This post ought to begin with an apology to friends who have noted the absence of film-related posts thus far despite film, cricket and politics forming my trinity of interests on this blog. I offer no excuses except that recent political events have detained me more than I had anticipated. This post, however, seeks to correct that anomalous state of affairs...
I am interested in exploring here a rather interesting character in Indian cinema, the renouncer-hero, the male protagonist who finds himself at odds with his milieu and revolts against society in dramatic fashion. The renouncer-hero is neither rare in Indian film history nor someone we can confine to a particular generation of films. He has existed in every generation of films, from the silent era through the turbulent decades of the anti-colonial struggle and the social upheavals of postcolonial India to the present decade. Yet the renouncer-hero has curiously escaped the attention of those writing on Indian cinema, or indeed, on Indian social history. This post seeks to fill that lacuna by probing into the socio-political and psychological dimensions of this enigmatic character, and highlighting his significance in South Asian political culture over the last century or so. Since the subject is vast, I shall focus on what I consider the three most outstanding examples of the renouncer-hero in three distinct historical moments in Indian cinema (Devdas, Pyaasa, and Gulaal), and refer et passim to many others.
Devdas: The Timeless Tragic
Devdas (1917), written by the Bengali novelist Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya, made a huge splash among its urban Calcutta readership in the 1920s, but its author could never have known that it would end up as one of greatest films of the pre-independence era. There was a silent film bearing the novel's name in 1928, but its limited scope for dialogue meant that audiences were expected to be already familiar with the basic plot and characters. Seven years later, most of the subcontinent was exposed to Sarat Babu's novel via popular cinema: the dynamic and controversial filmmaker Promatesh Chandra Barua made simultaneous Bengali and Hindi versions of Devdas, casting the debonair actor-cum-singer Kundan Lal Saigal in the lead role. Because these early cinematic adaptations closely follow the novel, my interpretation of these films may also be taken to be an interpretation of the novel itself, and by extension, of the socio-cultural circumstances that gave rise to both the films and the novel.
Devdas is the tragic story of a scion of a wealthy landed family in late-19th-century rural Bengal. The young Devdas is sent, like so many young men of his time, to study in Calcutta, the capital of British India and among the leading centers of Western learning and culture in the East. Being in Calcutta exposes him to modern/urban/Western ways of life even as it severs his ties from his childhood companion Paro. After thirteen years, when the time arrives for Devdas to return to his family mansion in the countryside, it is clear that he has changed irrevocably from his childhood days. Not only he is a young man now, he is also a modern Anglicized Calcutta gentleman who has only the faintest connection with his feudal background. His only emotional connection to his rural childhood is Paro, who despite her family's low social status and merchant-caste origins, harbors a forbidden love for her old playmate. Devdas imagines himself to be a modern man, ostensibly since his education in Calcutta has made him think so. On his return, he embarks on a torrid romantic affair with Paro, completely oblivious to the traditional norms of the caste-conscious society into which he has been born. For the novelist and the early filmmakers, Paro is merely the temptress whereas it is Devdas who succumbs to her rustic charms, so much at odds, he feels admiringly, from the ways of the city.
His love for Paro places Devdas in a double dilemma. Firstly, he is in love with this rustic beauty, an idealization of the country by the city, yet he himself is undeniably a member of the new modern/urban class of Indians, living entirely at odds with the countryside and tradition. Secondly, although he imagines himself to be a modern man, free from the shackles of traditional society, he is tied inextricably to his feudal background and its traditional caste basis. These personal-cum-social dilemmas are unresolvable for men such as Devdas. They are condemned to live, in Matthew Arnold's words in Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse, "wandering between two worlds, the one dead, the other powerless to be born." Their modern, urban Western education and lifestyle cannot be reconciled to the traditional, caste-ridden society of their birth. A distinctly Indian modernity cannot be expressed by Devdas and his peers, who are trapped between two unceasingly hostile worlds of modernity and tradition. In the end, Devdas must capitulate before the forces of traditional society: he cannot marry Paro due to her low social/caste status.
