It is very rarely that I write back-to-back pieces on the same film but this time the “ecosystemic" meltdown triggered by Aditya Dhar’s fabulously mounted espionage epic Dhurandhar seems like a personal vindication. This time the emotions are raw and frayed and a loose comment from a Bollywood actor warrants a reaction. While in his Instagram-post on the film, Hrithik Roshan praises the technical finesse of the film, he makes a reference to the “politics" of it to which he does not agree. Fair enough. He is entitled to his opinion and so are the ‘Aman-ki-Asha’ fifth-columnists who are having the most delectable and enjoyable meltdown in the history of all meltdowns. Now, what intrigued me about Roshan’s statement is his use of the word politics leading to the question — what is Dhurandhar’s politics?

In most Marxist, neo-Marxist, poststructuralist, feminist, subaltern, and critical-theory traditions, the conceptual universe that the wokists thrive in, politics does not mean electoral competition or party ideology. It refers to the distribution of power, resources, meanings, and identities embedded in everyday practices, cultural forms, and institutions. From this standpoint all knowledge is situated as it comes from somewhere and serves particular interests (see the works of Donna Haraway and Michel Foucault); all cultural production is shaped by ideology wherein it reproduces or resists existing power relations (see works of Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci); everyday actions are structured by systems of power such as class, caste, gender, race, coloniality, etc. and therefore, neutrality is impossible where claims of neutrality are themselves political because they often uphold the dominant order.

Thus,........

© News18