RRR Part 2: Why SS Rajamouli’s masterpiece triggers Hinduphobes

To understand why RRR triggers Hinduphobes so much, we’ve to go back to the two mendacious edifices that became the founding myths of the Indian Republic...

Nemo’s Note: Hello there and welcome to the second piece on RRR. First off, I am absolutely thrilled with the reception to Part 1. While I’ve received a lot of bouquets and brickbats for my writing over the years, including some exceptionally creative photoshopping from die-hard Bhai fans, I elicited as a response to my RRR piece what I consider the greatest compliment that could be given to an Indian who wields the English language.

Reacting to RRR Part 1, a Twitter user wrote: “The writer has the rhetorical skills of a Rushdie and the cleverly catty sensibility of a Shobha De Neeta's Natter column in Stardust.”

Honestly, I believe that there can be no higher compliment, given that, between Rushdie and Shobha De, we cover the entire depth of English writing in India. Either way, I am overwhelmed that so many of you enjoyed the piece.

So overwhelmed that I really struggled to bring you Part 2. It’s just a coincidence that Part II is finally going live on the day Naatu Naatu wins the Oscar for Best Original Song. It wasn’t planned, I swear. But I would like to thank you all for reading Part 1 (here’s the link, if you’ve not) and hope that you will enjoy Part 2 as much. If you like what I write, subscribe to my Substack.

Long before WAGatha Christie, the first-ever celebrity trial in England involved Oscar Wilde when he sued the Marquess of Queensberry for calling him a “sodomiser”. 

During the high-profile trial that kept London waiting with a bated breath – when they could breathe through the smog – Oscar Wilde was asked about the morality of his works. 

The noted playwright replied with his usual sardonic wit: “Works of art are not capable of being moral or immoral. It’s only brutes and illiterates who are incalculably stupid that discuss the morality of art.” 

Of course, he lost the trial, dying in penury, because we are mostly ruled by brutes and illiterates that wouldn’t recognise a good piece of art if it danced in front of it wearing Dobby’s tea cosy, but that’s beside the point. The same rules that apply to the morality of art apply to labelling art as propaganda as well. 

These days it has become fashionable for geriatric leftist historians to bandy about the term propaganda to define any piece of art that doesn’t resemble their worldview. 

An Ayushman Khurana movie about him playing a marginalised group - cross-fitters in Chandigarh? Propaganda. 

A fantastical historical action piece loosely based on two freedom fighters whose names aren’t Nehru and Gandhi? Hindutva propaganda 

A movie about Hindus being forced out of their state by extremists? Propaganda against Muslims. 

An actor dressed in drag to promote his movie on Kapil Sharma’s show? Propaganda against trans people. 

The issue is that if you run the rule hard enough, anything and everything can be termed propaganda. 

Take Rang De Basanti – a perfect anarcho-communist fantasy wrapped (read Great Bong’s fantastic post on the subject) in the fig leaf of patriotism and mellowed down with AR Rahman’s music. A bunch of proletariats taking up arms to shoot the authorities is everything the communists ever dreamt of.

Yet, the makers of Rang De Basanti had the wherewithal to do so while presenting it as a sort of freedom struggle, and bang, it’s no longer a communist swansong but a patriotic one. In fact, most Hollywood movies, including the wildly popular Marvel Cinematic Universe, are clearly promoting not just the Capitalist Military Complex but also American exceptionalism. 

However, no movie – at least in recent memory – was deemed as propaganda with such vehemence as RRR, which not only makes Bashing British colonialism an art form (which frankly sounds like a much better version of BBC) but also refuses to play by any of the Indian tropes that are popular with purveyors of cinema. There’s no poverty porn (Slumdog Millionaire), no Indians begging on the streets (The City of Joy), no Western saviour to show us the light (Basmati Blues), or even a baddie drinking monkey brain from a skull (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). In fact, with the older movies, one was hard-pressed to think of India in a way that isn’t a racist stereotype on steroids. RRR changed all of this. 

