Today, Explained - The politics of India’s biggest blockbusteRRR

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

Most people watch RRR and see one of the greatest action epics in the history of cinema. But some see an insidious brand of Hindu nationalism that’s been creeping into Indian culture. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shaprio, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram, who also edited. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Oscar nominations are around the corner. Which means we're in peak Oscar campaign season. And there's one movie waging a campaign that's unlike any other. It's called RRR. It's an anti-colonial Indian epic. There's singing, there's dancing, but there's also some of the most audacious action you will ever see on a screen. Seriously, it puts the Fast Furious franchise to shame, but there's another thing that sets this movie apart.

Critics seem to see it two different ways. Take this headline from NPR. If you haven't been back to the movies yet, Indian epic RRR is the reason to go. And compared to this headline from Slate. A wild Indian blockbuster is ravishing movie fans, but they're missing its troubling subtext. We're gonna try and get to the bottom

of the troubling subtext bit on this here episode of Today Explained. The all new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs.

And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. My face hurt because without knowing it, I was just grinning ear to ear because I had never seen anything like this film. Today explained Sean Ramosforum. This episode doesn't need a disclaimer, but RRR has one if you try to watch it on Netflix. It goes like this. The story of this film has been set in the backdrop of pre-independent India and is purely fictional.

The characters portrayed in this movie, the geographical areas depicted, the incidents shown, costumes, dances, linguistic dialects, and cultural attributes are fictional. This film, apart from showcasing the culture and geography of India, doesn't imitate or imply any person, whether living or dead, doesn't indicate any race, caste, creed, or tribe. Any resemblance whatsoever is purely coincidental. The producer, the director, or the technicians of this movie have no intention whatsoever of hurting anyone's sentiments or disrespecting any traditions or maligning the beliefs of any individual or group. That's a pretty hefty piece of reading to get through before three hours and seven minutes of singing, dancing, action, and who are we kidding, more reading of subtitles. But the real reason the disclaimer feels so out of place is because RRR is just so fun.

It's about these two dudes, Raju and Beam, who are on a quest to redefine bromance. We will be best friends forever and ever. These bros are loosely based on real Indian freedom fighters who were never actually friends. In the movie, Beam is this sweet guy from a small Indian village who just happens to have superhuman strength and agility.

Raju is this more serious dude climbing the military ranks who just happens to have superhuman strength and agility. And then there's the British. I want this bastard punished in such a way that no person will ever rise up against the British. Oh, I want to watch it, darling. I want to see him bleed. And so you shall. The Brits are portrayed a little more on the subhuman side. The whole movie is basically about sticking it to the Brits as hard as one possibly can, but no one seems particularly mad about that.

It is a very, very fun, just wild watch, but it is definitely representative, I think, of a rather pernicious strain of Indian culture and politics right now, that being the very open Hindu nationalism that has pervaded the country over the past eight years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power. Nitish Pawa writes for Slate, he wrote that one article I mentioned at the top of the show, the one titled, A wild Indian blockbuster is ravishing movie fans, but they're missing its troubling subtext. What I found interesting about RRR was just like the number of different elements of Hindu nationalism that interplayed in here. There was definitely very much a sort of demeaning of the

indigenous tribe in the movie, the Gans. They're kind of shown to be just like these simple-minded animal whispers who only care about fighting the British insofar as it is protecting their own community and not doing anything else for the country at large. I am fighting just for Mali. But he fighting for our country. This was Bean, the villager with superhuman strength and agility. He spends the first part of the movie pretending to be Muslim, which might feel kind of random if you know nothing about India. And if you do know something about India, maybe less random.

The use of the gone character Beams' Muslim disguise as part of his foray into finding the gone girl who's kidnapped, but then him immediately downplaying that fact later on when he confesses his real identity. First thing he says, I'm not a Muslim. I not tell you everything about me. I not Akhtar.

I not a Muslim. I am Behem. From gone time. And throughout the rest of the film, there's like no representation of Muslims at all. So I just find that choice of disguise and then like rhetoric there to be a little interesting. And then you also have this very castist angle

throughout where Raju, the main character who's embedded within the British, this is Superman on steroids. I don't know a better way to put it. There are plenty of fight scenes throughout the movie where he assumes like a very godlike form, like he's wearing like a bow and arrow the same way that like many old reincarnations of the god Vishnu have appeared in a Hindu mythology. You know, you have like the bare chest, the facial hair, just the ultra-masculine ideal of a godly, god-fearing human. We won't run anymore. We'll make you run. And

you see him throughout as always elevated above his purported partner, Beam. Beam is only on a mission, really, to rescue this girl. But Raju is seen throughout as like, oh, this guy all along was trying to play this long game to save all of India's people. He did this because he wanted to arm them and get them to save themselves.

