Propaganda premiere

NEW DELHI: We know from the electoral bonds data that funds ladled out to the BJP exceed the trickle served to the other parties by at least a factor of four. But this reckoning does not include the assistance received in kind by the ruling party through other channels, visible and invisible. If you threw in the worth of the propaganda contributed by the film industry, the media and the government’s own publicity arms, you would get a real sense of the lop-sided contest this election is, as the Prime Minister never tires of telling us.

The film industry in particular has been cranked up for this election season like never before. At least a dozen major feature films propagating the BJP’s ideas have already been released or are scheduled to be released in the next 10 weeks. Although made by different producers, the timing and the themes they address indicate they are part of one big campaign aimed at penning voters into one perception. Like time-release medication, the films deliver their dosage into the electorate’s bloodstream at regular intervals. Taken together, the Modi-friendly films of Election 2024 deal with the whole hive of bees in the BJP’s bonnet and attack the whole basket of its hate figures.

So, Article 370, winner of a five-star review by the PM, goes after the familiar hate figure of Muslim terrorists in Kashmir. JNU, short for Jahangir National University, trains its sights on left-wing liberals who, ostensibly, are found in abundance there. Bastar is targeted at Naxalites in the tribal heartland of India. Sabarmati Report and Accident or Conspiracy: Godhra try to refresh the narrative—for the benefit of the new generation—on the 2002 S6 train tragedy and the Gujarat communal carnage that followed. Razakar looks selectively at the atrocities committed upon Hindus by the Nizam’s militia before Hyderabad’s integration into the Indian union but not the communal violence unleashed upon Muslims in Hyderabad-Karnataka or the feudal state killings of peasant revolutionaries.

Also coming up is a film aimed at promoting the Sangh Parivar’s dearest desire: To paint VD Savarkar as a freedom fighter surpassing Mahatma Gandhi. Without a word, the promo for Swatantra Veer Savarkar expresses its true intent. It begins with a slow, progressive render of a pair of Windsor eyeglasses popular in the early 20th century. As Gandhi’s favourite bhajan Vaishnav Jan To Tene Kahiye plays in the background, it traces the familiar outline of a round head, and you expect a saintly image to form. But the final reveal is of Savarkar, who also favoured such spectacles. The following voiceover leaves little to the imagination: Had Savarkar had his way, India would have won its freedom thirty years earlier.

Using feature films as a campaign medium is a BJP contribution to Indian elections. Without appearing on the Election Commission’s radar, they work on the mind of the voter and rearrange the furniture inside. But as any student of European fascism will tell you, the BJP’s purpose in using films goes far beyond elections. Look no further than the crown jewel of propaganda films — Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), commissioned by the Fuhrer himself. The rash of false films we are being subjected to in this election is not only meant to swing our vote but to make us a different people.