The Kerala Story unit returns, this time to focus on the evils of the ‘Maoists’ who tramp up and down with impunity down their ‘red corridor’, hacking to pieces anyone who dares to claim loyalty to the Indian flag, backed by ‘leftists, media, Bollywood, NGOs’, and a certain university whose name starts with J and ends with U, and is muted sufficiently so that everyone can hear it loud and clear.
Just like in their previous film which used sliding numbers to press their point home, Bastar, The Naxal Story repeats this line: ‘50,000 to 60,000 innocents have been killed since the advent of these Maoists’, fuelled by the Lashkar and LTTE, as well as other global terrorist outfits.
And just to make sure that there’s no confusion in our minds, one such killing takes place in the opening moments of the film. A ‘Naxalite’ leader (Krishna) takes an axe and goes hack, hack, hack, one limb falling after another, blood spraying, till there is nothing left of the body but pieces, while the victim’s wife and daughter are made to watch. I’m finding it hard to write this. Watching this is beyond terrible, but the filmmakers are determined that neither they nor their camera will blink.
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To expect any kind of nuance from the makers of The Kerala Story would have been a stretch. Bastar is more of the same. When IPS officer Neerja Madhavan’s (Sharma) thunders that she wants to shoot all ‘these left liberals’, she means everyone of similar persuasion. The film is clear about everyone it wants to paint pitch-black: the sleeveless-blouse sporting journalist (Sen) is a venal Maoist-sympathiser, and along with the smirking female lawyer (Shukla) who fights the case for the ban on Salwa Judum (the organisation created to fight Naxalism at the grass-roots but was disbanded later), whose leader here is played by Kadam.
It’s nobody’s case that there hasn’t been unconscionable violence wrecked by the Maoist outfits in Bastar. But the film is uninterested in delving deeper to find out the root-cause of the Maoist influence in the region: what was the contribution of the state, and other private parties? The killing of the 76 CRPF jawans is a horrific fact, and that is used to propel Madhavan’s tirades against anyone who doesn’t see it the way she does. The victim’s wife (Tiwari) is recruited: how else will she get revenge? Songs in a university amphitheatre in Delhi alternate between revelry in a Maoist camp in Dantewada, or at any rate somewhere in Chhattisgarh: in the film’s universe, the students and hackers are the same.
How did they manage to leave out a mention of the ‘Khan Market gang’? Tsk.
Bastar The Naxal Story movie cast: Adah Sharma, Indira Tiwari, Shilpa Shukla, Raima Sen, Vijay Krishna, Yashpal Sharma, Subrat Dutt, Anangsha Biswas, Kishor Kadam
Bastar The Naxal Story movie director: Sudipto Sen
Bastar The Naxal Story movie rating: Half star
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