Wednesday, October 17, 2012

American Beauty review

American Beauty (1999)

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Chris Cooper, Thora Birch, Mena Suvari, Wes Bentley
Director: Sam Mendes

How about a film, whose leading protagonist is neither a good looking kick ass hero nor a genius whom the world admires? Leave that, the protagonist here is not even a role model for his own family, but is abhorred by him and is a somewhat defeated person, with no spark left in him and in severe midlife crisis? Can such a film be both a classic and a box office sensation?
Is it a comedy, drama, satire , thriller, skin flick , fantasy or a moral tale?
Maybe all of the above.

The events are narrated by the deceased Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), who tells the story of the last year of his life. “In less than a year, I’ll be dead. And in a way, I’m dead already”, he begins. Whacking off in the shower is his “highlight of the day”. Outwardly appearing as living an ideal suburban life, 42 year old Lester’s life is anything but ideal. Stuck in a dead end advertising job for the last 15 years, he is a literal punching bag for  his materialistic and pretentious wife Carolyn (Annette Bening), who has shunned him both emotionally and physically,  and finds no place in his introvert daughter Jane’s (Thora Birch) life, who hates both her parents. Carolyn abhors him for his lowly prospects and Jane thinks that he is just disgusting.

Lester is one day asked to write a self appraisal to show his utility for the company. This makes Carolyn’s behaviour even more insulting towards him. Suddenly, Lester’s world is turned upside down when he sees Jane’s extrovert and flashy friend Angela (Mena Suvari) during Jane’s cheerleading performance and instantly begins lusting after her. Angela soon becomes aware of this and cruelly encourages him.

A new family has moves next door, that of the retired Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper), a homophobic  disciplinarian with a traumatized wife and a psychologically disturbed son Vicky (Wes Bentley), whose weird hobby includes filming everything. Unknown to his family, Ricky makes a living as  a marijuana seller . He becomes infatuated with Jane and begins stalking her  and filming her without her knowledge, and she is secretly pleased that someone is attracted to her. He soon becomes friends with Lester, who becomes his regular client.  Lester’s attraction of Angela has somehow made him a confident and outspoken person who doesn’t care about Carolyn’s opinions anymore. He beings smoking pot and works out regularly. He even trades his Toyota Camry for a 1970 Pontiac Firebird.

 On one particular day, three big events happen which determine the fate of the film’s characters. Lester, fuelled by his newly acquired confident personality, quits his job after blackmailing his company for a year’s salary with benefits (he knows about a director availing escort service with company’s funds), and joins as an attendant at a drive in restaurant to have a job with the least possible responsibilities. Carolyn starts an affair with her professional rival Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher)  . Ricky and Jane begin a relationship.
 Lester finally stands upto  Carolyn for the first time in his life, when she berates him for losing his job. He knows that all his attempts to find any place in the lives of either his wife or daughter are useless and the least he can do is have a happy life for himself.

Spoiler

The second half of the film covers the last day of Lester’s life.
He and Angela flirt with each other much to Jane’s disgust. He signals to Ricky to call him  (for marijuana delivery) as he leaves for his job which catches Frank’s eye. He decides to investigate by searching Ricky’s room, and finds the video of a nude Lester working out in Ricky’s camcorder (which Ricky had accidentally filmed days earlier due to his obsession of filming Jane) and deduces that his son is a  homosexual (he mistakenly has been suspecting Lester being a homosexual as well because he has seen him jogging with a neighbourhood gay couple).  Carolyn and Buddy  drive into the same drive in restaurant where Lester works, and he coolly serves them even after catching the two red handed. Carolyn is  severely hurt by Lester’s indifference than the fact that she has been caught in the act. Buddy promptly breaks off the relationship, leaving Carolyn distraught. She is shown to load her gun while driving back home.

Back home, Lester calls Ricky as his marijuana has run out. Frank  spies on them through the window and mistakes their meeting for a sexual encounter. When Ricky returns, he beats him up severely and demands an explanation. Ricky, already sick of his overbearing father, lies to him that he works as a prostitute which causes Frank to throw him out of the house. Ricky goes to Lester’s house and asks Jane to leave with him and she readily agrees. Angela who is present there tries to discourage her and both Ricky and Jane shout her down.  

Frank visits Lester and asks him about his wife’s whereabouts. He replies that she’s probably with her boyfriend and he doesn’t care  as his marriage is just a sham. This reply turns Frank’s doubts into certainty. Suddenly, he kisses Lester, thereby revealing that his homophobic personality is a mere cover for his true self. Lester pulls him off and Frank leaves without another word.

