A lot of my friends here have written reviews and thoughts on the film <>Rang De Basanti</i>. Ever since I saw the film three Sundays back, I have been meaning to post my thoughts on this. But for one reason or another (mainly procrastination) I had not got around to it till now.

In replying to mannu's post Rang De Basanti is so 1920s prasun writes:

I think a lot of people have misunderstood the movie. [...] it does not advocate violence. Quite the contrary - it depicts the futility of it.

I agree with Prasun. I would go a step further to say that it advocates the futility of trying to bring about a change.

For me the message conveyed seems to be that Bhagat Singh & friends wanted to get the nation up on its feet and rake up a revolution like never before through their sacrifice; Something that did not quite happen, at least not to the extent intended.

For starters, the deeds of Bhagat Singh and his revolutionary comrades, for everything it was worth, is not propogated to be on par of the efforts of the Congress leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, et al.

We can of course blame the INC for that... but they are not the only ones to blame.

The school text books still refer (if they do) to Lal-Bal-Pal combine (and of course the legendary Azad) as "Extremists" as against the "Moderates" led by Gandhi. A term originally applied by the British, still carried on blindly, rather than the more apt and correct term - revolutionary. After all, these were the proponents of Inquilaab.

As once portrayed by Anand Patwardhan in a film, the deeds of Bhagat Singh are mostly unknown or forgotten -- a fact that changed a little after the spurt of Hindi films on the life of Bhagat Singh in the recent past.

This has been stated very clearly in the very first scene of Rang De Basanti: "Gandhi sells. Who is this Bhagat Singh?"

Thus, to me, the efforts of a group of friends (who are metaphorically compared to the legendary revolutionaries) is also shown to be futile...

AN AFTER THOUGHT:

But then the fact that we are all discussing so much about this film and what message is conveys, surely conveys that it has stirred up some emotion (good/bad) inside us.

I now remain optimistic that some of this newfound energy will be channeled towards nation building. Something India needs badly, and fast.

Nakul