I made a promise to my father that I would get everyone a weapon. And at the very end of the movie, when like all is said and done, you see Bheem, you know, begging him like, teach me your ways. Bheema, you helped us achieve our dream, inspired me to keep fighting for my cause.

What can I do for you? Be my cause. What can I do for you? Be my teacher. And that strikes me as like an incredibly demeaning depiction of a supposedly equal indigenous character. And again, I don't think that's a coincidence. A lot of the controversy and the curious choices you're pointing out right now are subtle enough that you could almost miss them if you're just waiting for the next big action sequence or song. But there's one thing I feel like you cannot miss, which is the end credits of this movie.

Yeah, at the end of the movie, you see this sort of final song and dance with Raju and Bhim. They show like this gallery sort of of a few different Indian independence fighters from, again, like the more early century era of activism. In a similar vein, as we see with Raju and Beam in the film, is like, these were people who were not afraid to raise their fists against the British Empire or their guns or other weapons. What I find interesting about this choice is that in keeping with what I mentioned about the Muslim representation dynamic in this film, there are no Muslim freedom fighters represented here. There are no indigenous freedom fighters represented in there either, even though there were plenty of them, including the real life beam. And I think the most defining image of Indian independence just about all around the world is it's Gandhi, it's nonviolence, it's Scythiagraha.

Yeah. Interestingly enough, the most famous Indian freedom fighter not included. Right. And like, I can't help but think of the fact of like Gandhi's absence from this gallery as being a part of nationalists praising Gandhi's assassin, Nazim al-Ghazi, who was a member of the RSS, the Hindu nationalist paramilitary, which came up during colonial times and has given birth to a lot of organizations and political parties who have huge influence today. Prime Minister Narendra Modi rose to power with the help of a nationalist volunteer movement

known as the RSS, which advocates hardline Hindu nationalism. And then you also have a lot of these Hindu nationalists basically trying to erase the memory of Jawaharlal Nehru. Jawaharlal Nehru, chief minister of his country since India became independent in 1947. From the beginning to the end, the struggle for independence was led by the Indian

National Congress Party. Gandhi was its guiding light. Nehru, its chief organizer. Viewed in that light, seeing the absence of Gandhi and Nehru from that list of freedom fighters, I don't think that's a coincidence. They might sound like wet blankets here talking about why this deeply enjoyable, fun movie is controversial.

Why does any of this matter? I'm not saying that RRR is going to like incite people, you know, to riot in the streets or whatever. But it is part and parcel of what the Hindu Nationalist Project wants to do, which is normalize their views across the globe. And I think people should just be aware if, you know, they're watching and enjoying this movie. Like, I'm not for censorship. I am not for like, you know, just automatically discounting any work of art because it has a different ideology. But people should be aware of the context, especially in a time right now when Hindu nationalism is a bigger domestic and global threat than it ever has been before.

So you're not saying boycott RRR. You're saying maybe watch RRR and then seek out an article that was written by someone who knows something about Indian politics. And conveniently, you've written one such article. Sure. Yeah, I mean, hey,

I'll always welcome the traffic. All jokes aside, that thing Nitesh said about Hindu nationalism being a threat is real. We reached out to a bunch of Indian academics to talk about the broader influence of the Indian government on culture, and a lot of them didn't want to go on the record with us. The one who did joins us when we're back on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Thank you. easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday.

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Not salsa, not flamenco, my brother. Do you know Desi Nach? What's Desi Nach? Today Explained is back. Before we parted ways, Nitish essentially said see RRR, but try to understand the context. So here's some context.

The first thing you should know is that RRR comes from Tollywood, not Bollywood. India is so big, there's room for multiple hubs in its film industry. But Bollywood's so much bigger and it gets way more attention from the government in India.

And let's talk more about that government. The ruling political party is the BJP. They've been in power since 2014, and the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is right-wing Hindu nationalist. Its perspective is that India is a majority Hindu country, and hence it's the interests of Hindus that need to be preeminent. This is Professor Tejaswini Gandhi, NYU, Anthropology.

It's in contrast to what I would say is the historical perspective of when India gets independence from Britain in 1947, India constitutionally set out to be a secular democratic republic. In fact, the BJP talks about secularism as being pseudo-secular because in the Indian context, what secularism means is not necessarily what we think of in the U.S. as separation of church and state. What secularism means in the Indian context is that all religions need to have equal importance and respect. So it's not about the absence of religion in public life. It's about the fact that all religions can have like a place at the table. And this isn't just talk from the BJP. I mean, this sort of Hindu nationalist ideology in India has actually turned violent in the past years, no?

It has turned extremely violent. Rights organizations have documented mass graves, torture, and extrajudicial killings carried out by the Indian armed forces. Laws against slaughtering cattle, anti-conversion legislation, and bans on headscarves have legitimized discrimination against religious minorities, especially Muslims. I would say with the rise to power since 2014, we have seen in India very brazen and concerted acts of violence against Muslims, as well as against lower castes and marginalized caste communities. And what I mean by brazen, you know, often the supporters of the BJP or of their, they have many different militant groups. They can carry out acts of violence with impunity, knowing that nothing's going to happen to them. So how is this predominant Hindu nationalist ideology playing out in Indian cinema?

