The Haider Controversy

From the TI archives — a guest opinion piece by Lopamudra Banerjee Dhar, originally published October 2014. Opinions are the author's. (Lopa runs Lopa's Creative and Bollywood Dance Studio in Naperville, where she lives with her husband and son.)

So much has been written about this movie. Every critic has passed judgment on Vishal Bhardwaj and his gang. I am no critic. I don't even write regularly. But after watching the movie, I felt the urge to voice my opinion. So, here goes…

"Jab tak hum inteqam sey azad nahi hongey, koi azadi humey azad nahi kar sakti" — If we do not free ourselves of revenge, no freedom can set us free. Spoken by Kulbhushan Kharbanda in the first half, and echoed by Tabu, this is the essence of Haider. Unfortunately, many of us have failed to grasp the film's worldview.

We are making a hue and cry over Bhardwaj portraying the Indian Army in a negative light. Some call him an idiot for attempting an adaptation of Hamlet. Others haven't even watched the movie and are simply against it because it hurts "our" community's sentiments.

After watching it, I realize: you will either LOVE it or HATE it — just like Hamlet. What is brilliant about the movie is that it has captured a sense of turmoil, conflict, and urgency inherent in the play. Kashmir is Denmark, and Haider is Hamlet for all practical purposes. The movie beautifully encapsulates the external conflict of Kashmir and fuses it with Haider's internal turmoil. The director could not have used a better backdrop — the most serious and long-lasting conflict India has witnessed in recent times. The Kashmir problem is the only one that could do justice to this Indian version of Hamlet.

And I don't just mean the plot — uncle conspires to kill father, mother has an affair with uncle, lover betrays protagonist and kills herself. Haider is Hamlet in its subtext, which is so close to the Shakespearean tragedy. The subtle hint of an Oedipus complex between mother and son, for instance — Haider's angst is heightened because he loves his mother not just as a mother but as something more. Marvelously dramatized.

The gravedigger's scene from Act Five is another masterstroke — "In youth when I did love, did love..." becomes "Arre aon a ki zindagi hai, thak gayi, so jao!" in the film's idiom.

We must also remember it is a political movie, and in that context it cannot be totally unbiased. Basharat Peer — author of Curfewed Night — is the scriptwriter; he will naturally show sympathy toward his community, especially the innocent people who gave up their lives in this war. Where there is war, there will be atrocities, and power during wartime lies with those who have guns — the army and the terrorists. The movie shows exactly that. The ground reality is that the Indian army fought this war through counter-insurgency, moles, and dummy groups, just like the film depicts. The army commander fires the grenade only after terrorists murder his jawans. The grenade eliminates a terrorist who would surely have killed more innocents. The army is NOT all bad.

The Indian army is no different from any other. Mistakes have been committed, but where there is war, innocent lives are lost — that is also a fact. The majority of people in Kashmir wanted "freedom" and thought it would come from across the border — but it never does. The dream is shattered.

And let us not forget: it is people of his own community who first put a gun in young Haider's hand. His mother and uncle, his friends, and Roohdaar — his father's ghost — put the gun there again. The "play within a play" culmination, in true Bollywood style with song and dance — the "Bismil" number, Shahid dancing, Sudesh Adhana's puppet choreography — asks: are we not all puppets?

What lingers as you walk out of the theater is Ghazala's fragmented body — her life made literal. Her husband, a good man, had no time for her. His brother, a reprehensible man, loved her. A son who loves his mother but loves his father more, and cannot let go of him. She is Queen Gertrude — but she is also Kashmir: broken, shattered, dead. War is futile. The lesson for the so-called freedom fighters: revenge does not get you freedom — only death.