While large portions of the world have gone bonkers about the movie, there has been a collective scream from the so-called critics, who’ve gone out of their way to find a hidden fascist Hindutva manifesto in the periodic action thriller and SS Rajamouli’s older works, going so far as to complain about the lack of Muslim representation in a fictional pre-Islamic society (Baahubali). 

The latest interview in this vein dropped from The New Yorker, which read more like the transcript of an illegal waterboarding session of a Taliban operator at Guantanamo Bay than a film critic interviewing a director who has made a wildly popular global film. 

Consider these questions: 

• Some critics have argued that the movie's concluding musical number highlights key historical figures like the controversial anti-colonial freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian-nationalist figurehead Bhagat Singh but omits others, including Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar, which they interpret as a deliberate avoidance of non-violent revolutionaries. What would you say to that?

• There has been some criticism...for replicating what they feel is a Brahmanic view of India, particularly how the Kalakeyas are portrayed in Baahubali 2: The Conclusion. There's been critique, as well, of stereotypes regarding Adivasis, particularly Bheem, who has been described as a "noble savage". Is that just misattributed anxiety and projection?

• Does it feel like the recent rise of nationalism, as well as anti-Muslim sentiment, has affected the way movies are made in India? 

• Is there pressure being put on you, whether anti-Muslim or pro-nationalist from BJP supporters or even the RSS? 

The waterboarding continues in the same vein, and it’s more ridiculous and farfetched than the action set pieces in the movie. It’s like asking Steven Spielberg whether ET’s hoodie is a secret nod to his support for white supremacy and the KKK.

What exactly is a Brahminic view of India, and how is an atheist like SS Rajamouli encapsulating that? How is Bheem a noble savage? What even is a noble savage, if not a creation of Western anthropology and literature with little parallels in Indian literature? When did Subhas Chandra Bose become controversial? How did Bhagat Singh become a nationalist figurehead? 

In fact, more than anything, the pernicious interview is a testament to SS Rajamouli’s humility and magnanimity. A lesser person (like yours truly) would’ve replied: “Aage bado chutta nahin hai.”

Editor’s Note: For non-native speakers, the phrase’s direct translation is “Please go ahead, I don’t have change” which alludes to telling someone that their idea is remarkably stupid and won’t pass the muster.

To the average Indian reader who understands English – and doesn’t get his news and views from Anglo-American publications – the questions are downright ridiculous. The very idea that RRR helps promote BJP is downright laughable, given the BJP’s dismal performances in the state whose denizens are mainly involved in its creation. Or the fact that a BJP leader threatened SS Rajamouli even before the movie was released. Of course, since 2014, everything has been linked to Modi and the BJP, with critics living through what I call a Panglossian-Kafkaesque dichotomy where a lack of electoral success has transformed many sane individuals into raving lunatics. Everything – from the success of Pathaan to Adani’s downturn – is about Modi.

The New Yorker piece epitomised much of what we’ve seen about the coverage of India by various foreign publications, including the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and others of their ilk, who have turned journalism into a competitive rat race to get the most outlandish quotes from the most out-of-touch-elitists in India. This has led to a hilarious situation where every single report, opinion piece, egg curry recipe, and even a pre-match ceremony portends to “rising extremist Hindutva fascism”. 

However, to understand why RRR triggers Hinduphobes so much, we’ve to go back to the two mendacious edifices that became the founding myths of the Indian Republic that has dogged it since its inception.

The first is that India had won its freedom through ahimsa or non-violence. It’s one that, to borrow a phrase from geo-strategist Brahma Chellaney gave rise to a “pacifist country that it could get peace merely by seeking peace, instead of building the capability to defend peace”. It’s downright hilarious to think that an Empire that had no qualms about gassing tribes, shooting down innocent civilians in cold blood or even throwing children into concentration camps would leave of their own accord because they were moved by morals.

The second misconception is that India is a truly secular country, a word that was shoe-horned into the Preamble of the Constitution during the Emergency. 

While secularism – the complete separation of Church and state – can be possible in a truly Laïcité society like France, it was always going to be a non-starter in a country like India, where the majority were deeply devout Hindus, who had clung to their religion despite facing off against invaders for millennia, many of whom wanted to convert them or demand they pay taxes if they didn’t.

