Deconstructing PK

At the time of writing this, news are pouring in that all the previous box office records are shattered by PK, currently it is the only Hindi movie in 300 crore-club. The 'intellectual class' is genuflecting Aamir khan and Rajkumar Hirani for enlightening the masses about the social evils, superstitions and fraud gurus. The opinion about PK was swinging from critical acclaim to debunking it as trash. Well, I thought let me figure that out for myself. 

I assume you have watched the movie and thus I am saving the trouble of reviewing it. I read in some review that it’s a lift from the Robin Williams sitcom “Mork and Mindy” and adapted to Indian scenario. I’m not sure on that but its brief description looks like they are strikingly similar. Also, it goes without saying it has taken a lot from OMG! We will let that pass. In this post, I’ll try to focus on some of the issues raised in the movie.

The movie starts with making a caricature of what is perceived as popular Hinduism. It’s not the first movie to do so, of course. The director brings in the ‘godmen’, bhajans, bhakts and uses them to ridicule pop Hinduism. Sure, there are many fraudulent babas, gurus in present day India and there were such people in the past too. These kinds of people needs to be exposed for what they are, no doubt. But to paint all gurus as frauds is not only stupid but also malicious. 

In India, the Guru-Shishya parampara is held sacred from time immemorial and for a reason. In many ways, I can say this parampara is the bedrock of Hinduism. Hinduism, being a tradition which has open architecture gives people the freedom to choose whatever path they want. There is no ‘one book, one god, one messiah’ concoction in it. I guess the film makers have absolutely no issues about the faiths that administer such concoction. 

The never ending fixation with Pakistan

The heroine who is studying in Belgium falls in love with a Pakistani guy and they decide to get married. Situations force them to not get married by casting aspersions on his religion and nationality. Eventually he turns out to be a good guy after all. It has become the template of many Bollywood movies in which the heroine falls in love with a Pakistani guy. It’s difficult to understand Bollywood’s fixation and love with Pakistan and Pakistanis. It’s a subtle way of saying – “You idiots! Love knows no nationality or religion”. True, that. So romantic, you exclaim! Many Bollywood movie makers make the same job like some communist writers or naxal sympathizers do – to romanticize terror a serious issue and anyone associated with it. These are 'aman ki asha' type pacifists who advocate Gandhism even at the face of imminent death. To romanticize any issue is to kill it — in the sense, that romanticization disables the faculties to examine critical issues at hand. 

Inter-religious marriages

The portrayal of the heroine who falls in love with a Pakistani guy and the eventual turn of events is nothing but the synthetic pipedream of Hirani and his type of secularists. The parents of the heroine who happen to be Hindu object to the heroine’s desire of marrying a Pakistani and anyone with right mind would do exactly that. Forget Hindus objecting to getting their daughters married off to Pakistanis, I doubt whether even Indian Muslims can muster courage for such unnecessary adventures. The way in which it is showed out is completely divorced from reality and militates against common judgement. 

Let us ask this question – Are inter-religious marriages especially those of Hindu-Muslim so simple and based out of merely love? And no other issues involved and no implications at all? We need not go far. Just try to pick examples from the industry to which Rajkumar Hirani belongs to – Bollywood. Sharmila Tagore married MAK Pataudi and became Begum Ayesha Sultana, Amritha Singh had to convert to Islam before marrying Saif Ali Khan and there are examples of Lucky Ali and the likes. The cases where there was no need to convert, say like that of Mr. Sultan of Sanctimony Amir Khan, they would have expressed their desire explicitly of bringing up their kids as Muslims. Enough said. Needless to say, this is the case with the so-called ‘progressive’ Muslims.

The truth of the matter is Islam or Islamic law sharia’h to be specific, doesn’t recognize the marriage between a Muslim and a non-Muslim. Even if one marries, and refuses to convert, that marriage is unlawful according to Sharia’h. With Islam, it’s always one way street. You can get into it but can’t get out of it. This is one of the many truths that PK successfully covers up. 

Lampooning of Lord Shiva

The scene which has been the reason for the ire of many Hindus is the scene where Lord Shiva (from the protagonist’s point of view) is chased inside the toilet and also shown in his underwear. Lord Shiva is one of the important gods in the Hindu pantheon. In Yogic lore, he is considered the first and the supreme Yogi. Anyone who knows the stories of Shiva from the lore also knows that Shiva is beyond this dichotomy of good and bad, ugly and beautiful, he is often depicted as a cool man smoking chillum. So, he is a cool god. He, as with his followers would not give two hoots for this BS. He is not one of those jealous gods who might go into incessant fits and call for a divine retribution for the perceived blasphemy. Of course Hindus didn’t kill or threatened to kill Rajkumar Hirani for this. 

