The Incomprehensible India

I just saw the notoriously flamboyant Samajwadi Party politician Amar Singh shooting for a Bengali film in Kolkata! Interesting? Of course. Wait, as the plot further thickens. He is shooting for a film that tells the story of a woman who, after being victimized by the 'system', takes the help of Naxalites for her revenge and justice. Guess who is playing the woman? His party colleague and one of the most beautiful faces of both Indian politics as well as cinema, Jaya Prada.

This is one of the many examples of an incomprehensible India for me. In a way, I celebrate this incomprehensibility. Things that get fossilized into a fixed meaning or signification are, for lack of a better word, dangerous. Republican or Democrat is dangerous, as is the hugely expensive farce of an American democracy. East or West is dangerous, and so is Black or White. India, on the other hand, with its myriad contradictions, comes as a relief to me.

That explains my strange sense of comfort at seeing Amar Singh or Jaya Prada act in a film that glorifies Naxalism. In Parliament, they might sit in their 'fixed' corners and among their fellow partymen. In elections, they will stand for their own party and its candidates, never failing to smear their opponents, especially if they are from the extreme left of the Naxal kind. In an India that projects itself as the next economic superpower and divides itself into a new category of SEZs and non-SEZs land, Naxalism and its brand of politics has to be disgusting. But a film? Oh, that's a different territory, quite literally. I have a strong feeling that these two actors-cum-politicians will even get away with the act, with no mainstream media interested in this heartening contradiction.

This explains why Congress resembles BJP at certain times and places. Or worse still, CPM resembles BJP and Congress at other places (called Nandigram and Singur for the uninitiated). That explains why a hardcore Dalit politician called Mayawati gets away with the most astonishing flip-flop of India's political theatre and becomes the darling of Brahmins in Uttar Pradesh. It even explains how a slogan like 'Chak De India', created explicitly to challenge the imperialism of cricket in India and restore its national game, becomes the war-cry of cricket-crazy fans when Yuvraj hits sixes. No questions asked... no eyebrows raised... the spectacle called India continues.

I can think of numerous other examples. How about a nation with the largest number of female Gods as well as one of the most dismal records of gender justice? How about the contradiction of all contradictions - one India contradicting the other? As Amitabh Bachchan says in one of his many celebratory spots on 'India Shining' - "there is one India that dreams, and the other India that hopes"!

The incomprehensibility continues, no matter which side you choose.