‘Kai Po Che’ and the Strange Case of the Vanishing Villain

UTV Motion Pictures Sushant Singh Rajput, far left, Amit Sadh, center, and Raj Kumar Yadav, in a still from the 2013 movie “Kai Po Che,” directed by Abhishek Kapoor.

“Kai Po Che,” or “Brothers for Life,” which opened in Indian theaters on Friday, isn’t a film about the Gujarati entrepreneurial spirit, or friendship, or cricket, or any of the various themes that the popular author Chetan Bhagat has suggested in press interviews over the past two weeks.

Based on his novel “The 3 Mistakes of My Life,” the film is a coming-of-age story about a group of three midle-class young Hindu men and a poor Muslim prodigy in Ahmedabad that unfolds from 2000 to 2002. But to understand the true premise of “Kai Po Che,” audiences may want to note what Mr. Bhagat changed or omitted from his novel as he wrote the screenplay with the director.

Like the book, the film deals with the Gujarat riots of 2002, the first mainstream movie to do so in the 11 years since deadly clashes broke out between Muslims and Hindus across the state following a sudden fire in a train making a stop at the Godhra station that killed 58 Hindu pilgrims. Mr. Bhagat’s 2008 book was about the adventurous quest of three Gujarati boys to make it in business - an aim derailed by, among other events, the relationship one of them develops with a lonely Muslim kid, all of this happening against the backdrop of a religiously divided city.

“3 Mistakes” was a heavy-handed attempt at turning the events that shook Gujarat at the turn of the millennium ! into racy fiction. In Mr. Bhagat’s written account of Gujarat’s politics, for example, workers of the “Hindu Party,” a clear reference to the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party,  carry “some form of accessory like a trishul (trident) or a rudraksha (prayer beads) or a holy book” at a dinner function. Nevertheless, it is the only work in Indian fiction, popular or literary, to deal with one of the most disturbing events in our recent history.

In turning his decidedly political book into a feel-good Bollywood spectacle, Mr. Bhagat has, on the face of it, done nothing less than rewrite history in favor of Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra Modi of the B.J.P., who has been dogged by questions over his role in the 2002 riots. Mr. Bhagat has, for the most part, kept the screenplay clear of damning references to Gujarat’s Hindutva nationalist poliics littered throughout his book, such as a grand conference of “the Hindu Party,” where the subject of discussion is “until when does a Hindu keep bearing pain”

In an interview with India Ink, Mr. Bhagat defended his decision to leave out the divisive politics that his book described. “It’s a Bollywood film,” he said. “Also, a film is never a decision of a single person. And it was decided by everyone together that it would be better to focus on friendship and not politics.”

In the film adaptation, Mr. Bhagat has also added what seems like justification for some Hindus to turn violent, like the death by burning of both of the parents of one of the three protagonists in the Sabarmati Express; in the novel, it was his nephew. We all know the level of vengeance with which Bollywood heroes respond to the targeting of their mothers: “Teri maa mari hai kya (Is it your mother who has died),” the bereaved son explodes at a sensible friend trying to stop him from losing c! ontrol of! himself..

In his book, Mr. Bhagat clearly showed the 2002 riots as a state-sanctioned exercise (“Whatever it takes to quench the hurt feelings,” says a “senior Hindu Party leader”). But he excised that from the film completely.

“It is not the kind of film that takes political stands,” he told India Ink. “But I still show everything that happens. The film depicts the riots in full detail; it just doesn’t take sides. I am still the only writer who has engaged with Gujarat riots.”

Mr. Bhagat also denied that the changes he made for his screenplay were intended to appease Mr. Modi. “No, that is not the case,” he told India Ink. “If I cared about that, the film wouldn’t have shown what it does.”

In an interview with The Indian Express, he explained further: “Nobody can deny what has happened in Gujarat. Why and how hs it happened that really is an opinion. And that the film doesn’t have.”

He also said, in the same interview, that neutrality was his biggest “trend,” even though his recent sharp words for public figures like the author Salman Rushdie and the Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy seem to indicate the opposite.

“It’s a writer’s job to speak and give opinions, and I’m somewhat popular and unlike other popular people like cricketers and actors, who don’t speak on issues,” he had said in a February 2012 interview with The Telegraph in India about statements in which he accused Mr. Rushdie of being a desperate attention-seeker and Mr. Murthy of running a body shop.

Over the last year or so, Mr. Bhagat has tried, painstakingly, to be seen as respectful of Mr. Modi, whose rise from the ashes of 2002 has seemed inexorable. From praising Mr. Modi’s! vision for development to acknowledging the emotional pull he exerts on many middle-class Indians, Mr. Bhagat has repeatedly endorsed the proudly nationalist chief minister in public.

Indeed, Mr. Modi publicly cautioned him, tongue in cheek, that rooting for him could cost the author the love of Indian liberals - well aware, of course, that Mr. Bhagat didn’t have that to begin with, and thus cementing their common-cause camaraderie.

Mr. Bhagat now opines in his influential column in The Times of India that “there is a lot more to Gujarat, the Gujarati people and their C.M. than Godhra” and that “many right do not cover up a wrong. But should a wrong be constantly used to cover up many rights”

So why does the man who once wrote “3 Mistakes” now appear to be trying to ingratiate himself with its implied villain Is it because the author fears losing his legendary hold over the imagination of a young India that’s increasingly drawn to Mr. Modi’s pied-piper promises Or could this extended goodwill, and an obvious softening of the original narrative, be a ruse to introduce the 2002 riots to popular cinema without earning the fatal wrath of Mr. Modi, who is being hailed as the new Hindu Hriday Samrat (Emperor of Hindu Hearts), after the death of Bal Thackeray

These questions remain unanswered. But, let’s not forget that at a time when a potential prime ministerial candidate like Mr. Modi is most desperate for Indians to see beyond the 2002 riots, Mr. Bhagat has allowed, and contributed to, the making and breathless promotion of a guaranteed blockbuster that shows tilak-wearing! and swor! d-waving Hindu mobs wipe out entire Muslim neighborhoods on account of a rumor.

That alone perhaps makes “Kai Po Che” worthy of the standing ovations it is reported to have inspired across the theaters.

Snigdha Poonam is Arts Editor at The Caravan. She is on Twitter at @snigdhapoonam