To escape this life-denying world of tradition, Devdas renounces his hereditary privileges and seeks refuge in the modern and urban realm of Calcutta. But, the author and filmmaker ask, does such a refuge exist at all? As Paro is married off by her parents to a rich widower, Devdas takes to drinking heavily in the company of his friend Chunnilal, under whose influence he is drawn slowly into the arms of a courtesan named Chandramukhi. For Sarat Babu, the courtesan typifies the urban woman, worldly-wise yet bereft of morals, caring yet incapable of feminine virtue as demanded by traditional society. Bengali literature of this period routinely inserted the courtesan into popular narratives because such women were frequent companions of upper-caste/class men in the city. Yet Devdas cannot become one of these absentee landlords revelling in the degeneracy of the city. His alcoholism is a desperate attempt to escape from the real to the imaginary and from the actual to the desired. He can neither settle down with his beloved Paro in the countryside nor can he live like Chunnilal who has made his peace with the urban world of courtesans like Chandramukhi.
Torn between the country and the city, between the traditional and the modern, and between Paro and Chandramukhi, Devdas endures a hellish existence, against which he revolts with the aid of alcohol. He has renounced his aristocratic privileges already, and there is no question of returning to the very people who made him give up Paro. Yet he has also renounced the modernity of the city, whose offerings are morally unacceptable to him. His alcoholism permits him to revolt dramatically against his past and present, that is, against both the traditional and the modern. Devdas is not your everyday hero, but a tragic one whose revolt against society is destined to end in physical death. Although he differs from the typical film hero, Devdas is most certainly a hero for film audiences, whose anxieties and dilemmas he plays out in extreme form. In a certain sense, Devdas could be an exaggerated version of just anyone in the audience, grappling each day to make sense of the contradictory impulses of tradition and modernity in Indian society. Whereas others experiencing similar pressures might compromise with their circumstances, Devdas does not. Therein lies his heroism. He pushes the contradictions of his social circumstances to their logical conclusion, that is, to his death.
Devdas is the classic renouncer-hero. His tragic story carries a powerful critique of the society that drives him to his death. Sarat Babu's critique is an unmistakably modern one. Although tragic tropes are common in pre-modern Indian literature, most notably in epic poetry, tragedy as a literary genre is conspicuous by its absence before the late 19th century. Ironically, Devdas itself marks the finest expression of a fledgling Indian modernity, germinating in a colonized society and adapting a European literary genre to a distinctly Indian/Bengali social context. The distinction between literature and film blurs in Devdas. So too does the distinction between fiction and reality. Audiences in the '20s and '30s were certainly not the only ones to connect the film's storyline to their own circumstances. Remakes starring Dilip Kumar in 1955, Shahrukh Khan in 2002, and Abhay Deol in 2009 serve to suggest that Sarat Babu's social critique retains its power over audiences nearly a century after it was written. During this lengthy lifespan, Assamese, Tamil, Telegu, and Bengali versions have ensured an all-India appeal. For every generation and in every region of the country, therefore, Devdas typifies the renouncer as hero, an outstanding figure whose uncompromising revolt against society resonates strongly with moviegoers who recognize their inability to emulate their tragic hero.
Pyaasa: The Thirst for Freedom
Pyaasa (1957) is widely regarded among the finest films ever made. The director, producer and lead actor in the film, Guru Dutt has been retrospectively labeled the Indian Orson Welles, though this label fails to do justice to his genius. Pyaasa was arguably his best film, and it did remarkably well at the box office. It is the story of a struggling poet Vijay, whose name ironically means "triumph" or "victory." Vijay thirsts for freedom in a society that finds no value in his poetry. His own brothers dump reams of his Urdu poetry into the recycle bin. Despite being a brilliant student in college, he now wanders unemployed in the streets of Bombay, futilely seeking patrons for his poems. Vijay is not just sad. He is bitter about the world and its ways. His persona appeals to those many moviegoers who thought that India's formal independence from colonial rule in 1947 has not translated into freedom for ordinary men and women. Like them, Vijay is dissatisfied by the world around him, one that venerates money and power rather than art and integrity.