Lester finds an upset Angela crying on the stairs. She asks him to tell her she is beautiful. He does, and they kiss. His dream of having the object of his desire is almost complete when Angela reveals that she is nothing like her projected slutty image and is actually a virgin. Lester suddenly sees her as a daughter and realizes that he has been wrong in lusting after her. He embraces her like a child, comforts her and the pair bond over their shared frustrations. He is pleased to know from her that Jane is in love. Angela then excuses herself to the restroom leaving a content Lester, whose life has now come to a full circle. He feels no remorse but only gladness at spurning the object of his desire. He picks up a family photograph of everyone together and gazes contently into it. A barrel of a gun appears behind his head as the camera moves away. A shot is heard and his blood is splattered on the wall. Ricky and Jane come down from their room and find Lester’s body in a pool of blood.

Lester in a final voiceover says that all his life has flashed before him at the moment of his death. (The reaction of the each of the rest of the characters is shown, when the shot rings out. Angela startled on hearing the gunshot, Carolyn devastated, and Frank changing his blood splattered  shirt, revealed to be the killer). His dying thoughts revolve around his childhood memories, Carolyn and Jane. He feels no regrets and finds it hard to be angry with what happened with him when there is so much beauty in the world. He is grateful for every moment of his short and stupid life. He concludes by saying that the viewers may not understand a word that he’s saying, but someday they will.

 Spoiler end

Look closer , the film’s caption says. Everything is not what it appears to be. The Burnham’s house is full of smiling and happy family photographs but the atmosphere in the house is anything but that. The prosperous looking neighbourhood is eerily silent, whether it be the sorrowful atmosphere in the Burnham household or  macabre in the Fritts one. Beneath the smiling faces, there is just pretentiousness or insecurity. Everyone practically lives life as a lie. Spoiler Carolyn’s fake self esteem is just a cover to hide her dissatisfaction and hate for her job. Frank’s homophobia is a cover to hide his own homosexual tendencies. Angela’s dirty talk and loose image is just a pathetic attempt by her to be seen as a glam doll. Jane while projecting herself to be aloof suffers from low self esteem and feels jealous of the extrovert Angela. The only person content and happy in the end is Lester, inspite of his life’s journey coming to a cruel and abrupt end. Spoiler end

The false image of  of happy suburbian middle class life in America (or anywhere else) lies shattered, and the film serves as an attempt to state life’s meaning, as a person’s wish to break free out of a mundane, materialistic existence , or simply that there is more to life than material stuff  or status symbols  like a particular job or social standing.

The film was the biggest hit of the year, raking in almost 2400% ROI. Sam Mendes couldn’t have asked for a better debut in Hollywood, with his film sweeping all the major awards, including five Oscars, best director for him, Best Actor for Kevin Spacey and best film. His direction is flawless, as he peels away the pompous layers of each character to reveal their vulnerable selves. He uses symbols like rose petals to depict Lester’s sexual fantasies of Angela or rain to show impending death. It simply isn’t meant for family viewing, like most great films ,and also stands out for the fact that it doesn’t patronize any character in it , trying to manipulate the viewer into backing him or her. Everyone is right from his/her point of view, and everyone faces the consequences of their actions. The script is great for not giving the film a forced happy ending, in order to give the real message of the film- Ultimate freedom comes at an ultimate price.

Among the cast,the film belongs to Kevin Spacey. As Lester Burnham, he has portrayed beautifully the very vulnerable and a very ordinary person prone to weakness and temptation, but yet remains a good human being who only wants  a more dignified and fulfilling life. Whats remarkable is that the role of Lester Burnham came to him after it was turned down by various bigger actors of 1990s, John Travolta and Bruce Willis being among the names.  Today with his Hollywood career shattered due to sexual harassment allegation claims, but that will never take away what he did in this role.
 Annette Bening is excellent as the materialistic and superfluous Carolyn who’s become a bot focussed on motivational tapes, expensive sofas and sales targets, and who in fact is a much sorrier figure than Lester. Chris Cooper is brilliant as the pathetically rigid and hypocrite Frank Fritts. Mena Suvari, Thora Birch and Wes Bentley are good in their roles and sadly couldn’t build on their success from this film.
There is beauty all over this film. Watch. And look closer.


Sunday, October 14, 2012

Goodfellas review


Goodfellas (1990)

Cast:  Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta,Lorraine Braco, Paul Sorvino

Director: Martin Scorsese

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster."

With this background narration from Henry Hill (while he is closing the trunk lid to conceal a bloodied dying Billy Batts ) opens Martin Scorsese's gangster classic Goodfellas, which is based on the true story of Henry Hill's and his associates's  rise and fall in the Luchesse crime family in the period 1955-80.

