Still? Innuma (இன்னுமா)?
Saket Raman (Kamal), gasping for breathe, minutes before he dies of old age, stuck inside a pit with his grandson (jr. Saket ram) and medical team, responds 'innuma'? when he is told about ongoing Hindu-Muslim communal riots.
It was not the 1940's. The date was December 6th of 1999. And cut to January 30th 2023,marking 75th year of Gandhi's assassination, seventy six years since independence and twenty-three years after Kamal Hassan's HEY RAM was released, the words Innuma?, continues to Revibrate.
Is it possible to discover a sense of truth and break dangerous stereotypes through cinema?
Can a movie transform the way an ordinary person views and perceives a countries inescapable history, politics, its figures, its events and the social impact of those?
Probably YES, in an universe where an incredible artist like Kamal Haasan exist!
It is not an error to say that Kamal Haasan's Hey Ram, is one of the most powerful pieces of cinema one will ever see.
I discovered HeyRam in 2015, followed by deep adoration for Kamal Haasan and longer ongoing interest in unraveling many layers of Gandhi. It is a difficult task to write about a film as multi-layered and deep as HEY RAM. Especially when the film has had a massive impact on oneself.
Hey Ram covers immense spectrum of themes and emotions. How hatred is born, how it is marinated, how it is blown up, indoctrinated on a micro and macro level, the futility of communalism, love, family and the inevitable price one has to pay, once you take a life. Nevertheless, there is no better day to write about the film, but on 75th anniversary of Gandhi's assassination.
Hey Ram, written and directed by Kamal Haasan, deals with the bloodiest and controversial parts of Modern India. Clocking in at nearly three-and-a-half hours, the film reflects on the country’s violent past. The riots that happened in the run-up to Partition, and its aftermath, which eventually took the life of Mahatma Gandhi.
It is not a biopic. It is a semi-fiction that runs parallel to major events that changed the history of the country. Hey Ram, is narrated entirely through Sakethraman's (played by Kamal Haasan) point of view.
Ram - a Friend, Lover, Murderer..
The story begins on the death bed of 89-year-old Saket Ram, played by Kamal. The film looks back at the turbulent period of 1946- 48. During this period of Indian history, the key word 'Partition` had set the country on fire. Saket and his close friend Amjad Ali Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) are archeologists, engaged in extensive investigations into the Indus Valley civilization and they discuss the then burning topic of the time - Partition. Both criticize the idea of Partition.
On leave from work, he goes home to Calcutta to visit his Bengali wife Aparna (Rani Mukerji). The song, Nee Partha Parvaikkoru Nandri, beautifully captures the passionate love between Ram and Aparna. One night, riots break out in the city, a group of Muslim men enter the house and tie Saketram up in a room, they assault Aparna and slit her throat, who succumbs to wounds before Ram manages to break in with a pistol.
As Aparna lies dead in a pool of blood, Ram, shocked and traumatized, limps through the streets of Calcutta the whole night, pistol in his hand looking for his wife's killers. As the roads burn, Ram witnesses Hindu Mob chasing Muslim men and Hindu girls running for their lives escaping from Muslim mob.
Ram on that night meets a radical extremist, Shriram Abhyankar who is on a 'hunt'. Delighted, Shriram asks Saket if he had a good time “hunting” . Saket is bewildered and explains that he was never like that and he was always a peace loving person. It was the murder of the wife that pushed him to this limit. Abhyankar interrupts him to tell Saket about a similar happening to his sister. He adds by telling that nobody naturally intends to kill, but it is the circumstances that push one to the drastic limits.
Abhyankar then asks Saket to point out who is responsible for all this loss. He asks him:
“Is it Bengal premier Suhrawardy?
No.
Is it Barrister Mohammad Ali Jinnah?
No.
There is only one man my friend.
Barrister Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
From the beginning, in the name of Khilafat movement and such stuff, he has nurtured the young green plant to make it a tree.”
The seed of radicalization is sown into Saket's mind and starting from that moment, Saket is convinced that Mahatma Gandhi is solely responsible for the riots and the result - REVENGE, Gandhi had to die. Meanwhile, Saket joins a secret extremist underground society in Maharashtra, that recruits Hindu victims to assassin Gandhi.
Influenced by extremist Shriram Abhyankar, Saket is chosen to assassinate Gandhi on an appropriate time. Meanwhile Ram leaves the Calcutta city, radicalized and traumatized both by the loss of his wife and the shock of being a murderer.
Mythili - torn between Past and new world..
Back home, Ram is emotionally blackmailed into marrying again. Young as she is, Mythili (vasundhara das) is an odd mixture of innocence and maturity, and is unquestioningly accepting of her new husband. However, little things remind Ram of Aparna, and of her horrifying death. His personal demons will never leave him. Meanwhile, the young innocent Mithili is a fan of Gandhi, so much so, that she sings Vaishnav janato (Gandhi's favorite song) and owns a copy of Gandhi's biography.
She now requests Saket to accept her as a friend (saki), (like the Krishna-Andal relationship) if not wife. She offers a handshake as Saket reciprocates. This is the first time they are close and come under the same depth in camera. Here, they are both physically and emotionally closer for the first time in the film. She then asks, if she can hug him. He accepts as if fulfilling a child’s petty wish. She hesitantly hugs him. He stares at her for a moment, relishing her child like innocence and her eagerness to bond but immediately feels guilty of not reciprocating the feeling.
He is not able to look into her eyes and looks down. The view of the toe ring on her feet just adds to the guilt. The sequence in the movie where Ram gets high on opiates and is seduced by the idea of terrorism, which is followed by Ram equating Sex with violence, is truly mind-boggling.
