What I think of Rang De Basanti
I have decided to join the Band Wagon of people talking about the movie Rang De Basanti (RDB). I think its a great movie and here is my justification for it.
(This was originally posted here as a comment. I previewed it and thought it would look better as a post on my blog and as a DC post later.)
1) This movie has lit up the spirit of atleast 50% of the ppl i know who have seen the movie. It proves (to me atleast) that how many ppl are desperate enough to see something positive. It shows the EDUCATED, LITERATE and LEARNED India is desperate for a change. All we miss among such a group is a set of Individual who DO something rather than crib and comment (like me 
). This movie shows it happening.
2) I think the message of the movie was to set a towering example of integrity towards principles. It did succeed in that. I guess if the story really happened then these charectors would be worshipped in India as equals of the Great Bhagat Singh. The only thing that I dont like in the movie was that it set the wrong ideals of revolution and violence. I think India needs reforms and not revolution. Also a revolution is mostly possible in a homongenous country where people are homogenous. We are the exact opposites of homogenity, because of centuries of irrational casteism and 100s of languages(which btw is used to divide and rule by the politicians just like our british masters did) So a revolution is not possible. We have to ACT and not REACT. We have to attack layer by layer. That would take a long path of struggle, and probably would make a long story spanning decades.
3) This movie(especially during the last sections) shows our political masters of today as equal to our british masters of the past. Both are fucked up(pardon me for the language but i have to use it and i MEAN it) and both have fucked up and plundered the country to the state it exists. BUT at ‘pre independence’ the Great Bhagat Singh and the likes decided to do something about the fucked up masters and he did it. He send waves among the people. According to me Bhagat Singh was a very learned man, having a towering integrity. For example check out THIS ARTICLE by Bhagat Singh on why he chose to be an atheist.
What we need right now is to identify that we are still not free. We have the same fate if our fucked up british masters had continued ruling us or our fucked up political masters continue to rule us. I do not blame the political masters or the british masters completely for this. For its Us the people that are TOLERATING this nonsense and we react by refusing to act against nonsense.
Gandhi used Tolerance as a virtue, and now we see it being used against us by our political masters. The more we tolerate here the more we get fucked, period. And we see tolerance everywhere. A govt. officer asks for a bribe, we tolerate and give in and say ‘chalo bhai, 300 ruppaye mein kya hai? De do’. Someone breaks the Red Light Signal, we say ‘chalo bhai, usko koi urgent Kaam Rahega, usse jaane do!!!’. A Politician rapes someone’s child and the news spreads, we say ‘Thank God, Meri Beti nahi hai. Woh politician hai, hum uske against kuch bhi nahi kar sakenge’. The more we show the other chin the more slaps we get. And they will slap us till we are doomed. Which is the state of contemporary India.
Tolerance is an ethical attribute of a philosophy. Tolerance is an action which presupposes a situation and a set of principles to act on. If u have integrity u shall never tolerate something against it. Say for example bribing is against ur principles, U shall never tolerate the offer of a bribe nor shall u tolerate the demand for a bribe. Perpetuating tolerance as a virtue to be held true at all times is suicidal idealism, and it does more harm than good. There can be no perfect example than India.
Bhagat Singh realized this and decided NOT to tolerate. That is what we ought to do. And thats why RDB is a GREAT movie. It contains the message of Intolerance. It contains the message of WHAT to tolerate and WHAT NOT to tolerate.
I am surprised that so many ppl miss out the richness of the movie.
I am also saddened that most ppl need movies like RDB and Swades to think about India. Shows how much we tolerate!!!!
Liked these last two lines.
“I am also saddened that most ppl need movies like RDB and Swades to think about India. Shows how much we tolerate!!!!”
It remains to be seen as to how many of us youth really dare to stand up for our integrity. There have been some but a country like ours requires a lot many.
Comment by khelnayak — February 10, 2006 @ 11:34 am
have been hearing lots of good reviews about this movie…i must watch it.
Comment by alive_n_confused — February 13, 2006 @ 8:00 pm
perfect analysis.. could not agree more.. ‘abhi abhi hua yakeen aag hai mujhme kahin;- if everyone nderstands this song and feels it we will move towards a better future and better India.
Comment by Raj — February 14, 2006 @ 4:34 am
all the hype about this movie..i have to watch it too! sadly, i have to get one with sub titles..
Comment by still_figuring_out — February 14, 2006 @ 1:11 pm
Gotta watch this now!
Keshi.
Comment by Keshi — February 20, 2006 @ 8:14 am
taking another break?
