The first film Prime Minister Narendra Modi allegedly watched after assuming office more than 10 years ago is The Sabarmati Report. It is necessary to ask, ‘Why this film?’
Were there no other films that he could have viewed over the past decade? For instance, The Kashmir Files – which too would have been to his liking.
After all, he would have been in agreement with that film’s depiction of ‘forced’ exodus of Hindus from the Valley. One can list several other films which were agreeable with his political standpoint and could have been viewed by him.
Let there be no doubt that of all ‘histories’ that Modi wants ‘corrected’ and ‘truth’ depicted, it is the one on the events in Gujarat in 2002, that is most essential.
By watching this film and publicising it, Modi underscored that even after 22 years of the incidents, he is agonised over the fact, that a majority of Indians do not completely believe his version of the entire episode. Unambiguously, this is one reality that he has not come to terms with.
Thus the necessity to promote a film which unabashedly demonises all that he also trashes and ‘corrects’ everything he wishes – journalists for instance, especially English ones.
But before proceeding ahead, let us get back for now, to the ‘event’ of Modi ‘watching a film’. His publicists ensured that this politically choreographed event was filmed, literally from every angle, by dedicated TV camerapersons and packaged in a film-within-film format for greater audio-visual impact.
Modi was shown watching the film along with senior Union Ministers and a galaxy of political leaders belonging to coalition partners of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the National Democratic Alliance.
NDA MPs at a screening of ‘The Sabarmati Report’ at the parliament. Photo: X/@narendramodi.
Presence of MPs and ministers from non-BJP NDA parties alongside Modi, inside the auditorium within the Parliament Complex, was a necessity because it was essential to convey the message that the entire ruling coalition stood with him in his endorsement of the film.
After watching the film, Modi made a mention of this too. He posted on social media that he “joined fellow NDA MPs at the screening of The Sabarmati Report” (not the other way as it would have happened) and that he commended the “makers of the film for their effort”.
He had previously stated on X that it was “good that this truth is coming out, and that too in a way common people can see it. A fake narrative can persist only for a limited period of time. Eventually, the facts will always come out!”
Ironically, The Sabarmati Report, the film that Modi lauded, does not convincingly provide a version which is ‘divergent’ from what the world believes in as actual. Instead, it is a skeletonised and de-contextualised fiction-film which has secured Modi’s stamp of approval.
Not surprisingly, the film focuses solely on one facet of the sequence of events which lasted several months – starting with the Godhra carnage on February 27, 2002. The film presents this episode as if it had no prologue and no main body of a large text after the ‘introduction’ involving the train and the nearby signal crossing.
These substantive parts are deliberately left out because the filmmakers must have been adequately briefed regarding which episodes from the events of 2002 Modi wished to pass into history as ‘truth’, and what he wanted erased.
Indeed, actual truth is always problematic when it is presented in any genre – documentary, journalese, theatre, fiction and non-fiction film, or even reports of enquiry committees.
It is because of this that the prime minister and his spin doctors need to lean on constructed truth, as in The Sabarmati Report.
In a text-plate prior to the film, its makers say that it is based on the report of the Nanavati Commission report but paradoxically the film makes no reference to it.
There is no word on the formation of the Commission within 10 days of the Godhra inferno as a one-judge enquiry commission and why it had to be shortly converted into a two-judge commission. The film does not refer to the report save in the declaration and its title.
Instead, the primary narrative in the film is based on a conflict between one ‘famous’ woman English TV anchor working for a news channel (no prizes for guessing who and which media organisation they parody) and a nondescript male Hindi reporter who eventually wages a successful battle unearth and broadcast ‘facts’ about what actually happened.
He is asked by bosses to wield the camera and tag along with the ‘star’, elitist, fashion conscious and domineering woman anchor (all negative tropes) to Godhra. All editorial decisions are in her hands and the down-to-earth Hindi reporter is merely at her beck and call.
The two differ majorly – she wants to present the train tragedy as ‘accident’ (as asserted by the Justice UC Banerjee Commission during the United Progressive Alliance’s tenure).
In contrast, the male ‘pawn’ in the system, shoots ‘evidence’ of it being a “pre-planned conspiracy” hatched by (who else) Muslim residents of the town. But this is suppressed by the elitist anchor and other editorial bosses in the channel.
He eventually succeeds when the balance of power shifts and he is in control of a flourishing Hindi channel, but not before going to a ‘Devdasian’ phase in life (there’s a rich girlfriend who ditches him under pressure from society).
The script has space for such a character but not for even a whisper of what happened thereafter in the rest of Gujarat state – the riots that broke out and caused deaths of an estimated 2000 people.
The film is endorsed glowingly as ‘truth’ by Modi because it ‘establishes’ the attack on the Sabarmati Express as pre-planned conspiracy which killed 59 children, women and men, returning from Ayodhya after a religious function organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
Truth, as bared by newspapers and TV reports of that time, is that these people were mobilised, like from other states, to exert pressure on the Vajpayee government to permit symbolic initiation of construction of the Ram temple.
This was required because VHP supporters were restive as it had been 10 years since the demolition of Babri Masjid and there was no movement forward.
The smear on Modi’s persona is due to accusations that he did not take necessary evasive action to prevent outbreaks of statewide riots after the heartbreak in Godhra.
Despite ‘clean chits’ and courts dismissing all accusations against him, questions keep being raised, within India and outside.
Also read: The ‘Emergency’ Rules Invoked by the Govt to Ban the BBC Film on Gujarat Riots
Unable to put an end to such allegations, Modi endorses the film’s ‘erasure’ of history – it makes no mention of targeted attacks on Muslims and their properties.
The script and film reaches its ‘end’ with the Hindi male (now star anchor) ‘establishing’ that the carnage was not an accident.
The film glosses over the fact that almost 2000 people were killed in violence that started from the next day. The film ignores reference to the fact that of those who died, an estimated 69 people were killed in just one housing complex in Ahmedabad – Gulberg Society.
It is this history of incidents in Gujarat in 2002 that was approved as the ‘truth’ by the prime minister, and he secured the backing of several Union ministers and MPs of his party and that of his alliance partners merely by them watching the film with him. That is how people get used as props.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is a journalist and author. His latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project. He also wrote Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. His X handle is @NilanjanUdwin.
