Indian cinema was in spotlight at the recently concluded International Film Festival Rotterdam, with over thirty titles presented at the two-week event. The majority of these were part of a special non-competitive section titled “The Shape of Things to Come?”, curated by Stefan Borsos, that sought to explore the following question: “Is the institutional success of right-wing Hindu-nationalist groups and the persecution of dissenting voices a sign for the shape of things to come – and not only in India?”

The formally eclectic program showcased a mix of acclaimed fiction features, documentaries, experimental YouTube videos and Bollywood productions, alongside a lecture and a panel discussion. The political ascent of Hindutva was the dominant theme of the curation, with a number of films delving into the ideological and operational aspects of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Many of the works  dealt with particular events—demolition of the Babri Masjid, Godhra riots, anti-CAA protests, COVID-19 lockdown—while some others evoked the atmosphere of fear, intolerance and disillusionment prevalent at different times and places in the country in the last thirty years. A notable subset of films trained their lens on the phenomenon of radicalization and the role that digital media has played in exacerbating it.

Harshad Nalawade’s smart, sympathetic drama Follower confronts the issue of radicalization head on, but remaps it along linguistic lines, bypassing the conservative-liberal dichotomy typical of culture wars. The film takes place in the border town of Belgaum, which, an infographic at the beginning apprises us, has long been a bone of contention between Kannada and Marathi chauvinists. Raghu is an activist at an online media outlet affiliated with a Marathi political party. When his inflammatory posts result in tragedy, we are taken in back in time to understand how a decent, kind young man came to be an internet thug.

The younger Raghu is close friends with Sachin, a successful Kannadiga YouTuber from a perceivably more affluent family, and with Parveen, a single mother whom he has feelings for. Seemingly immune to language wars, the three friends converse in a mixture of tongues and are at ease with their differences. Yet, at various moments, Raghu is shown his place by those that around him, made to feel like an outsider in his own home. These everyday frustrations and untimely mishaps snowball into a psychic assault on Raghu, persuading him to see himself as a victim. Follower touchingly illustrates the corrosive power of political narratives, capable of corrupting the deepest of bonds.

Anurag Kashyap’s short film, Four Slippers (“Chaar Chappalein”) affirms Follower’s diagnosis, but its subject is the personal cost of radicalization. Written by Varun Grover, the film is divided into four chapters wittily modelled on the four ashramas of Hindu life. In the first episode, set in Varanasi in the 1970s, a boy named Rajat is caught fantasizing in class and humiliated by a sadistic schoolmaster. This brutal repression marks the young man for good, catapulting him into a life of progressive social and emotional isolation that comes to an ironic end some twenty years from now.

Despite its coolly analytical approach that obliges the viewer to observe Rajat rather than identify with him, Four Slippers manages to convey the tragedy of a sensitive individual lost to hatred and communal polarization. Rajat’s trajectory, from a young lad who stutteringly sings Kishore Kumar’s “O Saathi Re” to a crush to a lonely man who spends his days online abusing people disagreeing with him, tells the story of an increasing alienation from the world. It is a sad portrait of a gradual inner exile that puts a finger on a very contemporary malaise.

Both Follower and Four Slippers view social media as an indispensable way station on the journey to political extremism. How has the telecom revolution of the past decade changed the shape of Indian democracy? Avijit Mukul Kishore’s short documentary An Election Diary considers this question against the backdrop of the 2019 general elections. Confining itself to the suburban constituency of Phulpur in Allahabad, the film examines the efforts of the BJP in both reaching out to voters through targeted campaigns and bringing them to the booth on election day.

Made as part of a research project for the University of Göttingen, An Election Diary furnishes no voiceover commentary, nor does it place its material within a national context. What we get instead is a highly local mixture of street interviews, kitschy YouTube clips and revealing IT-cell meetings. The cadres, organized into niche social-media units responsible for particular tasks, discuss the strategy of using smartphones to rally voters. Their campaign consistently foregrounds the personality of Narendra Modi, whose shining image is used to gloss over infrastructural issues affecting the constituency. In this scheme of things, digital media becomes a veritable simulacrum replacing reality.

Smartphones and social media, on the other hand, enjoy only a marginal presence in Varun Chopra’s Holy Cowboys. Set in the environs of Vapi in Gujarat, Chopra’s loosely fictionalized documentary keeps its ears to the ground in its attempt to trace a classic pathway to radicalization. Gopal, a teenager who works at a packaging plant, comes across a calf feeding on the kind of plastic bags he produces at work. In genuine concern, he brings the stray animal to a cow shelter run by a Hindu volunteer organization. He becomes a regular visitor to this place and is soon caught up in the outfit’s vigilante operations.

Narrated like a coming-of-age tale with moody music, Holy Cowboys devotes significant time to Gopal’s interactions with his teenage peers. We don’t get to know what the boy thinks of the organization’s activities, but it is apparent that his attraction to it originates from the camaraderie and the sense of community it offers—an empowerment sorely missing in his daily life. In shining a light on the weaponization of compassion, Chopra’s film agrees with Follower and Four Slippers that forces of radicalization feed on deep-seated human issues, offering hatred as a coping mechanism. Illness masquerading as cure.

 

[First published in Mint Lounge]