Comment by still_figuring_out — February 27, 2006 @ 2:09 pm
check this out at ibn live website
whatdya say now
Five badly behaved but photogenic young louts, and their hanger-on girl, regularly gather at night at a geographical feature resembling the Grand Canyon. There they take deep slugs of beer. Next they speed through rural Punjab on motorbikes and eat parathas with one of their mothers who tells them about Sikh folklore. One of them returns home, which is a pillared palace, where a nasty father sips whiskey in the morning and clinches an evil weapons deal. The “Muslim” member of the gang goes back to a very “Muslim” home where a lungi-clad dad is waiting to deliver a short seminar paper on Partition, vote bank politics and other “Muslim” issues.
A pretty (but cerebral) cultural tourist from Britain arrives. She reminds the foul-mouthed brats about their history. She wants to (and does) make a documentary on Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad in which the five take the main roles. Each of the gang informs the British tourist about the hollowness of their lives by delivering caricature-speeches entitled “Youth Alienation”. “I am young,” they intone, “but without ideals. Am therefore cut off from my country. My country is bad. The system sucks. Therefore I am an alienated youth.” But as the documentary progresses and the British film-maker introduces them to Bhagat Singh and others, they realise how best they can conquer their boredom. By assassinating some important people, of course.
The five ghastly friends have a fighter pilot friend whom they don’t seem to care about much. Or do they? We never know. In fact, this friendship with the fighter pilot is the most crucial relationship in the film but it doesn’t get more than three seconds of time or script. On one single occasion the gang rides with the pilot to a ruined monument with MiGs flying overhead. Later, the fighter pilot friend is killed piloting a MiG, and the five decide that even though they’ve not spent much time with the fighter pilot, even though they don’t really know him too well, they must immediately murder the Defence Minister. So they do. They also kill the awful whisky-oriented dad who got rich from bringing in the MiGs in the first place. While they kill the neta and the dad, pictures of Bhagat Singh and Azad play in the background, forcing us to believe that criminal spoilt brats are actually freedom fighters.
The climax of Rang de Basanti is perhaps the most chilling, the most strange. It takes place in the glare of 24-hour news media and radio. It is a technicolour death on TV. Young people from all across the land roar out their approval of the bloody-minded youths on TV. The action unfolds on TV and FM radio, as the fallen five wait to die in a denouement captured in second-to-second radio and television drama. A mammoth TV crowd bellows out its hatred of the politician. Another TV throng screams its loathing of The System. A jostling, demented, anarchic TV populace, like a purple-faced crowd in a Roman amphitheatre, yells for more blood to be spilled, both of villain and hero. All on 24-hour-TV. Scary!
Why is Rang de Basanti a scary film? Because it is a film that is unable to distinguish between media and reality. It is the ultimate made-in-media-India film. It is not rooted in any kind of reality, does not explore the position of the politician in our society, nor does it tell any kind of tale of heroism and ideals, nor does it bother to find real believable people in a real believable situation. Sure Bollywood is all fantasy anyway, but the best fantasies are always those that are, as Javed Akhtar once said, like kites that are tied firmly to a stake in the earth not simply kites in free fall. The transcendant brilliance of Sholay was not just its luminous script but its perfectly located reality: the fact that the story was real, the characters were believable. Veeru and Jai are far greater patriots than the neon-lit young people of Rang de Basanti gyrating to disco music one night and gunning down the Defence Minister the next.
Some blame the electronic media. That 24-hour news television is fostering a brute unthinking hatred of the politician and the ‘The System’. Fostering hatred in full technicolour, where politician-abuse creates media stars on the one hand, and on the other creates a simple-minded society where the young must either be drunk or suicidal killers. But that’s an unfair criticism. The media simply does its job and its job is to expose, to bombard and to deliver news. The media is undoubtedly a double-edged sword. It brings the politician up for public scrutiny in a sensational way. Yet, the media is also a robust public service that democratises debate and brings lofty issues right down to the street or to the panchayat or to the college dorm. It would be unfair to accuse the media of encouraging young people to murder politicians.
A democratic citizenry must see the media as its ally in activism, not seek to gear its life to being on camera, as this film shows its heroes doing. A democratic citizenry must not become so enamoured, indeed so enslaved, by the media that it seeks to emulate it in daily life. To become a dumb media animal with no sense of life or perspective outside radio or television, is to waltz closer to the abyss. An abyss of glittering bingo halls and bizarre “locales” with no sense of how people actually live or speak, other than that captured by the camera. The media is a comrade in the fight, not a god which demands obedience.
Even youthful nationalism is not what Rang De Basanti makes it out to be. A group of idealistic young students from IIT have recently launched a “political party” . Started in Jodhpur, its called Paritrana and its national president is a BTech in Aerospace from IIT Bombay. Their aim is the “complete relief from distress” and they’ve been carrying out quiet unfussy door to door campaigns across Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In fact, many public-spirited young people are working at all kinds of initiatives across India and lots of dramatic films can be made on the many complex situations that are arising every day in their lives.