Self-criticism has remained the hallmark of Hindu society. Anyone who takes some pain in studying intellectual history of India would know this as a fact. Criticism is welcome. So, the issue here is not whether Hindus are offended or not by this but the dripping hypocrisy of the film makers. Any remotely similar treatment to the other revered religious figures like say Jesus or Muhammad would have had violent repercussions. With the former, the movie wouldn’t have got the clearance from censor board; with the latter the movie maker would have met his creator. They know it and they always go for the easy targets. No risks but full bounty. 

Idol worship

Idol worship is lampooned, caricatured to the cringing levels possible. In one of the scenes, the protagonist takes a stone and pastes the stone with the paan and keeps it in front of a college building. This he does to demonstrate the stupidity of the people that they worship anything. True to his claim, people worship. Ergo, people are stupid. Thus goes the argument and its interpretation. 

Now, why would anyone hate idol worship? We need to see the source of the hate of such proportions. It started with Old Testament. There are many verses in Leviticus, Ezekiel, Deuteronomy etc. which warn against the sins of idolatry and then there is the Quran – which has many injunctions to destroy idols. When the Islamic invasions happened, they didn’t just loot the temples but also destroyed all the idols and their action was not without any reason and the actions were divinely ordained.  

The fundamental difference in the position of god in Abrahamic faiths and Dharmic traditions is that, for Abrahamic faith there is a clear duality in god and his creation but whereas in case of Dharmic tradition, god is inherent in everything. Also, when a Hindu worships an idol, he is actually not worshipping that idol but the ideal i.e. god which is represented with that idol. It’s one of the ways of travelling in the path of the ultimate. There! There. You have a problem. You remember the ‘wrong number’ reference in the movie? The insinuation in often repeated reference is that there is ONLY ONE right number i.e only one right way. This is not rational speak. This is coming out from a closet Abrahamic memeplex point of view. 

Somehow, the intellectual class which includes even some well-meaning people has come to believe that there is something wrong with the multiple gods and idol worship but the concept of single god is just alright. But history demonstrates emphatically the faiths which indulged in idol worship were close to nature and never involved in violence to coerce others to their religion. But the religions which advocated in the doctrine of ‘one god, one prophet, one path and one book’ inflicted the greatest violence on the world and it bleeds the world to this very day. But hey, let truth and facts be damned! We are having a gala time and let’s enjoy till it lasts!

Double standards of Censor Board

There are so many things that can be said about the censor board, the system of rating a movie, the way in which the members of the board are appointed and the recently resigned chairperson, the ‘contrived political martyr’ Leela Samson. Leela Samson's crimes — both as the chairperson of CBFC and before assuming that position — are too many to list in a blogpost. Since these issues are beyond the scope of this post, I am not going into the details. 

 

For brevity’s sake let me sum it up – Censor board practiced different yardsticks, standards for different movies. The treatment that PK got was way different from the treatment that the movies like Ya rub, Vishwaroopam, or the recent one MSG got. It was so brazenly different. The best thing that can happen for Indian cinema is to scrap this whole farce called censor board.

In Conclusion

Now, how does these Bollywoodians get so much confidence that they assume the high pedestal and patronize and ‘educate’ Hindus about the ‘superstitions’ they are mired in? – It’s the ignorance of the Hindus they make use of. An average Hindu knows next to nothing about his own Dharma, forget knowing about hostile ideologies or predatory religions. This makes them unable to mount any kind of effective counter-arguments when their traditions, culture are falsely criticized. Many wear this ignorance as badge of honor and mistake it for scientific temper. They think the more vociferous they are in debunking the junk called ‘superstition’, the progressive they look. When they don’t have any knowledge of their tradition & culture, a sense of history, the easiest argument to fall back on is – “All religions are same” – the same cliché-ridden, banal statement which is not only erroneous but also dangerous.

It really doesn’t take any guts to come out with the work of art be it cinema, novel or whatever that are critical of Hindus and their beliefs because you can be cocksure that you won’t be killed or ostracized from the society or from your chosen area. Many regional language cinemas have done it and none of them have run into any trouble. But, it takes real guts to criticize the cherished beliefs of Islam and Christianity ; with the later, your work of art may be censured and with the former you may be killed! One could challenge these Bollywood filmmakers whether they have the mettle to criticize these two religions with the same fervor with which they have criticized Hinduism but knowing their so-called liberalism and the supposed courage is shallow and selective, you know well in advance that the supposed bet is absolutely winnable. 