Growing up in a Bronx neighbourhood in 1950s the young Henry Hill always admired gangsters (for me, being a gangster was bigger than being the president of USA), who according to him lived the ideal life as it can be. He soon quits school and joins the Luchesse crime family under the guardianship of Paul Cicero aka Paulie (Paul Sorvino) , where he rises quickly doing things like distributing the "cuts" to the people that matter from policemen to union leaders and collecting protection money. He meets a very influntial part of the gang Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro) whose main work is hijacking cargo trucks and both quickly take liking to each other. Henry learns the biggest rule of a crime life from Jimmy when he is paroled after being arrested - "Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut". Henry earns the respect of all the gang members as he didnt give them away and his road to big riches is opened.

In the 60s, a now adult Henry(Ray Liotta) alongwith Tommy Vito (Joe Pesci),an increasingly psychopathic gangster and Jimmy, make a formidable trio to spread the gang's influence.But both Jimmy and Henry know that they dont have any chance of rising up the ranks of the crime family as they arent Italians.Henry,Tommy and others hang around with numerous women in nightclubs in an intimidating manner (If we wanted something, we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again.) In a tragicomic twist, the owner of a nightclub who is sick of Tommy's armtwisting ranging from non payments of dues to physical assault, begs Paulie to become a partner, hoping that this would save him. Paulie instead takes an unreasonable share in everything and bleeds the place dry leaving the owner with no other option but to burn the whole place down (ironically with Henry and Tommy doing the honours) in order to collect the insurance money.

In 1967, Henry successfully carries out the Air France Robbery with Tommy , thereby making his entry into bigtime crime. Henry attracts the attention of  and later marries a neighbourhood Jewish girl Karen (Lorraine Bracco) who is bowled over by his glamourous lifestyle. She accepts her husband's crime filled life, which includes socializing solely with his gangster collegues  to his long abscences and occasional  police searches at their residence, mostly because it is giving her an opulent living.  

In 1970, Tommy's overtly violent behaviour causes mayhem when he brutally beats Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) for insulting his poor origins, Jimmy too taking part in the assault. They are clearly in trouble as Batts is a "made man" in the Gambino crime family and the three could be killed for laying their hands on him. They decide to get rid of him, stopping midway to finish off the half alive Batts (the first scene of the film) and then burying the corpse in the outskirts of the city, even stopping to have a meal in Tommy's house en route . A few months later, they are forced to exhume and rebury the decomposed corpse elsewhere as they come to know that excavation will be carried out in the land due to a new construction project.

Like others in the gang, Henry too is two timing his wife (Friday was for the girlfriends, Saturday for the wives) and soon takes a mistress. In a memorable scene when Karen pulls a gun on him, he overpowers her and tells her that he has bigger worries than her, like getting killed on the street. Paulie meets him and orders him to go back to Karen, and sends him with Jimmy to recover money from a defaulting borrower, who they beat up pretty badly. Unfortunately, the defaulter's sister happens to be a typist in the FBI, and she turns over the entire gang (her brother included) to the police. In prison, the gangsters have a luxurious life, thanks to their police connections, but still it is Henry, who gets the longest sentence. In order to make his and his family's ends meet, he resorts to  drug running from jail.

Upon release from prison in 1978,he continues his cocaine trading which he had started in jail, much to the disapproval of Paulie who sternly warns him to stop it immediately. He not only ignores this warning, but ropes in Jimmy and Tommy and various other people, including Karen, his daughters babysitter and a new drug addict girlfriend.

The same year, Henry along with Tommy, Jimmy and several crew, carries out the Lufthansa heist in JFK airport , which is the biggest hijacking of goods in US history.However, some gang members start spending the proceeds from the heist immediately, buying expensive things that put them in the spotlight . Jimmy, in  chilling cold bloodedness has them murdered along with their family and later on,also has one by one all the other participants of the heist murdered, their corpses turning up in different parts of the city for months.He also has the businessman who had given them the inside info to set up the heist, killed in order to avoid paying what he owes him. Henry understands that its Jimmy who has all the cash from the heist, and he is merely eliminating the partners to have it all to himself. But he cannot do anything.

Then one day, Tommy is lured by  promises to make him a "made man" and killed, by his own gang members as a revenge for the murder of Billy Batts eight years ago, in order to make peace with the Gambinos.

By 1980, Henry is a cocaine addicted wreck, sustaining himself solely by drug running, due to which he has alienated Paulie and the others. He is on the constant surveillance of the FBI , who finally tail him an entire and arrest him. During his absence, his house is also raided, and Karen in order to evade arrest and conviction flushes down the entire cocaine stash, thereby rendering themselves virtually penniless.