Rang De Basanti does a terrible disservice to the nationalism of India’s young people. It wilfully paints modern day patriots as unthinking anti-establishment killers. It foolishly creates a myth known as Gen Next which does nothing but drink and dance. And it promotes a leviathan media as the ultimate interpreter of India. The fact that Rang de Basanti is a hit shows just how catastrophically distant we are getting from reality, where we’re happy to live from media image to media image, from frame to frame, without realising the depth and profundity of “ordinary” human dramas.
Comment by vijay — March 1, 2006 @ 12:51 am
Rang De Basanti was such a bad movie, it’s not even funny. i don’t even know where to start so i just leave it at that. thanks for not returning my CD!
Comment by Dori — March 10, 2006 @ 10:29 am
I’m not a Bollywood movie buff, but I really want to see this movie. The guys at my cricket club keep raving about it. They’re part of the Indian Student Association too, and they actually played it at one of the University’s Lecture halls tonight, but I couldn’t make it.
Comment by RaY-ZoR — March 11, 2006 @ 12:59 pm
http://desicritics.org/2006/04/09/212729.php
modern supranka has been exposed and modern ravan who supports suprnka. modern women only wants to work and negelct her house and abuse old parents,
Comment by Anonymous — April 11, 2006 @ 10:26 am
laks, welcome to the dark side- sign a pre-nup or break your mama’s heart by eloping with a blondie…hehehe…gotta stop laughing but these guys need to get a freakin’ life.
Hilarious …getting such a comment on Rang De…darn it ..i cant stop laughing.
Comment by dee — April 11, 2006 @ 11:08 am
So even you were in duisguise telling people something else.
you are a brother of allthe supranakas and that is modern ravan in the 22century.
rangde wasa moviw of reveoluion and in that all modern ravan gets destroyed.
Comment by Anonymous — April 12, 2006 @ 11:47 am
Case :The boy is like Ram and the girl is like Surpanakha:
Well well well this is what is happening everywhere, where 498A benefits the Surpanakhas of our society and Rams and his family are reduced to puppets. 498A is misused to the fullest of its capacity and the real motive behind the law it is lost to protect the “ABLA NARI”. Its is highly misused by the nuisance value creators of the society, committing a mockery of the judicial system, by misleading and fooling the entire society including the very law.
This needs to be stopped, as the real purpose is not met and the crooks are at work, making money and going scott free where as Rams and his family members are in jail.
“When the Statistics reveal that a drastic majority of the cases are framed and false why should we allow such laws that encourage injustice?” We need a change in the current scenario.
Well Come to bloger group . Let cut the nose of Suparnakhas and Kill Ravans .
last thousand of years we had given all the comfort , respect , try to save our women , sacrifice our life , and we will do the same for future also till the time whole world dont get crush ( provied you also dont think that 600 milion man are all rapist in india ) .
are all men rapists?
Comment by Anonymous — April 13, 2006 @ 4:23 am
we men pay for our wifes food and clothes and they live of us. yet they neglect their house and abus eold parents.
Comment by Anonymous — April 13, 2006 @ 4:24 am
Case :The boy is like Ram and the girl is like Surpanakha:
Well well well this is what is happening everywhere, where 498A benefits the Surpanakhas of our society and Rams and his family are reduced to puppets. 498A is misused to the fullest of its capacity and the real motive behind the law it is lost to protect the “ABLA NARI”. Its is highly misused by the nuisance value creators of the society, committing a mockery of the judicial system, by misleading and fooling the entire society including the very law.
This needs to be stopped, as the real purpose is not met and the crooks are at work, making money and going scott free where as Rams and his family members are in jail.
“When the Statistics reveal that a drastic majority of the cases are framed and false why should we allow such laws that encourage injustice?” We need a change in the current scenario.
Well Come to bloger group . Let cut the nose of Suparnakhas and Kill Ravans .
last thousand of years we had given all the comfort , respect , try to save our women , sacrifice our life , and we will do the same for future also till the time whole world dont get crush ( provied you also dont think that 600 milion man are all rapist in india ) .
It is not that you will put all the 600 million men in one bag and term them as rapist , wife beater , and all 600 million women in one bag and term them as sati savatri , abala nari .
Does dowry take happen. no. all caes are false. women want to hace adulterous relationship thats why thet file 498 and get alimony to do their whole sael free liscence affair with other men. we give them oney clothers, food and we get 498. false dowry. these men are modern ranvans
are all men rapists?
14000 lacs men commit suide every here
peole how have are dishinest mothers milk are modern ravans to have whole sale free affair dishoneslty.
pheeewsh
Comment by Anonymous — April 16, 2006 @ 4:03 am