Harsh words for Obama from a Bollywood director
Indian filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt with Ethan Casey and director Sanjay Jha, at the mahurat for Jha's film Deshdrohi 2: 26/11 War in Mumbai, March 3, 2009. Photo by Pete Sabo.
Here’s a chunk of dialogue that I transcribed recently, from an interview I did in early March in Mumbai with the well-known Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt:
“Prior to the attack in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was a kind of demonizing of people of the region which kind of made the American people look the other way. And then through very clever tools of control, they made sure that the images of the barbarism came back home.”
“Do you think that that can be changed in America now, under the new administration?”
“I wonder. I don’t think even America, in spite of the happy ending that you have superimposed on this tragic situation, is still not really going to look unflinchingly at what you have done over the last eight years to the world. The so-called War against Terror has only enlarged the war.”
“I think that’s something that’s done a lot in Hollywood,” I suggested. “Americans have a habit of superimposing happy endings on any story.”
“That’s what an average man wants. He wants fairy tales to lull him to sleep.”
“Do you feel that Obama’s election was that?”
“I think that the American dream of a black man in the White House is a yarn that the young people of America made into a concrete reality. That is not to take away the charm and the charisma of the man. He has a charm, he has a charisma. But what is the magic wand that he can flash and resolve the problem? A nation which has supported a war of demonic proportions had it coming. You are the architects of doom of the human race. No power is going to reverse it. What you have started, you cannot reverse now. Because you can’t start a war – even the Second World War was supposed to be a good war. Look what happened: it led to the catastrophe of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This war was the so-called War against Terror, against those values which you say are barbaric. And repeated through tools of mass distraction, amplifying to the world that your vision is the sanest vision and the most civilized, the most humane vision. How? By censoring? By buying people off? By getting wordsmiths to work on your payroll? Bush’s America was far more dangerous than Hitler’s Germany.”
“In what way?”
“Look at the magnitude of destruction. You’ve not even begun to finish a body count.”
“Do you think there’s any potential for American people to face that honestly?”
“I don’t think so, as of now. As of now there’s a euphoria of getting the slum kids onto the Oscar dais and putting the black man in the White House. You’re patting yourself on the back that how fair a nation it is. But I want to know one thing: will the American people come to terms and deconstruct the war industries that you have as your lifeline? The lifeblood of your nation is the war industries. It’s not because you hate the world. That’s the only route to survive. The mosquito doesn’t bite you because it hates you. It has to bite you because if it doesn’t bite you it can’t get your blood, which is its only means of sustenance.”
What a complete idiot Mahesh Bhatt is. Not content with making movies little more than pseudo-intellectual trash he confirms all the stereotypes of the pretentious film director who thinks he’s got something important to say.
To imagine that Amerca under Bush was worse than Hitler’s Germany beggars belief and reveals a man wildly caught up in his own historical fantasies. He should try looking at the mess of his own country with its 5000 year old history of racism ingrained in to the very fabric of Indian society through the caste system. Or the religious hysteria that claims thousands of lives through violent pogroms in the slums of its cities. Or the 10 million estimated baby girls murdered by their parents over the last decade due to rampant female infanticide.
At least the US and American society has the capacity for change despite all its faults. Mahesh Bhatt and his ilk simply sit and seethe in their Mumbai ivory towers while ‘India is shining’.
Max, I think you need to read more about history of India rather than relying upon the knowledge of others’. ( got a chance to read your blog- happy to know that you are a converted pakistani). I am a born Pakistani and proud of my Indian Heritage. 5000 years old history and culture and tradition of embracing and welcoming everyone from Turks, Tajiks, Arabs, Tuglaks to Mugals etc etc. It were only British who insisted on remaining British. Otherwise whoever came and conquered Hindustan eventually became a Hindustani.
Kindly, abstain from calling us racist. What is this english proverb haaan people living in glass houses should not throw stones.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne311009inside_balochistan.asp