I would say there's like two main strands. One has to do with the impact on the film industry and filmmaking itself. And the other has to do with the themes of the films. So there's a few concrete ways that the government at the center, the federal government, is exerting its influence. One is all films, in order to be released theatrically, have to be certified by the Central Board of Film Certification, which everyone shortens to calling it the censor board. They see the films and they give them a rating, but in order to give them a rating, they also mandate cuts. But who gets to be a censor, who gets to be on that board, those are political appointees.

So every time the government changes at the center, the people in the censor board change. So with the BJP government at the center, of course, you know, it's very likely that you'll have a lot of people who are allied or sympathizers or, you know, who agree with the certain ideology who would be put in place. The other ways that the government has been coming after, say, Bollywood, over the last few years, some of the directors or actors who may have spoken out maybe comment upon, for example, incidents of violence. Our country, we keep on talking about religion. We're going to go back to the dark ages.

There is nothing, there is nothing less important than religious intolerance. When people have been critical that way, some of these directors or actors or writers suddenly, like the Income Tax Bureau, it's like, we're going to raid your home. We think you're like hiding money from us. So that's another concrete way. And then the last one, which really emerged in 2020 during the kind of beginnings of the pandemic, so like the summer of 2020, is that there was this whole, quote, Bollywood drug scandal that erupted across the national media.

The son of the Bollywood superstar, Shah Rukh Khan, has arrived home in Mumbai after spending more than three weeks in jail in an alleged drugs case. It wasn't really based in any sort of evidence. This really had to do with some people saying, oh, Bollywood is just like infested with drugs and people who use. And so suddenly that started a whole series of investigations and everything was pretty flimsy evidence. It's like, oh, look at this photo on Twitter of everyone sitting around at a party. You know, maybe they're using something, you know? And so these are very, very concrete ways that the government has been going after the film industry. Okay, so it ranges from censorship to maybe you'll be investigated by the tax bureau to even straight up like drug raids and conspiracies, which sounds like it's no joke.ensible Hindu king who is fighting off, you know, the Muslim, quote, invader.

Right, so like this notion of a historical time period where Muslims are constantly being portrayed as the invaders. And I have to say that's also a really important part of Hindu nationalist ideology is kind of reframing Indian history as one of constant invasion and conflict. Because if you actually speak to, you know, academic historians, they'll point out that the history of India itself is very complex and you can't think, and also the borders of what we now think of as India were not the same borders a thousand years ago, right? So you have this very anachronistic idea of, quote, people coming in from somewhere and invading, you know, so there's that. So certain kinds of historical films. Also, a greater attention to war films, often focusing on conflicts between India and Pakistan. And then finally, there's not been as many films of this nature

but i feel like the fact that certain historical figures who may have been taboo earlier people are thinking about making films about them so one is for example the the man who assassinated mahatma gandhi nathuram god you know, a film where he's featured prominently. Like, that would not have been done 20 years ago. No one would have thought about making a film about him. This is our Hindu nation. One day, God will come here. So how should we think about a movie like RRR in this context? Because there's this incredible opportunity here to turn American audiences and international audiences onto the incredible cinema in India.

But at the same time, you're saying ongoing in India cinema is this effort to change what these movies are about and who gets to be in them. I think I would think about in two ways. The first is that the fact of RRR's success, given the type of film it is, it is an unabashedly mainstream film that celebrates everything that has been a part of popular Indian cinema for decades. So aesthetically, it's not watered down for, quote, a global audience. And so I'm intrigued by its global reception. Indian cinema always had large audiences. It's now, I think, the fact that it's being celebrated in the US is seen as like, wow, here's this new opportunity that we can try to build upon. What I do get troubled by is that whenever you have something

that successful, and it also seems successful in a global sense, everyone worries about like, is this just going to start this new trend? And so I guess the fear becomes because the BJP is so invested in cultural nationalism, cultural production, you know, they will make it easier for people to make films like that, and maybe other sorts of storytelling, other sorts of narratives. It's not that people won't make them, but maybe they'll become more difficult. But ultimately, Indian cinema predates the BJP. Yes, yes, definitely predates the BJP.

And I have faith in, you know, in the storytellers. There's a lot of voices. And I think that there's many more opportunities for those voices to be heard these days because everything doesn't rely on a theatrical release. I think with the explosion of media and the digital platforms, we actually do have a chance to be able to see a greater diversity of perspectives and viewpoints and stories. Professor Tejaswini Gandhi teaches people about people at NYU. Amanda Llewellyn produced our episode today.

Laura Bullard fact-checked it. And Afim Shapiro mixed and mastered. This is Today Explained.