Rather than wasting time on rhetoric, emotions and drama, if Aakhri Sawal had engaged in a serious debate with more controversial questions and stronger arguments to counter them, it would have enriched the viewer as well as lifted the discourse, observes Utkarsh Mishra.
Key Points
- Sanjay Dutt’s Aakhri Sawal aims to address ‘misconceptions’ about the RSS through a debate format, but the film’s arguments are often unconvincing and lack factual depth.
- The movie portrays a principled RSS member as the hero while caricaturing ideological opponents, including a left-wing professor, an Opposition leader, and student protestors.
- Aakhri Sawal fails to achieve its objective of presenting a convincing narrative in favour of the RSS.
While watching the Sanjay Dutt starrer Aakhri Sawal, released last week, I was reminded of philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s book On Bullshit. Frankfurt argues that the essence of bullshit lies not in outright lying but in the ability to create the impression of answering difficult questions without seriously engaging with their factual core.
Aakhri Sawal sets out its objective clearly in the first few minutes: To dispel the popular ‘misconceptions’ that continue to surround the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh through a debate between a learned professor and his wayward research scholar.
The professor, Gopal Nadkarni, is played by Dutt, who is shown to be a member of the RSS, and, of course, a principled, well-intentioned man who is given a hard time by his ideological adversaries and a system that appears inclined to humiliate him.
Caricaturing Opponents and Setting the Stage
While the soft-spoken and mild-mannered professor is the obvious hero of the film, the antagonists are portrayed equally conspicuously. It checks all the boxes of the type of people the powers that be want to be seen as enemies of the nation today.
So, the college has a left-wing professor — played by Sameera Reddy — named Pallavi Menon (guess after whom?), who is quite over-the-top in her words and gestures.
She is shrewd, conspiring, and has friends in the media who help her in (Oh! The irony) ‘not narrating the truth but manufacturing truth out of a narrative’. You can see her thanking one such friend in the media for the promotion of one ‘Mrs Roy’s’ book (Do we know a famous female author whose last name is Roy, I wonder?).
Next is a middle-aged Opposition leader who is always seen wearing a white polo t-shirt (a caricature of whom, I wonder). Perhaps the director thought that the white t-shirt still left some room for ambiguity, so you also see portraits of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi behind the leader all the time.
And obviously, he is seen conniving with shady elements to support the efforts to ‘bring down the government’. No wonder he is interested in the rebellion of Professor Nadkarni’s student and manufactures violent student protests in his support.
The third and final entry in the list of enemies is made up of students wearing shawls, beating daflis, and shouting ‘azadi‘, who remain, lamentably, more on the streets than in classrooms.
But our rebellious scholar Vicky Hegde — played by Namashi Chakraborty — is not one of them (and is also shown to be a hero at the end).
He sought Professor Nadkarni’s guidance to write a supposedly sympathetic thesis on the RSS. But he writes one that’s quite the opposite, leaving his professor dejected. Confronted by his teacher, he is ready to defend his thesis by publicly asking him five controversial questions about the RSS.
As the video of their confrontation goes viral on social media, this debate turns into quite a spectacle, with the TV media harping on it for TRPs (friendly fire by the makers of the film, I know).
However, the high drama with which the film sets the tone for the debate — supported by an unsettling background score — quickly fizzles out when the debate actually happens. The questions that are asked are not new, fair enough. But the film doesn’t really abide by its commitment to provide convincing answers.
At the risk of giving spoilers (well, it’s not a nail-biting thriller, so don’t worry), here are the questions that are raised and how they are dealt with.
Ban on RSS after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination
Professor Nadkarni is asked why the RSS was banned and its top leaders arrested after the Mahatma’s assassination. He answers in four parts: That the RSS was the first to mourn Gandhi’s assassination; that Nathuram Godse had left the RSS for active politics; that Gandhi himself praised the RSS’ and that the ban was lifted unconditionally after it was found that the RSS had no role in the assassination.
What he skips is that Gandhi’s assassination was the last straw after which the government banned the RSS. Before that, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad and other leaders had raised concerns over RSS activities in their letters.
The ban was not lifted unconditionally, as the movie claims. Patel had asked the then RSS sarsanghchalak Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (who is portrayed positively in the film) to comply with five conditions, which included pledging loyalty to the Constitution of India and accepting the Tricolour as the national flag.
Not surprisingly, Chakraborty’s character presents none of these facts as a counter and accepts the professor’s answer.
The Emergency
The second question pertains to the letters that then RSS sarsangchalak Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras wrote to then prime minister Indira Gandhi after the Emergency was imposed in 1975; many RSS workers had been arrested.
The film seeks to answer this question by justifying Deoras’ action as his responsibility to save ordinary RSS members and their families. To deliver the point more impactfully, Professor Nadkarni is shown to recount a personal tragedy that he suffered as a child during the Emergency era.
However, again, what the answer conveniently skips is that the letters did not only renounce any active role by the RSS in opposing the Emergency, but also offered co-operation with the then government. The film also shows a dramatic version of Jayaprakash Narayan’s 1977 speech, which he delivered at an RSS training camp in Patna.
Many believe that this speech ‘legitimised’ the Sangh’s role in fighting the Emergency and subsequently in Indian politics. Yet, JP also asked the RSS to rise above their image as a Hindu communal organisation and seek to unify people across all religions ‘who are as Indian as we Hindus are’.
Babri Demolition of 1992
Here, Aakhri Sawal takes a big leap from partially-informed historical discussion to full-blown communal rhetoric.
While the Supreme Court’s verdict in the Ram Janambhoomi case has left a lot of such points moot, most of the claims made by Professor Nadkarni in the film can be contested. Refusing to accept the incident of December 6, 1992 as a conspiracy, he claims that it was a manifestation of broken hopes and lost patience by the Hindu community that was ‘waiting to enter the premises for 500 years’.
Again, conveniently skipping details about the incident of December 22-23, 1949 and what followed it; the opening of the gates in 1986, after which Hindus were allowed to pray inside; the foundation laying of the temple in 1989; and the undertaking given by then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh in the Supreme Court that the structure would be protected.
Political killings in Kerala
Aakhri Sawal comes back to where it began: The murder of RSS activists in Kerala. Yet again, the question is vague. But the answer certainly isn’t. Even a cursory look at the data on political killings in Kerala, especially Kannur, would reveal that it is not a one-sided affair.
The list of victims on both sides is almost equal. Nonetheless, it is understandable that partisan narratives would like to paint a skewed picture.
But this film goes beyond that. The killers shown have a particular religious identity (no prizes for guessing this one) and Professor Nadkarni asks people to keep in mind who they are. He ends his answer by asking every ‘deshbhakt‘ to unite against these ‘religious extremists’.
A Missed Opportunity for Discourse
In conclusion, the film fails in achieving the big objective that it had set for itself. While it ends with a visible victory of the narrative favouring the RSS, it is not so convincing a victory for the viewer.
Aakhri Sawal wants to appear fearless in confronting difficult questions, but its confidence often masks how selectively those questions are engaged with. Even those on the side of the Sangh might not like it, given the lackadaisical way in which their arguments are made.
Rather than wasting time on rhetoric, emotions and drama, if the film had engaged in a serious debate with more controversial questions and stronger arguments to counter them, it would have enriched the viewer as well as lifted the discourse.
A victory of the Sangh narrative could then have been more convincing even without the deriding spoof of political and ideological opponents.
Photograph curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff
