Economic and Political Weekly December 23, 2006 5225

ARUNABHA GHOSH, TAPAN BABU

In more than one sense, Lage RahoMunna Bhai (LRMB) is an unusualfilm. There is no semblance of conti-nuity that is often the hallmark of a sequel.While the hero Munna and his companionCircuit got married and started a hospitalat the end of the first film Munna BhaiMBBS (MBM), after Munnas abortiveattempt to do an MBBS, Munna is backto his original self of a local goon in LRMBto begin with. MBM, with a faint resem-blance to the Robin Williams starrer Holly-wood film Patch Adams, had a messageof Doctor Heal Thyself with Munnahealing the patients with love, compassionand camaraderie that are shown in directcontrast to the sub-human ethics of themedical profession.

LRMB does not start from the end ofMBM. In fact, apart from the two centralcharacters, viz, Munna and Circuit thereare no common characters between LRMBand MBM. Munnas field of experimentgraduates from medicine to social life.With Munnabhai meeting MahatmaGandhi, LRMB gave birth to a brandMunna along with brand Gandhigiri.While Hindi films are replete with illus-trations of a character emerging almost asan icon, the blurring of a character withan otherwise real national figure is quiteuncommon.

A Beginners Guide to LRMB

The film produced by Vidhu VinodChopra, directed by Rajkumar Hirani andscripted jointly by the duo is simple, racy,witty and uproariously funny. A soft-hearted goon Munnabhai falls in love withthe voice of Jahnavi, a radio-jockey of aprogramme on World Space Satellite Radioand in his desperate bid to meet her par-ticipates in a dial-in quiz on MahatmaGandhi on October 2 by forcing five experts

Lage Raho Munna Bhai:Unravelling BrandGandhigiriGandhi, the man, was once the message. In post-liberalisationIndia, Gandhigiri is the message.

at gunpoint to prompt the answers to thequestions. Munnabhai wins the contest,meets Jahnavi, works with her for theSecond Innings Home she runs for theaged and also at a radio programme, fightsland sharks bent on grabbing the oldpeoples home with his satyagraha,falls out with Jahnavi as he discloseshis identity and finally wins back thecherished house and the lady. Munna,despite being a goon, got exposed to Gandhithe person (in fact started hallucinatinghim), applied Gandhian techniques ofnon-violence in contemporary times andfinally won.

Brand of LRMB Gandhism

Who is Munnas Gandhi? MunnasGandhi perhaps is not someone distant andhistorical but someone with whom thecontemporary masses can relate morein the nature of the conscience personified(called the bibek) of traditional Bengalifolk theatre, jatra. We will come to thisissue later.

Ashish Nandy in an essay Gandhi afterGandhi distinguished between fourGandhis.1 While the first Gandhi is theGandhi of the Indian state and Indiannationalism, the second Gandhi is that ofthe Gandhians, who according to Nandydoes not touch politics. The third Gandhiis the Gandhi of the ragamuffins, eccen-trics and the unpredictable and is morehostile to Coca-Cola than to Scotch whiskyand considers the local versions of Coca-Cola more dangerous than imported ones.Finally, the fourth Gandhi walks themean streets of the world threateningthe status quo and pompous bullies inevery area of life. In some sense, perhapsall these Gandhis are alive today, each withhis own eccentricities. While Nandyscompartmentalisation of Gandhi could bea caricatured one, one tends to think thatLRMBs Gandhigiri is perhaps closer to the

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fourth variety of Gandhi. In fact, almostechoing this sentiment, Abhijat Joshi, aco-author of the story of film said, Itwas important for us to dispel the mythabout Gandhi being a sedate, asceticperson. We wanted to show his otherside witty, humorous, light-hearted andcreative.2

Is Gandhis shunning of industrialismthat spawns consumerism and related vio-lence relevant in todays India? Perhapsnot. But that it is not a subject any film-maker with commercial intent would dareto touch and understandably so. S Ganeshin his article Lage Raho Munnabhai:History as Farce (EPW, October 14, 2006)misses this point when he sees Gandhi ofLRMB in the historical perspective. TheGandhi of LRMB is not so much an his-torical figure as he is an icon of popularculture. In fact, the irrelevance of theGandhian ideology is hinted and just sowhen Munna visits the Gandhi library thathas not seen a footfall in years. He is themost welcome reader, worthy of beingtreated to tea. The irony is inescapable. Abhai, a don, whatever be his compulsion,is the sole consumer of the vast literatureon Gandhi! Munna reads on relentlesslyand indefatigably. And voila` Gandhiappears to him, speaks to him, assureshim of his advice whenever sought withtrue ardour.

