by ANJAN BASU
Two Satyajit Ray films made 20 years apart present searing critiques of the privileging of insular religiosity over humanity. Can we hope to see such films being made in India today?
In three films – two full-length features (Devi, 1960 and Ganashatru, 1990) and one short made for television (Sadgati, 1981) – Satyajit Ray examines the intersection and overlap of unreasoning, blind faith and crushing superstition. There is a fourth film foregrounding the same theme, at any rate elements of the same theme: I am referring here to Mahapurush, one of the two segments making up the 1965 movie Kapurush O Mahapurush. But, unlike those three other films, Mahapurush was conceived as a hilarious takedown of overzealous religious faith, rather than as a critique of what such faith spawns and how, and thus it belongs in a different category to the other three movies I mentioned.
On another level, by the time Ray had come to work on Ganashatru, he was in poor health, his mobility was seriously compromised and he was unable to shoot on location. This handicap clearly shows in a certain flatness, a lack of solidity in the narrative, and this in large measure takes the sting out of what could have been a compelling critique of organised, institutional religion’s many vulnerabilities.
On the other hand, though two decades separate them, the point of departure for both Devi and Sadgati is the severe, inward-looking world of fanatical religiosity which locates itself at the antipodes to the natural human instincts of reasonableness, compassion and empathy. Both are masterfully told stories and each shines an unforgiving light on how self-righteous religiosity dehumanises, robs individual lives of dignity and meaning. In today’s India, where bellicose religiosity of a certain kind is not only being increasingly normalised but is often projected as an important public virtue, it will hopefully be sobering to revisit these two great Ray movies. Besides, one can scarcely imagine a better way to pay homage, on the eve of his 100th birthday, to one of our finest artists across all art forms.
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