Music and Terror - Ratnam and Rahman's philosophy of love! Part-1

From the early nineties, India began to go through a lot of political instability. The Kashmir dispute, the Hindu-Muslim riots, the North-East Indian independence struggle - all combined to redefine India as a country. Since cinema is a very big medium in the Indian subcontinent, it was very natural for the producers to try to bring up the situation at that time.

In between, Mani Ratnam selected three topics very carefully. He put a love story in the midst of every crisis and took cinematographer Santosh Shivan (Roza and Dil Se) and young music composer AR Rahman as partners to publish it. Rahman then earned a good name by jingling. Watching Mani Ratnam's movies, viewers will be hesitant to call it a political film or a love story. Because both people go with his movie. And if there is AR Rahman, he has no hesitation in calling the movie musical.

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If you want to make a movie with the political context of the country, a director has to be very clever because if you move a little here and there, the feelings of any tribe, any religion, any person can be hurt. Mani Ratnam first chose the context of Kashmir to tell his political stories. The main reason for taking the context of Kashmir is that the common people of Tamil Nadu are not yet very familiar with Kashmir. The politics of Kashmir did not attract them then. The natural beauty of Kashmir has not caught the eye of many Indians. If we want to create a story in the context of Kashmir, we have to show the real form of instability in Kashmir.
Inspired by the kidnapping of an Indian Oil Corporation executive by Kashmiri militants in 1991, Mani Ratnam wrote the story for the movie 'Rosa'. The main character is Roza, and her husband, cryptologist Rishi Kumar, is abducted. Around the abduction, Mani Ratnam painted a picture of Kashmir and the political instability in Kashmir.

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Through the long montage at the beginning of the movie, we see the clash between a terrorist group and the police and finally the capture of a terrorist. At the beginning of the movie, Mani Ratnam instructs that this instability will change the course of the story. Rishi Kumar is a simple government servant but his love for the country is unwavering. So he did not hesitate to go to Kashmir with his fiance to help the Indian Army break the code. There, when Rishi Kumar was abducted, Mani Ratnam showed a real picture of terrorism in Kashmir. The ordinary Kashmiri people who live in the midst of the conflict between India-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir take up arms to get justice, an independent territory. One side declares war on the other side.
We see a group of brainwashed terrorists of the Pakistan Army taking Rishi Kumar hostage and demanding the release of their comrade Wasim Khan. He is Liaquat, the head of the terrorist group, and his eyes are full of hatred against India. But Rishi Kumar discovers that these people around him are actually brainwashed. If they fight for Pakistan, they will get an independent territory. But when the Pak army killed the young men of the village, including the brother of the terrorist leader Liaquat, while crossing the Pakistan border, Liaquat realized that they were actually fighting for others. They are neither from India nor from Pakistan.

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Mani Ratnam wanted to show terrorism and showed a humane story, showed patriotism. He could show jingoism if he wanted to, like in today's movies, he could show that the army-police are going to kill the terrorists, and protect India. But he has shown that both sides have stories to tell. He did not make Liaquat a lover of India but explored the conscious form of humanity within Liaquat. He said that the political instability in Kashmir will not end with arms, it will not end with blame, but peace will return only when this misunderstanding ends. Southern visitors have also discovered the natural beauty of Kashmir through the eyes of Rosa. Visitors do not get to see Kashmir, the horrible and beautiful form of Kashmir until they see Ramadan. Mani Ratnam and Santosh Shivan have shown Kashmir, saying that the whole country needs to know the black behind the light.
Hindu-Muslim riots are nothing new in the Indian subcontinent. But in the late 1990s, the Hindu-Muslim riots over the Babri Masjid, a train blast in Mumbai, seemed to resurface. Mani Ratnam wrote the story of Bombay centering on that difficult time. Returning to Bombay, Shekhar grabbed his hand and entered the story. Shekhar, a son of a Brahmin family in Tamil Nadu, is a reflection of Mani Ratnam's free-thinking. Long before the Hindu-Muslim issue came up, the people of South India at first expressed their negative attitude towards the people of North India without any hesitation. Please also point out the contradictions that are coming up. These issues seem to point the finger at India's hundreds of years of racism, caste discrimination, religious discrimination.