Pyaasa bears more than a passing resemblance to Devdas. Indeed, Guru Dutt reached his intellectual maturity in Calcutta, where the social critique laid out in Devdas sought to express itself politically as a radical alternative to the nationalist politics led by the Congress. Moreover, two years before the release of Pyaasa, Dilip Kumar had starred in a popular remake of Devdas. Initially, Dilip Kumar was supposed to play the protagonist's part in Pyaasa too. In terms of the structure of the plot itself, of course, the resemblance is strongest. Like Devdas, Vijay too is compelled by society to give up his lady love (Meena). Vijay and Meena were lovers during their college days, but Meena chose to marry a rich owner of a publishing business (Ghosh) instead of a struggling poet. It is not so much Meena he blames for her decision, but a society in which status and money mean everything. Again, like Devdas, Vijay too is forced to live a life of penury and humiliation on the streets of Bombay, struggling to make ends meet and seeking solace in alcohol. Nonetheless, Vijay is defiant in defense of his poetry and his way of life, however much at odds they may be with his millieu. Once again, like Devdas, Vijay meets a man (Abdul Sattar) who is well-versed with the cruel ways of the city and agrees to help the struggling protagonist selflessly. Sattar is a funny man, who laughs at the world when it mocks him. Much like Devdas' Chunnilal, Sattar is someone whom Vijay can never become because he can never accept the vulgar, materialistic world for what it is. Lastly, like Devdas, Vijay befriends a prostitute (Gulabo), who falls in love first with his poetry and then with him. Gulabo's love, like Chandramukhi's, is characterized as pure of heart, quite unlike that of Meena, for whom material comforts and high status matter more.
And yet, Guru Dutt differentiates Pyaasa from Devdas in the film's latter half. Unlike Devdas, Vijay does not self-destruct in his rage against society. By a strange quirk of fate, Vijay attempts unsuccessfully to save a beggar on the rail tracks but loses his coat in the process. The dead beggar in Vijay’s coat is taken by everyone to be Vijay, who is, however, alive and recovering in hospital. Gulabo, determined to publish her dead lover's poems, approaches the publisher Ghosh, who is only too eager to make a quick buck. The poems are hugely popular, and everyone in Bombay, including Vijay's greedy brothers, seems keen to claim the "dead" poet as their own. Yet when they learn that Vijay is, in fact, alive, Ghosh and his brothers disown him as an impostor and banish him to a mental asylum. The scenes that follow raise the crescendo of action progressively. First, Vijay, finding himself among lunatics, wonders whether those outside the asylum might be more insane than those inside. Then, his friend Abdul Sattar finds him in the asylum and rescues him. Together, they visit a public function where his poetry is being commemorated, and declares himself alive. Soon after this declaration, his brothers and a rival publisher flock to his side, looking to claim him and encash his fame and popularity. Vijay is sickened by such hypocrisy and crass materialism around him, and dramatically declares that he is not the famous poet they seek. Accompanied by Gulabo, he walks off in the final scene stating his intention to renounce the world as he finds it and begin a new life far, far away from it.
Unlike Devdas, Pyaasa is not a tragedy. Nor is Vijay a tragic hero in the Devdas mould. Unlike Devdas, Vijay does not have to self-destruct in the climax as the logical conclusion of the personal and social contradictions he faces. Vijay is clear-sighted enough to avoid Devdas' mental contradictions and failings. He is aware, like Devdas, that he cannot make peace with society, but as a poet and an intellectual, he is aware of possibilities beyond the mundane world into which he has been born. As such, Pyaasa brings the renouncer-hero to the fore far more sharply than in Devdas. At the beginning of the film, we are informed that Vijay has already renounced the financial security sought by the petty bourgeoisie in favor of the vagaries of intellectual and literary life. At the end of the film, we watch awestruck as Vijay dramatically renounces the crass materialistic world of the modern postcolonial city (Bombay) and walks away with Gulabo into the unknown. Vijay is, therefore, the quintessential renouncer-hero who, unable to find peace within society, walks away from it in search of a better life.