Jimmy goes to Paulie for help, who being angry with him due to his drug operations, pays him $3200 and ends all association with him (3200 bucks. Thats all I got, for a lifetime. Not enough even to buy myself a coffin). He gets a final shock when he realizes that Jimmy intends to have him killed, by setting him up in a hit, in order to erase the last link between him and the Lufthansa heist.
  
With no other way to save himself and his family, Henry agrees to become an FBI informant under the witness protection plan. As a result of his collaboration and his testimony, Paulie, Jimmy and all the major members of the gang are arrested and sentenced to long terms in prison without parole. Henry himself gets a sentence which is further reduced due to his collaboration.

The last shot of the film shows a very vulnerable looking Henry Hill ,now divorced, who in a final voice over says that the good times are over and that he is penniless just like the average working people that he used to ridicule (I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schmuck). The closing credits show his fate and that of all the others in the gang , being put away for life.

The film is based on the novel Wiseguys, based on Henry Hill's account and Scorsese maintains the film as close to reality, keeping a good pace, with a background narration done by Henry and in some places, Karen. The surnames of the major characters except Hill were changed and artistic liberty was taken for a few events. In no scene does it glorify the organized crime that is being portrayed onscreen and it shows gangsters as what they really are, vermin beneath the shining suits and opulent lifestyle. It perfectly shows, with the example of Henry, that crime never pays and nothing lasts which is earned from it. It gives this message very subtlely, without any preaching or moral dialogues, instead leaving the viewer to figure this out himself as the film goes along.

Ray Liotta portrays Henry efficiently, right from the background narration to his transition from a brash gangster to a sorry shadow of his former self. He gets the maximum screen time and justifies it fully. This sadly remained his best performance which he could not better in his subsequent films. Ditto for Lorraine Bracco. The real Henry Hill met Liotta and told him that he loved the film. Robert DeNiro very beautifully portrays the cunning and vicious Jimmy Conway who is a friend one instant and a killer the next, his screen time is shorter than usual but just as effective. But the performance that stands out is Joe Pesci as the psychopathic Tommy Vito who is crazy and vicious at the same time. He's played Tommy to perfection (for which he won the best supporting actor oscar) as the one who jokingly intimidates Henry or the one who calmly shoots a waiter just because he is late in bringing him his drink.

Oscars again snubbed this great work and Martin Scorsese and its only Joe Pesci who got his due here. However, it rightly was a big commercial and critical success and will always remain a favourite for any avid film viewer. A must watch, for great story, acting and filmmaking.



Sunday, October 7, 2012

Raging Bull review

Raging Bull (1980)

Starring: Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty

Directed by: Martin Scorsese


Raging Bull is not just about boxing. It is more about a boxer's life out of the ring. Shot entirely in black and white, the biopic is based on the turbulent career and more turbulent life of the two time middleweight champion Jake La Motta, who was known popularly as Raging Bull. It covers the period 1941-1964, the first half showing his boxing days and the second half his very less glamorous post retirement years.

The film opens in 1964 where an aging and overweight Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro) is rehearsing his lines for a standup comedy act. The scene then moves to two decades earlier with JakeLaMotta losing his first major match. Jake’s brother and agent Joey (Joe Pesci) discusses Jake’s chances for a potential shot at the title with one of his mafia connections, Salvy Batts (Frank Vincent). Jake’s family life is in tatters and he constantly has ugly fights with his wife in his Bronx home. Soon, Jake gets acquainted with a 15 year old Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) and gets into a relationship with her, inspite of him being married. Jake defeats Sugar Ray Robinson twice but is denied victory in the second bout due to the judges in a biased decision. He finally gets married to Vickie. Slowly, his love for Vickie becomes an obsession. He is jealously possessive of her and looks suspiciously at every meeting of her with common acquaintances and friends, every contact of hers with a male acquaintance, even as minor as a pat on the back makes him burn within. Even his brother Joey cant escape his jealousy fuelled suspicion. Frequent fights erupt, most of which end in Vickie being abused physically. In one of his fights, which he wins against Tony Janiro ,in front of the local Mob boss, Tommy Como (Nicholas Colsantro) , he brutally smashes Janiro’s face just because he knows that Vickie finds him attractive. Later when discussing Jake’s victory with journalists in Copacabana night club, Joey spots Vickie in the company of Salvy and his friends. He blames and attacks Salvy and injures him badly in a fight which spills out to the street. This puts him in grave danger as he has laid hands on the mafia men. Tommy Como calls both the parties for a truce and tells Joey that Jake will have to throw his next match if he wants to have a shot at the title. Jake does not even put up a fight in the said match, thereby earning him a disqualification. He cries bitterly in the dressing room. Inspite of the disqualification, he goes on to win the middleweight title in his next bout against Marcel Cerdan in 1949.
 
