[Reader-list] Hey Ram

[Shekhar Krishnan]

Dear Rehan:

I am happy that someone is being more sensitive to the content of Hey 
Ram and its explorations of the extremist imagination, rather than 
spending time wondering about the position of the film-maker with 
regard to his work.

I found Hey Ram a deeply disturbing, ambiguous, and compelling film, 
one of the best treatments of extremist subjectivity I have seen in a 
while. I would however disagree that Hasan does not portray Gandhi as 
he actually was, in which context you mention Attenborough's film. 
The Gandhi portrayed in Hey Ram, enacted by Naseeruddin Shah, is both 
the Gandhi vilified by the Hindu Right, as well as by many other 
critical discourses within the nationalist tradition. Did anyone ever 
notice that Naseeruddin Shah plays the same wily bania Gandhi in 
Jabbar Patel's Ambedkar, a film released within a year of Hey Ram? Or 
that Gandhi was also portrayed in similar terms in Jinnah?

I remember a conversation that we had at SARAI last year, when the 
discussion of Hey Ram came up. I thought it might be good to look at 
Hey Ram against these other films, Ambedkar and Jinnah, to understand 
what Ravi Vasudevan was saying about submerged discourses within 
nationalism which are now finding public articulation. It would be a 
shame if we didn't listen to these more closely.



Shekhar
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Shekhar Krishnan
9, Supriya, 2nd Floor
Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road No.4
Dadar, Bombay 400014
India