Why is Vijay able to revolt against society and then walk away with dignity whereas Devdas must self-destruct to complete his revolt against society? I am tempted to conjecture that, in Pyaasa, Guru Dutt comes close to Albert Camus' conception of "revolt" as an essentially human impulse within us all that finds its ultimate expression in art and literature. Perhaps a poet's revolt against society encompasses within itself possibilities that are not open to ordinary mortals such as Devdas. Perhaps, too, a poet is not beleaguered by the kinds of social and personal contradictions that Devdas faced. The pyaas or "thirst" for freedom and enlightenment enables the poet/artist/intellectual to rise above social circumstances that may lead others to self-destruction or violence. Unfortunately though, Guru Dutt's own life followed Devdas' more than Vijay's. Six years after Pyaasa, he committed suicide after suffering from acute depression, following an extra-marital affair with co-star Waheeda Rehman that effectively terminated his marriage to actress-singer Geeta Dutt. In retrospect, it may be fair to say that Pyaasa represents Guru Dutt's optimism that poetry or art can offer some a sanctuary that shields them from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and from society at large, yet we also know that self-destructive tendencies are always at hand and we may succumb to the contradictions inherent in our selves and society. In a social-historical sense, formal freedom from colonialism may explain the cautious optimism of Guru Dutt's generation of filmmakers, but their personal and social lives convinced them that genuine freedom may be nigh unachievable. The colorful package of freedom, therefore, may be sadly a mere counterfeit.
Did the rest of Guru Dutt's generation sympathize with his damning assessment of postcolonial Indian society? Certainly, the evidence for the Sixties and Seventies seems strong. Guide (1965) remains a landmark in Indian cinema because the protagonist, following R.K. Narayan's novel, goes so far as to assume the traditional saffron robes of the ascetic renouncer in the climactic scene. Zanjeer (1973) represents another landmark in the cinematic career of the renouncer-hero since its angry young protagonist violently turns his own self-destructive tendencies against identifiable villains in society. Postcolonial frustrations in the Seventies could no longer be contained as before. There was a marked increase in cinematic violence perpetrated by the (leftist?) protagonist against politicians, businessmen, and/or criminals. The lines between good and evil were blurred as the renouncer-hero, best personified by Amitabh Bachchan, frequently resorted to violence to cleanse society of the villains who were oppressing ordinary people. By the Eighties and Nineties, however, the hero was no longer a renouncer: despite mimicking the violent methods of the renouncer-hero of the Seventies, the new hero fully intended to wallow in middle-class comforts, preferably by romancing a rich man's daughter. The radical tradition of the renouncer-hero, therefore, seemed to be dying a natural death as popular cinema began to be dictated increasingly by middle-class priorities or by the very society that Devdas and Pyaasa sought to criticize.
Gulaal: The Color of Revolt
Inured as we had become to life without the renouncer-hero for two decades or so, it became a truism that an age of "entertainment" is upon us, and therefore, meaningful cinema, both inspired by and inspiring art, became a relic of the past. Some film critics even told us unabashedly that the masses only want sex, violence, and raucous humor. These shockingly elitist remarks neglected to mention, however, that Indian cinema over the last decade has moved into mulitplexes, and the so-called masses have been shut out of the theaters. In neoliberal India, particularly post-2000, the top quarter of the population, calling themselves the "middle classes" (middle of what exactly?), is the primary consumer of Indian cinema at home and abroad. Much tasteless, nonsensical fare caters to their palates though the blame is conveniently shifted to "the masses" without the slightest shame. Yet there occasionally comes along a film that makes us sit up and think. Anurag Kashyap's Gulaal (2009) is certainly one of them. The director of a postmodern remake of Devdas, Kashyap has singlehandedly revived the career of the renouncer-hero in the new century.
