HAIDER Movie Review: It's separatist propaganda officially endorsed by CBFC

Thursday, October 02, 2014 10:19:45 AM (IST) | Rajesh Kumar Singh, Bollywood Trade Editorial

HAIDER is not about Shakespeare’s famed tragedy. It’s an official endorsement of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) of India of the cause of the Kashmiri separatists and wily and devious ISI sponsored terrorists. It’s an alibi for the Pakistani establishment and Hurriyat leaders who will use this film as a strong evidence of what they consider to be the reign of bloody oppression and terror unleashed on the good peace loving people of Kashmir by the Indian security forces using draconian laws and devious tactics.

It speaks a language similar to what the Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief spoke at the UN General Assembly recently. With this film a noted filmmaker joins the crowd of those elements who instigate kids to throw stones on our security forces projecting them as villains of the Kashmir story. It almost brazenly advocates the separation of Kashmir from India and presents the state of Jammu & Kashmir as a territory under Indian occupation. The film probably will be granted entertainment tax exemption by the Omar Abdullah govt. to oblige separatists and militants. I have a feeling that it may even have free public screenings in Pakistan under instructions from the Pakistani government and military bosses. It serves their agenda of denigrating and demeaning our armed forces so effectively.  

The film subscribes to the Pakistani and separatist point of view and adopts their anti-India propagandist narrative. It does not care to present the Indian perspective. It has been granted U/A certification. The filmmaker reportedly accepted numerous cuts, as many as 41, to ensure the film gets viewed widely.

However, more than 150 minute long film still has graphic violence of extreme kind and its inspiration itself is a hard-core adult theme of ‘a son in love with his mother’. The CBFC has shown extra-ordinary generosity in certifying a film for universal viewing, making a mockery of its own guidelines. I don’t think they will be as generous with a film that showed the ugly murderous face of separatists.

Here is the story, set in Kashmir of 1995. Haidar’s (Shahid Kapoor) father (Narendra Jha) is a doctor and surgeon and his mother Ghazala (Tabu) an English teacher. Haidar is away, studying at Aligarh Muslim University. His father brings home an ailing terrorist to operate upon his appendicitis. Ghazala does not like it. The security forces get to know about it through an informant and raid the doctor’s house and arrest him. Haidar returns to find that his house is burnt and his mother is living with his uncle Khurram (Kay Kay Menon), a politician, who is an informant of the security forces, and his father is now among the missing people. Haidar is quite disturbed to see his mother and uncle together. He thinks they are not worried about his father’s disappearance. His childhood love Arshia (Shraddha Kapoor), who is a journalist, consoles him. One day a separatist called Roohdar (Irrfan Khan) approaches Arshia. He knows about the whereabouts of Haidar’s father. Haidar meets him and is informed that his father was dead, tortured and killed by the Indian security forces. His uncle Khurram was the one who betrayed his own brother. The last words of his father to Roohdar were that he should let his son know of the betrayal and tell him to seek revenge for his death and also the defilement of his mother by Khurram.

After the death of Haidar’s father is confirmed, Khurram and Ghazala decide to get married. This really makes Haidar go crazy. The ghost of his father keeps reminding him of the idea of revenge quite graphically, calling upon him to shoot in both the eyes of Khurram. Haidar trusts Roohdar now and joins him and is all set to go across the border but before that he has to extract his revenge prompted by his father’s ghost.

If the original story was more about a son’s obsession with his mother and his troubled mind over her marriage with his uncle, the killer of his father and usurper of his throne, this one does not dwell much on that. The politics of Kashmir overpowers everything else in the film. The stylized stagey drama comes across as a specious subterfuge to hide the film’s propagandist objectives. This kind of deviousness contaminates and compromises the film's artistic integrity. The film is obviously sympathetic to the cause of the separatists and the Pakistani establishment.

As I said earlier, it endorses the perspectives and propaganda of ISI, Nawaz Sharief, and Hurriyat. It also derides AFSPA, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. In doing so, it belittles and demeans Indian Army, making it look like an occupation force. It romanticizes terrorists as devout heros fighting for a just cause against the might of Indian army. And if we read between the lines and interpret the metaphors in the film, we can clearly sense that it’s a treacherous call by an Indian filmmaker for Kashmir’s ‘azaadi’, funded with Indian money, and endorsed by the CBFC.

The tradition of Jai Chands and Mir Zafars continues to thrive in India irrespective of who rules in Delhi. Since the film is released on 2^ndOctober, on Gandhi’s Birth Anniversary, it reminds us of his approach to politics and life. He believed in tolerance and forgiveness. This is an India that is generously tolerant and forgiving to devious and wily enemies of our nation. We can even sing a prayer of praise to our killer and look at him in gratitude while he slowly severs our jugular vein, and bleeds us to death. That’s the kind of Gandhigiri we seem to be practicing.

Should I say kudos to the filmmakers, the CBFC, the I&B Minister, and those who will go gaga over the artistic merits of the film irrespective of the fact that it questions the nation’s territorial integrity, equips our enemies with potent propaganda ammunition and weapons, and portrays our men in uniform either as fools or monsters? I don’t think I can do that. Had the film tried to portray the actual reality of Kashmir and the devious ways our enemies adopt to bleed us and blackmail, discriminate, and browbeat Kashmiri Indians, it would have been valid art in my view since true art seeks the truth.  This is pure propaganda and thus worthless however good it looks.  

Rating: 0/5
Rajesh Kumar Singh (the author) is Editorial Consultant for Festivals and Markets for BollywoodTrade.com. He is a filmmaker, critic and market analyst. The information and views set out in this movie review are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the Publication/Organization. Neither the Publication/Organization nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.