Editor,
Satyajit Ray was born on 2 May, 1921, in Kolkata. Many filmmakers made films on real stories. But we will recall his two films that were made before two similar tragedies happened in larger magnitudes.
Let us first take a look at Satyajit Ray’s film Ganashatru and his experiments with truth in the film. This is an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play The Enemy of the People. In the film, an honest doctor, Dr Ashok Gupta, finds that the contaminated water in the Tripureshwar temple is spreading jaundice at an alarming rate. The doctor asks for a temporary closure of the temple. But people with vested interests do not pay heed to his appeal as it would stop the business revolving around religious tourism for a while.
The doctor tries to publish an article in a newspaper to make people aware of the danger, but the people with vested interests do not let it get published. Thereafter, the doctor organises a public meeting to caution people about the reason for the outbreak of jaundice.
This makes them very angry and they label the doctor a biased faultfinder, an anti-Hindu and an enemy of the people. They are not ready to accept scientific evidence and instead say that charanamrita cannot be contaminated. They accuse the doctor of hurting traditional practices, religious beliefs and the traditional culture.
This film showed us how the reformers who always helped us move forward, shedding the baggage of our superstitions and myths, got the tag of ‘the enemy of the people’ by people with vested interests. Those who have a vested interest brainwash us into believing that the past was always very good – Satyayug (the age of truth) – and the present is very bad – Kaliyug (the age of anarchy). So, we need to cling to our past and march backwards. This makes us quite apprehensive about our evolutionary progress.
Satyajit Ray’s Ganashatru was released on 19 January, 1990. But was the film relevant? Yes, it was. Dr Dabholkar was an anti-superstition crusader like Dr Gupta in Ganashatru. Interestingly, 23 years after the release of the film, he was shot dead on 20 August, 2013, when he was out on a morning walk in Pune. He was to address a press conference later in the day to advocate an eco-friendly Ganesh festival.
Now recall Ray’s film Mahapurush (The Holy Man). It was based on a short story, Birinchi Baba, by Rajshekhar Basu. An old man becomes restless after the death of his wife. He and his daughter, Buchki, become devotees of a self-styled god-man, Birinchi Baba, who has many rich devotees. But ultimately Buchki’s lover Satya and his friend Nibaran expose Birinchi Baba. The devotees learn a lesson after losing their time and money on the god-man.
The film was released on 7 May, 1965. Nearly 10 years after the release of the film, Asaram Bapu came into the limelight. Whereas Birinchi Baba might have had 4,000 devotees, Asaram Bapu had 40 million devotees. He had established 400 ashrams and 40 schools in India and abroad.
The self styled god-man was charged with illegal encroachment, rape and tampering of a witness. He was convicted by the special POSCO court in Jodhpur and sentenced to life imprisonment for raping a teenage girl in his ashram. He is now in the central Jail in Jodhpur. A sessions court in Gandhinagar also convicted Asaram in another rape case and sentenced him to life imprisonment in January 2023.
Had audiences listened to Satyajit Ray and absorbed his ray of truth, it would have been a better world and we could have managed to avert two great disasters.
Sujit De,
Kolkata