Politically incorrect

Nonika Singh

Sorry to disappoint you readers, but Indu Sarkar isn’t about the enigmatic former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, who was loved and despised in equal measure. The title (Indu we all know was her nickname and Sarkar needs no qualifier) might have misled you in believing so.

But the film in the eye of controversy for some time, zeroes down on her most inglorious phase; the draconian and dreaded Emergency. 

Expectedly, the narrative takes sides and does seem politically motivated as well. However, Indira’s presence is confined to the margins, just a scene or two - that too sans dialogues. Instead, it’s her son who gets ample footage. By the way, neither of them is referred to by actual names. However, the resemblance to real characters is telling and uncanny. And Bhandarkar has left no stones unturned to demonise Sanjay Gandhi - sorry, beg your pardon, chief as he is alluded to throughout the film.

His body language, dialogues or the mean act and references to his five-point programme including nasbandi … all are meant to paint him as the big bad boy of mommy dear, who, of course, is not Indu Sarkar. 

So who is the titular character? Well, a fictitious woman coined by Bhandarkar who has gone on record to say the film is 70 per cent fiction and only 30 per cent fact. And it’s this marriage of reality with imagination that is rather problematic. Who can deny that a film on Emergency should be made?

Emergency is without a doubt a period that even Congress can’t be proud of.  But by mixing facts with fiction, by trying to humanise  the story of  an orphan girl, Indu, caught in the vortex of  political repression and then turning it into a thriller of sorts, the film neither remains truly political nor  a riveting, heart-tugging, human drama. 

Besides, to compare the fight against Emergency to the second freedom movement is stretching the yarn a bit too far. The use of National Song, Vande Mataram, as the anthem of the so-called peaceful revolutionaries too is rather distressing, if not in bad taste. All through the film you can’t shirk off the nagging doubt and realisation that Bhandarkar would gave gained in stature had he made the film during the Congress regime.  

Today, his attempt seems like a government-pleaser stunt. In the film there is one key dialogue; Emergency main ya police ki chalti hai ya yes man ki.  The same dialogue can be turned against the director. 

Indeed, it’s tragic that 70 years after Independence, films on political subjects, that too not biting enough, are made in accordance with who is ruling at that point. And that is a bigger tragedy than the film itself, which despite sepia tones and occasional period touches (Bobby is running in theatres), also succumbs to the typical Bollywood plot. 

However, one person that emerges tall is Kirti Kulhari. As the stammering poet-turned-rebel, she engages you with her dilemmas, more so in the first part. To a large extent her screen spouse, Actor Tota Roy Chowdhury, playing her ambitious husband, a government servant willing to play along with the powers that be, gets the nuances of his character right. Neil Nitin Mukesh as the near despicable chief spurning and mocking his loyalists too adds menace to his part. Only if Bhandarkar, who has been losing his touch lately, found his métier. From the man who gave us incisive Page 3 and fairly credible Fashion, we expected and deserved better.