Sacred Games In The Name of Babri Masjid

Sacred Games

Sacred Games-2 is slated to begin from August 15 on Netflix

Cinema is the worst form of expression, and particularly more so, when we are bombarded with over 400 hours of news, real news, enacted news in our 24 hours, round the year, which has rendered an ordinary citizen gasping. Even real time wars, street to street battles and massacres are live-streamed, thus, leaving very little room to maneuver for cinema to survive, and particularly so, for the common audience, reduced to the point of porn-saturation, there is no more scope left for even sex to automatically sell. Nothing kinky is there left to titillate, men and women have truly become animals who can speak, no wonder Islam has always ordained man as Haiwan-e-Natiq, (animal who speaks) and it is spirituality which carries an individual towards humanity and the opposite towards animality.

Sacred Games-1 ( eight episodes) was launched in 2018 (after Narendra Modi accent to power in 2017) and frankly I did not see it then, and lately, I don’t know how many times I saw it, to the extent that some of its dialogues have got etched on my mind. The film (Sacred Games) is based on a novel by Vikram Chandra but what surprised me, to no ends, is that the film reviews have not been able to pin-point the ‘whose-who’ of real life characters who are the genesis of the roles enacted by actors, except of Dawood Ibrahim, the prime accused of Bombay blasts -1993. Everyone has very sweetly conferred it as a work of fiction, which certainly it is otherwise, no wonder the film is very dangerous, for it incongruously, validates the overtly Hindu ideology. All of its episodes are soaked into deep Sanskrit lingua. It is another matter that Panini wrote Sanskrit grammar sitting on the high mountains in Afghanistan. The film being put to probe on the onset of its second part, is certainly not out of place, for all the political relevance, prophecies and exhortations it has espoused for the days ahead.

Petitions were made to halt the film, for its free loathing of Congress leaders, but courts did not help. The film is astute for its star cast, a Muslim (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) playing a Brahmin role of Ganesh Gaitonde, a Muslim (Saif Ali Khan) playing a Sikh cop- Sartaj Singh, a double minority reference, and a Kayashta (Saurabh Sachdev) as Isa (Dawood Ibrahim). The film primarily revolves around these three apart from Girish Kulkarni, a Brahmin playing a politician Bipin Bhosle. The cinematography is superb, screenplay compact along with a very precious direction as never was there a disjointed moment where pusillanimity could seep into. The dangerous part of the overall endeavour is the message it carries, subtlety and also shabbily, is that India is changing for Hindus only and where Muslims are now only to be churned and roasted.

The first episode begins as Ashwathama, a mystical character from Mahabharata who never dies, in which Gaitonde shoots himself but does not die and tells Sartaj Singh about his story overheard through surveillance by RAW. It begins with his troubled-childhood where his ‘first father’ begs for alms and his mother sleeps with another Brahmin and Gaitonde murders them both, flees to Bombay where Halahala, the next episode begins in which he meets his second father aka Saleem Kaka (a Muslim) whom he murders, usurps his gold, starts his gang with two Muslim boys ( Chota and Dada Badarya) and gets involved into garbage-lifting business, where he kills Momin ( a Muslim again) and picks up a fight, all on his own, with Isa ( a Muslim) who enters the film with a Shemale Kukoo played by Kubra Sait ( a Muslim). Halahala is poison in Sanskrit which was created by demons. In Persian too it stands for poison. The episode ends with Sartaj Singh reaching out to a huge cache of counterfeit currency, an input given by Humint from Baluchistan to RAW, to seek support for its independence. All real time drama. Gaitonde all along requests Sartaj that everything would be finished in 25 days and only Trivedi (a Brahmin), played by Chitranjan Tripathi, will remain safe.

The third episode Atapi Vatapi takes its cue from an old Hindu mythology where the two con brothers, befooled and fed on innocent travelers, sporadic scenes (from real news) don the film of what is shown as a religious conflict gaining momentum in India obviously in the name to build the Ram Temple. The voice-over commentary takes the audience towards the third-father of Gaitonde who is a religious preacher and narrates the story of duo-brothers but what comes as an abrupt surprise was the compatible ease with which the third-father likens Muslim, Jews, Christian and Hindus as all duo-brothers who are all berserk to control over the souls of people, and thereafter, bludgeoning them against each other. Such a detestable simile was never needed except for the senile head behind the camera.

The fourth episode Brahamatya also finds the director desperate attempt (sic) to be politically correct when in a voice-over he confers that Shahbano case led Rajiv Gandhi (PM) to wilt to Mullahs and for placating Hindus Rajiv Gandhi started Ramayana on TV. The director did not do his homework, whereas Rajiv Gandhi had got Babri Masjid locks be opened up, on Feb 1, 1986, and this had nothing to do with Shah Bano, as a campaign to liberate Ram Temple from beneath Babri Masjid was already underway since 1983. The Hindu trope was given yet another impetus. Come 1992 and Muslims being killed by Gaitonde gang comprising of Muslims! One Muslim was even shown with a crescent flag and shot down. All this is lavishly shown to further annihilate Muslims (in real world) and also to instill a fear amongst them. The episode also finds a full-time desk and field show of RAW officer, Radhika Apte (a Brahmin) playing Anjali Mathur, hogging the limelight, no more RAW is now a hidden force as the cloak is now mainstream.

The sixth episode is Sarama in which Gaitonde assumes the role of God and wants himself to be worshipped something disapproved by his Muslim members and the whole episode as well as the next Pretakalpa is consumed by the gangwar between Gaitonde and Isa and Isa leftovers as Isa had fled to Dubai. The seventh episode is Rudra which is wrath and focuses precisely on the third-father Khanna Guruji, played by Pankaj Tripathi ( a Brahmin) who predicts to Tripathi

( a Brahmin) that the wheels of time were turning and only 25 years were left for time to change, which can easily be counted as from 1992, Babri Masjid is shown getting demolished, and the year now coincides with the advent of Narendra Modi in 2017. Guruji asks Tripathi if he was able to search (for the purpose) and the answer was Gaitonde who is credited to have been reborn as Lord Shiva, a dreaded mafiosi was attributed spirituality, as India was to turn into a battlefield and a general( from Hindu side) is what is needed (to cleanse Muslims). If parallels are drawn, which are very easily visible, then it signals a parable very dangerous for Muslims to survive in India. The last episode Yayati shows that Malcom Murad, played by Luke Kenny who is a Muslim salafist and appears in shows at crucial points, of course with a killing gun, supplying weapons of mass destruction, to India, which Bipin Bhosle Home Minister validates, as country is to be in danger, and thereafter, the film ends with Tripathi, dilapidated inside a basement, with nuclear armaments around.

The worst aspect of the film was to build a premise that everything in this world is predestined which is a wretched logic totally non-compatible with science, apart from the virtual ease with which it denigrates Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh and Chadrashekher-all PMs of the country, to the merry of BJP, but proved itself to be spineless to the hilt, as it could not dare to the deceit of UP CM Kalyan Singh, who gave an affidavit in SC to safeguard Babri Masjid-the central plank of the film, and instead, charted its demolition. The film is not just a portrayal of moving-pictures woven into a story, but a political/social agenda, full of dread, and a reflection of mind, of spiritual Hindus ready to bestow the sobriquet of a ‘lord-incarnate’ on anyone who can put Muslims to sword. At least that is what the film has successfully honed.

Is India to find its next Pushyamitra Shunga?

Haider Abbas is a lawyer, journalist and former UP State Information Commissioner.


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