Mohenjo Daro makes historians cringe, Hindutva bigots proud

Having made two films dealing with periods from modern and medieval history, Ashutosh Gowariker is back with a film on ancient history.

It would not be wrong to say that as he has moved deep in the past with his third successive historical venture, the problems with his understanding of history have been very clear.

Now that the trailer of Mohenjo Daro is out, they seem to have reified that for a wider audience as well. His films have always been associated with historical inaccuracies, but this time the narrative seems to be openly siding with the dominant historical paradigm of the Hindutva forces.

The trailer, lasting less than three minutes, is replete with images, claims and glorification that overtly reinforce the now universally discarded thesis of the far Right trying to extol our "pristine" past.

The first scene of the trailer is possibly the only thing that Gowariker gets right. It dates back the period of the film to 2016 BC, which is more or less believed to be the period of Harappan civilisation.

The historical correctness ends here. Throughout the trailer, the characters, especially the lead played by Hrithik Roshan, constantly keep harping about how Mohenjo-Daro enjoys a special place of significance in their lives.

While invoking this word, it almost makes one believe that the people knew about the place they were living in. That this historical place was excavated in the 1920s and Mohenjo-Daro's literal translation is "the hill of the dead" seems oblivious to the inhabitants living in the plains, who happily keep calling the name in a number of scenes.

The second big problem arises in the second scene - depicting a seal that has a figure which looks like a unicorn. Coupled with what is shown to us in the subsequent scenes, we are enlightened about how the place has actually had Arabian horses striding majestically through the lanes of the settlements!

Horses were never a part of the Harappan civilisation and, far from being indigenous animals, they were first brought to the land by alien pastoralists.

The linking of the horse with the wider Hindutva game of the autochthonous Aryan theory and its conflation of the Harappan civilisation and the Vedic period have been attempted in the past.

This false theory has been quashed by many Indologists over the years, by meticulously putting forward evidence that rips apart the claims made by the Hindu far-Right.

Another jarring element that exasperates the audience is the heavily Sanskritised Hindi used by the characters to communicate with each other. The complexity of the language issue as far as the civilisation is concerned is enormous.

Far from lending a definitive idea on the texture and the phonology of the language these people must have spoken, the film brazenly clings to the counterfeit historical assertion of how their dialect evolved from the original, pure language of all time - Sanskrit.

As there is no convincing, foolproof evidence, it will not be off the mark to accuse the filmmaker of toying with this popular historical line.

There are numerous moments when you feel the exoticisation is way over the top, from the peacock feathers jutting out from the princess' crown to the outlandishly lavish sets, which would have put the Harappan civilisation to shame.

There are easy giveaways, like the scenes which depict the floods destroying the entire civilisation in the end. This comes at a time when multiple causes are being cited for its decimation; the popular cause remains thoroughly inadequate.

With no clear disclaimer for the liberties taken with the portrayal of the historical site, Gowariker's Mohenjo Daro shows an unambiguous deference to the popular myths of our times.

Hindutva forces are in the habit of making mythology synonymous with history, and their cause is starting to enter into our popular entertainment media.

Even if an innocuous response is issued by the filmmaker later in terms of how Mohenjo Daro stands bereft of political motives and accusations, it still very much contributes to that larger project of polarising history.

This kind of a "banal Hinduism", to borrow from historian Meera Nanda, acts as the perfect breeding ground for Hindutva forces to spread their vicious tentacles across the society.

I shudder to think of how the film will pan out in the end.