The title win and subsequent success the following year do nothing to quell the jealousy within him about Vickie, his insecurities only become worse. Things come to the worst one day when he blatantly asks Joey whether he and Vickie have something going in between them. Joey leaves disgusted , after telling him that he must concentrate on retaining his title instead of indulging in such repulsive behaviour. Unintimidated, he confronts Vickie asking her the same, to which she replies, being fed up of the nonstop torture that she has relations with Joey and every man in the neighbourhood. Enraged, Jake goes over to Joey's house and beats him up brutally in front of his family. That spells the end of relations between the two brothers. 
 
Jake successfully defends his title against Laurent Dauthille in 1950, a match even his estranged brother Joey watches on TV. After the victory, Jake calls Joey in an attempt to reconcile but is unable to speak anything when Joey answers the phone. Joey shouts a barrage of abuse when he hears nothing at the other end, thinking that it is Salvy who has called. Jake simply puts down the reciever and never makes another attempt to call his brother again. Jake's career slowly starts to go downhill and he loses his title to Sugar Ray Robinson in 1951 in a bloody encounter. In one of the most poignant scenes, a defeated, bloody faced and swollen eyed La Motta smiles at Robinson saying "You were never able to knock me out, Ray".

The scene then cuts to 1956 with a now obese Jake LaMotta, having moved to Miami and now running a nightclub there, posing with Vickie and his three children for a newspaper interview, showcasing a former sportsperson’s happy post retirement life. The reality though is much different. Vickie soon asks for a divorce, telling him that she had been planning it since his retirement. She gets the custody of the children and moves away. Jake then suddenly gets arrested one morning on the charge of introducing underage girls (who had posed as 21 year olds) to other patrons of his nightclub. He is unable to raise enough money for parole, eventually resorting to break his title belt to sell the encrusted gems, only to be told by the pawn shop owner that they would have been more valuable had he left them in the belt. In the most memorable scene from the film ,he bangs his head and pounds the walls of his prison cell, crying and repenting his actions and questioning his misfortune.
The scene then moves to two years later, in 1958.On being freed, he moves back to New York and continues his gigs at various night clubs in addition to being a manager in them. One night, after one of his stand up comedy acts, he sees Joey on the street. He calls out to him and asks him to forgive him, but Joey keeps walking. Finally he catches up with him near his car and hugs him and asks for forgiveness. Joey tells him that he has forgiven him and then drives away without another word.
The viewer then comes back to the first scene in 1964 where La Motta is practicing his lines and in between pondering what might have been had things been a little different and had Joey looked out for him (It is implied that Joey never contacted him again). A stagehand informs that his act is ready and the last shot of the film shows Jake exiting the dressing room, shadowboxing , like the older days.
This isnt a biopic about a sportsman hero because this is anything but a hero. This is a story of a man who inspite of reaching great heights in the ring is pulled down to the abyss because of his abhorrent behaviour outside the ring.
The film was a critical success and emerged as the years best. Martin Scorsese made it to redeem himself after nearly dying of a fatal drug overdose a year earlier. The film is based on La Motta's autobiography Raging Bull:My Story, and a lot of changes were made for the script (The character of Joey is an amalgamation). A few moments into the film and the viewer thinks that he is watching behind the scenes footage of a celebrity. Like his other works, Scorsese does not add a bit of pleasantry but shows realism, with human nature at its ugliest, the usual expletive laced dialogues and grimness  which can be appreciated only by a true cinema fan.
This is arguably Robert DeNiro's best performance and the most physically demanding role any actor can have and he leaves no stone unturned in becoming Jake LaMotta. His stellar performance is made better by the fact that not for a moment does he even try to make the viewer feel any sympathy for or  like the hatred and envy filled character he is playing. Jake LaMotta on screen is the exact opposite to Rocky Balboa . Rocky is a a hero in everyman who we root for in his quest to reach for the sky. For Jake, who already has reached the top, the viewer feels only revulsion and later on pity, when he begins his downward slide. To prepare for the role, DeNiro trained vigourously for weeks under the real Jake LaMotta,even fighting and winning some amateur matches. Production was halted for four months and DeNiro went on a binge eating spree on gourmet food across Europe in order to add nearly 30 kilos to portray the older La Motta. On seeing his performance, the real LaMotta quipped "I never knew that I was that bad". Robert DeNiro deservedly won the  Academy award for the Best Actor for this role where he had, in his usual style erased the difference between reality and celluloid.
Joe Pesci who was an unknown actor at this time, is great as Joey. He very aptly portrays the brother who tries his best to stick with his sibling but puts and end to the whole thing when it gets beyond redemption. It was the begining of his pairing with Rober DeNiro and Martin Scorsese for a decade and a half in films like Goodfellas and Casino. Cathy Moriarty is impressive as Vicky in her debut film. Unfortunately she couldnt live upto the promise she showed in this film.
Watch this great work folks. And remember to cherish your loved ones.


