With the tagline “A Generation Awakens,” Bollywoodblockbuster ‘Rang De Basanti’ RDB (2006) invited a lot of debate by raisingintertwined themes of youth, disenchantment, and rebellion.
For majority of audience, especially youth, it did touch anerve. The sense of heightened activism clubbed with a concern for thedeteriorating system around, created audible waves. Nonetheless, a few criticsquestioned the very purpose of making such type of political movie for a”generation of urban youth which had no campus radicalization, is largelydisconnected from the public sphere by private aspirations, and derives its ideasabout politics from television.” They lambasted RDB for triggering FlashActivism into the fore. One critic curtly remarked, “To be awakened from aslumber of indifference is one thing, but to be awakened and almost hypnotizedin the darkness of a theatre, where your senses are under complete control ofthe maker, and preached ‘what you cannot tolerate, do away with’, isHitler-ish”. Amidst a range of reviews, RDB eventually ended up as anexpression of numerous contradictions—social and political.
Stephen Duncombe in his book Dream outlines a theory of”dreampolitik,” that calls for progressive political and activist groups toembrace the appeal of fantasy. He argues, “instead of asking for sacrifice, wecould try appealing to people’s hopes and dreams, weaving them into a tale thatends with their lives being better than they are now.” This is exactly how andwhy fantasies/stories motivate people, especially youth, using different formsof media as a medium. Stuff like RDB are its cinematic manifestation. Powers orplayers, that may be, reach the youth through various media and make them theliving laboratories of ideas/ideologies, and play politics more like avideo-game. And if the target group lacks moors—historical, political orreligious—then the job of roping them up is not so strenuous.
In Kashmir, it has been generally observed that in thefantasy of ‘battling’ against the system, the youth are usually drawn into afight that is politically personal, eventually. Under the garb of many slogans andtags, youth are allured towards concepts that are not just manipulative but areexploitative as well. That’s why, they are ridiculously pigeonholed intocertain ‘genres’ as and when required.
The term ‘student politics’ here is as baffling as the shrinkingof native Dal Lake. So far, no one could precisely explain the slow death ofthe lake and no measures have proven successful in salvaging it. Reeling underthe stench and stink, it however continues to attract people by its superficiallook. Similarly, student politics here is a phenomenon that met a toxic killingsome decades ago, and it could not be resuscitated to its original form everagain. Of course, it is flogged up whenever it meant to do more with ‘politics’than with the students who are usually swayed by ‘flash activism’ because ofinsufficient understanding of their history and society.
Rightly said, thereis a potential inferno in the backdrop of every classroom. However, thatinferno is well defined and well justified for those who visit the classroom.For a non-serious pack who know everything but their classroom, playing’politics’ is the right short-cut to aneasy life that slaps bitter lessons in the long run.
Bottomline: Classroom will retain its power, come what may.Torrents of time can turn up the different chapters, throwing up contradictionswithin and without. Campuses may or may not be permitted to be the breedinggrounds for future politicians, but for coming generations, the “selectivecampus politics” can steer nothing beyond a sense of disgruntlement. And withmedia in the setting, pushing its agendas, this all will be all the moredreadful as, to quote Duncombe, ‘fantasy and spectacle are becoming theproperty of fascism’.