Mardaani and Bollywood's misguided notions of feminism

In the concluding scene of Mardaani, the audience is treated to a fight sequence between Rani Mukerji’s character Shivani Shivaji Roy and the film’s villain, the leader of a child trafficking, drugs smuggling and prostitution ring, played by Tahir Bhasin. Shivani delivers kicks, punches and shows off some remarkable action chops. You expect her to beat the living hell out of the villain and she does, but that’s not all. Shivani decides to hand over the bad guy to the girls who were his victims, rather than to the police force. She effectively breaks every rule in the police handbook by not only thrashing him but with her silent direction to the girls (who have been watching her beat up Bhasin). She wordlessly directs them to kill their tormentor. The girls, barely teenagers, obediently follow her directive and crush the bad guy to death while Sanskrit shlokas invoking the devi in her shakti roop play in the background. This ghastly excuse for female empowerment raises several questions. First, did director Pradeep Sarkar get a memo about female empowerment from a men’s rights’ activists’ group? Second, did Mardaani actually have Mukerji describe an act that is somewhere between a custodial killing, public lynching and murder as “public outrage”? [caption id=“attachment_1682675” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Facebook[/caption] For a film that’s supposed to be sensitive to women, the sheer irresponsibility Mardaani advocates at the end of the film is galling. Apparently, it is okay to encourage young girls to kill someone and dismiss the impact that committing and witnessing murder may have on a child’s psyche. In fact, as far as Mardaani is concerned, it’s almost therapeutic if the child is someone who has been kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Clearly, the notions of law and criminal cases do not exist in the world of Mardaani. This is really ironic because earlier in the film, Shivani recites portions of the Indian Penal Code while slapping a two-bit bad guy around. To be clear, Mardaani’s villain is a vile human being. He preys upon young girls and he definitely deserves the severest punishment for his disgusting and cruel actions. However, these punishments should be delivered by a constitutional body, like you know, a court of law. Not only because that’s how criminals are dealt with in a civilised society but also because the last time we checked, murder was not the prescribed therapy for those who have experienced trauma like rape. _Mardaani’_s love for machismo is obvious from the film’s first scene, but by the end, it devolves into shameless and senseless aggression. The problem with this construction of womanly strength is that it puts across the message that Shivani’s maar-dhaad policy is the only way a woman can get any kind of justice or command respect. This is not Mardaani’s contribution to Bollywood, but rather Sarkar carrying on an old tradition that dates way back. But here’s the thing: equality isn’t and should not be a test of muscular strength. The respect you’re owed as a human being cannot and should not be contingent to how many push-ups you can do. Unfortunately, that’s what passes for women’s lib in Bollywood. (Is this better or worse than the patronising “I ’m not a woman but I wish I were one because women are sexy" routine? You decide.) Despite all the noises it made during its pre-release publicity, Mardaani ended up to be a vehicle designed to display machismo rather than feminism. Shivani is more Chulbul Pandey and Bajirao Singham than, for instance, Kiran Bedi. Not just that, the film would have you believe it wants to create awareness about child trafficking. Yet its treatment of this social evil is superficial and the voices of the child victims are largely silenced. The film also had to cut a couple of shots that were considered too graphic by the censor board. According to the film’s version of feminism, Shivani is a hero for empowering the young women, which would be wonderful if empowerment wasn’t limited to Shivani encouraging them to engage in an act of aggression that would have serious criminal consequences, let alone add to their existing cache of trauma. This confused and misguided activist zeal is not unique to Mardaani. When Bollywood becomes socially aware, particularly concerning issues like gender, the press statements come out fast and furious but are rarely backed by concrete actions. So there will be headlines telling us X condemns violence against women (but didn’t care that her character was slapped around in her last film); Y expresses fear and worry for his daughter (but plays characters that stalk and sexually harass heroines); Z pledges support to a campaign for women’s rights (but argues that item numbers should not be criticized). Even campaigns that start with the noblest of intentions can’t seem to escape the curse of apathy and misguided feminism. Bollywood actor and everyone’s favorite human being, Farhan Akhtar set up a campaign called MARD (Men Against Rape and Discrimination) to spread awareness about sexual violence. Akhtar’s messages, mostly shared via social media, seem to be sincere. He was complimented for being a celebrity who used his star power to talk about a serious issue. We even forgave the silly moustaches that MARD distributed and the patriarchal undertones associated with the title of the campaign. Unfortunately, MARD has turned out to be something of a damp squib. It’s a listless campaign now, made up of quotes and photographs that sound lovely and are not at all thought provoking. Selling t-shirts that say “Real Men Don’t Rape” on Myntra.com or asking a cricketer to put on the MARD moustache during an IPL match is good publicity but in actual terms, it’s not doing much to make men respect women. The MARD page on Myntra.com has a hefty footer explaining its idealism. “With MARD, you promise to ‘live by values of gender equality and respect for women, volunteer to become the catalyst for change, pledge to instil these values in your family and friends, and spread awareness within your community and local schools’. And you can do all of this by flaunting the lovely MARD t-Shirts with a soul.” So that’s what Indian society’s been missing all this time – a t-shirt with soul. If only gender biases really could be removed with a click worth Rs 199. The problem with campaigns like these is that they’re ready to jump onto the feminist bandwagon but are not willing to actually commit to the cause. Mardaani, MARD and other such initiatives certainly succeed in cashing in on a trending topic, but their involvement threatens to trivialize the very real and serious issues that they’re supposed to discuss. They encourage tokenism in a society that is in dire need of a lot more than lip service. The conversation quickly slips into generic quotes and slogans that are entirely toothless. Soon, the press statements recede from public memory and India is back to business as usual. In an ideal world, we would have celebrities that willingly and wholeheartedly participated in the female rights movement. It would not be an uncommon news item to hear an actress take a leaf out of Beyonce’s VMA performance  and proudly declare herself to be a feminist. Till then, we’ll have to settle for a woman judging herself by the standards of male machismo like in Mardaani. Or perhaps we could buy a MARD t-shirt online.