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Sheila Banu of the Muslim family fell in love with Shekhar of the Brahmin family. Capitalizing on the love between Shekhar and Shaila Banu, Mani Ratnam highlights the conflict between the two families in the first part of the story and the conflict between the two countries in Bombay in the second part. When Shekhar repeatedly says at the beginning of the story that Bombay has come a long way, there is no orthodoxy in Bombay, they seem to be slapped one after the other in the second part of the story. The whole country was shocked by the train blast, the destruction of Babri Masjid, the most upset was in Bombay. Hindus say there is no place for Muslims in this country and Muslims say how dare Hindus demolish Babri Masjid. Burning each other's houses, bloodshed with swords and tridents, as if medieval barbarism descended on so-called modern Bombay. Mani Ratnam has shown all this instability through the eyes of Shekhar and Shayla. Those who were living a secular life themselves also named their two children Kamal Bashir and Kabir Narayanan.
At that time, the police and the media also showed glimpses of the indifferent form from time to time. Shekhar and Shaila's fathers have also pointed out the way out of the horror of the futile Hindu-Muslim struggle that Mani Ratnam is looking for in this movie. Just as Narayana and Bashir forget all their differences and live in the same house with each other, so the Hindus and Muslims of India must also unite. Then this quarrel, this division can no longer be separated by anything. However, no one still knows when that unity will come.

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In the midst of Hindu-Muslim riots, the Kashmir issue, the Indo-China crisis, the instability in Northeast India never comes up like that. But this part of India has been fighting for independence for the longest time. The Indian government has never given autonomy to the nine states connected by the 14-mile-wide Siliguri corridor, let alone independence. For years, millions of people in the region have been fighting for independence with the Indian government and army. Some are also inciting terrorism in those areas. Mani Ratnam has made this instability his companion in the movie Dil. Perhaps his first Hindi language film, Broad Audience, was to bring this subject to life.
With the immortality of All India Radio, the viewers can also take the Barak Valley Express to Silchar in Assam. Immortal, who went to India to know the feelings and emotions of the people there about India's Independence Day, basically brings back a lot of complaints, accusations, and anger. Even the head of the extremist group made it clear in an interview that the cause of poverty and human rights violations in the region is the government of India. They do not want to spend any money on the development of the region. They are not willing to sit in any kind of discussion with the government. From this, it is understood how much anger has accumulated among the people there.

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We see Meghna in this movie. A mysterious character, Meghna is understood from the beginning to be part of the extremist group. It is revealed to the audience, even if the immortal does not know. He and his family were victims of inhumane violence as a child, and he has been vindictive ever since. We see Meghna and some of her associates in Delhi. Mani Ratnam points out to the audience how people in a region can be cornered and later brainwashed to come to the Indian capital Delhi and carry out a suicide bombing on the eve of Independence Day. The distance between the government and the marginalized people of the country, the treatment of the CBI-police-army as direct terrorists, and the inequality among the people in different parts of the country all came up in the film in a beautiful way.
Mani Ratnam has carefully drawn a map of India through these three movies in perfect weaving. On the map there is Kashmir, there is Tamil Nadu, there is Bombay, there is Assam, there is Delhi. Mani Ratnam has attached all the parts of East-West-North-South, but that pair is with blood. He painted a picture of how the people of the same country are soaking their hands in each other's blood by capitalizing on politics, terrorism, religion, and caste hatred. If Mani Ratnam wanted, he could only tell the story of this unrest in these three movies. But he also found relief in the midst of this instability. Finding this comfort in love. The gentle form of love that he has shown in these three movies, Rosa, Bombay, and Dil, can calm this turbulent sea in an instant.