Jha's take on reservation: I like it, I like it not

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THERE ARE two Aarakshans. One is the two-and-a-half hour film playing at some cinema halls in India. This Aarakshan, unfortunately, has been pushed past the goal post of good-bad cinema. Rising shrill voices and bans have ensured that director Prakash Jha escapes the embarrassment of acknowledging that this is one of his worst films.

Aarakshan is boring, verbose and it flounders about.
Then there is Aarakshan the political comment, a motion for debate. So, does Aarakshan make you think, argue? Yes. But not by the dint of its politics or stand, but simply because of the subject it has picked.
Jha and his scriptwriter Anjun Rajabali take a controversial topic, discuss and look at the two Indias fighting in college canteens and work places, and their characters take turns to spout all the pro and anti reservation arguments we have heard before, but then the two go weak in the knees. That’s me being charitable. They actually duck behind the misplaced geniality of the upper castes and request a draw.

FIRST, THE film. We are in Bhopal in 2008. Deepak Kumar (Saif Ali Khan), nervous but natty, is being interviewed for a lecturer’s job at an expensive institute. He is asked his surname and about his background. He is a Dalit and his mother irons clothes. Therefore, no job. Of course, he doesn’t leave without saying his piece, and invoking B.R. Ambedkar.
Deepak is a brilliant boy. He has applied at Cornell to complete his PhD, but, ideally, he would like to teach and do his PhD at his college, Shakuntala Thakral Mahavidyala (STM). But he can’t ask the principal, Dr Prabhakar Anand (Amitabh Bachchan), mostly known as Guruji, for another favour.
We are introduced to Guruji’s family – wife (Tanvi Azmi) and daughter Poorvi (Deepika Padukone) -- and to the free classes he conducts in his house for poor children, caste no bar.
But before we can ponder on any of this, we are shoved into a love song -- something about Poorbi’s zulf and towel, and Deepak’s inability to come to the point. Nice song, but, whatever.
Guruji’s dear friend falls ill and the family needs help, shelter. Guruji offer his own house (he stays at the college bungalow), and stands guarantee for a business loan.
Guruji, you see, is a much adored, admired man. People fawn over him. His daughter, his wife, even the doodhwala. Deepak respects him and is obliged to him. Guruji obliges a lot of people. Poor Brahmins and poor Dalits. So, of course, he offers Deepak a job at STM.
STM is a private college and has chosen not to have quotas. Guruji, however, often picks poor Dalit candidates over the sons of rich daddies, all marks being equal. But some trustees on the college board disapprove of these “backdoor entries”, especially Professor Mithilesh Singh (Manoj Bajpai). Mithilesh is rich and powerful. He has a thriving side business, KK Coaching Centre, is friends with the state education minister and is looking forward to running a Rs 1,200 crore education institute. He and his friends see education as a risk-free business and would ideally like to auction seats to the highest bidder. They don’t like Guruji.
This uneasy status quo gets disrupted when the Supreme Court rules in favour of 27 per cent reservation in educational institutions. Sushant (Prateik Babbar), the son of a rich businessman and an STM student, doesn’t get into Jamia because of quota; some students scribble a message on STM’s canteen wall: “Aarakshan hamara janamsidh adhikar hai”. The lines are drawn. There’s Deepak on one side and Sushant and Mithilesh on the other. This confrontation is electric – between the pro and anti groups. The politics is alive and pulsing. But Guruji doesn’t like political talk in his college. He wants to ignore the screaming, celebrating Dalit boys outside STM’s gates. Sushant accuses Guruji of favouring Dalits, of putting caste before merit. He gets thrown out of the college. Deepak asks Guruji, “What’s your stand on aarakshan?” Shocked, Guruji says, “I don’t have to explain myself to you. All the good I have done to you and others orbiting around me should give you the answer.” Deepak resigns.
Poorbi stands by her father and dumps Deepak. He leaves for Cornell.
But the reservation debate is heating up. Guruji gives an interview to a newspaper which runs the headline that he favours reservation. The college trustees are upset. Guruji is asked to retract his statement, but...
This is the film’s first half. What follows in the next is a hotchpotch of an aging, upright man’s struggle to save his house and his principles, until one rainy night he walks to the house of Shambhu (Yashpal Sharma), the milk man, and asks for help. Thereon begins Guruji’s satyagrah, right across his own house which is now plastered with KK Coaching Centre banners. He gathers students from poor families, offers free, quality education for all in a tabela. His is not a fight for reservation, or for Dalit rights. It’s an education revolution, a la Patna’s Super-30.
Soon there is confrontation – bulldozers versus aatma-bal, but the day is saved by a benign lady from Rishikesh. And, with the lighting of the diya, the film closes on the happy note of a Poona Pact of sorts.

AARAKSHAN, A film by the mighty Prakash Jha, has a cumbersome script and a distracted screenplay. Its narrative is faltering and the story predictable. Jha starts off by raising a political issue, but then turns it into a moral fight, the same-old good versus evil nonsense.
Jha ticks all the boxes: he acknowledges the prejudice against Dalits, talks about years of oppression, and puts words into Deepak’s mouth few in Bollywood would dare to. He stands on both sides, by turns. His heart goes out to the poor Brahmin boy and to the Dalit boys. But, at the end, this is what he says: Merit should be the only way, but because of useless, corrupt governments, reservation is inevitable. But reservation is leading to many problems -- the caste divide is getting sharper and the terrible rash of third-rate institutes demanding donations is all thanks to reservations.
This is a cop-out. Jha promises something, delivers nothing. His wimpy politics is annoying, and nowhere more so than in the character of Prabhkar Anand, Guruji.
Amitabh Bachchan is the emotional core of Aarakshan. He plays Guruji with quiet dignity, weary but unwavering in the face of evil forces. He holds the film, as far as possible. But his character is the most problematic.
B.R. Ambedkar said that Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign to eradicate untouchability failed because it was “a fad”. He accused Gandhi of not wanting to antagonise upper caste Hindus and said that his Harijan Sevak Sangh was “charity” that was “creating a slave mentality”. Deepak says something similar about Guruji, but is eventually thawed by the halo around Guruji’s mug.
Like Gandhi, Guruji treats reservation “as an act of penance”, as righting a moral wrong. He won’t implement reservation in his college, but will dole out seats to “deserving” Dalits when he wants. Why? To ring a moral bell and draw attention to himself?
This complexity could have been interesting if it was pursued. It’s not. Jha averts our gaze by making Guruji and his family homeless and sad, and then starts talking about commercialisation of education. And at the end offers a silly, romantic solution that can’t be faulted, but means little. He craves another Gandhi to fix the problem.
Mr Jha, wake up and sip your chaach. Or at least pay attention to these lines by Prasoon Joshi in your own film:
Barabar ki line toh kheechon zara,
Phir himmat badi ya Bhagwaan dekhna...
Ik chanas (chance) toh de-de meri jaan, tum,
meri jaan, tum,
Phir udaan dekhna...
This is a rights anthem. Plucky, self-assured and in your face. Unlike the film.
Saif Ali Khan doesn’t look the part but is decent. Manoj Bajpai is sufficiently oily, Deepika is beauteous and Prateik Babbar just looks spaced out.