http://theviewspaper.net/raging-bull-1980/
 
 
 

Friday, October 5, 2012

Dear Mr Gandhi

Dear Mr Gandhi,


Since childhood, we are taught to worship you as the best thing to happen to this country, the perfect human. There is no escaping you in India. Your face smiles at us on banknotes, your name is given to every other road or govt project. All others, most of whose contributions far exceeded yours , are cunningly pushed to the background or obliterated from history by the elements whose very business runs on deifying you.

The stay in South Africa for 21 years is said to be the beginning of your greatness, which starts with you being thrown out of the train compartment for not being white. Why then, inspite of your dedication to non violence, were you so supportive of every British war effort which included every imperialistic battles of theirs from the Zulu war to the Boer war in 1899 where you also served as a stretcher bearer? Was supporting the efforts of an imperialist power not opposite to the principles of Satyagraha or non violence? You called the native Blacks as “Kaffirs” and even forwarded a demand that Indians should be allowed to use the same door as the whites instead of being forced to share the entrances with “Kaffirs”. No wonder they don’t like you down there, no matter how much we are told about your exemplarily work in South Africa.

Isn’t the year of your arrival in India, 1916 that is, more than just a coincidence? The British needed cannon fodder after the devastating losses of manpower in battles like Somme and Verdun on the western front. You did an exceptional job in recruiting Indian soldiers to die for King and the empire in the muddy trenches (which is anywhere from one to five hundred thousand) for which you were awarded the title of Kaiser e Hind (http://indiafacts.org/deconstructing-gandhi-gandhi-recruited-indians-world-war/ ). On the other hand, the Non Cooperation movement was suspended by you because you were saddened by the burning of a few policemen serving the empire, leaving everyone who had followed you for two years feeling cheated. Because the lives of a few policemen serving the empire was worth more than the lives of thousands of Zulus, Boers and of thousands of Indian soldiers who died in a useless war. 


Hindu Muslim unity was your ultimate goal, at any cost, the cost which was without exception, paid by the Hindus alone in copious amounts of blood and honour. Khilafat movement (1921) went simultaneously with the non cooperation movement and you supported it whole heartedly, the Congress party making it its cause. You felt that the reinstating of the Ottoman Empire which had made an inferno out of central asia for five centuries, which just five years ago had killed a million plus Armenians, will bring about Hindu-Muslim unity in our country. It was another matter that the very man who was in the forefront for bringing the Caliphate to end and made Turkey what it is today, Mustafa Kemal Pasha was given the name Attaturk (Father Turk) by the Turkish population. So much for your knowledge of world affairs, Bapu. Because the country paid a heavy price for your Khilafat dreams. It very soon became an anti Hindu movement, the most horrific of which was the Moplah engineered pogrom in Malabar where almost a hundred thousand Hindus were done to death. But you called the Moplahs brave and patriotic for doing their duty (“.....The Moplah revolt is a test for Hindus and Mussulmans. Can Hindus friendship survive the strain put upon it? Can Mussulmans in the deepest recesses of their hearts approve of the conduct of the Moplahs?........ The Hindus must have the courage and the faith to feel that they can protect their religion in spite of such fanatical eruptions.......... The Mussulmans must naturally feel the shame and humiliation of the Moplah conduct about forcible conversions and looting, and they must work away so silently and effectively that such things might become impossible even on the part of the most fanatical among them. My belief is that the Hindus as a body have received the Moplah madness with equanimity and that the cultured Mussulmans are sincerely sorry for the Moplah’s perversion of the teachings of the Prophet.”). 

Khilafat also strengthened the Muslim League, making leaders of people like the Ali brothers who swore by your name, but abandoned you soon as a dirty Kafir the moment they didn’t need you to give them legitimacy, and fuelled separatist tendencies which would cause the vivisection of the country less than three decades later.


Your words and preaching, Mr Gandhi are very nice to hear. Its another matter that there was never any concrete action to back them. You made Tokenism and Symbolism as our national character. So, just giving the depressed classes a name like Harijan does not elevate them. What is needed is massive social awareness raised by the likes of Veer Savarkar and Sri Narayana Guru (No wonder that calling anyone a Harijan would result in bruises). Remaining shirtless to show sympathy for poor doesn’t make their lives easier. Calling manual scavenging as the “highest of work” did not honour the manual scavengers. What was needed was to fight this evil on a war footing. How many of India’s poor was your charkha able to clothe, excluding your party members? Did your charkha make enough cloth to cover even one naked and battered body of a woman gangraped in the partition riots? But then everything looked very cosy from Agha Khan palace and the Birla built Sabarmati Ashram.