India also is the birthplace of three other major religions -- Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism and has a rich history of major global religions like Christianity and Islam. The friction between imaginary secularism and India’s deep religiosity was evident from the beginning when PM Jawaharlal Nehru took great umbrage to President Rajendra Prasad going to the inauguration of the Somnath Temple in Gujarat, arguing that its ‘restoration’ was “Hindu revivalism”. 

Ergo, secularism (pseudo-secularism, if you ask its critics) came to mean that having group identities and religious markers was great for all groups except Hindus, who despite being a majority, should practise their religion without claiming any identity or marker. They shouldn’t claim rights to historically important religious places nor point out that these sites were debased by invaders.

The identity somehow became part of the original Hindu nationalist party, and slowly shaped its politics with Shah Bano, shooting cow-worshipping sadhus, adding secularism to the Constitution, saying minorities have the first rights on resources, complaining to the USA about “Hindu terror” or denying the existence of Lord Rama in court. As an exasperated late PVN Rao once said to Mani Shankar Aiyar (who would later become infamous for his chaiwallah jibe against an incumbent challenger): “Mani, you don't seem to realize that this is a Hindu country." To this, Mani Shankar Aiyar replied: “But, Sir, that is exactly what the BJP says.”

As Mani Shankar Aiyar (and the rest of Congress) would learn, that’s what a major number of Indians say as well. The prescient PVNR had realised what even Congressmen of later vintages failed to, that India was a de facto Hindu country, irrespective of what the preamble says, and anyone who denies it is only fighting a Quixotic battle. In fact, one honestly believes that Godse’s dastardly act to assassinate MK Gandhi delayed the inevitable rise of Hindutva by a few decades. The fact that the assassination triggered a genocide of Brahmins in Maharashtra has been lost to the history pages and remains unknown to most folks even today. 

From then to now, the term secularism came to mean something very strange in the Indian context, where even people, to this day, go around claiming that they are “secular”. How a person can be secular is something one finds rather hard to comprehend, given that secularism is a separation of religion and the state, and the state is equidistant to all religions. 

Yet, in India, secularism became a buzzword for people who hated their own religion, and we see it manifest in a million ways in India and the world. It’s the reason India is branded intolerant despite the fact that there are many more groups of minorities living in India, whereas, its neighbours have found the minority groups disappearing faster than cake at an office party.

Consider that there are barely any Hindus left in the ancient Gandhara kingdom, which is now modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet it’s India, with its constitutional equality, that’s often labelled intolerant. 

Political parties finally woke up to the dangers of pseudo-secularism with the rise of the BJP, often with unintentionally hilarious consequences.

We see it manifest in a million different ways in India and the world. In India, it has led to the rise of the BJP, and we are almost on the brink of post-Hindutva politics where any major party which hopes to be politically relevant must tout its Hindu credentials much like Rahul Gandhi flaunting his janeu and proclaiming he’s a Shiv Bhakt. In fact, Arvind Kejriwal, whose AAP is often at loggerheads with BJP and has even gone a step further in post-Hindutva politics, offering free yatras to Ayodhya. Of course, it doesn’t fly against a party whose very foundation is based on the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Or, to quote Varun Grover: “Tum unke core competency mein mat ghuso.” 

However, there still remains a deracinated elitist class that thinks that all religious criticism should be reserved for Hindus. They are fine with phallic Shivling memes but think a BJP spokesperson angrily quoting parts of a holy book should be in jail. They mock Rishi Sunak for “cow worship” and become thrilled when The Guardian turns racism on its head by painting Priti Patel as a cow.

They vacillate from saffronphobia and saffronfreude, depending on the situation. They blame everything on Hindutva – from riots in Leicester to the Tories’ immigration policies – and derive pleasure while doing so.

They revel in reading alternate fanfic about Hindu goddesses but tie themselves into Gordian knots when there’s any criticism of any other religion. They think Hindu festivals like Holi or Diwali are occasions to write diatribes on patriarchy or animal rights. They take great pains to explain why the ghungat is regressive, but the hijab is a choice that should be allowed as part of a uniform. Halaal and kosher are fine, while pure vegetarianism is a sign of upper-caste exclusivity.

