Roja: A movie which was well ahead of its time
How far will you go for love?
Roja is not merely a love story. It portrays Kashmir as the quintessential paradise lost — for the tourist, and for the larger Indian state. It is set against the backdrop of the demand for azaadi, but the controversies around it are dismissed in favor of a unified India. In the early 1990s, the raised political consciousness around the unfulfilled plebiscite evolved into civil uprisings and the region saw a rise in armed militancy. The then ruling government used excessive means to thwart such opposition. In this context, the film is significant as it was in a position to create consent towards this violence among a new emerging middle class, and re-design India’s patriotism and nationhood vis-à-vis Kashmir.
Roja, a seminal film directed by Mani Ratnam over 29 years ago, was awarded the Best Feature Film on National Integration. The government even waived the entertainment tax on it. Originally made in Tamil, it was dubbed and released in Hindi and Telugu as well. The box-office hit evoked in its audience a nationalistic fervor. As the titular Roja, the female protagonist, from small-town Tamil Nadu fights against all odds to rescue her husband who has been kidnapped by Kashmiri militants. Mani Ratnam initially intended to shoot Roja in Kashmir, but the very violent circumstances at the territory compelled him to settle for Manali, Himachal Pradesh, Ooty, and Coonoor instead.Like his earlier film Mouna Raagam which was about a woman dropped in unfamiliar surroundings and in a marriage, she doesn’t want, Roja, to tell the story from the eyes of its heroine.
The rousing music brings a lump to the throat, tears to the eyes, goosebumps to the flesh. Released on August 15 twenty-nine years ago, made every movie-goer walk out of the theatre, feeling that they had done their bit for the country. The hero is saved, the heroine is reunited with him and the terrorist becomes ‘human’. Everyone goes home happy with AR Rahman’s scintillating score still resonating in their ears. The chemistry between the two actors, the suave Arvind Swamy and the earthy Madhoo, however, made these scenes work — and who can remain immune to AR Rahman’s wonderful songs? As Rishi and Roja romance between the sheets to a gorgeous composition like Puthu Vellaimazhai, you’d need a heart of stone not to be swept away.
From then on, even as we’re shown Roja battling on the sidelines, pleading with authorities to enable the release of her husband, she essentially becomes an idea — one that keeps Rishi alive and fighting. Mani Ratnam succeeded in bringing the Kashmir conflict home by eliciting emotional investment from the audience in this couple, who is entangled in a quandary they’d only read about in the headlines. Even now, Tamil films have not engaged meaningfully with the subject of terrorism, beyond a strong dose of sledgehammer nationalism which marks out Pakistan as the enemy country and shows a few bearded ‘misguided’ men operating at its instigation. Action thrillers like Vallarasu, Unnai Pol Oruvan, Payanam, Thuppaki and so on, for instance, do not delve much into the politics behind incidences of terrorism and are quite content with simplistic black and white depictions. When it comes to landscape, they’ve chosen to situate the violence in societies and territories that would be immediately relatable to the audience, as reverberations of what happens at the borders, rather than take the camera to the conflict zone.
The army is usually depicted with an uncritical eye; they are the good guys who lay down their lives and all the violence is only shown from the perspective of the heroes in uniform, not the people who live in these conflict zones. If military atrocities find its way into the picture, it is mostly the enemy country which indulges in brutal acts — as in the 2016 film Wagah.
To be fair, it isn’t only Tamil cinema that is guilty of this. Hollywood films like American Sniper, for example, are unapologetic in adopting a jingoistic tone when narrating war stories. Roja, too, was unquestionable in its depiction of the Indian state and the status of Kashmir. So much so that by the end of the film, Liaqat (Pankaj Kapoor), the separatist fighting for Kashmir’s azadi, lets Rishi go with the line, ‘You’ve made a human being out of a terrorist!’ — the choice of words betrays the lack of willingness to understand the complexity of the Kashmir issue, turning the narrative into a Good Vs Evil battle instead.
Interestingly, it’s Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se, released in Tamil as Uyire in 1998, which ventured into showing the other perspective, making a reference to Kunan Poshpora where the Indian army has been accused of mass gangrape. The politics in Roja, a film which caught the imagination of the audience in those days and became a massive hit, appears to be half-baked and populist. But seeing how little we’ve come since then in understanding ideas of nationalism/patriotism as a society and consequently their depiction in cinema, the lack of layers is still forgivable in a film that came out more than two decades ago.
However, in the present-day political climate when ‘Go to Pakistan!’ has become a refrain for self-proclaimed nationalists to beat down criticism, we’re only seeing more and more films that reject nuance and instead, play to the gallery . In Mani Ratnam’s Kaatru Veliyidai, for instance, there is a shot of the Pakistani flag crashing down as Air Force officer VC (Karthi) and his boys make their escape from a Pakistani prison. That’s the kind of depiction we’re meant to applaud.
The man who put out the burning flames, Arvind Swamy, has evolved from playing the charming hero to a badass villain, but the brand of patriotism he sold to us on celluloid remains unchanged. And sadly, it looks like it’s here to stay till the cows come home.
It is a perfect blend of everything like music, direction, actors, singers, camera work. ‘Roja’ was an exquisite amalgam of brilliant direction by Mani Ratnam, unforgettable music by newcomer A R Rahman and sparkling performances by Aravind Swamy and Madhu.
Roja is too good to call a classic!
Co-author :Gopikrishnan V