Saket and Mythili often get into arguments about Gandhi, as the movie establishes Mythili having a mind of her own, and not just reduced to an innocent young wife isolated from politics of that time. Saket points out to the newspaper headline that mithili is holding and asks her opinion about that quote by Gandhi. The headline reads “Protect Muslims in India and then alone would I go to Pakistan to protect the Hindus”. He is unhappy with Gandhi’s incessant support to the Muslims of India.
Mythili tells that whatever Mahatma says would have a firm reason and it would be beneficial to follow it, affirming the Southern image of Gandhi as a demi-god.
She adds that revenge will take one nowhere and one has to live in harmony.
While hate for gandhi brews in saket's mind, he couldn't escape but fall in love with Mythili.
In a beautifully captured scene, Mythili says that she is going to say something that her ancestors never would have said to their spouses and says “I love you”. Saket says he loves her too and that is why he is disturbed. He is not able to digest the fact that he is going to leave this innocent woman suffering in a few weeks to fulfill his mission to kill gandhi.
He sympathizes for the woman, whose innocence adds more and more to his guilt and he asks if he would find peace if he tells her everything about him. She asks him to tell her everything after he has met Abhyankar. Saket looks at the toe ring on his finger, removes it and slips it onto Mythili’s finger. This ironical shot not only shows his acceptance of Mythili as his wife but also the relinquishment of his last traces and his firm commitment to assassinating Gandhi.
I only know Ram..My brother...
“Forgive me for killing your Aparna. I forgive you for killing my father. Now will you accept me as your brother, Ram?”-
asks Amjad Ali Khan,(SRK) the old Pathan friend of SaketRam, who brings a transformation in the mental make-up of Saket, when their paths cross again, right before saket is set to execute assassination plan to kill Gandhi the following day. Saket is immensely moved by this statement.
He says that he is not here to kill Amjad, but the cause of all this – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Amjad is surprised at this and informs Saket that Gandhi is the only sanity in the country. If not for Gandhi, whatever peace is being maintained couldn’t have been possible.
As Amjad is shot down by a Hindu mob, Saket rushes Amjed to hospital. Saket enters the hospital where Amjad is. He sees children, women and old men – the innocents of the riot – struggling for life. He enters Amjad’s ward and sees an inspector inquiring him about the “man with the gun” Upon being asked if he has seen Bhairav(saket) earlier, Amjad replies-
“I’ve never seen that animal before! I only know Ram…my brother!”
And the man, who came remotely close to carrying out the task of executing Gandhi, transforms at the moment, as he watches his friend Amjad die in his arms. The rapid emotion of being torn between vengeance and sanity takes a final rest, as Saket rediscovers his humanity.
Discovering Mahatma...
Saket meets Gandhi after Amjad's death, but this time he is not there to kill Gandhi but to apologize. Gandhi consoles Amjad’s family and turns to Saket and tells-
“You know Ram… I am willing to take all this communal hatred in the form of a bullet if I am promised that along with that bullet, they will also bury this communal hatred, and live together as one community.”
These words resonate in Saket’s ears. Tears rush into his eyes. Saket watches Gandhiji go. We also notice the slow respect that is built for Gandhi in Saket, a reversal of the image he has formed of Gandhi in his mind. Gandhi is not a demon now.
He realizes that it is because of people like Gandhi that the country is surviving. He learns that his mission was a wrong one. He will not be the same person hereafter. He closes the gun case after placing the gun in it, metaphorically implying that he has put an end to his rage of violence which will be shut hereafter.
On January 30th,1948, as Gandhiji proceeds for his daily prayers, the crowd grows thicker. A man from the crowd approaches Gandhi and fires at him thrice, Gandhi collapses to the bullets, "Hey Ram” as believed by many to be his last words. The man who shot at Gandhi, was Nathu Ram Godse.
The mentality of Saket is most complex now. They say that you’ll know the value of things when they disappear. The same thing happens to Saket. As he sees Gandhiji being shot and killed, he is both furious that a man has done such a crime and frustrated that the mishap has occurred just when he had decided it should not. He sees blood of the Mahatma lying around. Saket goes back to the scene of murder and notices Gandhiji’s slippers and spectacles on the floor. He picks them up takes them with him.
GANDHI..
In social media's day and age, pumped by political propaganda and mock up alternative history, any decent discussion on Gandhi feels unthinkable. The young and ignorant old, are largely influenced by nasty WhatsApp forwards and YouTube propaganda as history lessons. All the stake holders involved seem to enter with their own set of prejudice and are driven solely by self interest, making it impossible to have critical discussion on Gandhi's role in shaping modern India.
Gandhi and his character was an extraordinarily mixed one, and I believe that even Gandhi's worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive.
Historians are of the opinion that, there was much Gandhi did not understand, but not that there was anything that he was frightened of saying or thinking. Gandhi's critics often criticize him of having stuck in past when the world was changing, and he went too far with his ideas on tolerance, but who can deny his adamant struggle against hatred and keeping the political air of his time disinfected.
His whole life was a sort of pilgrimage, a humble, semi-naked man, sitting on a praying mat, writing, fasting, and shaking empires by sheer spiritual power, was considered unworthy of living, and had to be killed as the likes of his killers were convinced, if the Hindu soul is to survive, this Mahatma had to die.
The idea of Gandhi will refuse to die as long as the quest to restore humanity and peace thrives, and moreover the assumption, which served Gandhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more or less approachable and will respond to generous gesture.
They say a picture is worth a 1000 words. Kamal Haasan has woven a film that is truly anti-violent and makes a heart felt appeal to stop the atrocities carried out in the name of God. The genius of Kamal Haasan, of keeping Saket Ram alive amidst the chaos is a thing of beauty!
Truth does not cry, Truth does not comfort us. It is with us. It is us.