The film shifts gear. The focus is firmlyon the moral Mahatma moral but notsentimental. Contrast another recent filmMaine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara by thenoted film-maker Jahnu Barua. The pro-tagonist played by Anupam Kher suffersfrom a deep-rooted guilt caused by a child-hood trauma. While playing with a cutoutof Gandhi, someone hits it with a redcolour filled balloon and the boy is pun-ished by his father for killing Gandhi. Thesplashing of the cutout in red coincideswith the breaking news of Gandhis assas-sination. The coalescence of a game anda national disaster eats into the boy through-out his life until he becomes severelyparanoid after retirement, causinga collapse in his immediate world. Theguilt of the nation in erasing Gandhisvalue system is depicted in microcosm.Jahnu Baruas treatment is complex, lay-ered, psychologically plausible, serious anda bit sentimental. This is where LRMBdeftly negotiates the pitfall of sentimen-tality because it is clear about its targetaudience and its branding.

Does LRMB make Gandhi contempo-rary? Of the various terms initiated in the

film, the term Gandhigiri has drawn muchattention so much as that there is a websitecalled http://www.gandhigiri.org whichsays, If Munnabhai can do then whycant we do Gandhigiri, and has sub-menus devoted to: Gandhigiri Forum, andGandhigiri Blogs, Gandhigiri News andMission Gandhigiri. There is yet anotherwebsite called, http://www.gandhigiri.co.indevoted to the same subject. The episodesof Gandhigiri have cut across the rural-urban divide. There are reports that thatthe film inspired farmers in Vidarbharegion to stage a protest with flowers aswell as AIIMS students aspiring to giftroses with a get well card to the visitinghealth minister. There are reports that aUP-based mafia don was so inspired byLRMB that he wanted to distribute rosesas a message of love and peace. All theseare indeed fads and little to do with thecontemporary reality. Given the shortshelf life of a Bollywood film, all thesefads will perhaps soon be extinct. Nev-ertheless, given the usual social content of acommercial Hindi film, it is indeed interest-ing to see these fads getting reflected insocial life.

The brilliance of Munnas healing strat-egy is that as Munna speaks the languageof the next door Mumbai tapori (the localfriendly goon) it is extremely accessibleto the common Mumbai slum dweller. Ifthere is something common betweenthe two films, MBM and LRMB, it is the

language. In fact, in both the films thelanguage that Munna and his associatesuse is set apart from that used by the rest.Yet it is this language that sets the agendaof discourse in and on popular culture.Language plays a crucial role in beefingup the brand. In a remarkable manoeuvreof communication skill, the street-smartMumbai tapori lingo, peppered with slangs,is used to create instant communicationwith the audience, especially GenNext.Thus Gandhigiri stands for Gandhism(Gandhivad) a coinage that has provedso potent as to warrant a condemnationby the Indian National Congress (TheTelegraph, October 10, 2006). Change ofhearts is termed as chemical locha. Infact so potent and catchy is the mediumof communication that Bapu himselfcannot but use it, albeit in jest, to pickMunnas brain.

Cinema and Popular Culture

Cinema and popular culture are inextri-cably linked more so in India and par-ticularly in Bollywood. The makers ofLRMB have taken the route of pop-culture to pop up a non-statist view ofGandhi. Munna, Circuit and their croniesfrom the metropolitan underbelly knowthis much of Gandhi that his image isprinted on currency notes, that October 2is a dry day, that the name of hischildren are Indira Gandhi and Rajiv

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Gandhi, that he had effectively spiked(Wat laga di in street or tapori lingo) theBritish, that to walk along his path is totake a walk along M G Road for 3 kmseveryday.

What makes LRMB a cult film? It isinstructive to turn to Umbarto Eco in thisconnection, who said,

What are the requirements for trans-forming...a movie into a cult object? Thework must be loved, obviously, but thisis not enough. It must provide a completelyfurnished world so that its fans can quotecharacters and episodes as if they wereaspects of the fans private sectarianworld...I think that in order to transforma work into a cult object one must be ableto break, dislocate, unhinge it so that onecan remember only parts of it, irrespectiveof their original relationship with thewhole.3

One can give umpteen number of illus-trations from LRMB which enunciates dis-connects between the part from the whole.Nevertheless, to enter the realm of massculture is to abjure the socio-economic andpolitical thoughts of Gandhi, or so it seemsin LRMB. It is safer for a Bollywood movieto repackage and market moralism throughthe iconic figure of Munnabhai from hisearlier avatar with the other, the largericonic figure of the Mahatma, superimposedon him.

In a cheeky reference to Gandhi beingcalled bhai in South Africa, an audaciouslink is established between the Mahatmaand Munna, one of the ways in whichthe Mahatma meets Munnabhai. WhereMunna uses muscle power to get thingsdone, Gandhi uses moral power. ForMunna the end justifies the means, forthe Mahatma the dichotomy betweenthe means and the end is inconceivable.The Gandhi that Munna meets is ahallucinatory figure no doubt, but as hehimself says he is not a spirit (atma)but a consciousness (chetna). It takesjust a small step from consciousness toconscience.