The malaise is deep, the rot is deep. PK is just a symptom. With all the pomp, PK comes across as an average entertaining movie but tries to preach ‘gyan’ in the garb of being funny. Having said this, I along with many others am against banning of any movie including PK. One of the central ideas of free society is that there should free flow of opinions and ideas – however stupid they might be. And also there is no need to attribute any bad or evil motives to Rajkumar Hirani or Amir Khan in making this movie although there are many reasons to cast such aspersions. I am a firm adherent of this dictum – “Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence”!

Case against monotheism – A fountainhead of multitudes of ills

The common understanding of monotheism is that it’s a system of belief in one god. Well, that’s only partially correct. It’s a belief in one TRUE god is the complete truth. The emphasis on all three words makes sense – ‘ONE’ ‘TRUE’ ‘GOD’. It’s important that the god to the one – as he brooks no partnership of any kind, also he has to be true because the creed fears impostors and also he is THE GOD. This is the image of god that most of the dominant monotheistic faiths viz Islam, Judaism, Christianity etc profess.

As I mentioned in the very beginning, monotheism doesn’t only mean belief in one god but it also means intense hatred to any other gods. So, hatred is something inherent to the creed of monotheism. The prevalence of the spooky, imaginary creature, the bogeyman called the ‘satan’ and his eternal conflict with the god speaks about the never ending need of the monotheistic creed to hate something to keep the things going.

Monotheism rests on a set of belief system where most of them happen to be out and out irrational. For example, Christianity rests on ‘sin’, virgin birth of Christ; Islam rests on the revelation of Allah to Muhammad, Muhammad travelling with Gabriel to heaven on a horse and receiving revelations from Allah over a period of time. Monotheistic creeds are usually revealed creed. So, the votaries of the creed have to believe in each and every word of their canonical texts. 

Since the focus of this post is on the ills of monotheism, I’ll only stick to it. To begin with, monotheism hacks at the very roots of the most fundamental of human aspirations – Knowing oneself. That thirst of knowing the source of existence is inherent in every human being. Religions (Sic.) with open architecture provide the necessary means for the followers to find the answer. But, with monotheistic creeds one has to quench their thirst for knowledge by the ‘holy’ texts. Anything else amounts to blasphemy. An example of one Mansur Al-Hallaj should explain this or for that matter the burning the ‘witches’ at stake in Europe during the medieval times is a direct influence of blasphemy which in turn influenced by the fundamental tenet of monotheism. We would have seen a great number of seers in Muslim and Christian world if not for ossified monotheism.

As mentioned earlier, the holy texts of monotheism like Quran, bible are canonical i.e. they can’t be edited, deleted or added with. The followers believe the texts are the very words of god and hence, infallible. This belief removes all the possible doubts any reasonable mind possess for good or for worse, usually the latter. This is the main reason that mass killing, arson, rape and other atrocities in the name of religion get passed off as if there are nothing because all of them have divine sanction. Ask any Mujahiddin of ISIS or Boko Haram why he is doing what he is doing. He’ll show you perfect ayat and surah of Quran which completely condones and mandates his action. The so-called terrorists are straightforward and honest. They don’t hide their motives and their inspirations for their actions. It’s only the liberal-intellectuals who provide the smokescreen for the action and motive of terrorists who are confused.  

There is no ideology which has brought the amount of human suffering as the monotheistic ideology has brought. The closest ideology that comes in inflicting the magnitude of human bloodshed to monotheistic ideology is the ideology of communism. While communism is just around two centuries in existence whereas, monotheism is over a millennium in existence and hence the wreckage is naturally more. 

Monotheism has shunted the human growth – both at personal level and societal level. It is incompatible with science. Europe started walking in the path of progress when it cut loose of the Church and fundamental Christianity. The day it was in the stranglehold of church is aptly referred to as ‘the dark ages’. The eastern religions (Sic.) like Buddhism and Hinduism on the other hand, never had such issues ever. They were perfectly compatible with science and there was little difference between scientists and what we traditionally referred to as rishis. Monotheistic creed has been evil and destructive since its inception, it continues to this day and it will continue till its last breath. If there is indeed a god and he is just, I don’t think he can be kind to the founders of any monotheistic creeds.