REEL REVOLUTION IN INDIA:

A Critical Analysis of the Social Movements Surrounding Rang De Basanti (2006)

Angele Maraj
February 21, 2016
GST 6210 - The Developers - Winter 2016
Dr. Edward Murphy

I. INTRODUCTION
This January marked the 10th anniversary of the release of the film Rang De Basanti, a
Bollywood drama that drew controversy for its message which seemingly condoned actions of
revolutionary violence and sparked larger discussions on the topics of patriotism and social
action, especially among Indian youth. The film draws parallels between the true historical
events surrounding Indian independence revolutionary Bhagat Singh and his associates and the
fictional events in the lives of a group of Indian youth in the present day. In doing so, Rang De
Basanti exemplifies several tenets of social movement theory discussed by authors Donatella
Della Porta, Mario Diani, Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow through its plot and characterizations,
concepts like identity formation and framing, contentious performances and repertoire-building
across cultures and issues and the shift from contained to transgressive contention (particularly
escalation to violence).
While it is not necessary to consider the artistic merit of Rang De Basanti with regard to
standards of filmmaking or even the realistic merits of the particular forms of social movements
depicted within, critical feedback on the overall message of the film should be examined to shed
light on the reception of it and how that may reflect on the Indian public's own understanding
and application of social movements. In order to recognize the scope of the film's impact and
influences as it relates to social movement theory, it is also necessary to examine the historical
context of the Indian Independence Revolution to understand the concepts of social movements
and contentious politics that may have been applied to result in what was covered by the film.
"Social movements are a historical -- and not a universal -- category," and so examining the
constraints and influences of that time period are essential to understanding that history (Tilly &
Tarrow, 2015, Chapter 1- Contentious Politics).

II. FILM SUMMARY AND CONTEXT

Rang De Basanti (2006) centers on a group of six young adults in India and a
documentary filmmaker from England, all hailing from different backgrounds but with the
common task of recreating the story of the extremist Indian independence revolutionaries of the
early twentieth century. The making of the film along with some significant external events end
up awakening these youth to a previously dormant sense of patriotism and social engagement,
leading to a climax that shocked as well as inspired audiences across the Indian diaspora.
In a ten-year reflection on the film, critic Subhash K. Jha (2016) wrote, "I remember
watching the film with a very fidgety, very confused audience reacting as we all to unfamiliar
experiences, with embarrassment and heckling". Some accused the film of condoning fascism
and dangerous action; academic Kanti Bajpai wrote in several press outlets that if this is a
clarion call to the Indian public...we should be worried," (Saccarelli, 2006). Others, including
director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, argued that it provided a jolt of energy for Indians and
especially Indian youth, inspiring them toward becoming political actors. The movie has been
credited with expanding the repertoire for the India Against Corruption movement, starting a
wave of 'flash activism' (SMS-based calls to action aimed at engaging the middle class) and in
what seems like a direct take from the watershed scene of the film, a series of candlelight vigils
at India Gate in response to the acquittal of a wealthy but widely-presumed guilty accused
murderer (Werbner, Webb & Spellman-Poots, 2014, p. 205).
Both viewpoints on the message of the film have their place, but in any case, it is clear
that Rang De Basanti had a palpable impact on the dialogue surrounding social action in India
and did so by linking the past to the present in a way that other movies featuring the stories of
those same independence revolutionaries were unable to do (Jha, 2016).

A. Plot
The movie opens on a sepia-toned tracking shot of several Indian men behind the bars of
a British Indian prison, eventually landing on the cell of Bhagat Singh. He is seen reading a book
when the British Raj General McKinley comes to collect him for his execution and says to the
general, good-naturedly, "Just a minute, Mr. McKinley. One revolutionary is meeting is another."
Singh closes the book to reveal it is written by Vladimir Lenin. "Thank you," he says. "Shall we
go?"
From there the audience is brought back to the present day and introduced to Sue
McKinley, the granddaughter of the general and a documentary filmmaker for the BBC. She is
taken with her grandfather's respectful and almost reverent accounts of the freedom fighters he
encountered and is determined to tell their story, even when her producers inform her that her
funding has been cut and she will have to go the project alone. She travels to India to meet her
contact there, a young college student named Sonia who has been helping her arrange for the
film from abroad.
To cut costs, Sue and Sonia work together to audition students at the University of Delhi
for the lead roles of Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru, Ashfaqulla Khan,
and Ram Prasad Bismil, but the amateur performances by the students in their auditions are
painfully bad and Sue is at a loss for what to do next. That is when she meets Sonia's friends, a
diverse group of friendly but apathetic students who have little knowledge of the revolutionaries
and their role in Indian history, and decides to cast them in the lead roles. Daljit 'DJ', the Punjabi
ringleader of the group whose mother often comments on his inability to take things seriously, is
cast as Azad; Karan, the wealthy and intensely apathetic son of an industrialist, is cast as Singh;
Aslam, a kindhearted Muslim poet, is cast as Khan and Sukhi, a goofball (and admittedly a