We are made to believe that you singlehandedly destroyed the British empire. I also believed this for many days. But then something happened:- I grew up and went to secondary school. An empire, which was ruling over one fourth of the world , which could stand alone against the Nazi Army for a year and a half before Soviet Union or America joined the war, which kept 300 million Indians under their thumb with less than a force of one hundred thousand civil servants, were chased away by you and you alone if we believe the official history. Which no sane person would. Your methods were tolerated because India was a part of the British empire. Had it been in a setting like Soviet union or Nazi Germany, there wouldnt have been you or your experiments with the truth beyond a year. The fact is that the British empire mercilessly destroyed all the threats and real dangers to them , may it be the armed revolutionaries or armed uprisings which came up every now and then against them. Leaders like Veer Savarkar and Lokmanya Tilak were put away in jail for many years, in conditions you wouldn’t have lasted more than a day. The fact remains Mr Gandhi, that all your fasts and marches were weekend getaways compared to the unimaginable and inhuman tortures that our real freedom fighters went through.That is why when Clement Attlee, on a visit to India in 1951 was asked about what effects you or your movements had on the British empire, gave a monosyllabic reply “Minimal”. After all, its no coincidence that your party, which was formed by a retired civil servant AO Hume in 1885, has gone overboard in lionizing you.


You are someone who is proclaimed as the role model for human behaviour. Yet, what justification can there be for your celibacy experiments (which had a severe impact on the women in question), something which cannot even be talked about on public forums? 




Any discussions about this is a taboo in India, but that does not prevent the media outside:-



Your views about rape victims are something which makes the word shameful inadequate (“I have always held that it is physically impossible to violate a woman against her will. The outrage takes place only when she gives way to fear or does not realize her moral strength. If she cannot meet the assailant’s physical might, her purity will give her the strength to die before he succeeds in violating her…It is my firm conviction that a fearless woman, who knows that her purity is her best shield can never be dishonored. However beastly the man, he will bow in shame before the flame of her dazzling purity.”)


What about your lifelong teachings which did a great job in neutering the Hindu populace out of any valour, and promoting Hinduism as something which believes in nothing more than pacifism and surrender? 





You & your followers stood not for the truth but the distortion of it, of promoting Sanatana Dharma as pacifism and surrender. You parroted “Ahinsa parmo Dharmaha” whereas the entire shloka is “Ahinsa Paramo Dharmaha, Dharmo Hinsa yathev ch” (Non violence is a duty but so is righteous violence). All this talk of turning the other cheek is found in no Hindu scripture, but the new testament. What this skewered teaching did to the psyche of this country is seen even today as inspite of being the biggest democracy and a formidable military power, we inspire hardly any fear in our enemies as they are confident that their attacks will go unanswered.