Gulaal is the tragic tale of Dileep, a postgraduate student of law in Rajasthan, who struggles to make sense of society and politics around him, and ultimately, fails miserably. Dileep, along with a young female lecturer Anuja, is physically harassed and humiliated by goons at his university, and seeks help from Dukey Bana, a local strongman and Rajput separatist leader. Although he wins the battle against the bullies in his university, the naive Dileep now unwittingly enters the dark world of postcolonial politics. Meanwhile, Anuja and he become friends, though theirs is a platonic friendship. Soon, however, Dileep ends up as Dukey's candidate for the university general secretary's post, where he is pitted against the beautiful and ambitious Kiran. The novice Dileep's chances of winning are deemed slim, but bribery and ballot-rigging lead him to victory. Kiran then starts seducing Dileep, and they soon move in together. As love blossoms, Dukey uses Dileep's position to siphon off university funds to finance his party's drive for a separate Rajputana state. When Dileep finds out and confronts Dukey, he is told off. Around the same time, Kiran gets pregnant, blames Dileep for not taking precautions, and leaves him promptly. She soon replaces Dileep as general secretary as part of Dukey's machinations. Frustrated with politics and love, Dileep starts losing his sanity. He first spits venom on Anuja, which forces her to leave his side despite her best intentions. Then, he kills Dukey, who, in his dying moments, reveals that Kiran had merely used Dileep to get to him. Finally, Dileep confronts Kiran, who readily admits to using him for political gain. Distraught, Dileep nearly shoots Kiran, but decides against it in the end. He is, however, shot himself by goons loyal to Kiran's brother Karan. As the injured Dileep walks back to his house, a rousing rendition of Sahir Ludhianvi's masterly composition in Pyaasa, Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye To Kya Hai ("What does it matter even if one can master the world?") plays in the background. Dileep dies at the end of the final scene after failing to make sense of the cynical milieu into which he was thrust.
There are, of course, numerous parallels between Gulaal and the two films discussed earlier. Like Devdas and Vijay, Dileep struggles to make sense of the world, particularly its brazen pursuit of power and profit above all else. Like Devdas and Vijay, Dileep, too, is unable to find happiness in love. Neither can he find satisfaction in his platonic friendship with Anuja. Like Devdas and Guru Dutt, Dileep becomes so exceedingly disillusioned by events in his life that death seems to be the only way to renounce the harsh realities of life. Like them, too, Dileep struggles futilely to manage the contradictions in his life: his love for Kiran and his personal ambitions. More generally, we must acknowledge the director Anurag Kashyap's debt to Guru Dutt's Pyaasa, expressed in the storyline as well as in the dramatic song at the climax. Additionally, we must appreciate the fact that Kashyap has directed a popular remake of Devdas titled Dev-D (2009), whose lead actor Abhay Deol believes that the contemporary, postmodern feel of the film should not obscure its close reading of Sarat Babu's novel. As such, it is no coincidence that Gulaal bears some striking similarities to Devdas and Pyaasa.
But there are also some interesting points of departure in Gulaal. Although Dileep is drawn into postcolonial politics in ways that remind us of how Devdas and Guru Dutt were drawn into their social milieus, the postcolonial world is much darker than its predecessors. The film's title Gulaal, or the red powder sprinkled during the spring festival of Holi, suggests a bloody celebration of power. At the same time, however, Gulaal also connotes the color of revolt. But both the power-play and the revolt in Kashyap's film are more violent, more cynical, and ultimately darker than what the makers of Devdas and Pyaasa could have ever imagined. The iconization of violence throughout the film stands sharply apart from films prior to Zanjeer. The popular acceptance of violence since Zanjeer is reflected in the filmmaker's treatment of the theme. In real as well as reel life in postcolonial India, therefore, one finds the progressive deterioration of civic and political order, so much so that violence is now regarded as inseparable from both power and revolt.
