Editor,
Had Satyajit Ray been alive today, he would have shuddered in horror to hear the invocation of his 1980 classic Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds) from the lips of a person who can’t go beyond communal vulgarities of ‘mullah, madrasa, mafia’, linking a particular community with all sorts of crime and terrorism, with his party and its bosses notorious for indulging in riots, pogrom, demolition of religious shrines and all forms of religious hatred possible in the name of attire, diet, marriage, prayer, conversions, and what not.
If Satyajit Ray and his culture, thoughts, spirit, and ideals reside at the North Pole, the saffron ecosystem stands exactly at the extreme south.
So, what a joke cracked by not only invoking Satyajit Ray, and Hirak Rajar Deshe among all his films!
This film was nothing but a massive protest launched against the state apparatus by the legendary Ray in a humorous, light tone.
Megalomania and brainwashing programme had been nicely presented in the film, in which the ruthless king of Hirak cannot tolerate any form of opposition. And whoever desires to swim opposite the ‘mainstream’ and is perceived as an enemy of the state’ gets immediately detained, and thereafter brainwashed to sing the praise of the king, akin to god.
Cold-blooded demolition of the education sector, so that minds do not get enlightened enough to pose crucial questions to the authority; setting up a close set of cronies as a ‘support system’ and surrounded by shameless sycophants; leading lavish lifestyle at the expense of human rights of the poor, exploited subjects in diamond mines; mesmerising the world through all things which glitter; erecting grand statues to celebrate himself and to build up a vulgar personality cult – what a resemblance to the times we practically live in!
By which audacity can the laggard orthodox saffron ecosystem dare to invoke Satyajit Ray, who had always spoken against tyranny, communalism, superstition, and orthodoxy with iconic films like Debi, Hirak Rajar Deshe, Ghare Baire, Ganashatru, and Agantuk?
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar, Kolkata