Non Violence and Satyagraha were meant to be borne by the Hindus alone. Hence the Moplahs were brave and patriotic but there was no word from you on their victims. For you, Shivaji Maharaj ,Maharana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh  were misguided patriots. You called Abdul Rashid who killed Swami Shraddhanand as Bhai yet you didn’t make any effort to save Bhagat Singh, Shivram Rajguru or Sukhdev Thapar from the gallows while signing the pact with Lord Irwin to end the Civil Disobedience movement ("The government certainly had the right to hang these men. However, there are some rights which do credit to those who possess them only if they are enjoyed in name only."). You had absolutely nothing to say about any of the hundreds of religious riots which took place from the Khilafat movement to the partition . You never condemned the Jallianwaala bagh massacre yet you called Udham Singh as a madman. You went to fast until death on the matter of separate electorates for the depressed classes as it was divisive to the society but were silent on the issue of separate electorates for the Muslims  in 1932 .During London bombings, you advised the Englishmen to vacate their houses for Hitler, you called for the Jews to commit collective suicide in order to become immortal in history, but you forgot Mr Gandhi, that your baloney didn’t have any effect on anyone except the gullible masses of India. After the Direct Action Day massacre in 1946, you went around preaching peace tagging yourself with HS Suhrawardy, the very man who was on the forefront for causing them. You denied that anything was happening in Noakhali while thousands of Hindus were being butchered there and you went there only when the situation was calmed. It was you who gave the title of Qaid e Azam to Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was you who brought a spoilt playboy to the forefront of Indian politics (because the party needed his father’s money) and pushed the capable Sardar Patel to a secondary role. You had absolutely no sympathy for Hindu and Sikh riot victims of the partition riots (“I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. I would be a real sinner if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek revenge. I must die without rancour. … You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain.”). You advised the Hindus and Sikhs of West Punjab to bravely court death and chided the ones who had escaped to India for “cowardice” (“I am grieved to learn that people are running away from the West Punjab and I am told that Lahore is being evacuated by the non-Muslims. I must say that this is what it should not be. If you think Lahore is dead or is dying, do not run away from it, but die with what you think is the dying Lahore.”), you advised the women threatened with rape in West Pakistan to lie still with their tongue between their teeth to cooperate with their “brothers” [Just before the partition, both Hindu and Sikh women were being raped by the Muslims in large numbers. Gandhi advised them that if a Muslim expressed his desire to rape a Hindu or a Sikh lady, she should never refuse him but cooperate with him. She should lie down like a dead with her tongue in between her teeth. Thus the rapist Muslim will be satisfied soon and sooner he leave her. (D Lapierre and L Collins, Freedom at Midnight, Vikas, 1997, p-479).]. On the other hand, during your pace march to Noakhali, you told the Hindus to flee if they wanted to save their lives. Why this double standard, Mr Gandhi? And what does this tell us about your mentality? ("Hindus should not harbor anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives. None should fear death. Birth and death are inevitable for every human being. Why should we then rejoice or grieve? If we die with a smile we shall enter into a new life, we shall be ushering in a new India. (Prayer meeting, April 6, 1947, New Delhi, CWMG Vol. 94 page 249)


“The few gentlemen from Rawalpindi who called upon me, asked me, “What about those who still remain in Pakistan?” I asked, why they all came here (Delhi)? Why they did not die there? I still hold on to the belief that we should stick to the place where we happen to live, even if we are cruelly treated, and even killed. Let us die if the people kill us, but we should die bravely with the name of God on our tongue.” He also said, “Even if our men are killed, why should we feel angry with anybody? You should realize that even if they are killed, they have had a good and proper end” (speech delivered on November 23, 1947)


“If those killed have died bravely, they have not lost anything but earned something. … They should not be afraid of death. After all, the killers will be none other than our Muslim brothers.”


“If all the Punjabis were to die to the last man without killing (a single Muslim), Punjab will be immortal. Offer yourselves as nonviolent willing sacrifices.” (Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, p-385)






But your last fatal blow was yet to come. You went on a fast unto death unless Rs 55 crores were given to Pakistan (which it gleefully used in its Kashmir invasion of Oct 1947), which was given. Earlier you had said that the country would be divided only over your dead body. The country was divided and no hunger strike or satyagraha from you in protest. Had David Ben Gurion been like you, Golda Meir like Nehru or had the Jewish leadership been like the Congress, the Jews would have joined the Sumerians and Babylonians as museum artefacts. It was Nathuram Godse who made you a martyr, otherwise your popularity was at its lowest towards the end of your life.




Could you have been repackaged by Congress and your disciples like Birla and Bajaj (who benefitted the most from the four decades of license permit raj) as a Mahatma had you died a natural death, instead of being shot dead by Nathuram Godse? Did the Congress follow non violence by not controlling the riots which were engineered post your murder which cost the lives of more than 6000 chitpawan Brahmins (because Nathuram Godse was one)?


No Mr Gandhi, I cannot call you a Mahatma even by the wildest stretch of imagination. Mahatama or great soul is someone who dreams to make his country and his people as the strongest and leads like a warrior from the front, beyond pious platitudes. And neither can I call you the father of the nation because India is an eternal land and not formed  by a mandate or someone’s signature on a piece of paper. When the greats revere in being called as their country’s sons and daughters, then why should you be called as its father?

But its not you who is the reason for the debacle. Its a collective failure, of a people who have no interest in learning anything from history and no desire of improving themselves or rising beyond pettiness towards a greater consensus.



The question is how are you relevant in today’s world, you who had called India to destroy its rails and post offices and become a functioning anarchy,without having a least vision of a nation state, your ideals of sending unarmed soldiers to the invading enemy so that his heart melts on seeing them offering themselves for sacrifice? Of silence being the best speech when forget national stage, even an individual cant get things done by being silent? Or saying that ‘’nirbal ke bal raam ‘’when it has been proved throughout history that god is on the side of the biggest battalions? Or your vision not going beyond India being an agrarian economy when its known that agrarian countries will always be run over by the industrial ones? Or by not advocating even one value that would have made a strong self reliant India with model society and citizens?




Happy Birthday Mr Gandhi, out of formality.

 







Sincerely,
A proud Indian.