They go to pains to even justify an “insulted and disrespected” man setting someone on fire for playing colours and go out of their way to excuse blasphemy threats, arguing for the mob’s right to riot because someone said something in a TV debate. They cite so-called hate trackers that don’t even consider cases where Hindus are victims. And they go to great pains to draw parallels between Hindutva and Islamist extremism even though Hindutva extremism will have to go a long, long way to match its Islamist counterpart with a global footprint. In fact, when one study’s the debasing of the word, it’s evident how we came from Nehru’s India to Modi’s India.

And it’s this fast-diminishing demographic which is most scandalised by RRR and clutch their pearls when they see Raju in that resplendent action sequence channelling his inner Lord Rama and showering proverbial arrows on the two founding mendacious edifices.

Also, when they can't seem to digest that Raju and Bheem get along because, in their minds, Hindus are intrinsically opposed to tribals, a model they directly borrow from their notion of the colonialists invading and pillaging indigenous tribes. 

But I digress. Not only do Indians hit back, but they do so while proudly wearing their religion on their sleeves. SS Rajamouli is a remarkable auteur, and RRR is a reminder – in its own tiny way – why Hinduism is the last pagan religion standing. From a perfect bromance between the leads, who happen to be Hindu and a proud son-of-the-soil tribal leader celebrating Dahi Handi, to a patriotic Muslim family to showing Ajay Devgn with a red liquid in his mouth, SS Rajamouli showcases every Indian identity from varied intersections.

The thing is that once there has been an awakening of sorts, it’s very hard to put the genie back in the bottle. Hindus – in India and abroad – are becoming increasingly more important with more political representation. While some will obviously go woke, there will be others who will voice intergenerational concerns.

So, you can hold your Dismantle Global Hindutva conferences or write theses on why Aurangzeb was a great secular king, but you will have to realise it’s a losing battle. That’s because all groups need a persecution complex to unite them, and Hindus finally realise it. 

As Amit Majumdar argued in his essay in Open titled Hinduism is forging a new unity around its history of prosecution, Hindus are uniting over wrongs past and present.

He writes: “Unless contemporary politics is a marker for something else. Dangers lurk in Hinduism’s transformation to a religion with foundational persecution: history offers, as grisly precedent and warning, the behaviour of Abrahamic religions worldwide. What alarms them most in India, perhaps, is the realisation that their polytheistic adversary has morphed to resemble them". “He who fights monsters,” Nietzsche wrote, “should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” Indian Hindu­ism will be tested in the decades to come. The question will be whether it can find a way to unite, and to assert itself politically and culturally, without turning—converting, as it were—into a version of itself its ancient rishis would not recognise.”

Of course, things change, but Hinduism has never been viewed in this way, along with the more assertive Hindutva. For the longest time, both Hinduism and Hindutva were explained to the world by their most vehement critics. This is set to change with the rise of non-Left historians, authors, and podcasters whose events get far more traction than those of geriatric historians who sigh about their idea of India changing. 

This brings us back to Oscar Wilde’s comment on works of art. Yes, they might be good or bad, but they are most often representative of the zeitgeist of our times, a reflection of our souls.

In that sense, RRR isn’t propaganda, it’s a reflection of how a growing number of people now view themselves. Its success across the globe shows that the world accepts that projection. It is, to borrow a phrase from Pandit Nehru, the modern Hindu Revivalism, a time and space where Hindus are quite proud of whom they are and aren’t ashamed of displaying it. 

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1960s :: The Beatles With Maharishi Mahesh Yogi In Rishikesh

As for Hinduism’s critics, they will have to learn to deal with it as the world realises that Hinduism has far more to offer than enlightenment to foreigners. In fact, its constant evolution for millennia shows why it’s the last pagan religion standing, and India’s rise will only see the rise of Hinduism on a world stage as its people reclaim how its story is told. Whether it comes from an oratorically gifted man named Narendra is immaterial because once a group learns to be proud and assertive about their identity, there’s no going back. So turn on Naatu Naatu and put your dancing shoes on. It’s going to be a long ride.

Edited by the very cute Alekhya Boora.