There is, however, something still more disturbing in Kashyap's film in comparison with those discussed earlier. Dileep is far more deeply complicit in the structures of power than either Devdas or Vijay or Guru Dutt. He is a weak character like Devdas, but he is also ambitious and seeks power as a means to avenge his humiliation by the goons in his university. He, like Devdas, lacks the means to revolt via art or poetry, which may offer us solace amidst the vagaries of life. Yet, despite his ambition and his complicity in the power play of his times, Dileep is much more naive than either Devdas or Vijay, those weary travelers whose revolt against society stemmed from their extensive experience of its flaws and failings. Can one be both naive and complicit in power play then? Yes, thinks the filmmaker, who suggests that it may not be possible any longer in postcolonial India to avoid being shaped by "the system," as it were, or to be complicit in its machinations and blind to its flaws. The only freedom or revolt possible under such circumstances is via death, one's own and of others who run the show. Here we have a latent message of nihilism, rather similar to the one presented by suicide bombers claiming to be fighting for a better world. It is hard not to be disturbed by this discovery, mainly because it suggests that there might be a moral-political justification for violent revolt against the status quo of our times, and that without systemic change, the best option can only be death. Furthermore, Kashyap seems to be telling his audiences that they are naive yet complicit in maintaining the status quo, and that the few Dileeps among us are heroes precisely because they have the courage to violently throw off their yokes and renounce the world-as-it-is. In other words, the filmmaker is challenging his audiences to reject and renounce the world-as-it-is, which he portrays as corrupt, ignoble, and incapable of reform. Gulaal is, therefore, nothing short of a clarion call for revolt.
Conclusion: The Politics, Aesthetics, and Metaphysics of Man in Revolt
The cinematic history of the renouncer-hero in India unsurprisingly parallels the socio-political history of the country. In Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya's Devdas, especially its pre-independence adaptations, the protagonist grappled between the contradictory forces of tradition and modernity, each of which promised as much as threatened him. Standing between a dying world and one yet unborn, Devdas could not articulate a distinctly Indian modernity that could have helped him escape his tragic fate. Yet there was hope because, although the author, filmmaker, and the reading/viewing public may have empathized with Devdas' struggle to reconcile tradition and modernity, they knew that art, particularly cinema, offered a way to escape the tragic hero's predicament. What they thought could be articulated explicitly in films such as Pyaasa, which recognized the crude, cynical core of society but also offered art (poetry) as a way to revolt against it. Art could thus be more than merely escapism. It could be the setting for modern man to revolt against the society that so oppressed him. In 1957, Guru Dutt ostensibly felt that optimism with respect to his own art. But in seven years' time, he himself had gone the way of Devdas, disgusted by his personal life as well as his social milieu. In the same year, 1964, Nehru died too, formally ending the fledgling nation's age of innocence.
The end of the Nehruvian era inaugurated an age of revolt against society in reel and real life during the Sixties and Seventies. The optimism that had characterized the first decade after independence seemed a distant memory for filmmakers and audiences alike. The next two decades, characterized by Naxalism and culminating in Mrs. Gandhi's assumption of dictatorial powers, represents the heyday of the renouncer-hero. From Guide to Zanjeer, the biggest names in Bombay films played the renouncer-hero's role. Amitabh Bachchan's "angry young man" antics, in particular, filled his fans with the hope that some leftwing populist might bring radical reform to politics and society and thus fulfill the wishes of the demos. The hopes of these young populists were dashed on the hard rocks of real politik, at which Mrs. Gandhi and her cronies specialized. For someone like Anurag Kashyap, who came of age in the late 1970s, cynicism regarding politics and meaningful social change must have seemed almost natural. Kashyap's Gulaal indicts us all as irreparably complicit in sustaining a vile system, and challenges us to take up the gauntlet thrown by his protagonist Dileep. For those sympathetic to the filmmaker’s nihilistic call, reform is no longer an option: postcolonial history appears to be little more than a chronicle of steadily-accumulating oppression, the response to which can only be a violent destruction of both self and society.