throwaway character in most respects) is cast as Rajguru. Sue finds her Ram Prasad Bismil in
Laxman Pandey, a right-wing Hindu nationalist who previously harassed this group of friends
due to his anti-Western and anti-Muslim views; notably, he is the only one of the group who is
familiar with his historical counterpart prior to the filming.
As the group rehearses together and prepares for the filming (it is unclear if the sepiatoned sequences seen are the product of this project or Sue's mental projection of her artistic
vision), they grow closer with each other and with their sense of national identity, but it isn't until
a traumatic event linked to political corruption affects the group directly that a common group
identity with an ideological base begins to form.
Earlier in the film the audience is introduced to Ajay Singh Rathod, Sonia's fiancee and
an "outside" member of the friend group who is respected even by Laxman. He is an ace flight
lieutenant with the Indian Air Force and argues passionately several times for the merit of
national pride and investment only to be berated and teased by his more apathetic friends. When
his plane crashes due to equipment malfunction and he is killed, the friends are devastated and
soon outraged as it becomes clear that the corrupt Minister of Defense intends to cover up the
crash -- one of many recent IAF crashes -- by blaming it on Rathod and his supposedly
irresponsible and reckless piloting. At this point, all focus on the documentary is shifted aside
and Sue becomes an observer of similar events playing out in real time as the group takes to the
streets for a large-scale protest. Their initially peaceful sit-in protest at India Gate is met with
violence from police forces, a reflection of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and Simon
Commission protest events depicted earlier on which in the film started Bhagat Singh's journey
toward more extremist action. Many of the group members are injured, with Rathod's grieving
mother knocked into a coma. Incensed and now clearly paralleling the revolutionaries they were

previously fictionalizing, the group plays out a plan to assassinate the Minister of Defense and
then come forward in a public way to gain a voice for the masses against internal corruption. Any
previous identity barriers are overcome as this new social movement and revolutionary identity
solidifies, especially once Laxman discovers that his own nationalist party had a hand in the
violence at India Gate and they publicly beat and humiliate him for criticizing the party's corrupt
agenda.
The film ends in a violent climax as the group takes over a radio station, taking public
responsibility for the assassination and broadcasting their message to the world: they intend to
cause no further harm, simply to call to action the youth of India to further a social movement
against the internal corruption of the Indian government. Despite making their intentions clear
and throwing up their hands in surrender to be arrested for the assassination, they are gunned
down brutally by the forces sent to respond as the nation listens and watches on in horror. The
movie closes with a somewhat mawkish shot of the friends reunited in the afterlife as a happy
and victorious band of brothers, intercut with media interviews of college students around the
country furiously demanding a change and pledging to continue the movement en masse against
corruption and injustice perpetrated by the current government.
B. Historical Context
The Indian independence revolutionaries whose lives are explored in Rang De Basanti
were initially inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's call to action in 1920. Singh, Azad and many other
young Indians left their formal educational pursuits to participate in the campaign of noncooperation which Gandhi had helped to initiate, heeding Gandhi's words: "To everyone I say:
whether no education is available elsewhere, you should leave. You can try for a similar sort of
education elsewhere if you are so inclined but it should not be under the aegis of the

Government. I want to say that it is not a question of livelihood; it is a question of humanity" (J.
Singh, 2006).
Though he always publicly supported their patriotic spirit, Gandhi would later denounce
the actions of Singh and his associates, such as the assassination of Assistant Superintendent
Saunders of Lahore in response to the police brutality-attributed death of Indian Independence
leader Lala Lajpat Rai (Wolpert, 2002, p. 136). Singh and Gandhi's political philosophies
diverged greatly beyond the common desire for Indian independence from the British Raj, with
Singh desiring to upend the political and economic system entirely in favor of a socialist
government and Gandhi's "pro-capitalist" Congress seeking to otherwise maintain the status quo
post-independence. The difference was such that current analysis often seeks to place them as
potential political rivals had Singh lived (P. Singh, 2015). The dichotomous relationship between
Singh and Gandhi within the greater independence movement is indicative of the way that
political cleavages can be consolidated temporarily for the benefit of the movement (Della Porta
& Diani, 2006, p. 36-37).
Bhagat Singh, an active member of the left-wing Naujawan Bharat Sabha and Hindustan
Socialist Republican Association organizations and probably the most historically prominent
figure of the extremist revolutionaries, was inspired in developing his initial philosophy toward
the movement by Marxism as well as the accounts of Irish freedom fighters (Das, 2006). Singh's
adaptation of these other social movements to fit his own structural and ideological needs is an
example of what Della Porta and Diani refer to as the "cross-national diffusion of protest,"
wherein protest makers are inspired by the tactics of others around the world and apply similar
tactics, simultaneously debunking their assertion that countries generally must have past
interaction or geographical proximity for diffusion to take place (2006, p. 186-187).