So when Munna in his lecture to the eldercitizens (prompted by Gandhi himself)talks about demolishing Gandhis statues,removing his images, erasing his namefrom buildings and roads and urges every-one to preserve the Mahatmas name inones heart it touches an emotional chordin the public. The statist project of comme-moration and the public perception ofoblivion clash. That the institutionalisedimage of Mahatma Gandhi has been ren-dered hollow in todays context is brought

out by an unquiet conscience. When oneof the old men suggests that the countryhas had its share of development it isrejected outright by Munna: electricalconnections without power, roads withmore potholes than macadam, schoolswithout teachers, a corrupt bureaucracythat drives people to desperation in shorta country that Gandhi did not envisage, acountry liberated from foreigners but wherethe people have turned strangers. It isas far as this political statement that thefilm will go. A step ahead and there isevery chance of being mired in Gandhissocio-economic thoughts a completeno-no for todays consumer economydriven India.

Unravelling Brand Gandhigiri

Gandhi is not original in his preachingof truthfulness, forgiveness for the offender,or even non-violence. RememberSt Mathews gospel in the The NewTestament (Ch V, verse 39) it is the sameadvice of turning the other cheek whenslapped on one. Similarly, Gandhi himselfacknowledged his debt to Thoreau andTolstoi. Munna, hardly convinced byGandhi about the technique, does not knowwhat to do when the slap lands on the othercheek too. So he reverts to his core com-petence. He bashes up the offending se-curity guard guarding the house of the civilcontractor, the ultimate villain, LuckySingh. Take another instance. Atmaram,abandoned in his old age home by hisson, is to be given a rocking birthdayparty. Munna, with politeness, tries topersuade the son to attend the party evenif for a short while. The head-strong mandecides to physically fight it out withMunna. The result is effective violence, bydint of which Munna hangs him upsidedown from his 12th floor office and theman later joins the celebration with ahuge cake and a lot of hoopla for his muchhappy father. Popular culture can be sub-versive and Gandhian non-violence is notspared either.

What is unique though of the Gandhianethical scheme is the uprooting of fear.Abhay or fearlessness comes from thecourage to face truth. Since the realadversary resides within, it is a constantand continuous battle with the self. Goadedby Bapu, Munna asks Circuit for forgive-ness and even reveals to Jahnavi his actualidentity after a long spell of self-doubtand dithering. Once he does that his fearof Lucky Singhs threat to expose him

vanishes. Munna is no more subject toLuckys blackmailing. Overcoming fear isone lesson that Munna imparts success-fully through his radio programme. Thus,he saves Victor from committing suicideand prompts him to confess blowing upmoney in the stock market to his father.Victor in his turn saves Simran, Luckysdaughter, from the same fate. Simrangathers courage to reveal the truth aboutthe timing of her birth concealed by herfather to her prospective father-in-law.Reverting to non-Gandhian methods oncemore, Munna, in a climactic scene, rips themyth of astrological certainty shatteringthe fear of superstition.

But Gandhigiri as portrayed in the filmhas another angle to it. To bring the un-scrupulous realtor Lucky Singh to hissenses the listeners of the radio programmeare exhorted to send flowers with a getwell soon card attached. Whether it isfriendly persuasion of the Quakerist kindor a method of psychological coercion isopen to debate. The same applies to theperson who smilingly mops up the spittlestrewn around his door by a boorishneighbour. Or to the old teacher whooffers everything on his person, includinghis clothes, to the clerk, as the bribedemanded for handing his pension papers.Thus satyagraha, the ethico-political toolthat Gandhi had used to shake up animperial power, is now an instrument tonail erring individuals. It is not Gandhi-giri over dadagiri as S Ganesh hasargued, it is perhaps a blurring of dis-tinction, and not spoofing of history. Itis a trivialisation no doubt but a triviali-sation necessitated by a decidedly debasedcontemporaneity. A link having beenestablished between the bhais separatedby almost a century, it is no wonder thatGandhigiri and dadagiri become implicitlyinterchangeable.

Gandhi, the man, was once the message.In the India of the post-liberalisation brandGandhigiri is the message.

A parting word of thanks: LRMB hasmercifully not attempted to updateGandhigiri on sex. Amen.

Email: arunabh2911@yahoo.co.in

Notes1 Available at http://www.multiworld.org/

m_versity/althinkers/nandygan.htm.2 Available at http://www.rediff.com///movies/

2006/sep/26joshi.htm.3 Umberto Eco (1986): Trends in Hyperreality,

Picador, London.

EPW