskrit shlokas, the IIT engineering student with a photographic memory is — yes — a RAW agent. Both films appear to be fantasies of the self generated by the same New India drug: a potent cocktail of supposed technological genius and Hindu high culture, shaken together with an aggressive patriotism.

I’m not suggesting, obviously, that Mulk was made with an awareness of these particular films. But films like Vishwaroop and Genius do represent the zeitgeist, and it’s clear that the zeitgeist has defined Muslims as the unspoken other. Haasan’s character in Vishwaroop II says such things as “Musalmaan hona gunaah nahi, lekin aap jaisa insaan hona haraam hai” and “Main mazhab nahin mulk ke liye khoon bahaata hoon”. Watching Mulk right after makes it hard not to see Rishi Kapoor’s Murad Ali Mohammad as a response.


Anubhav Sinha, who has previously made such films as Dus (2005) and Ra.One (2011), moves into very different terrain here. A Banaras boy himself, Sinha crafts a portrait of the mixed mohalla life that feels both affectionate and authentic. Once replete with the sights and sounds of a Banaras morning —which include the ‘Ram Nam Satya Hai’ of a Hindu funeral procession as much as the azaan from the city’s mosques — we are introduced to the portly, devout and bearded Murad Ali Mohammad, addressed by his neighbours as Vakil Sahab.


Part of Murad Ali’s morning ritual is to walk back home from his morning namaaz, stopping at his neighbour Chaubey’s shop for a cup of tea. As long-time residents of the neighbourhood, Hindus and Muslims of the same age-set have warm, cordial relationships that allow for banter — even on topics that are increasingly being labelled ‘sensitive’. So at Murad Ali’s birthday celebrations, Chaubey gulps down some kababs on the sly — but must suffer in silence when Murad takes a bowl of the mutton korma tantalisingly past his nostrils, because he is still vegetarian in front of his wife. Sinha is sharp enough to allow for differential degrees of integration — one Hindu lady at the gathering is heard to say quite unselfconsciously to another: “Naachne gaane ke liye toh thheek hai, khana nahi khate hum inke ghar par.”


This particular Muslim family also has a Hindu daughter-in-law called Arti (Taapsee Pannu), who happens to be visiting from London when events take a sudden turn into catastrophe. Murad’s nephew Shahid (Prateik Babbar) turns out have been one of the bombers involved in a terrorist attack that kills 16 passengers on a bus and is soon thereafter killed in a police shoot-out.


The rest of the film unfolds in a courtroom, in which Shahid’s father Bilal, who is Murad’s not-so-bright younger brother, is accused of having foreknowledge of the terror plot. As the media gets to the case, the whole family is tainted by association. Even Murad Ali must move from being the old lawyer defending his brother to someone who is put in the dock himself. The film shows the enormous pressure placed on inter-communal relationships in today’s India, and how easily they can break: the same Chaubey who has known Murad for decades can turn around and berate him in public as treasonous, based on his nephew’s image on TV. Friendship across religion is not the only tie that’s tested — another Muslim family abandons the Mohammads rather than take the risk of their son getting embroiled in the case.


Where Sinha scores is in creating a world in which there is not only one kind of Muslim. Murad Ali may remain standing even under pressure, insistent both on his constitutional rights as a citizen and his religious rights as a practicing Muslim. But we also meet those Muslims who meet Murad in the mosque, for whom the growing suspicion and abuse directed at the community is a reason to come together to treat Shahid’s death as a form of martyrdom. And alongside, we have the figure of police officer Danish Javed (Rajat Kapoor, effective as always), whose response to crimes by his co-religionists is one of overcompensatory punishment. As emerges in one of the film’s slightly overwrought court scenes, Javed’s mercilessness comes from a desire to make an example of the rotten apples — before they infect the whole basket.


Mulk does not provide flawless answers, but it has the courage to ask the right questions. The real question is not how every Muslim is to prove her love of the country. The real question is whether punishing a whole community for the crimes of some individual members is really the way to rid us of the rot. Or is that only helping the infection spread, producing more real wounds that the country may never be able to heal from?


Published in Mumbai Mirror, 12 Aug 2018