III. AN APPLICATION OF THEORY TO 'RANG DE BASANTI'

A. Identity Formation and Framing
One of the themes explored heavily in Rang De Basanti is the effect of social movement
involvement on identity formation and the way that framing of an issue can encourage and
expedite that process. Della Porta and Diani write that identity formation with an "us versus
them" structure is necessary for collective action to occur (2006, p. 94); in the case of this film,
the framing for that structure is presented as young Indians fed up with injustices versus the
corrupt government elites. Tilly and Tarrow further develop this idea by stating that contention
typically activates a single us-them boundary "while deactivating others that could have been
relevant," including those of "social classes, ethnic groups, religious faiths, neighborhoods, and
other categories [which] organize some of routine social life" (2015, Chapter 5 - Political
Identities). While most of the main characters in Rang De Basanti transcend some kind of class,
gender or religious identity to form a new primary identity as a young anti-corruption
revolutionary, the clearest indication of this concept in action throughout the film is the
progression of the relationship between the characters of Aslam and Laxman and the
transformation of the Laxman character as a whole.
When Laxman is introduced, it is as an antagonist -- along with his right-wing party, he
invades an open-air hangout of the group of friends which features drinking and Westernized
music and harasses the crowd, spewing vitriol toward their "obscene" and "lewd" behavior,
threatening them with physical violence and shouting ethnic slurs at Aslam when confronted by
him. He has little in common with the others, ideologically or otherwise, as he is the only one of
them who is not a student at the college. Even as Laxman becomes more integrated with the
group through Sue's documentary, playing a role that is a friendly counterpart to Aslam's

Ashfaqulla Khan, he still has a strained relationship with Aslam, refusing to sit with next to him
at dinner or to even acknowledge him in most situations.
It is only as Laxman becomes politically involved with the group in opposition to the
elitist Indian government that he discards his former identity in favor of an newly formed
identity related to the social movement he is now a part of. At the climax of the movie, Laxman
and Aslam die together literally as brothers in arms, clasping hands as they are hit with a bomb at
the radio station by paramilitary forces. This transformation of character combined with
Laxman's previous intensity of involvement with his right-wing party also speaks to the idea that
part of the appeal for identity formation around a movement is the feeling of belonging and
importance that such an identity association brings (Della Porta & Diani, 2006, p. 99).
The way that the main characters are presented and received as heroes within the film is
another indication of the importance of framing, or the context in which a particularly ideology is
presented, in inciting collective action (Della Porta & Diani, 2006, p. 74-79). By the end of the
film, the characters have murdered two key figures involved in the cover-up of the AIF
equipment malfunctions due to inferior parts, an accusation which they admittedly never firmly
proved to the public before or after the assassinations. They could easily be perceived as
misguided vigilantes at best and violent criminals at worst by the Indian public. However, the
movie seems to imply with Karan's closing speech over the radio and the subsequent
impassioned cries of support from college students across the nation that his framing of these
actions is effective enough to start a widely supported social movement in favor of this group's
ideology. His speech has a clear us-versus-them narrative ("Men like the Defense Minister aren't
just above the law; they control it...These corrupt ministers are a reflection of our society. We've
chosen them"), an admission to the crimes with a rationalization of necessity ("It's not a lust for

blood - it's a matter of justice"), and a final call to action ("No country is perfect. You've got to
make it perfect") with an appeal to the broader public to become legitimate political actors.
B. Transgressive Contention and the Escalation to Violent Acts
In its portrayal of the contentious dynamic between its protagonist and antagonist
government figures, Rang De Basanti provides a textbook demonstration of how collective
action can shift from contained contention, or performances that are tacitly approved by the
political powers-that-be, to transgressive contention, defined as an act which challenges
established institutional routines when it "violates standard arrangements or adopts previously
unknown forms of claim making" (Tilly & Tarrow, 2015, Chapter 3 - Contained and
Transgressive Contention).
Shifts toward transgressive contention by challengers can be induced by a power holder
with a rigid repertoire, especially one which seeks to repress challengers. For example, the film's
protagonists begin their open dissent against the government using forms of performance
common in repertoires of peaceful protest such as pre-arranged interviews with media and
organized sit-ins at a public landmark. It is only when the police force responds to this peaceful
disturbance with outright violence that the challengers decide to take more drastic action and also
rapidly form a stronger collective identity as political actors; this is a strong example of how
opportunity structure shapes contention as discussed by Tilly and Tarrow in Chapter 3 of
Contentious Politics (2015, Regimes and Opportunity Structures). The organized violence occurs
in response to the limitations on and repression of traditionally contained acts of contention by
the power holders, and the audience sees this reflected both in the story of the fictional
protagonists as well as the reenactments of the early twentieth century extremists.

IV. CONCLUSION
Ten years after Rang De Basanti's release, it is clear that while the artistic merit and
viability of the central message of the film can be called into question, the impact it had on
viewers and its display of some fundamental concepts of collective action and contentious
politics cannot. The film uses historical re-tellings as well as the development of the fictional
central characters over the course of the film to demonstrate the ways that performances and
repertoire occur in cycles, the reasons why peaceful protests escalate to organized violence and
the impact that powerful framing and identity formation can have on the success of a social
movement. The cyclical nature of social collective action presented in the film combined with
the real-world reaction that resulted from the film is a clear reflection of one of the final lines of
the movie, spoken by the independence revolutionary characters: "Hamare baad aur bhi aayenge,
aur bhi...There will be many more after we are gone, many more" (Mehra, Pandey & D'Silva,
2014).

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