The Naxals in Chakravyuh bear little resemblance to those in real life
In a sequence in Chakravyuh,cops seize 25 AK-47s and 110 SLRs,besides plenty of other arms meant for Naxals. No more than two AK-47s,the most coveted weapon for the rebels,were recovered in Chhattisgarh,the state most hit by Naxal violence. Some 10 Kalashnikovs have been seized in the state through the entire insurgency. Intelligence records and conversations with Naxals confirm they have nearly 10,000 firearms in the entire Bastar region,with many of them being muzzle-loaded desi bharmars. And the rebels are always short of bullets. In Chakravyuh,the Naxals operating in just one camp of a district seem to carry more weapons,pretty sophisticated ones at that,and open fire at will. A walk in the Dandakaranya woods is enough to tell that the guerrillas prefer to lay IEDs; one-to-one armed combat is not their strategy.
While Naxals are still conducting predominantly guerrilla or mobile warfare,Prakash Jha depicts a war that looks almost conventional. Through Naxal history,there have been only a few instances of straight gunfights,like at Tadmetla in April 2010,when 76 men from the security forces were killed and which inspired Jhas first combat sequence. Situating the entire police-Naxal conflict on this majestic plane may lend an epic scope to the movie,but it betrays little understanding of the battle. This cannot be excused as artistic licence,especially when the filmmaker himself claims to be realistic,and the mode and method of the conflict is crucial to understand its nuances. At worst,it perpetuates the myth urban India has woven around the term Naxal.
The movement began with an honest cause decades ago,but since then it has mutated. Jha proposes that the battlefield he presents is the Naxal movement in a microcosm. He ignores that the movement today is layered,comprising several ethnicities and causes. Yes,there are committed rebels,but you have plain thugs,too. Even if we ignore the differences between Naxals of distant lands,like Gadchiroli and Lalgarh,there is little similarity between Naxals of Khammam and Sukma,neighbouring border districts in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Some comrades have ideology and total revolution wired into their DNA,while some only seek revenge against local chieftains or upper caste leaders,such as in Bihar,and many others are disillusioned and oppressed young men.
Consider Rengha Yadav,35,a major Naxal commander of the Surguja district in north Chhattisgarh. A farmer,he was allegedly framed by the cops at the behest of a local trader. He escaped from jail to neighbouring Jharkhand and returned with a gamchha and a gun. He soon became a prominent Naxal and raised a small Red army before he was killed by his protégées over the division of loot worth a few lakh in June 2011. When this reporter visited his village,Balangi,his second wife and relatives narrated his emergence and murder as classic badle ki aag (fire of revenge) stuff. Yadav may have been a victim of the system but he,at best,could serve as inspiration for countless characters in Hindi cinema since Sunil Dutt in Mother India.
Jha invents a Naxal that suits him and his market. Even the lingo his men speak,a cocktail of Bhojpuri and Chhattisgarhi dialects,is a curious invention. There is no trace of tribal dialects.
Some reviews have called the movie honest and bold. On the contrary,its a celebration of clichés collected from newspaper clippings. Jha takes no risk,just scratches the surface and plays to all available galleries. So you get pretty evened out characters an extortionist Naxal later executed by a jan adalat,a committed commander,an honest cop and the usual corrupt netas and businessmen.
The narrative of political-ideological violence is never as well-defined as the film makes it out to be. An artist should venture into unchartered territories and explore the psychology of killing and the criss-crossing patterns of human conflict. Recall Ardh Satya or Drohkaal,in which cops go behind enemy lines. Kabir,the only conflicted character,is so broadly drawn and his conflict so easily resolved,that he adds nothing to the discourse or the movie.
A movie on Naxalism hobbled by the conventional narrative Jha clung to needed something more than the yawn-worthy tough-cop-versus-friend -turned-Naxal formula he came up with. When Indian exotica fetches a pretty penny,who cares about art? Anurag Kashyap sold Wasseypur and Jha converts Naxalism into a product,though he does gives you a few moments of (uninentional) laughter the helicopter shot he invents in the climax,for instance. Fully filmy,ok,but dont confuse this Nandighat drama with Naxalism.
ashutosh.bhardwaj@expressindia.com