Beyond twentieth-century Indian history, however, the renouncer-hero in Indian cinema has much to say to us. He cannot be hemmed in by the coordinates of time and space, that is, by history and geography. His appeal is timeless for he speaks to the deepest anxieties and most imponderable existential dilemmas of modern life. At this point, I am reminded of Albert Camus’ The Rebel, appropriately sub-titled “a study of man in revolt.” Camus traces the modern history of revolt from the French Revolution to the mid-20th century, describing at each historical moment the social and psychological dimensions of those who revolted against society. More importantly, he makes a vital distinction between “rebellion” and “revolt.” Both emanate from the same metaphysical wellspring within human beings, but the former seeks to remove all imperfections from society, usually via violent schemes in search of utopian outcomes, whereas the latter gives voice to man’s capacity to creatively express dissent, articulate resistance against tyranny, and imagine possibilities that may exist beyond the realm of the ordinary, especially via art. There is good reason to believe that we, in India and elsewhere, have blurred this all-important distinction between rebellion and revolt, largely due to the disheartening trajectory of modern history. And by doing so, we are in danger of succumbing to nihilism in both art and politics.
The problem is hardly a peculiarly Indian one. It is a global problem that enshrines violence against the established order above all. It refuses to accept the compromises that political and social life demand in all times and places. It strives for a perfect society, from which all defects are obliterated, and which only millenarianism or theodicy can seemingly install. It is not difficult to see that the aesthetics of rebellion being described here are distinctly modern rather than postmodern. The millenarian option is nothing but the one favored by leftist radicals in France, Russia, and China. The option of theodicy, which was raised by that most sober and pragmatic theorist of modern politics Max Weber, is the one favored on the center-right, whether in the form of the Ayatollahs’ rule in Iran or as the rise of “Obamamania” in the United States. The roots of the problem lie not so much in this or that ideology, but in the modern progressive philosophy of history that endeavors to “correct” every social and metaphysical contradiction in human lives in due course.
I should clarify here that I do not oppose, in a blanket sense, either utopian schemes or violence as a means to an end. Utopias can be articulated and attained in practical forms, but only as long as they emerge beyond the minds of disaffected elites and take root in the popular realm. As an example of these practical utopias with a mass basis, consider the medieval bhakti movements across the Indian subcontinent, which sought a more just social order without a violent French-style revolution. Similarly, a principled defense of violence is also possible, but only as long as it is well-targeted and self-limiting. Here, I offer pre-Reformation Europe as an example of a society in which wars were commonplace yet casualties extremely low and treaties many, unlike in the modern world, where Clausewitzian “total war” has moved from theory to reality.
In sum, we may ask, in the manner of Lenin, what must be done? I am afraid I can do no more than offer some tentative solutions here. First, I think revolt in Camus’ sense of expressing oneself against the status quo through art is a worthy endeavor. From Sarat Babu to Anurag Kashyap, one finds recognition of this thesis in the form of the renouncer-hero of Indian cinema. Second, the nihilistic glorification of violence in art and society ought to be restrained. Sadly, this is a task easier said than done since the roots of nihilism are more metaphysical than socio-historical and metaphysical consensus is a seemingly impossible goal. But here again, I think the aesthetics of popular cinema offers the best way to converse with and challenge the metaphysics underlying nihilism. Third, artistic and intellectual endeavors ought to step beyond the academic groves, and help bridge the widening gulf between elite and popular classes in modern society. Again, this is a task easier said than done, but once more, cinema offers possibilities than neither fine art nor literature can. Fourth, there is an urgent need to seek a moderate politics, one that rejects the status quo and seeks social change without making unreasonable demands upon one’s fellow citizens. Here, I think one must venture beyond cinema for a way out of the current rut in which we find ourselves. The solution will come, if at all, from ordinary citizens getting together to mobilize for particular ends, to employ the instruments of democracy (mass media, civil disobedience, social audits, etc) to strengthen popular control over governmental agencies, and to remain eternally vigilant in defense of freedoms fought for and won. For, no matter how much we may sympathize with the predicament and fate of the renouncer-hero, we cannot be him since we must affirm life and liberty within the imperfect realm of society itself. In the final analysis, Devdas, Vijay and Dileep should be seen as elements of a cautionary tale that has retained its popular appeal across generations, one whose lessons we would do well to heed today…
