Opinion: Has Article 370 film been made just to please PM Modi?

Opinion: Has Article 370 film been made just to please PM Modi?

“Parliament chale, ya na chale. Desh chal pada hai [Whether Parliament moves or not, the country is on the move].” This is what the fictional Prime Minister says in the new film, Article 370, directed by Aditya Suhas Jhambale, and produced by Aditya Dhar.

The statement comes late in the movie, but it is one of several dialogues which celebrate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s actions. From demonetisation — when Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes ceased to exist as legal tenders from the midnight of November 8, 2016 — that it alleges ‘broke the back of terror’ to the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019 — the leader is venerated for being always one step ahead of his opponents, whether they be power-hungry opposition parties or scoop-starved journalists.

It is no accident that the actor chosen to play him is Arun Govil, famous for decades for playing Lord Ram in Doordarshan’s Ramayana. And it is no accident that Dhar is known for directing Uri: The Surgical Strike, which was released in January 2019, a few months before the general election that year. The movie celebrated the Balakot strike in February 2019, seen as a strong riposte to the Pulwama attack, and got PM Modi and his minister repeating its trademark phrase, ‘How’s the josh?’

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Similarly, Article 370 got a mention from the Prime Minister when he visited Jammu earlier this month. According to him, the film would be “useful for people to get correct information”.

And what is this correct information? That Jammu and Kashmir ruler Maharaja Hari Singh was keen to accede to Hindustan, and the only person standing in his way was then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who wanted his “karibi dost” Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah to be allowed to run the state. That Nehru deliberately allowed the United Nations to declare ceasefire in Pakistan’s war on India in 1948 so our neighbours ended up retaining one-third of Kashmir.

And that by giving special status to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370, Nehru created an “alag mulk” [separate nation], with an “alag vidhan, alag pradhan and alag nishan” [a separate constitution, a separate head of state and a separate flag].

Bollywood battle lines

All these claims can and have been contested. Hari Singh delayed accession to India for 73 days after India attained independence, and signed the Instrument of Accession only in exchange for protection from the Indian Army after the invasion by Pakistani raiders. Sheikh Abdullah may have been close to Nehru but he was also an immensely popular leader in Kashmir.

As for the acceptance of the UN mediation and ceasefire being weak and squandering an opportunity to capture the entirety of Kashmir, this is a commonly held view by Nehru-baiters who fail to understand the limitations of an Army just shaking off the yoke of British rule and a division mandated by Partition.

As for the origin of Article 370, it was the result of detailed negotiations between the politicians of Jammu and Kashmir and the Government of India, which included the icon BJP has appropriated from the Congress, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

The movie thanks Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha in the opening credits, and adds it is inspired by true events. It is part of a series of movies by the ‘New Bollywood’, which has been lending muscle to the ruling party’s propaganda machine.

One of 2023’s biggest hits Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Pathaan begins with a rogue Pakistani general ruing the abrogation of Article 370, saying that India will now make a play for Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Fighter, released in January, also makes Kashmir the lynchpin of its story, with the hero, fighter pilot Hrithik Roshan, beating up the key terrorist operative, saying if India wanted it could change the contours of the map making it “India Occupied Pakistan”.

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Far from truth

Article 370 also stars Dhar’s wife, actor Yami Gautam Dhar, who plays a Kashmiri Pandit, Zooni Haksar, an officer with the National Investigative Agency, whose father was an employee of the J&K Bank and allegedly committed suicide because of a scam he had nothing to do with. Haksar mouths an oft-quoted idea of Jammu and Kashmir as a “conflict economy”, where central funds have been misappropriated for years by a combination of “top politicians, corrupt bureaucrats and big businessmen”.

“Corruption inke khoon main ghul chuka hai [Corruption is in their blood],” she says. Two leading politicians in the movie are caricatures of Farooq Abdullah (who is shown to have both a love for verbosity and single malts) and Mehbooba Mufti. Mufti, here called Parveena Andrabi, is shown to be the font of paid-for protest marches, quite forgetting the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) alliance with her People’s Democratic Party (PDP) not so long ago.

Dhar has been a vocal supporter of Prime Minister Modi, saying the “current government doesn’t need a small film like ours to win elections”. As he said in a media interaction: “They made Ram Mandir for us. It took us 500 years to get that. I don’t think they need us.”

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The movie echoes this sentiment in connection with Article 370 when it says about the Prime Minister: “For someone to write history, someone will have to create history.” And it ends on a note of intrigue, with a newspaper headline celebrating the historic abrogation of Article 370 as the “fulfilling of a 30-year-old promise” and asking of the Prime Minister: What will he do next?

That’s not all. The movie end credits talk about rising tourism figures, reduced terrorist casualties, the opening of cinemas, among other changes in the Valley. Targeted killings of Kashmiris Pandits (the community to which Dhar belongs), loss of civic freedoms, and indefinitely postponed assembly elections? What are those?

Does propaganda pay?

Article 370 made Rs 34 crore in its opening weekend, which is impressive given its budget is Rs 20 crore. But not every film that advances the cause of the ruling establishment is a winner at the box office.

At Rs 1,050 crore, Pathaan was the second-largest revenue earner in 2023. Fighter made Rs 330 crore at the box office globally, but on a budget of Rs 250 crore. The writer of Fighter, Captain Ramon Chibb, says the Indian Air Force is only too willing to collaborate with Bollywood, inspired by the rise in recruitment to the US Navy and Air Force after the release of the ultimate aviator movie, Top Gun, in 1986.

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But not every nationalistic project sponsored by the Mumbai film industry succeeds. Tejas, starring Kangana Ranaut, was a mix of fighter pilot daredevilry and anti-Pakistan sentiment. It made Rs 5.6 crore at the box office worldwide on a budget of Rs 70 crore.

Main Atal Hoon, a recent biopic on Atal Bihari Vajpayee, one of the early architects of the BJP, was a commercial failure too, earning Rs 10.15 crore at the global box office with a budget of Rs 20 crore.

Propaganda movies work when leavened with good scripts and designer action. Audiences clearly love their country and their government but not enough to waste their hard earned money at the cinemas.

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